20 ms·

Girls need higher entrance exam scores than boys at 80% of Tokyo high schools

58 points by fodmap 5y ago

liberty-bzmh 5y ago
これは米国でも非常に当てはまります。アジア人は他の人よりも高いスコアを必要としています。
- DrAwdeOccarim 5y ago
  I don't think this is true, and I'm hesitant to go down this road on the internet but why not. My limited understanding of 'affirmative action' in the US is that it allows a schools to bin people based on specific categories, with race/ethnicity the one I think most people think of when discussing affirmative action. So maybe a school can legally bin based on gender if they wanted to hit a 50/50 ratio. A quick google search turns up some discussion around the topic, with the top hit describing a change in advertising instead of relying on affirmative action.
- square_usual 5y ago
  Those aren't comparable. There's no score-based admission to US High Schools, and for colleges the SAT/GRE is only one part of a broad application. There's no such thing as a score above which everyone is admitted, as there is in many Asian countries.
knuthsat 5y ago
If this is true, what might the reason for it be? Maybe there would be too few boys in schools if requirements for girls reduce?
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  Worth reading the article. :) "According to the Mainichi Shimbun's research, high schools under Tokyo Metropolitan Government jurisdiction are the only prefectural schools to have separate enrollment caps for male and female students. "
reedf1 5y ago
I read the article - but it doesn't explain why high schools are doing this. Is it purely sexism? Could it be that girls are performing better than boys and the pursuit of a 50/50 gender split increases the requirements for girls? Would be interested if anyone knew the reason as it isn't presented in this article.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  > Could it be that girls are performing better than boys and the pursuit of a 50/50 gender split hence increases the requirements for girls? This is it. It’s in the article: [H]igh schools under Tokyo Metropolitan Government jurisdiction are the only prefectural schools to have separate enrollment caps for male and female students. The numbers at each high school are based on the ratio of boys to girls at public junior high schools in Tokyo.
  - xvector 5y ago
    Eh, still sexism. Affirmative action is not an acceptable practice.
    - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
      Developmental studies definitely show that girls mature faster than boys and tend to display traits making them highly adapted to the school system. From there, basing entrance to high schools solely on grades is basically deciding that women will hold the majority of highly skilled jobs. Anyway, from my point of view, the real question is why is the Japanese school system starting selection so young? At this point, in most countries, students just had to chose between short vocational studies and high schools geared towards entering university and high school selection is mostly done on geographic criteria. It's relatively easy to design a school system which will carry everyone upward. You don't really need gatekeeping.
d3nj4l 5y ago
Key point here is: [H]igh schools under Tokyo Metropolitan Government jurisdiction are the only prefectural schools to have separate enrollment caps for male and female students. The numbers at each high school are based on the ratio of boys to girls at public junior high schools in Tokyo. I.e., this is sort of “affirmative action” for boys since girls score much higher. From personal experience, too, I’ve seen girls score much higher than boys at the school level here in India.
- MikeUt 5y ago
  Of course the approach is misguided. They should instead address the systemic discrimination against boys that is causing them to score lower. Isn't that how it goes?
- cperciva 5y ago
  I think the important question here is: Why are the girls scoring higher? Are they doing better academically, or are teachers grading them differently? In Canada we see girls outperform boys dramatically on teacher-assigned grades, but only very slightly on standardized tests; it's important to understand if the difference arises from the students or from the teachers.
  - golemiprague 5y ago
    Women develop faster than men so at high school age they are much more mature. They are also more willing to sit down and study while boys burst of testosterone makes them a bit more active and restless. At high school level when the material is not that sophistcated almost anybody can succeed just by putting the time into it, later in life at uni and the workplace men are overwhelmingly more innovative and successful and women tend to go out of the race towards care taking and soft people skills roles.
  - Tycho 5y ago
    Isn’t this iron-clad evidence of structural sexism?
    - 5y ago
globular-toast 5y ago
Positive discrimination doesn't look so nice when it works the other way, does it?
- viraptor 5y ago
  Most of programs that could be described this way are about giving underprivileged people a better chance. For example by reaching out to specific groups to bring more applications, or funding scholarship to allow poorer people to attend. They're rarely about strictly changing passing scores to adjust the balance. Yes, I know there are exceptions like this one. You can still fight for adjusting chances (what people also describe as positive discrimination) and criticise this idea.
  - xvector 5y ago
    This is objectively incorrect. Multiple lawsuits have shown that most affirmative action measures directly lower the required test scores for “disadvantaged” groups significantly, and discriminate against so-called “model minorities” by raising their entrance requirements. Affirmative action is simply discriminating against groups society cares less about in favor for groups society cares more about. As shown here, where men are valued over women. As shown in the US, where AA/LatinX have a higher cultural value and far more positive cultural portrayal than Asians. So on and so forth. It comes down to who you can devalue enough to deem an “acceptable casualty” in favor of the “greater good” of promoting your preferred racial/gender/other group. Never mind the children whose adolescences were wasted as they poured countless hours into a struggle to reach asymptotically high admissions thresholds, because they were binned by affirmative action policies before they were even born. Acceptable casualties, according to the promoters of AA. No, if you want to bring certain groups out of poverty, spend tax dollars on that pre-admissions instead of placing the burdens of your historical societal failures disproportionately on the shoulders of my people’s children.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway78877 5y ago
wodenokoto 5y ago
The reasoning is something along the lines that a college education is more important to boys than girls, which kinda makes sense in a world where jobs require college degrees and men are the sole breadwinner. Basically, the logic goes: giving a seat to a girl at a high school robs the seat from a boy and therefore his chance at getting into a good university, and since the girl is going to be a homemaker anyway ...
- Tobu 5y ago
  That was the explanation given for rigging medical school scores so 70% of doctors could be male: - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/08/tokyo-medical-school-admits-changing-results-to-exclude-women https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/08/tokyo-medical-... - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/12/two-more-japanese-medical-schools-admit-discriminating-against-women https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/12/two-more-japan... - https://apjjf.org/2019/07/Schieder.html https://apjjf.org/2019/07/Schieder.html
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  No, the logic here is that there is systematic discrimination against boys and that this corrects that. They say as much in the article: >The numbers at each high school are based on the ratio of boys to girls at public junior high schools in Tokyo.
ganzuul 5y ago
If this is a real problem they are having and not a cultural artefact boys and girls need a different curriculum. Lean on strenghts instead of weaknesses.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

