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Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

theatlantic.com

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Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#41

Post by tptacek »

donatj wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me take a wild guess here: You're male. It seems like according to your premise, if we could just get over our prejudices, we could drastically streamline military training by simply selecting docile, compliant females instead of petulant, inquisitive males.

I just know these to be the reasons I and my friends didn't do well in school.

The psychological attraction towards retrofitting a formative experience of failure into an indicator of innate unique value does indeed seem irresistible. Which is a good reason to be suspicious of it; it's a meme that has evolved countermeasures to all of reason's defenses.

I did terribly in school, by the way.

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#42

Post by onewaystreet »

minimaxir wrote: post #7

I recently did an analysis of Harvard and MIT's MOOCs to determine which gender gets the better grades in classes. (full post: http://minimaxir.com/2014/07/online-class-charts/ ) Turns out, there's no statistically significant difference between male and female grades. http://minimaxir.com/img/online-class-charts/gender-grade.pn...

It doesn't surprise me that there would be a different result at the high school level and the college level. Most people are more invested in their education when they enter college, especially at elite schools like Harvard and MIT.

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#43

Post by tptacek »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me take a wild guess here: You're male. It seems like according to your premise, if we could just get over our prejudices, we could drastically streamline military training by simply selecting docile, compliant females instead of petulant, inquisitive males.

Public school and military training are (or were) intimately related, actually. The former, as we know it today, has its origins in 19th century Prussian militarism. That said, one cannot fairly compare the two. The military has an express purpose of national security, and is well suited to obedience and susceptibility. Public schools, on the other hand, are little more than industrialized daycare at best, and harmfu…

It sounds like your implied argument is that boys do worse than girls in school because school is derived from 19th century military training. That doesn't sound right.

(I'm reading more into your comment than you actually said, I know; maybe you're just making a tangential point).

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #29
calibraxis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexism is about power relations. Like racism and capitalism. Men dominate society. Doesn't matter how meritorious women are. Women can be tacitly competent and men buffoonish, yet incompetents routinely triumph. After all, they're gatekeepers and enforcers. Since society ridiculously built a massive infrastructure based on gender, women and men are trained differently. To the intellectual destruction of men.

This is true only if you use a specific sociological definition of "sexism", which is absolutely not to be equivocated with the one in common vernacular.

> This is true only if you use a specific sociological definition of "sexism", which is absolutely not to be equivocated with the one in common vernacular.

I think you mean "equate". "Equivocate" means something quite different.

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#45

Post by rotw »

donatj wrote: post #31

So much of school is based on blindly doing what you're told and I think young boys have trouble doing what they're told. I know I personally wanted to know the reasoning behind things. In the army they have to break young men down before they blindly follow orders. Even as a nearly 30 something I don't like being told what to do. Ask, don't tell. I know I could see this was pointless charade and would rather do some…

I read somewhere (forgotten the book title sorry, I'll try and get back to you on that!) that our patriarchal society's gender roles (and thus the games children play at a young age to educate them about these) differ for men and women in terms of how they relate to people: For men, competition is emphasised, meaning that independence and dominance is the prime goal, while for women, connection and bonding is the overarching ideal.

To this end, having stereotypes and games like girls playing with dolls while boys build things and play more combative games instills different behaviours in children, which fundamentally change how they relate to others. You can still see it reflected in stupid things like "Be a man", which is essentially a shaming shorthand for "assert independence and dominance, thus showing less vulnerability to those able to dominate you in a competitive social hierarchy".

This obviously also reflects on the way people relate to obedience; independence being a supposed virtue, obedience can be intepreted from this masculine framework as an attempt by someone else to dominate. Emphasising co-operation and connection, though, means a greater willingness to engage. These are obviously only broad trends, but they are noticeable.

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#46

Post by jeffreyrogers »

alukima wrote: post #9
yummyfajitas wrote: post #4

tl;dr; Girls work harder than boys and are more diligent about getting things done. Awesome for them. What's the problem? The article does raise one real issue - grades in school are based on more on obeying arbitrary rules than on actual mastery of the knowledge. That's a problem worth fixing. But it's a problem worth fixing because grades are measuring the wrong thing, and it's worth fixing regardless of it's affec…

To try to be fair, life is often more about obeying arbitrary rules than mastering certain subjects. Many of the things named in the article are important life skills that should be taught and encouraged.

