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For the past 10 years or so, I was usually the person assigned to present our Kiwanis Club scholarships on senior recognition day. The accomplishments of the students receiving the millions of $ of scholarships is remarkable. However something else stands out:
90% or more of the valedictorians/top ten students are female. Not in one instance but every year, year after year. About 70% of the scholarship recipients are female. Again not in one instance but year after year.
This is not unique to our community. Other clubs with scholarships - their presenters have told me the same thing is true at their schools.
Almost all of the colleges our kids have attended or considered were majority female students. Some were as high as 65%. Outside of hard sciences, many graduate schools are 80 - 100 % women.
Men are not dumber than women. It should be more even. We must be doing something wrong in our education system or the way we raise kids.
For the past 10 years or so, I was usually the person assigned to present our Kiwanis Club scholarships on senior recognition day. The accomplishments of the students receiving the millions of $ of scholarships is remarkable. However something else stands out:
90% or more of the valedictorians/top ten students are female. Not in one instance but every year, year after year. About 70% of the scholarship recipients are female. Again not in one instance but year after year.
This is not unique to our community. Other clubs with scholarships - their presenters have told me the same thing is true at their schools.
Almost all of the colleges our kids have attended or considered were majority female students. Some were as high as 65%. Outside of hard sciences, many graduate schools are 80 - 100 % women.
Men are not dumber than women. It should be more even. We must be doing something wrong in our education system or the way we raise kids.
K-12, generalizing obviously, in The US is heavily biased in favor of female students. Girls are actively courted, told how great they are, supported directly and indirectly far more than boys. Boys are told to sit down, shut up, don't squirm. High IQ K-12 washout students are far more likely to be boys etc. Clearly more is at play.
One of my wife's friends is a professor who works with teachers all the time on advanced certs. and teaching masters programs.........the line about all this is more or less, "US schooling was designed by women, implemented by women, run by women, taught by women so it no surprise that the result favors girls."
Finally, it's too much for boards like this, but IQ distributions among men and women point to more girls being solid k-12 students............also why men tend to dominate in STEM but that's a different topic.
_______________________
That said a nephew graduated #2 from a very tough coed private school. The top 5 ended in statistical tie. They drew straws (literally) two were named Vals. three Sals. All 5 are boys - and a seriously impressive lot.
About 70% of the scholarship recipients are female.
Those scholarships generally require an essay (correct me if I'm wrong). Neither of my sons could be bothered to write an essay even if you dangled a potential $500-$1,000 scholarship in front of them.
Anecdote: At Senior Night for my younger son when awards were given out, in his class of about 60 students (small Catholic school) one girl took home what seemed like a dozen of those scholarships. Either she really had a knack for essays or there weren't many applicants!
Other anecdote: My elder son who did get a 4 year full-tuition scholarship to college, nevertheless did so poorly on his entrance essay that they made him take non-credit "Dummy English" (095 level). His two majors were Mathematics and Computer Science, and he graduated with 3.6 in both.
Bottom line is, many boys even if they are smart, have an aversion to "school work".
From my observations of the last few years (my last two graduated last June), scholarships do not go searching for the worthiest candidates, like some kind of micro MacArthur grants. They aren't even awarded based on nominations (from teachers or whatever). They're a lottery entered by the students who fill out applications and, often, write an essay or some equivalent. So the bias is going to go towards the small percentage of the student population that is qualified for the awards (or at least think they are)... and very good at the application process.
I am not surprised that this group is mostly female, as it's no secret that girls get their Shatner together well ahead of most boys. So they get the scholarship list from the counselor's office and work it like a hot-contacts list. Many of the smaller awards may only get three or four applicants, making the odds high. Guys are still... winging it.
Boy you should learn how to read and write better at a young age.
That is my conclusion.
XX and XY develop along utterly different timelines until fully cooked, around 20. Yet people remain completely goshwoggled when that proves out, over and over, in this era of regimented equality.
XX and XY develop along utterly different timelines until fully cooked, around 20. Yet people remain completely goshwoggled when that proves out, over and over, in this era of regimented equality.
And nowhere better does that stand out then in the area of engineering.
The field is dominated by men and has always been dominated by men.
But there is nothing stopping females from pursuing engineering degrees.
I graduated in the late 80's from college with an Engineering degree.
For most of my last 2 years (classes for major) I was the only female in the class.
In my graduating class for my major (College of Engineering) there were 5 females out of about 400 graduates.
So why today do they look at these numbers, which are much higher for females, and cry discrimination ?
XX and XY develop along utterly different timelines until fully cooked, around 20. Yet people remain completely goshwoggled when that proves out, over and over, in this era of regimented equality.
More like 25 for boys.
This isn't a "last 10 years" thing but has been ongoing for decades. I taught from 1984 to 2015, and the number of female Vals far outnumbered males. It goes back further.
As someone mentioned, school is really set up to favor typical female strengths in language and word usage, even more so since A Nation At Risk was released and the focus of school transitioned almost entirely to academics.
K-12, generalizing obviously, in The US is heavily biased in favor of female students. Girls are actively courted, told how great they are, supported directly and indirectly far more than boys. Boys are told to sit down, shut up, don't squirm. High IQ K-12 washout students are far more likely to be boys etc. Clearly more is at play.
One of my wife's friends is a professor who works with teachers all the time on advanced certs. and teaching masters programs.........the line about all this is more or less, "US schooling was designed by women, implemented by women, run by women, taught by women so it no surprise that the result favors girls."
Finally, it's too much for boards like this, but IQ distributions among men and women point to more girls being solid k-12 students............also why men tend to dominate in STEM but that's a different topic.
_______________________
That said a nephew graduated #2 from a very tough coed private school. The top 5 ended in statistical tie. They drew straws (literally) two were named Vals. three Sals. All 5 are boys - and a seriously impressive lot.
No. It doesn't follow, that, because the education system was designed by women for women, taught by women, that girls would come out on top. For many decades, boys were coming out on top. Studies have shown, that teachers pay more attention to boys, even if it's negative attention for acting out, than to girls. Teacher bias in favor of boys has been demonstrated over and over.
The bias partly had to do with the fact, that back before so many women were going for careers, boys were expected to be the career-bound students, the future breadwinners for families, and for the women the girls in the classroom would be. There was cultural bias in favor of boys, in general. At the end of the 20th Century, programs were implemented, to boost girls, who tended to fall behind. Whether or not those programs have over-compensated, I'm not qualified to say. Maybe some new studies are called for.
By the way, fwiw, I wouldn't have applied for essay-based scholarships, either. I didn't apply to any college that required an essay for admission, and back then, more didn't have the requirement, than did. Those types of qualifying essays usually required more self-reflection and articulation of one's reflections than I was capable of at 16. The girls I know who did write essays for college approached the task cynically, making up a story they thought the admissions officials wanted to hear. I wasn't capable of that level of cynicism, either, lol.
The big question is, what can schools do differently to help boys?
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