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Anyone with young boys and girls will notice that girls are much more likely to obey rules and instructions. A lot of doing well in school is about following ru

Anyone with young boys and girls will notice that girls are much more likely to obey rules and instructions. A lot of doing well in school is about following rules and instructions, and it seems pretty natural that girls will do better. Also, most teachers are women. I haven't checked, but I'd assume most school administrators are women. It seems natural that they'd construct a system that's more suited for females than males.

endisneigh 6y ago
I've seen this take a few times and I don't really buy it. How exactly is school setup in a way that's more suitable for women compared to men? Everything you've stated (following rules and instructions, etc.) also applies in the workplace, so if you were correct you would the same sort of discrepancy in the workforce.
- visarga 6y ago
  The difference in teaching style is putting accent on cooperation vs competition.
- xhkkffbf 6y ago
  * Lots of sitting still. My local school canceled recess several years ago to make sure the kids had more studying time. * Fine motor skills like good handwriting are rewarded, often explicitly as part of the grade. * Verbal skills are often explicitly rewarded, even if they don't have much to do with a subject. My local school asks students to write and make a presentation about their math answer. It doesn't matter if they get the right answer as long as the presentation is professional and impressive.
- aviraldg 6y ago
  The rules and grading are different. In school, the rules that students are rewarded for following are "softer" and harder to justify directly. eg. You must submit a project with a cover with beautifully handwritten title of this specific size, or you lose marks (This is real guidance that was provided for my school and college projects.) At work, while these kind of rules exist, it's typically okay to break them, and performance is mostly rated on actual impact, not pointless rule-following.
  - endisneigh 6y ago
    None of this explains why women are capable of following these rules and men are not. Are you saying men are biologically predisposed to not follow such simple rules?
    - aviraldg 6y ago
      I was answering your question about why this difference exists. I don't know about the reason, but if I had to guess I'd say it's not biology, but culture/upbringing. I think girls are culturally expected to follow rules, and boys encouraged to break them.
      - AussieWog93 6y ago
        I'd suspect it's biological, since boys in (almost?) all human societies are more prone to challenging authority. It's the same story in elephants, chimps and wolves too. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case in all species of social mammals.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      No, it sounds like female teachers make rules that are easy for female students to follow. Meanwhile some boys simply don't like the rules and thus don't follow them.
      - endisneigh 6y ago
        Yes I've seen this comment many, many times. Where's the proof? Women crush men in college (see link below) yet most professors are men. People are just spouting unsupported nonsense. Heck my link understates the difference as it is old. https://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ANNALS_Conger,Long_Manuscript%20(Feb%2009).pdf https://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ANNALS_Conger,Long_Ma...
        BlargMcLarg 6y ago
        There is at least the "women are wonderful" effect covering both why female as well as male teachers may favor girls over boys, including subjective grading methods. That seems enough of a point to counter this being "unsupported nonsense". Additionally, pointing out most professors are men does not counter the argument. Merely the transition of going from a highly cooperation- and rule-following-favored environment to an extremely competitive environment should give some indication as to how multifaceted this problem can truly be.
- ameister14 6y ago
  >Everything you've stated (following rules and instructions, etc.) also applies in the workplace, so if you were correct you would the same sort of discrepancy in the workforce. That might be true if you ignored development, but we're talking about children here. A 12 year old boy is not the same as a 23 year old man.
  - endisneigh 6y ago
    this would be true, but these patterns still exist in college. https://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ANNALS_Conger,Long_Manuscript%20(Feb%2009).pdf https://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ANNALS_Conger,Long_Ma...
- 1_player 6y ago
  Perhaps, presuming OP's assumption that women have an easier time to follow the rules and there are more women in education than men is correct, that school has a lot of rules and not enough freedom. I have no real opinion on it, just that my memory of school was a really strict place compared to real life and work. There are plenty of plan B options, alternatives, ways to think outside the box in real life, but not in school. You could only use your brain on the task but not to get out of the task or complete it in a different way than your teacher had intended you to. As if I had left a traumatic situation, I vividly remember enjoying a lot finally having time for myself after work the first few years after I dropped out of high school. I had to put real effort 8 hours a day, then nothing else was expected of me.
  - hc-taway 6y ago
