My uncle's views on girls outperforming boys in school: A public high school teacher's perspective

[YoungDemCA]

My uncle is a public high school teacher in Colorado, and he (among many others) has noted that the trend is this: young women are outperforming young men not just in college, but also at the high school level and even earlier.

When I asked him a few years ago why he thought that was, he just said, to the best of my recollection, "in general, the guys aren't taking education as seriously anymore. You aren't entitled to a good education simply by virtue of being a (white, middle-class) male. You have to work for it."

Food for thought.

[dipsydoodle]

1. I assume that to be co-educational schools/colleges.

I recall years ago in the UK a report that girls did even better at co-educational schools than did at girls only schools.

A desire to outperform the boys drove them on.

[seabeyond]

2. exactly. i agree. i have been preaching this. and this is why i am so bothered when talking about

Last edited Tue Dec 31, 2013, 02:17 PM - Edit history (1)

our boys and giving them all kinds of excuses. that is all it is. i have watched boys the last 16 yrs go thru the system. we aggressively worked against the peer pressure that boys are anti reading. what is that. especially in middle school, there was a real push that boys are suppose to be uninterested in school, learning. that was never allowed in my house. my boys friends would come over and we would talk social and political issues. these kids would sit around the table or following me around expressing their opinion, listen to other thought. there was a need, craving for exploring thought, to the point after a time i would tell them, go off and play.

any kids that got in my car for a ride had to express opinion and thought. they all participated and loved it.

middle school, i was talking to the principal about oldest. i mentioned how he never stopped talking and his friends so actively participated in conversation. i mentioned one kid with such a desire to learn. the principal was shocked.... this kid had any interest. when talking to the mom, i would tell her how fun he was cause he never stopped talking. again, shocked, cause the kid was quiet. they had him in lower classes, but i felt he had an ok brain and liked to explore. but, cause they had not touched his interest, he stayed quiet.

it was expected and demanded in our house. the kids met that expectation. at a point in middle school, after years of being nice but directing to expectation, i finally told teachers.... have a high expectation of my kids, then they can meet it. keep it low, that is what they will meet.

so often i heard that it was just boys, being boys

so often i heard teachers begging for parental support.

i agree with your uncle, totally.

we need to NOT sell our boys short.

[sufrommich]

3. I raised a son too,Sea

One thing I realized as a parent was whether a male or female child,most will rise to the expectations expected of them,the trick is not setting unreasonable expectations. My son was a straight A student and I expected him to go on to college and made that very clear to him. I now have a 13 year old nephew with some learning disabilities that make school difficult but he's funny and brilliant(well,in his auntie' s totally unbiased opinion,lol)he either wants to be a game designer or a welder right now at 13 and we all encourage him to think big and go for it! My point is,family important as to how kids feel about their abilities and should be encouraged to take their own path regardless of gender,I know that's obvious to most of us,but obviously not all parents.

[seabeyond]

4. exactly. i saw the classes boys put effort in and struggled. was a ... pass the class.

but the classes that are easy, get an A. it is not about unreasonable, but it is not setting the bar too low, giving them excuses.

[sufrommich]

5. Exactly,I guess what I was trying to say,

in my very convoluted post,was that boys should be encouraged to follow their own path and be creative with their personal abilities. It's a parent's responsibility to respond positively to their dreams and abilities.

[seabeyond]

6. exactly....lol.

how many exactly is that. i heard ya. just did not go further. my oldest, very academic. going for law degree. my youngest.... has for a while looked at other options. fine. i support. no two children are the same

[YoungDemCA]

7. Great post.

Well said, and I agree with you!

[Flatulo]

8. I wonder if the old male stereotypes don't play into this in some way...

You know, boys are supposed to play sports and be more into goofing around.

My son and his friends (including a few girls) considered themselves nerds in middle school through high school. They eschewed sports, and instead preferred to engage in board games and discussion at our house every Friday evening. I'd drop in on them and they'd be chatting away about politics and current events. I was delighted to see them using their brains instead of bashing each other at football, or trying to sneak alchohol.

