US Boys failing in the education system

[beancounter]

The bottom line issue is that fewer boys are attending college than girls. It's common sense that a college educated women will make more than a high school educated man. What needs to be specifically addressed is why fewer men go to college and try to find ways to correct that. When more people go to college, society as a whole benefits.

Just because men are, right now, collectively faring better than women in the workplace doesn't mean that trend will continue, especially given the lower college attendance rates.

 

[AeryFairy]

Remuneration wise, that's very simple.

All other things being relatively equal; aggression, assertiveness, forcefullness, risk taking etc are problems in school/academia but are benefits in any competetive job market.

Well, I'd contest that they're beneficial to any competitive job market, but the vast majority of high-powered corporate office type jobs do value those things.

But I really don't think the reasons for the disparity are anywhere near as simple as you have stated. For one, I don't think those are necessarily disadvantages in education. Also, although those are perceived as masculine qualities, they are far from being exclusive to males, and not all males have them. And those are just the surface issues - it is nowhere near as easy as "boys are just generally better at the high-paying jobs" and "boys are just worse at studying".

 

[Mischief]

This thread is pretty amusing, because it so accurately reflects the extent to which people assume that their biases reflect reality. (Much of the information pasted into the opening post is inaccurate and/or misleading, BTW, for example the assertion that a 12 year old girl has math skills equivalent to an 8 year old boy.*)
For those who are actually interested in the subject of differences in educational outcomes related to gender, let me recommend a recent and fairly exhaustive study of the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Women-Growing-Education-American/dp/0871540517/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382186064&sr=1-1&keywords=the+rise+of+women
It boils down to this:
1. Boys tend to not concentrate as much on school during grade school and junior high because doing well in school is not considered to be “masculine.” In families with fathers who earned post secondary degrees, boys tend to not lag behind girls. (The reasons for this should be obvious.)
2. Because studying is a skill that develops over years, by the time students reach high school, girls tend to have an advantage over boys, and this advantage persists through college.
3. The better the school, the smaller the difference between boys and girls (both with respect to the generalized underperformance by boys and the hesitancy of girls to take advanced mathematics and science classes). Likewise, the greater the equality of the sexes in society at large, the less difference in educational achievement between the sexes.
4. Factors that are generally cited, such as a high percentage of female teachers, biological differences between males and females, supposed preference by teachers of girls over boys, are either nonexistent or have a negligible impact.
For those who don’t want to read the book, but want a synopsis, here are some articles summarizing salient points:

The puzzling gender achievement gap and what “they” say.