    > As if I had left a traumatic situation, I vividly remember enjoying a lot finally having time for myself after work the first few years after I dropped out of high school. I had to put real effort 8 hours a day, then nothing else was expected of me. Same. I slacked a lot in high school (in hindsight, I'd have gone actually-nuts otherwise) but it was still by far the hardest consistent work I've ever done, largely due to the sheer amount of time it took and the constant, overlapping, usually-very-short ("due tomorrow") deadlines. College was a vacation. Work is easy. High school did little to prepare me for "how the real world works" (always the excuse for deadlines and requirements and such in school) but did harm me psychologically in ways that took more than a decade to get over—and I wasn't even bullied or anything like that, it was mostly just the strict schedule, extreme lack of freedom (asking to go to the bathroom, stuff like that), and crazy workload.
- dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  Everything you've stated (following rules and instructions, etc.) also applies in the workplace, so if you were correct you would the same sort of discrepancy in the workforce. In my working life every time I brazenly break the rules and ignore instructions I end up getting a raise, or promotion. This is across 5 or 6 jobs stretched out over 23 years in small businesses, and fortune 100 companies. This is because I always back it up with results In school, any deviation, regardless of intention or outcome, was perceived by my teachers as being disrepectful to their authority, and was quickly punished. To be fair, I went to catholic school in the 80s/early 90s, so following rules was probably a bigger emphasis than most people's experiences.
  - endisneigh 6y ago
    Your anecdote is interesting, but without knowing how often women also break the same rules and ignore the same instructions and get results it's pretty meaningless. I mean, good for you I guess?
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Women started breaking the rules as well now, as that’s what’s coming from the media. The problem is of course when somebody does it without providing results / breaking rules that they shouldn’t (some of the firings from Google happened because of this). I expect this to normalize though.
  - theropost 6y ago
    I agree totally - if you brazenly break the rules, you tend to get punished.. unless you back it up with real results. Disrupters tend to be the innovators in society. School does not value disrupters in the same way as a business might. In a school setting, someone who listens, follows the rules, and does not challenge the structure of the institution is highly likely to receive excellent grades. In a business setting, this person may be an employee who contributes to the team by doing their job, and doing it accurately and consistently. A disrupter may work in the same job, and challenge the way things are done - they may fail in doing so, and be repremanded or fired, or they may succeed in their disruption, and allow for a change in the process or job, resulting in greater efficiency. This is the trade off in my humble opinion.
aviraldg 6y ago
I don't agree with the rest of your comment (my school had a pretty even mix of male and female teachers), but anecdotally the primary difference between boys and girls was exactly what you mentioned: the former were more likely to skip classes, study things that were not in the syllabus (which helps sometimes), not maintain notes as well, etc. whereas the latter would typically follow the syllabus, teachers' instructions etc. more closely and maintain very thorough notes.
- dijit 6y ago
  My own anecdatum indicates that the parent is right though. 20 female teachers. 1 male. No males on the senior staff.
  - groby_b 6y ago
    Or... we could look at data? No? LAUSD: ~4.5:1 in elementary school, ~1:1 in secondary, ~4:1 in special ed[1] Across all CA public schools: ~2.5:1 [2] Across the US: 3:1 [3] So, more women? Yes. 20:1? Wild outlier. So, what about the claim that it's more women, somehow building a system more friendly to girls? Turns out the data says "not so much" there, too. Principals are roughly 1:1[4] [1] https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/domain/280/democurrent/B-1.pdf https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/doma... [2] https://www.ed-data.org/state/CA https://www.ed-data.org/state/CA [3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_clr.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_clr.asp [4] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp#:~:text=In%202017%E2%80%9318%2C%20about%2078,and%209%20percent%20were%20Hispanic https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp#:~:text=I....
    - jfim 6y ago
      According to your data, a 20:1 ratio could be explained. The first figure of your link [3] shows that the ratio for elementary level teachers is 89:11. Plugging these numbers into R shows that it's not exactly a surprising result: > prop.test(1,21,p=11/100) 1-sample proportions test with continuity correction data: 1 out of 21, null probability 11/100 X-squared = 0.31913, df = 1, p-value = 0.5721 alternative hypothesis: true p is not equal to 0.11
odiroot 6y ago
> Also, most teachers are women. I haven't checked, but I'd assume most school administrators are women. That was definitely the case for me until university.
- protomyth 6y ago
  Education and childcare administrators are 66.5% women in the USA according to https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm
  - odiroot 6y ago
    I'm not American (like many people here). In my country 82% of teachers are women according to the ministry of education.
mfenix 6y ago