I disliked sports myself as a kid, and maybe my values rubbed off on him, or maybe there's a genetic component, but whenever I'd throw a ball at him he'd run the other way. We had our best times chatting about everything under the sun

All these kids turned out great. One of them came out as gay and the others were quite accepting. They've all gone to college and have scored B+ or better grades. They've not all gotten good jobs yet, but that's another story.

[Nay]

9. IIRC, most studies over the past 60 years show that girls have always outperformed boys

in school at nearly every level, even though they were generally not encouraged to excel as the boys were, since the teachers all 'knew' they would just grow up and get married. The difference between then and now is that as long as the boys didn't absolutely flunk out (and many times even if they did), there would be good-paying jobs for them to step right into. That made school, for most boys, irrelevant. They had it made already. And, inversely, girls could get all the A's they wanted and would find that doing extremely well in school did them little good in the work world because of the societal expectations that they were just going for their "Mrs." degree, or they were only good for being in the helping professions like nursing or school teaching.

That dynamic changed only when it became unlawful to shunt women off into the pink-collar ghetto and women started to be accepted grudgingly in most occupations. Now, EVERYONE has to get a college degree to get even the lowest positions, and there's much more competition out there. Men, in the past, only had to compete against other men. Now there are twice as many people competing. Boys who find school tedious and boring have nowhere to go after they barely pass high school. These are the guys who have NEVER taken education seriously -- and they, along with girls who don't like school, are finding themselves at a serious disadvantage these days. What's interesting is that a college degree today is falling-down easy to get; with the online schools, bible 'colleges,' long-distance learning, community colleges, etc., the standards for passing courses are abysmally low. If you have a pulse and some money, you can get a college degree. (Of course, this has made college degrees useless, but that's a discussion for another thread.)

A third possibility is that boys/men are still in the mode of denigrating certain activities/things as "only for girls" -- IOW, if girls/women like it, do well at it, or have a numerical advantage in it, boys/men will shun it. If that's true, that attitude will bite them in the butt.

[seabeyond]

10. i think this is another of the very real equations in all this. absolutely. nt

[ismnotwasm]

11. I think there's another dynamic going on as well

Education wasn't always needed to support a family; in the traditional male-as-breadwinner sense, a young man no longer can to follow his father to be a dockworker, or a sanitation worker ( we used to call them garbage men-- my dad was one for a while) a truck driver or any number of jobs that required some skill but little or no education.

The push for education, the direct competition from people of color and women, have made jobs less available, but it seems as though we aren't teaching our boys that they have to excel. The free lunch of the entitled middle class white male is over (there never was one for the working class-- and now, there are barely jobs; at least not the sort that pays enough to help raise a family)

So boys are getting mixed messages. My oldest grandson wants to be a blues guitarist. I'm sure he will be, as I'm sure he won't make a living at it. My wise daughter has taught him to pursue education as a back up plan.

She's got 3 boys and every one will know the value of working for what you get, and not expecting because of race or gender or anything else

[boston bean]

12. Do you know if the percentage of boys/men attending college have dropped

or has it been steady over the years?

[Nay]

14. I believe it has dropped a bit. nt

[eridani]

13. Due to longstanding American anti-intellectualism, guys have never taken education seriously

It never used to matter. If you were male, you were guaranteed a job that would pay better than any job a woman of whatever social class you were in could get. All you had to do was put in the time. Since that sissy girly book-larnin' has gotten far more important, young men are now relatively disadvantaged.

[nomorenomore08]

16. "Anti-intellectualism" was exactly how I was going to put it. And that will doom us all if we let it

[Sheldon Cooper]

15. I'm very glad you posted this in this group.

I like being able to read and learn about the issue without the resident MRAs flocking in to declare that it's all a feminist plot to destroy men.

[nomorenomore08]

17. Also that girls do better in school, therefore men are oppressed now.

That kind of silliness really doesn't even deserve a thoughtful response, but still takes up valuable time dealing with it.