But why do boys get lower grades than girls, and why have they responded so much more slowly and partially to changes in the job market that have increased the rewards for academic achievement? Researchers agree that it is not because girls are smarter. In fact, while boys score slightly higher in math tests and girls score slightly higher in reading tests, overall the cognitive abilities of boys and girls are very similar. The difference in grades lies in effort and engagement. On average, girls are more likely than boys to report that they like school and that good grades are very important to them. Girls also spend more time studying than boys.
Many observers believe that boys’ lower engagement with school is a result of biological differences between males and females. They say that boys need to engage in rough and tumble play, get their hands dirty, build things, and read books about war, espionage and sports if they are supposed to learn. Boys fail, they claim, because schools do not give boys enough opportunities to do “boy” stuff.
What we say. We do not agree. Our research shows that boys’ underperformance in school has more to do with society’s norms about masculinity than with anatomy, hormones or brain structure. In fact, boys involved in extracurricular cultural activities such as music, art, drama, and foreign languages report higher levels of school engagement and get better grades than other boys. But these cultural activities are often denigrated as un-masculine by pre-adolescent and adolescent boys -- especially those from working- or lower-class backgrounds. Sociologists C.J. Pascoe and Edward Morris relate numerous examples of boys who strive for good grades as being labeled “pussies” or “fags” by their peers.
Commentators who emphasize boys’ special needs usually propose that we make schools more “boy-friendly” by offering single-sex classrooms where “boys can be boys,” by recruiting more male teachers, and by providing more rough and tumble activities. Our research shows that, contrary to what is rapidly becoming “conventional wisdom,” this is precisely the wrong strategy. Most boys and girls learn more in classrooms where girls are present. In classrooms with more girls, both boys and girls score higher on math and reading tests. And several recent studies refute the claim that teacher gender matters for boys’ or girls’ achievement.
Two key findings for the way forward. Our research yields two important findings. First, boys have less understanding than girls about how their future success in college and work is directly linked to their academic effort in middle and high school. In part, this may be due to many Americans still hearkening back to a time when job success for many men was linked more to physical strength and hard manual labor than to getting good grades in school. Young men as well as women will be further motivated to do well in school when our education system provides a clearer link between educational programs and workplace opportunities in our changing labor market.
Second, the most important predictor of boys’ achievement is the extent to which the school culture expects, values, and rewards academic effort. We need schools that set high expectations, treat each student as an individual (as opposed to a gender stereotype), and motivate all students to invest in their education so they can reap the big returns to a college degree that exist in today's labor market.
The win-win news is that the same reforms that help more boys achieve college success help girls as well. For example, schools with strong science curricula not only promote male achievement but increase girls’ plans to major in science and engineering. Schools that promote strong academic climates reduce gender gaps in grades and promote healthy, multi-faceted gender identities for both boys and girls. In education, as in the rest of society, it’s time to discard the zero-sum game of the “gender wars” mentality and start helping males and females to work together for success.

http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/Gender-Sexuality/gender-achievement-gap-publication.html

 

[Mischief]

“Young men don’t prepare as well in middle and elementary and high school as do the girls,” he said. “As a consequence, boys are less prepared than the girls are to get through college.”
The shortfall in male performance has multiple causes, but a lower average level of engagement with school is a major component. Boys need to take a lesson from sports, he said, an area where they are more inclined to practice and prepare.
“Boys know that you can’t aspire to be on the varsity basketball team in high school if you don’t commit to developing your basketball skills in middle school,” he said. “They don’t understand the extent to which academics is like basketball.”

http://news.columbia.edu/research/3242

— “Boys don’t understand that school is like sports. You can’t start playing the fall of your senior year in high school and expect to succeed.”
— “It takes years of training to perform well in college.”
— Unlike young women, many young men try to emulate their fathers or grandfathers, who succeeded in blue-collar jobs without college educations. But those jobs don’t exist anymore. “It’s the echo of an older generation.”
— “Girls get gratification day to day from doing well in school. We’re not as good at conveying the need for school to boys.”
— Schools don’t need “boy-specific” policies. Schools simply need to raise the quality of education for both boys and girls.
— Girls still lag in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but less so in the highest-quality schools.
— Likewise, boys are closer to girls in academic performance in the schools with the strongest academics.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-01/new-bls-data-shows-gender-gap-growing-in-college-education

To explain these trends, The Rise of Women charts the performance of boys and girls over the course of their schooling. At each stage in the education process, they consider the gender-specific impact of factors such as families, schools, peers, race and class. Important differences emerge as early as kindergarten, where girls show higher levels of essential learning skills such as persistence and self-control. Girls also derive more intrinsic gratification from performing well on a day-to-day basis, a crucial advantage in the learning process. By contrast, boys must often navigate a conflict between their emerging masculine identity and a strong attachment to school. Families and peers play a crucial role at this juncture. The authors show the gender gap in educational attainment between children in the same families tends to be lower when the father is present and more highly educated. A strong academic climate, both among friends and at home, also tends to erode stereotypes that disconnect academic prowess and a healthy, masculine identity. Similarly, high schools with strong science curricula reduce the power of gender stereotypes concerning science and technology and encourage girls to major in scientific fields.

https://www.russellsage.org/publications/rise-women
Also:
http://www.livescience.com/17429-math-gender-differences-myths.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/ar...lls-the-truth-about-the-rise-of-women/273342/
*With respect to the math issue:

