Boys lagging behind girls??

This morning I read an article in the October 2009 issue of Canadian Living magazine which states that boys are lagging behind girls in the classroom and more women than men are graduating from university. The article states that around grade 4, both sexes are relatively even in math and sciences, however girls are better in literacy. And in high school, the boys have a slight edge in science and math but are significantly behind the girls in reading. I didn’t find those statistics too surprising. Traditionally haven’t girls been better at reading and writing than boys, and the boys have traditionally been better at math and sciences. Wasn’t that the reason for the big push for girls to get into science and math when we were growing up?

What I found interesting were the reasons they suggested for the lag. One study found that right from birth, boys generally have fewer physical, cognitive and emotional dimensions than girls. Is this suggesting that boys don’t have the same capacity to develop that girls do? I don’t agree with this. I think boys are generally less complex than girls, though. Have you ever heard the analogy that a male brain is filled with boxes and a female brain is filled with wires?? Males are able to compartmentalize; they take out whatever box they need, use it and then put it back before taking out the next box. Whereas for women, everything is interconnected, so she goes to access one thing and thinks about how it is connected to something else or gets side tracked by something else and never actually completes what she started out to complete. So I don’t think it’s necessarily that boys don’t have the capacity, I think they do things in a simpler way. Possibly growing up with three brothers has lead me to defend the male gender :)

Anyways, the article suggested another reason for this lag is what’s called “feminization of education.” In the 1970s, boys were ahead of girls in school and approximately 70% of university grads were men. So, teachers changed instructional methods to better suit the learning styles of girls. For example, teachers focused on teamwork and cooperative tasks rather than individual contests and competitions (such as spelling bees). Apparently these changes worked as in 1991 half of the students in Canadian universities were women. So now have we swung too far the other way and are teacher neglecting the boys and which teaching methods work best for boys? Or is there anything to this gender study? Shouldn’t teachers be using a variety of teaching methods to assist all students in learning? I wonder if it is that simple to say that girls work better in teamwork type of situations. I don’t necessarily agree that that’s the best way for me to succeed. I definitely can work well in a group, years of group work forces you to be able to develop those types of skills, but I don’t necessarily think it’s always the best way for me to learn.

The article goes on to suggest methods “to help your son succeed” which I think are some good techniques for all students, not simply for boys. But an interesting article to read and to see how things have shifted over the years. Let me know what you think!