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Why do girls do better at school?

atis.substack.com

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Re: Why do girls do better at school?

#21

Post by akomtu »

octopoc wrote: post #14

There's a book on this topic, it's called Boys Adrift, by Dr. Leonard Sax. I highly recommend it. It's been a while since I read it but some of the dynamics he talks about are: 1. The age at which children start school has gradually lowered. This has reached a point where ~80% of boys and ~20% of girls do not have the brain maturity to pay attention (boy brains mature at a different schedule from girl brains). The re…

All this is reasonable if the goal is to create obedient workforce: they must be good at understanding instructions and following them. Any sort of initiative, and violence is a form of initiative, is discouraged. That's also why many girls do much better in schools, but struggle later when initiative is needed.

Re: Why do girls do better at school?

#22

Post by sagarm »

codefreeordie wrote: post #8

I don't think there is any commentary, evidence, or proposal hypotheses which could be offered on this subject without attracting accusations of bigotry. Which, actually, is a big part of why this persists.

The article has over a dozen links to articles and quotes data from several studies, so this claim seems contrary to the evidence.

Re: Why do girls do better at school?

#23

Post by canadianabanoci »

kashunstva wrote: post #16
skyde wrote: post #6

because 90% of teacher are girl! or because since 1980 all the teaching method used by teacher are designed for girl learning style and none are designed for boy learning style! Because there are no incentive for boy to work hard and get good grade because they never receive praise for good work.

> since 1980 all the teaching method used by teacher are designed for girl learning style Can you be more specific and support the assertion that there exist gender-based learning style differences? Maybe there are; maybe there aren't. But an evidence-free claim such as this benefits no one. > [Boys] never receive praise for good work. Again, wildly unsupported claims, while apparently welcome on many social media pl…

I am old enough to remember when boys outperformed girls in the various levels of school. They complained that the learning styles used favored boys. They then changed them all to ones that favored girls, and then girls started doing better. (Limited physical activity, no competition, focusing on feelings instead of logic, etc)

Now? Well they don't want things to change but they can't deny the stats. The solution? Blame all males for being born inferior and useless. Each top level comment here does exactly that. "Maybe the problem with boys is that they are too much this or not enough that" and so on. As if there was a wave of cosmic rays that only caused damage to XY chromosomes or something.

So what they do is pretend they never made those changes. They pretend girls always did better in school when that is a relatively recent thing. The schools are designed and built for them.

Re: Why do girls do better at school?

#24

Post by fallingfrog »

I’ll venture a guess and say it’s because they’re more comfortable asking for help. They may also be more likely to study in groups. Both of those will be positively correlated with achievement. That’s the most obvious place to look first. Boys are often taught an attitude of self reliance, which in an academic setting is maladaptive.

Re: Why do girls do better at school?

#25

Post by daniel-cussen »

I'm fine with that, in some walks of life, girls have an advantage. There for sure are many where boys have an advantage, and that doesn't look like it'll change. There will be asymmetry, so there have to be walks of life where girls do better for there to be parity. And that is what equality in real life looks like.

Re: Why do girls do better at school?

#26

Post by throwerofstone »

floor2 wrote: post #17
throwerofstone wrote: post #10

Isn't the answer extremely obvious? Girls grow up faster than boys, while boys have a longer growing period that extends further (or is equal to) than the schooling period. I'd be interested in seeing an extended study in the general differences between the study progress of girls and boys seperated by school year and age.

Lol no that's not "extremely obvious" at all. This is a preposterous hand-waving away of hundreds of distinct factors so that you can excuse massive, systemic bias against boys as being a natural outcome. Would you so flippantly make the same claim about racial disparities in education?

I am not waving away all other factors, I am merely stating that the difference of mental development between girls and boys is, at least to me, quite obviously the largest by far. Mental development has an enormous impact on school performance. Areas that "our" Western school system bases its grading on, from memorization to attention, are things that children only get better at when they grow more mature.

The lack of quality in modern school systems aside, I do not believe in forced equality and fully believe that sorting children by age hurts their academic progress tremendously. By extend, separating boys from girls while teaching each at a different pace might actually improve the educational quality of every child, rather than trying to appeal to merely the average for whatever reason. I believe that the above applies to any characteristic. Education should, in my opinion, be based on an individual's learning capability, but I suppose that would go against everything the modern school system stands for.

Re: Why do girls do better at school?

#28

Post by pitsnatch »

endofreach wrote: post #9
skyde wrote: post #6

because 90% of teacher are girl! or because since 1980 all the teaching method used by teacher are designed for girl learning style and none are designed for boy learning style! Because there are no incentive for boy to work hard and get good grade because they never receive praise for good work.

wtf?

It's a female dominated industry. It should be seen as a problem just like it is for male dominated industries.

Re: Why do girls do better at school?

#30

Post by DiggyJohnson »

throwerofstone wrote: post #26
floor2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol no that's not "extremely obvious" at all. This is a preposterous hand-waving away of hundreds of distinct factors so that you can excuse massive, systemic bias against boys as being a natural outcome. Would you so flippantly make the same claim about racial disparities in education?

I am not waving away all other factors, I am merely stating that the difference of mental development between girls and boys is, at least to me, quite obviously the largest by far. Mental development has an enormous impact on school performance. Areas that "our" Western school system bases its grading on, from memorization to attention, are things that children only get better at when they grow more mature. The lack…

I don’t think that your answer is obvious at all. It seems just as or much more likely to do with differential factors other than age (pedagogy, environment, etc.) than it is model boys as being N-2 years “behind” the girls. That seems very narrow.
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