As the father of 6 years old twins (one boy, one girl) I agree with this 100%. My son needs more discipline than my daughter, he's more likely to get into trouble at school, he likes physical activities, etc. almost the opposite of his sister.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobolus 6y ago
  > son needs more discipline This does not seem like the right conclusion. More like "needs running around time and free play". Cf. e.g. https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/discipline-problem-solution/ https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/discipline-problem-solutio... https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/beyond-discipline-article/ https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/beyond-discipline-article/
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    Discipline is probably the wrong word. More training in order to succeed in an unnatural environment (modern school) is maybe a better way to put it.
    - stretchwithme 6y ago
      Or changing the unnatural environment.
      - Teknoman117 6y ago
        Sometimes the unnatural environment is significantly more difficult to alter (as an individual).
        stretchwithme 6y ago
        Sometimes. But people can move their kids to a different school, the environment referred to, if they live in a free society. My parents did it. Sent to us to Catholic schools instead for many years. And we grew up on welfare.
tompazourek 6y ago
Girls the same age are more mature than boys. They develop differently. Maybe that's a factor?
- mpweiher 6y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. However: if it were the other way around, would that ever be an acceptable answer nowadays?
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    > would that ever be an acceptable answer nowadays? Changes in public sensibility regarding sex and gender are not a good basis to reject GP' claim. Of course, "girls develop earlier then boys" itself may have other, underlying, causes.
    - ganzuul 6y ago
      Like environmental hormone response?
- kzrdude 6y ago
  What do we mean by mature though? It's a kind of bias to prefer one over the other, when it's simply different.
  - loa_in_ 6y ago
    If by mature we mean respecting tasks and duties, why don't we count duties to your own psyche and body into it? Being an adult is sometimes finding some occupancy that with minimum amount of time will give us the psychological comfort to do the maximum amount of paid work through the rest of the week (or day). Why don't we teach kids that being mature is caring for our needs too, instead of pushing them into the square hole of just duties that are demanded of them by everyone else.
- tomp 6y ago
  I've always heard this as a kid/young adult but as I've grown older, I've noticed that most people don't ever mature (well, at least not until 35-ish) so I've started doubting all claims and folk-wisdom about maturity pretty much wholesale...
bb611 6y ago
In the US, there's a significant gender gap in administration, especially above the school leader level. Also, larger schools (middle, high) are more likely to be run by men than woman.
- dominotw 6y ago
  > run by what do you mean by this ?
  - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
    "run by" is a common phrase used to mean the person or persons who make decisions. Normally the manager, or owner. You could say "That pizza place is run by someone from my neighborhood." In the context of the school it would mean the administration, the school board, and if its a private school the owners or trustees.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    in the US most middle, high schools have a top down organizational hierarchy (in my experience, no data on this point but willing to bet on it), therefore the parent poster is asserting that in the US most middle, high school top administrative officials are men (no data on if this is true, not willing to bet on it)
filmgirlcw 6y ago
> I'd assume most school administrators are women. At least in the United States, this isn’t at all true. A disproportionate number of administrators (especially when adjusted for the normal male/female teacher breakdown) are male. There have also been many studies that show that teachers call on boys more, praised them more (they acknowledge girls, praise boys), and talk with them more. So your assumptions are completely at odds with decades of data. [1]: https://time.com/3705454/teachers-biases-girls-education/ https://time.com/3705454/teachers-biases-girls-education/ — has good links to various research from across the world.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  Teachers grade boys more harshly than girls: https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2016.07-Terrier.pdf https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents...
- scarmig 6y ago
  Teachers also criticize boys more often, and boys' grades tend to increase when submitted work is anonymized. Boys and girls experience different gendered teaching practices, but the net result is girls being given higher grades than boys on average.
- dominotw 6y ago
  > A disproportionate number of administrators (especially when adjusted for the normal male/female teacher breakdown) are male. Surprised to hear this. This is opposite of my experience working for Chicago public schools(CPS).
- mattmcknight 6y ago
  >> I'd assume most school administrators are women. > At least in the United States, this isn’t at all true. 54% female, 46% male https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
dominotw 6y ago
Do you think it has anything to do with girls having better handwriting. I couldn't improve my handwriting for the life of me when i was in school and got really poor grades from teachers not being able to read what i was writing.
- analog31 6y ago