That's true, and I want to extend that by saying that at the highest levels life is more about relationships and who can do favors for you. Even Y Combinator is an example of this. I'm sure everyone who gets in is fully capable, but there are probably just as many capable people who don't get in. Those who got in will probably go on to do bigger things simply by having the Y Combinator brand and network. I often ask my friends at business school whether they feel it's worth it. Invariably they mention how the things they learn aren't that useful, but that the relationships they make (plus the signal of HBS or Wharton or wherever) are well worth the price of admission.

The downside of all this is that it promotes disparate outcomes for those who come from privileged backgrounds and those who come from more ordinary ones. I'm currently attending an "elite" college and there seems to be a pretty clear distinction between job placement and family status.

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#47

Post by scott_karana »

jff wrote: post #40
scott_karana wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. Food for thought. :)

So when the parent here says males genetically have less self-restraint, that's a fair point, but when https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338135 says women are genetically subservient, your response is "Wow, you're off the rails" I'm not saying I agree that women have a ~subservient nature~, just that the way comments ended up being laid out really struck me.

You're right: I could see how I could come across as inconsistent. :-)

I'm certainly willing to reconsider my views, and even conceded the possible incorrectness of my beliefs in my other post which you linked.

But, I think there's a big difference in both meaning and tone between "self-restraint" and "subservience", which is (part of) why I had objected to the other post.

I had a huge problem with how the point was presented: use of a derogatory adjective, opinions as fact ("school sucks" coupled with "they like it"), "blow [my] brains out", etc. Came across as angry injust blame, to me, which is why I said it was "off the rails". It's not reasonable or fair to predicate an argument on an exaggerated and probably sexist set of statements.

Whereas contrasting aggressiveness against self-restraint (with very vague sources cited, at least) and leaving room for uncertainty as in GP at least leaves room to consider respective advantages and disadvantages of both aspects, instead of painting a "female" aspect with an entirely negative light, as in your link's parent.

This guy said it better than I did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338243

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#48

Post by Torgo »

calibraxis wrote: post #23
DigitalSea wrote: post #8

I find this incredibly sexist. To say that girls worker harder than boys offends me greatly. These studies are never accurate and somewhat biased, and I think work ethic is something that can't be averaged out like this. I don't doubt a lot of girls out there do work harder than boys, but making statements like: " Girls succeed over boys in school because they are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals, and put e…

Sexism is about power relations. Like racism and capitalism. Men dominate society. Doesn't matter how meritorious women are. Women can be tacitly competent and men buffoonish, yet incompetents routinely triumph. After all, they're gatekeepers and enforcers. Since society ridiculously built a massive infrastructure based on gender, women and men are trained differently. To the intellectual destruction of men.

In the article, evidence is presented that boys and girls need to be trained differently, and are being trained the same, to boys' detriment. That is the exact opposite of what you're saying.

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#49

Post by vezzy-fnord »

dragonwriter wrote: post #44
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true only if you use a specific sociological definition of "sexism", which is absolutely not to be equivocated with the one in common vernacular.

> This is true only if you use a specific sociological definition of "sexism", which is absolutely not to be equivocated with the one in common vernacular. I think you mean "equate". "Equivocate" means something quite different.

Actually, I do mean "equivocate". To quote Wikipedia, it is "the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time)".

Re: Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys

#50

Post by cafard »

cwbrandsma wrote: post #27
ps4fanboy wrote: post #11

I wonder if this has anything to with the massive decline in male teacher population.

Was that population that big to begin with? Most of my male teachers in highschool were actually just wanabe-sport coaches. My male history teacher/basketball coach just played movies every day.

In my middle-school days, there were some very sharp guys teaching in part because of the Vietnam draft. (No, I'm not young anymore.) At my high school (all boys, Catholic), the coaches had to teach real subjects: Algebra I, Trig, Plane Geometry, Biology, Chemistry. Now, one of the wrestling coaches sent a classmate of mine hurrying to the other class with his statement that a milligram was one million grams, but most of them seemed to do OK. Not all of the other male teachers were in orders, either, and most of them, lay or religious, ranged from adequate to good.
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