The evidence has piled up for years. In 1990, Hyde and her colleagues published a groundbreaking meta-analysis of 100 studies of math performance. Synthesizing data collected on more than three million participants between 1967 and 1987, researchers found no large, overall differences between boys and girls in math performance. Girls were slightly better at computation in elementary and middle school; in high school only, boys showed a slight edge in problem solving, perhaps because they took more science, which stresses problem solving. Boys and girls understood math concepts equally well and any gender differences narrowed over the years, belying the notion of a fixed or biological differentiating factor.
As for verbal ability, in 1988, Hyde and two colleagues reported that data from 165 studies revealed a female superiority so slight as to be meaningless, despite previous assertions that "girls are better verbally." What's more, the authors found no evidence of substantial gender differences in any component of verbal processing. There were even no changes with age.

http://www.apa.org/research/action/share.aspx

The idea that both genders have equal math abilities is widely accepted among social scientists, Hyde adds, but word has been slow to reach teachers and parents, who can play a negative role by guiding girls away from math-heavy sciences and engineering. "One reason I am still spending time on this is because parents and teachers continue to hold stereotypes that boys are better in math, and that can have a tremendous impact on individual girls who are told to stay away from engineering or the physical sciences because 'Girls can't do the math.'"
Scientists now know that stereotypes affect performance, Hyde adds. "There is lots of evidence that what we call 'stereotype threat' can hold women back in math. If, before a test, you imply that the women should expect to do a little worse than the men, that hurts performance. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Parents and teachers give little implicit messages about how good they expect kids to be at different subjects," Hyde adds, "and that powerfully affects their self-concept of their ability. When you are deciding about a major in physics, this can become a huge factor."
Hyde hopes the new results will slow the trend toward single-sex schools, which are sometimes justified on the basis of differential math skills. It may also affect standardized tests, which gained clout with the passage of No Child Left Behind, and tend to emphasize lower-level math skills such as multiplication, Hyde says. "High-stakes testing really needs to include higher-level problem-solving, which tends to be more important in jobs that require math skills. But because many teachers teach to the test, they will not teach higher reasoning unless the tests start to include it."
The new findings reinforce a recent study that ranked gender dead last among nine factors, including parental education, family income, and school effectiveness, in influencing the math performance of 10-year-olds.

http://www.sciencecodex.com/myth_dispelled_difference_between_females_and_males_in_math_skills

 

[das_nut]

I'm not saying there's no credence to this argument, or even making a comment on whether or not it's legitimate, or even trying to debate really, but I just feel like that first infographic there reeks of "oh woe to us, poor boys!"

Considering that this is highlighting a problem with boys in the education system, are you surprised that this is talking about problems that concerns boys?

Or is your thinking so flawed that you are unable to have empathy for a certain gender and age of person?

 

[beancounter]

Examples?

Here's hree examples. (The actual posts plus the one "like")

I'm not saying there's no credence to this argument, or even making a comment on whether or not it's legitimate, or even trying to debate really, but I just feel like that first infographic there reeks of "oh woe to us, poor boys!"

This thread is pretty amusing,

 

[ledboots]

Is this phenomenon unique to the US, I wonder. I'm going to google around.

ETA I think the US public school system is for the most part, terrible for children and "teaches" them mostly useless things in mostly useless ways.

 

[Mischief]

Here's hree examples. (The actual posts plus the one "like")

Yeah, I find it amusing when anyone, male or female, black or white, goes off half cocked in excitement about their biases being confirmed, without bothering to examine the information presented in furtherance of those biases.

People do tend to swallow, hook line and sinker, anything that reinforces their beliefs, without bothering to check even the glaringly improbable portions of the "information." (Prime example, the assertion in the opening post that it takes a 12 year old girl to equal the math skills of an 8 year old boy. All you have to do to wonder about that tidbit is to think back to 7th grade - were the 7th grade girls really at third grade level in math? That alone should have given everyone pause and reason to do a bit of research.)