  Today, it's typing. I've seen the difference in kids. I think readability may be one issue, but perhaps even more important is that if writing is physically awkward and painful, it leads to writing fewer words and doing fewer edits. My own experience was that learning to type, thanks to getting interested in programming, was game changing. All I can say is that I could write lengthy essays and reports in a jiffy. Still can.
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    > Today, it's typing. Not for math, at least not for my kids. I was helping my son with his high school physics homework a few days ago, and IMO his poor handwriting was a genuine impediment to his mathematical problem-solving.
    - throwaway3699 6y ago
      Layout is more important than handwriting for maths, no?
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        poorly written 7's can look like 1's, and 5's like 6's. I lost a lot of points in high school math because I couldn't read what I had just written on the previous line!
        OscarCunningham 6y ago
        Taking notes for my maths degree I learnt to 'cross' my 7s and zs.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JKCalhoun 6y ago
> Also, most teachers are women. Probably true for half a century now. And yet.
0xy 6y ago
Don't forget that teachers give artificially low marks to boys for identical work. [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672 https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672
- pmarreck 6y ago
  Why is this getting downvoted?
  - justaman 6y ago
    This forum has become increasingly afraid of anything that contradicts their own world views.
legulere 6y ago
At least what I read about Germany the disadvantage of boys is even bigger under male teachers.
908B64B197 6y ago
With shrinking recess time and PE disappearing from some schools, I also wonder if a lot of this is caused by boys having more energy and needing more movement than girls. Energy has to go somewhere so it ends up manifesting itself in behaviors that are deemed "disruptive" (really, not sitting still and being unable to concentrate on tasks). Maybe it's something that female administrators and teachers fail to understand. It would also explain the current epidemic of ADHD and especially ADHD medication prescribed to young boys.
- zionic 6y ago
  Future generations will consider us barbarians for dosing our young boys with drugs because we providing them with physical education/exercise was inconvenient to us. They'll also be able to datamine the internet from this time period and use our own words to hang us.
  - grenoire 6y ago
    That's a rather utopic view.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    Roko's Fitness Trail?
  - Causality1 6y ago
    It'll be a long time yet. We haven't even moved past cutting pieces of them off for cosmetic reasons.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - insert_coin 6y ago
      What? religion has been doing that for thousands of years.
      - 6y ago
pmarreck 6y ago
> It seems natural You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means, because it's the naturalistic fallacy or the appeal to intuition > girls are much more likely to obey rules and instructions So is that difference a problem, then? Or not? Or neither? You can't force people to take a risk they aren't comfortable with, and if boys (for whatever reason) are a little less risk-averse, what is there to do? Punish boys for taking risks as we praise girls for doing the same?
akudha 6y ago
Another thing I've noticed is that girls are generally much better at taking exams than boys. I don't have any numbers, just from observation - from my own school days, from observing my niece/nephew. It is super painful to get my nephew to do the homework vs my niece, for example.
walkedaway 6y ago
A great video on how boys are treated vs girls in schools: https://www.prageru.com/video/war-on-boys/ https://www.prageru.com/video/war-on-boys/
rootusrootus 6y ago
> Anyone with young boys and girls I'd have to see hard data, not anecdotes. My daughter is a wild child, actively flouts damn near every rule I create, refuses to follow instructions, and has a lot of trouble in school because she thinks it's stupid. My son is far more compliant. Like night & day different from his sister. And they've been like this since they were old enough to start showing real personality.
kamaal 6y ago
>>Anyone with young boys and girls will notice that girls are much more likely to obey rules and instructions. A lot of doing well in school is about following rules and instructions, and it seems pretty natural that girls will do better. This hypothesis fails when applied to militaries. Throughout history men have near 100% representation in militaries and wars. Where discipline and following rules is more seriously enforced.
tropdrop 6y ago
> It seems natural that they'd construct a system that's more suited for females than males. Public School Education in the US is not a hotbed of innovation – we are largely riding on the coattails of a system constructed by men, no? Women may have filled these positions, but the system was largely constructed circa the Industrial revolution (and the tertiary education system with its initial origins in monasteries).
marbartolome 6y ago
Or perhaps we are stricter when raising girls, so they become more compliant. "don't be so loud, that's not lady-like" "don't play in the dirt, you'll ruin your dress" "it's uncomfortable, I know, but you have to look pretty" "girls don't like sports, here, sit down and play with your dolls" It's subtle things, but a million of them may make a difference. There's a lot more rules for girls than boys, they are used to spend their time in quieter activities, etc.

