BBC: "Clever girls, stupid boys" education gender gap continues to widen and leave boys behind, but it doesn't really matter because it's probably mostly their fault anyway.

TechnoSam_Belpois · 2015-03-05T18:46:45+00:00

Someone call me out if I'm get the wrong idea of this article, but I hate this mentality...

"The only reason boy's aren't doing as well as girls is because of their own choices."

"In the past, girls were held down, so that's why they didn't do as well."

It seems that a growing number of people like to hold the two ideas. Now that the boys are falling behind, it's really just their own fault and nothing can be done. It has nothing to do with the nearly exclusive female staff and the behavior of an average boy being labeled defective. These people also believe that girls were oppressed in the past and that's the only reason they've had trouble.

Like the situation where some colleges now "discriminate" against women because their are too many female applicants and not enough male ones. It's suddenly a bad idea to be worried about equality when men get the short end.

Which I guess is nothing new.

DavidByron2 · 2015-03-05T17:37:58+00:00

An institution or immense importance for people's quality of life, and one dominated by women and feminist principles that objectively discriminates against boys because of their sex. Swap the sexes around and this would be all feminists would ever talk about.

I don't know about girls in general but this statement says Ms Andreas Schleicher can't do math.

But there are a couple of big conclusions delivered by the OECD's education guru, Andreas Schleicher.

There is no "maths gene", there is nothing inherent about boys or girls doing particularly well or badly in different subjects.

If boys can do better than girls in maths tests in some western countries - and then girls in Shanghai can do better at maths than those western boys,

And what about the boys in Shanghai? Don't they beat the girls there?

absurdsc · 2015-03-05T23:32:37+00:00

Eh, the article acknowledges "Teacher Bias" in favor of girls as the first cause.

I don't really see the theme of this article as being "it's probably most their [boys] fault." I would have liked to see more depth on why boys are considered to be less well behaved or less likely to do their homework, but overall I thought the article did a fine job of acknowledging the issue: boys are being left behind in schools.

baserace · 2015-03-06T02:54:04+00:00

And the response from the "feminism is about equality, guyz!" brigade?

tumbleweed

Marcruise · 2015-03-05T20:32:44+00:00

The OECD Report pdf itself is required reading as far as I'm concerned. Spend an hour or so going through it. Perhaps it's just me as an educator, but I found it fascinating.

Some of the most interesting findings for me were:

boys tend to improve more dramatically than girls when classrooms move from more chaotic environments to ordered environments, suggesting that they are more easily distracted.
girls tend to be worse at problem-solving, especially with questions like "Anna is twice as old as Bob, who is three years younger than Anna was five years' ago. How old are they?" that are best solved by translating into algebra first.
girls are better at identifying scientific issues (questions like "Why do earthquakes occur more in some areas than others?").
girls spend much more time reading outside the classroom, and do on average an hour's more homework a week. (and yes, I'm afraid video games may well be part of the problem here... sorry!)
just on video games, there's a difference between online collaborative games (e.g. WoW) and one-player games. The collaborative ones seem to hit performance quite badly, but one-player games (if only played lightly) improve performance in many areas.
there's evidence that teachers are giving better grades to girls for their more conscientious attitudes towards fancy book-learnin', rather than objective grades. This is at odds with that recent Israeli study that found Israeli teachers were (likely unconsciously) marking down girls in maths.

Claude_Reborn · 2015-03-05T21:48:19+00:00

Boys are now being held down by the feminist boot on their throat. It's the same boot that stops them speaking up.

xNOM · 2015-03-05T17:44:16+00:00

There is no "maths gene", there is nothing inherent about boys or girls doing particularly well or badly in different subjects.

If boys can do better than girls in maths tests in some western countries - and then girls in Shanghai can do better at maths than those western boys, it shows the variable factor is not gender, but those education systems.

Ok kids, today the BBC is going to teach us how to construct a logical argument.

If western boys > western girls, but Shanghai girls > western boys, what conclusion might you draw about nature vs nurture?

I hope the answer you all gave is BLANK SLATE NAH NAH NAH I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

2015-03-06T10:44:06+00:00

at least in the US, it probably has a lot to do with the fact that more than 25% of our boys are put on behavioral medication like ritalin or adderall by the time they reach high school...

thrway_1000 · 2015-03-05T17:48:52+00:00

https://archive.today/xmSny

Tokin_it · 2015-03-05T22:23:52+00:00

And their argument with video games includes a picture of an off-brand gamecube controller. I'm done here

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