ETA: You might also want to think about this: If you need to quote only a portion of someone's sentence (as you did in quoting me) in order to make your point, you probably don't have a valid point to make. Selective editing, when you can't bring yourself to quote even an entire sentence, isn't honest or particularly persuasive.

 

[Mischief]

Is this phenomenon unique to the US, I wonder. I'm going to google around.

ETA I think the US public school system is for the most part, terrible for children and "teaches" them mostly useless things in mostly useless ways.

Several of the articles I cited actually address this (as does my post, briefly).

 

[Mischief]

The bottom line issue is that fewer boys are attending college than girls. It's common sense that a college educated women will make more than a high school educated man. What needs to be specifically addressed is why fewer men go to college and try to find ways to correct that. When more people go to college, society as a whole benefits.

Just because men are, right now, collectively faring better than women in the workplace doesn't mean that trend will continue, especially given the lower college attendance rates.

It should comfort you that women's participation in the professions in which they had started entering at higher rates than men (medicine and law) peaked about a decade ago and has been declining ever since.

 

[Mischief]

1. Boys do 'worse at school.

2. Boys do 'better' at work.

Possibly (look it up in the dictionary plz Mischeif) the problem is that schools have FA to do with, because they have FA understanding of and FA interest in, the thing(s) which boys do better at?

Personaly I struggled with school but became MD of a modest sized company by 28.

I can even pinpoint one key reason for that;

What the working world wants and needs and rewards, the academic world doesn't want or need and 'punishes'.

The other side of that coin being that what schools want and need and reward the working world places a measurably lesser value on.

It's part of the patriarchal plot BC.

"I need touchy-feely" and "I'm just going to deal with it" have quite different values in worky-world and schooly-academia.

(Something to do with one being far more economicaly efficient than t'other, the way I understand it.)

Either way round it may look like a discrimination against boys but it is actualy to the benefit of boys and to the girls detriment.

Remuneration wise, that's very simple.

All other things being relatively equal; aggression, assertiveness, forcefullness, risk taking etc are problems in school/academia but are benefits in any competetive job market.

I think you may be missing what the greivance is here, IS.

The greivance is that in the workplace it is the girls, not the boys, who need helping out.

Frustrates the hell out of me, this ..

The 'call' appears to be for the working world to adjust to what suits the schools, which is insanity.

(It's an "if the working world reflected schools then girls would be faring better than boys" kinda thing I'm seeing there ...)

Sanity would be for the schools to adjust to nurturing, in both boys and girls, the qualities that the working world rewards because it needs.

Thank you for demonstrating so clearly and effectively the underlying cultural bias in a certain segment of the population that research has shown is the reason why boys don't work at hard at school as girls do, namely the belief that academics are girly, and a manly man needn't bother with such stuff.

I doubt that you intended to reinforce the researchers' findings, but you have done an excellent job of it.

 

[Freesia]

The bottom line issue is that fewer boys are attending college than girls. It's common sense that a college educated women will make more than a high school educated man. What needs to be specifically addressed is why fewer men go to college and try to find ways to correct that. When more people go to college, society as a whole benefits.

Just because men are, right now, collectively faring better than women in the workplace doesn't mean that trend will continue, especially given the lower college attendance rates.

Why is college so important though? Is it really important for people to go to school after school? What is wrong with learning a profession? Apprenticeships? Should young people really feel pressured into attending college when it isnt the right choice for them? It is elitist for society to expect people to go to college.

 

[Mischief]

Why is college so important though? Is it really important for people to go to school after school? What is wrong with learning a profession? Apprenticeships? Should young people really feel pressured into attending college when it isnt the right choice for them? It is elitist for society to expect people to go to college.

That's one of the flaws with the entire discussion (and with the U.S. educational system, as a matter of fact). There's the underlying assumption that a college degree is automatically significant in earnings capacity, when there are so many people with college degrees working fast food, as home health aids, as office assistants, and other minimum wage or close to minimum wage jobs.