endisneigh 6y ago

I've seen this take a few times and I don't really buy it. How exactly is school setup in a way that's more suitable for women compared to men? Everything you've stated (following rules and instructions, etc.) also applies in the workplace, so if you were correct you would the same sort of discrepancy in the workforce.

visarga 6y ago
The difference in teaching style is putting accent on cooperation vs competition.
xhkkffbf 6y ago
* Lots of sitting still. My local school canceled recess several years ago to make sure the kids had more studying time. * Fine motor skills like good handwriting are rewarded, often explicitly as part of the grade. * Verbal skills are often explicitly rewarded, even if they don't have much to do with a subject. My local school asks students to write and make a presentation about their math answer. It doesn't matter if they get the right answer as long as the presentation is professional and impressive.
aviraldg 6y ago
The rules and grading are different. In school, the rules that students are rewarded for following are "softer" and harder to justify directly. eg. You must submit a project with a cover with beautifully handwritten title of this specific size, or you lose marks (This is real guidance that was provided for my school and college projects.) At work, while these kind of rules exist, it's typically okay to break them, and performance is mostly rated on actual impact, not pointless rule-following.
- endisneigh 6y ago
  None of this explains why women are capable of following these rules and men are not. Are you saying men are biologically predisposed to not follow such simple rules?
  - aviraldg 6y ago
    I was answering your question about why this difference exists. I don't know about the reason, but if I had to guess I'd say it's not biology, but culture/upbringing. I think girls are culturally expected to follow rules, and boys encouraged to break them.
    - AussieWog93 6y ago
      I'd suspect it's biological, since boys in (almost?) all human societies are more prone to challenging authority. It's the same story in elephants, chimps and wolves too. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case in all species of social mammals.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    No, it sounds like female teachers make rules that are easy for female students to follow. Meanwhile some boys simply don't like the rules and thus don't follow them.
    - endisneigh 6y ago
      Yes I've seen this comment many, many times. Where's the proof? Women crush men in college (see link below) yet most professors are men. People are just spouting unsupported nonsense. Heck my link understates the difference as it is old. https://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ANNALS_Conger,Long_Manuscript%20(Feb%2009).pdf https://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ANNALS_Conger,Long_Ma...
      - BlargMcLarg 6y ago
        There is at least the "women are wonderful" effect covering both why female as well as male teachers may favor girls over boys, including subjective grading methods. That seems enough of a point to counter this being "unsupported nonsense". Additionally, pointing out most professors are men does not counter the argument. Merely the transition of going from a highly cooperation- and rule-following-favored environment to an extremely competitive environment should give some indication as to how multifaceted this problem can truly be.
ameister14 6y ago
>Everything you've stated (following rules and instructions, etc.) also applies in the workplace, so if you were correct you would the same sort of discrepancy in the workforce. That might be true if you ignored development, but we're talking about children here. A 12 year old boy is not the same as a 23 year old man.
- endisneigh 6y ago
  this would be true, but these patterns still exist in college. https://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ANNALS_Conger,Long_Manuscript%20(Feb%2009).pdf https://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ANNALS_Conger,Long_Ma...
1_player 6y ago
Perhaps, presuming OP's assumption that women have an easier time to follow the rules and there are more women in education than men is correct, that school has a lot of rules and not enough freedom. I have no real opinion on it, just that my memory of school was a really strict place compared to real life and work. There are plenty of plan B options, alternatives, ways to think outside the box in real life, but not in school. You could only use your brain on the task but not to get out of the task or complete it in a different way than your teacher had intended you to. As if I had left a traumatic situation, I vividly remember enjoying a lot finally having time for myself after work the first few years after I dropped out of high school. I had to put real effort 8 hours a day, then nothing else was expected of me.
- hc-taway 6y ago
  > As if I had left a traumatic situation, I vividly remember enjoying a lot finally having time for myself after work the first few years after I dropped out of high school. I had to put real effort 8 hours a day, then nothing else was expected of me. Same. I slacked a lot in high school (in hindsight, I'd have gone actually-nuts otherwise) but it was still by far the hardest consistent work I've ever done, largely due to the sheer amount of time it took and the constant, overlapping, usually-very-short ("due tomorrow") deadlines. College was a vacation. Work is easy. High school did little to prepare me for "how the real world works" (always the excuse for deadlines and requirements and such in school) but did harm me psychologically in ways that took more than a decade to get over—and I wasn't even bullied or anything like that, it was mostly just the strict schedule, extreme lack of freedom (asking to go to the bathroom, stuff like that), and crazy workload.
dec0dedab0de 6y ago
Everything you've stated (following rules and instructions, etc.) also applies in the workplace, so if you were correct you would the same sort of discrepancy in the workforce. In my working life every time I brazenly break the rules and ignore instructions I end up getting a raise, or promotion. This is across 5 or 6 jobs stretched out over 23 years in small businesses, and fortune 100 companies. This is because I always back it up with results In school, any deviation, regardless of intention or outcome, was perceived by my teachers as being disrepectful to their authority, and was quickly punished. To be fair, I went to catholic school in the 80s/early 90s, so following rules was probably a bigger emphasis than most people's experiences.
- endisneigh 6y ago
  Your anecdote is interesting, but without knowing how often women also break the same rules and ignore the same instructions and get results it's pretty meaningless. I mean, good for you I guess?
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Women started breaking the rules as well now, as that’s what’s coming from the media. The problem is of course when somebody does it without providing results / breaking rules that they shouldn’t (some of the firings from Google happened because of this). I expect this to normalize though.
- theropost 6y ago
  I agree totally - if you brazenly break the rules, you tend to get punished.. unless you back it up with real results. Disrupters tend to be the innovators in society. School does not value disrupters in the same way as a business might. In a school setting, someone who listens, follows the rules, and does not challenge the structure of the institution is highly likely to receive excellent grades. In a business setting, this person may be an employee who contributes to the team by doing their job, and doing it accurately and consistently. A disrupter may work in the same job, and challenge the way things are done - they may fail in doing so, and be repremanded or fired, or they may succeed in their disruption, and allow for a change in the process or job, resulting in greater efficiency. This is the trade off in my humble opinion.

aviraldg 6y ago

I don't agree with the rest of your comment (my school had a pretty even mix of male and female teachers), but anecdotally the primary difference between boys and girls was exactly what you mentioned: the former were more likely to skip classes, study things that were not in the syllabus (which helps sometimes), not maintain notes as well, etc. whereas the latter would typically follow the syllabus, teachers' instructions etc. more closely and maintain very thorough notes.

dijit 6y ago
My own anecdatum indicates that the parent is right though. 20 female teachers. 1 male. No males on the senior staff.
- groby_b 6y ago
  Or... we could look at data? No? LAUSD: ~4.5:1 in elementary school, ~1:1 in secondary, ~4:1 in special ed[1] Across all CA public schools: ~2.5:1 [2] Across the US: 3:1 [3] So, more women? Yes. 20:1? Wild outlier. So, what about the claim that it's more women, somehow building a system more friendly to girls? Turns out the data says "not so much" there, too. Principals are roughly 1:1[4] [1] https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/domain/280/democurrent/B-1.pdf https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/doma... [2] https://www.ed-data.org/state/CA https://www.ed-data.org/state/CA [3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_clr.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_clr.asp [4] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp#:~:text=In%202017%E2%80%9318%2C%20about%2078,and%209%20percent%20were%20Hispanic https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp#:~:text=I....
  - jfim 6y ago
    According to your data, a 20:1 ratio could be explained. The first figure of your link [3] shows that the ratio for elementary level teachers is 89:11. Plugging these numbers into R shows that it's not exactly a surprising result: > prop.test(1,21,p=11/100) 1-sample proportions test with continuity correction data: 1 out of 21, null probability 11/100 X-squared = 0.31913, df = 1, p-value = 0.5721 alternative hypothesis: true p is not equal to 0.11

odiroot 6y ago

> Also, most teachers are women. I haven't checked, but I'd assume most school administrators are women. That was definitely the case for me until university.

protomyth 6y ago
Education and childcare administrators are 66.5% women in the USA according to https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm
- odiroot 6y ago
  I'm not American (like many people here). In my country 82% of teachers are women according to the ministry of education.

mfenix 6y ago

As the father of 6 years old twins (one boy, one girl) I agree with this 100%. My son needs more discipline than my daughter, he's more likely to get into trouble at school, he likes physical activities, etc. almost the opposite of his sister.