With very limited exceptions, the U.S., unlike many other developed countries, also does not have an apprenticeship system in place to teach people specialized skills that are not acquired in a college setting.

 

[Mischief]

I would also say that, whether it's girls thinking they can't do well at math because they're girls and math and sciences aren't "feminine", or boys thinking it's not "manly" to excel at academics and therefore not working at their studies, at some point, individuals need to suck it up and just do it. It would of course help if parents (and other adults, such as people on the Internetz) stop perpetuating and encouraging these stereotypes.

 

[FortyTwo]

Considering that this is highlighting a problem with boys in the education system, are you surprised that this is talking about problems that concerns boys?

Or is your thinking so flawed that you are unable to have empathy for a certain gender and age of person?

Sigh.

Yes. As a teenage male, I don't have any sympathy for any other teenage males.

The above is sarcasm. You are missing my point by quite a lot.

Anyways, I've seen your arguments on this subject and you've seen mine, and this has been debated beyond the point of exhaustion both here and on the other forum, so I'll step out now.

 

[das_nut]

That's one of the flaws with the entire discussion (and with the U.S. educational system, as a matter of fact). There's the underlying assumption that a college degree is automatically significant in earnings capacity, when there are so many people with college degrees working fast food, as home health aids, as office assistants, and other minimum wage or close to minimum wage jobs.

On average, a college degree holder makes much more than someone who holds just a high school diploma.

A quick google search shows that a college degree holder makes, on average, $22/hr, while a high school diploma holder makes about $15/hr.

 

[das_nut]

Sigh.

Yes. As a teenage male, I don't have any sympathy for any other teenage males.

The above is sarcasm. You are missing my point by quite a lot.

Nah, I think I got your point. You don't seem to have the background or experience to understand my point.

 

[Mischief]

On average, a college degree holder makes much more than someone who holds just a high school diploma.

A quick google search shows that a college degree holder makes, on average, $22/hr, while a high school diploma holder makes about $15/hr.

But that only tells part of the story. According to the WJS, the lifetime earning differential between someone who graduated from college and someone who didn't is only $279,893. That comes down to $6,509 per year if you work from 22 to 65. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703822404575019082819966538

According to this study, the pay gap between men and women in the job is bigger in those professions that pay more. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013...t-and-smallest-pay-gaps-between-men-and-women

The average weekly pay is $1,087 for the jobs where the wage gap between men and women is biggest. That annualizes out to $56,524. Applying the median pay gap for that classification of jobs, women are earning $18,539 per year less then men, doing the same job. That is a lifetime difference of $797,214 simply by virtue of having been born female, versus the $279,893 difference resulting from not going to college.

If you do the same calculation for the jobs which have the least gap between men and women in terms of pay for the same job, you get an weekly pay of $773, for annual pay of $40,196. The median annual gap between men and women in this category of jobs is $522, and over a lifetime is $22,469.

If you average those two lifetime gaps between men and women performing the same jobs, that still means that women's lifetime wages are still $409,991 less than the lifetime wages of the men doing the same jobs. Compare that again to the lifetime wage gap of $279,893 between college grads and high school grads.

By all means, improve schools. That will benefit males and females. Stop perpetuating stereotypes about how "girly" it is to seek to excel academically, and how math and science and technology aren't "feminine". That will benefit males and females. But don't pretend that males are more disadvantaged than females in their schooling and career path, because the facts don't support it.

 

[FortyTwo]

Nah, I think I got your point. You don't seem to have the background or experience to understand my point.

Yes! I am young and stupid! If that is the explanation you desire then you have every bit of evidence to back it up.

Good luck arguing the same misguided point over and over for all eternity. I will take myself and my hormone-addled, fragile brain out of the conversation.

 

[Clueless Git]

Yes! I am young and stupid!

A shortfall in life experience is different to stupidity.