deleted 6y ago
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jacobolus 6y ago
> son needs more discipline This does not seem like the right conclusion. More like "needs running around time and free play". Cf. e.g. https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/discipline-problem-solution/ https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/discipline-problem-solutio... https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/beyond-discipline-article/ https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/beyond-discipline-article/
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Discipline is probably the wrong word. More training in order to succeed in an unnatural environment (modern school) is maybe a better way to put it.
  - stretchwithme 6y ago
    Or changing the unnatural environment.
    - Teknoman117 6y ago
      Sometimes the unnatural environment is significantly more difficult to alter (as an individual).
      - stretchwithme 6y ago
        Sometimes. But people can move their kids to a different school, the environment referred to, if they live in a free society. My parents did it. Sent to us to Catholic schools instead for many years. And we grew up on welfare.

tompazourek 6y ago

Girls the same age are more mature than boys. They develop differently. Maybe that's a factor?

mpweiher 6y ago
Maybe, maybe not. However: if it were the other way around, would that ever be an acceptable answer nowadays?
- einpoklum 6y ago
  > would that ever be an acceptable answer nowadays? Changes in public sensibility regarding sex and gender are not a good basis to reject GP' claim. Of course, "girls develop earlier then boys" itself may have other, underlying, causes.
  - ganzuul 6y ago
    Like environmental hormone response?
kzrdude 6y ago
What do we mean by mature though? It's a kind of bias to prefer one over the other, when it's simply different.
- loa_in_ 6y ago
  If by mature we mean respecting tasks and duties, why don't we count duties to your own psyche and body into it? Being an adult is sometimes finding some occupancy that with minimum amount of time will give us the psychological comfort to do the maximum amount of paid work through the rest of the week (or day). Why don't we teach kids that being mature is caring for our needs too, instead of pushing them into the square hole of just duties that are demanded of them by everyone else.
tomp 6y ago
I've always heard this as a kid/young adult but as I've grown older, I've noticed that most people don't ever mature (well, at least not until 35-ish) so I've started doubting all claims and folk-wisdom about maturity pretty much wholesale...

bb611 6y ago

In the US, there's a significant gender gap in administration, especially above the school leader level. Also, larger schools (middle, high) are more likely to be run by men than woman.

dominotw 6y ago
> run by what do you mean by this ?
- dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  "run by" is a common phrase used to mean the person or persons who make decisions. Normally the manager, or owner. You could say "That pizza place is run by someone from my neighborhood." In the context of the school it would mean the administration, the school board, and if its a private school the owners or trustees.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  in the US most middle, high schools have a top down organizational hierarchy (in my experience, no data on this point but willing to bet on it), therefore the parent poster is asserting that in the US most middle, high school top administrative officials are men (no data on if this is true, not willing to bet on it)

filmgirlcw 6y ago

> I'd assume most school administrators are women. At least in the United States, this isn’t at all true. A disproportionate number of administrators (especially when adjusted for the normal male/female teacher breakdown) are male. There have also been many studies that show that teachers call on boys more, praised them more (they acknowledge girls, praise boys), and talk with them more. So your assumptions are completely at odds with decades of data. [1]: https://time.com/3705454/teachers-biases-girls-education/ https://time.com/3705454/teachers-biases-girls-education/ — has good links to various research from across the world.

jimbokun 6y ago
Teachers grade boys more harshly than girls: https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2016.07-Terrier.pdf https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents...
scarmig 6y ago
Teachers also criticize boys more often, and boys' grades tend to increase when submitted work is anonymized. Boys and girls experience different gendered teaching practices, but the net result is girls being given higher grades than boys on average.
dominotw 6y ago
> A disproportionate number of administrators (especially when adjusted for the normal male/female teacher breakdown) are male. Surprised to hear this. This is opposite of my experience working for Chicago public schools(CPS).
mattmcknight 6y ago
>> I'd assume most school administrators are women. > At least in the United States, this isn’t at all true. 54% female, 46% male https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp
- whimsicalism 6y ago

dominotw 6y ago

Do you think it has anything to do with girls having better handwriting. I couldn't improve my handwriting for the life of me when i was in school and got really poor grades from teachers not being able to read what i was writing.

analog31 6y ago
Today, it's typing. I've seen the difference in kids. I think readability may be one issue, but perhaps even more important is that if writing is physically awkward and painful, it leads to writing fewer words and doing fewer edits. My own experience was that learning to type, thanks to getting interested in programming, was game changing. All I can say is that I could write lengthy essays and reports in a jiffy. Still can.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > Today, it's typing. Not for math, at least not for my kids. I was helping my son with his high school physics homework a few days ago, and IMO his poor handwriting was a genuine impediment to his mathematical problem-solving.
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    Layout is more important than handwriting for maths, no?
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      poorly written 7's can look like 1's, and 5's like 6's. I lost a lot of points in high school math because I couldn't read what I had just written on the previous line!
      - OscarCunningham 6y ago
        Taking notes for my maths degree I learnt to 'cross' my 7s and zs.

deleted 6y ago

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JKCalhoun 6y ago

> Also, most teachers are women. Probably true for half a century now. And yet.

0xy 6y ago

Don't forget that teachers give artificially low marks to boys for identical work. [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672 https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672

pmarreck 6y ago
Why is this getting downvoted?
- justaman 6y ago
  This forum has become increasingly afraid of anything that contradicts their own world views.

legulere 6y ago

At least what I read about Germany the disadvantage of boys is even bigger under male teachers.

908B64B197 6y ago

With shrinking recess time and PE disappearing from some schools, I also wonder if a lot of this is caused by boys having more energy and needing more movement than girls. Energy has to go somewhere so it ends up manifesting itself in behaviors that are deemed "disruptive" (really, not sitting still and being unable to concentrate on tasks). Maybe it's something that female administrators and teachers fail to understand. It would also explain the current epidemic of ADHD and especially ADHD medication prescribed to young boys.

zionic 6y ago
Future generations will consider us barbarians for dosing our young boys with drugs because we providing them with physical education/exercise was inconvenient to us. They'll also be able to datamine the internet from this time period and use our own words to hang us.
- grenoire 6y ago
  That's a rather utopic view.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Roko's Fitness Trail?
- Causality1 6y ago
  It'll be a long time yet. We haven't even moved past cutting pieces of them off for cosmetic reasons.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - insert_coin 6y ago
    What? religion has been doing that for thousands of years.
    - 6y ago

pmarreck 6y ago

> It seems natural You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means, because it's the naturalistic fallacy or the appeal to intuition > girls are much more likely to obey rules and instructions So is that difference a problem, then? Or not? Or neither? You can't force people to take a risk they aren't comfortable with, and if boys (for whatever reason) are a little less risk-averse, what is there to do? Punish boys for taking risks as we praise girls for doing the same?

akudha 6y ago

Another thing I've noticed is that girls are generally much better at taking exams than boys. I don't have any numbers, just from observation - from my own school days, from observing my niece/nephew. It is super painful to get my nephew to do the homework vs my niece, for example.

walkedaway 6y ago

A great video on how boys are treated vs girls in schools: https://www.prageru.com/video/war-on-boys/ https://www.prageru.com/video/war-on-boys/

rootusrootus 6y ago

> Anyone with young boys and girls I'd have to see hard data, not anecdotes. My daughter is a wild child, actively flouts damn near every rule I create, refuses to follow instructions, and has a lot of trouble in school because she thinks it's stupid. My son is far more compliant. Like night & day different from his sister. And they've been like this since they were old enough to start showing real personality.

kamaal 6y ago

>>Anyone with young boys and girls will notice that girls are much more likely to obey rules and instructions. A lot of doing well in school is about following rules and instructions, and it seems pretty natural that girls will do better. This hypothesis fails when applied to militaries. Throughout history men have near 100% representation in militaries and wars. Where discipline and following rules is more seriously enforced.

tropdrop 6y ago

> It seems natural that they'd construct a system that's more suited for females than males. Public School Education in the US is not a hotbed of innovation – we are largely riding on the coattails of a system constructed by men, no? Women may have filled these positions, but the system was largely constructed circa the Industrial revolution (and the tertiary education system with its initial origins in monasteries).

marbartolome 6y ago

Or perhaps we are stricter when raising girls, so they become more compliant. "don't be so loud, that's not lady-like" "don't play in the dirt, you'll ruin your dress" "it's uncomfortable, I know, but you have to look pretty" "girls don't like sports, here, sit down and play with your dolls" It's subtle things, but a million of them may make a difference. There's a lot more rules for girls than boys, they are used to spend their time in quieter activities, etc.