58 points by fodmap 5y ago

liberty-bzmh 5y ago

これは米国でも非常に当てはまります。アジア人は他の人よりも高いスコアを必要としています。

DrAwdeOccarim 5y ago
I don't think this is true, and I'm hesitant to go down this road on the internet but why not. My limited understanding of 'affirmative action' in the US is that it allows a schools to bin people based on specific categories, with race/ethnicity the one I think most people think of when discussing affirmative action. So maybe a school can legally bin based on gender if they wanted to hit a 50/50 ratio. A quick google search turns up some discussion around the topic, with the top hit describing a change in advertising instead of relying on affirmative action.
square_usual 5y ago
Those aren't comparable. There's no score-based admission to US High Schools, and for colleges the SAT/GRE is only one part of a broad application. There's no such thing as a score above which everyone is admitted, as there is in many Asian countries.

knuthsat 5y ago

If this is true, what might the reason for it be? Maybe there would be too few boys in schools if requirements for girls reduce?

sz4kerto 5y ago
Worth reading the article. :) "According to the Mainichi Shimbun's research, high schools under Tokyo Metropolitan Government jurisdiction are the only prefectural schools to have separate enrollment caps for male and female students. "

reedf1 5y ago

I read the article - but it doesn't explain why high schools are doing this. Is it purely sexism? Could it be that girls are performing better than boys and the pursuit of a 50/50 gender split increases the requirements for girls? Would be interested if anyone knew the reason as it isn't presented in this article.

d3nj4l 5y ago
> Could it be that girls are performing better than boys and the pursuit of a 50/50 gender split hence increases the requirements for girls? This is it. It’s in the article: [H]igh schools under Tokyo Metropolitan Government jurisdiction are the only prefectural schools to have separate enrollment caps for male and female students. The numbers at each high school are based on the ratio of boys to girls at public junior high schools in Tokyo.
- xvector 5y ago
  Eh, still sexism. Affirmative action is not an acceptable practice.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    Developmental studies definitely show that girls mature faster than boys and tend to display traits making them highly adapted to the school system. From there, basing entrance to high schools solely on grades is basically deciding that women will hold the majority of highly skilled jobs. Anyway, from my point of view, the real question is why is the Japanese school system starting selection so young? At this point, in most countries, students just had to chose between short vocational studies and high schools geared towards entering university and high school selection is mostly done on geographic criteria. It's relatively easy to design a school system which will carry everyone upward. You don't really need gatekeeping.

d3nj4l 5y ago

Key point here is: [H]igh schools under Tokyo Metropolitan Government jurisdiction are the only prefectural schools to have separate enrollment caps for male and female students. The numbers at each high school are based on the ratio of boys to girls at public junior high schools in Tokyo. I.e., this is sort of “affirmative action” for boys since girls score much higher. From personal experience, too, I’ve seen girls score much higher than boys at the school level here in India.

MikeUt 5y ago
Of course the approach is misguided. They should instead address the systemic discrimination against boys that is causing them to score lower. Isn't that how it goes?
cperciva 5y ago
I think the important question here is: Why are the girls scoring higher? Are they doing better academically, or are teachers grading them differently? In Canada we see girls outperform boys dramatically on teacher-assigned grades, but only very slightly on standardized tests; it's important to understand if the difference arises from the students or from the teachers.
- golemiprague 5y ago
  Women develop faster than men so at high school age they are much more mature. They are also more willing to sit down and study while boys burst of testosterone makes them a bit more active and restless. At high school level when the material is not that sophistcated almost anybody can succeed just by putting the time into it, later in life at uni and the workplace men are overwhelmingly more innovative and successful and women tend to go out of the race towards care taking and soft people skills roles.
- Tycho 5y ago
  Isn’t this iron-clad evidence of structural sexism?
  - 5y ago

globular-toast 5y ago

Positive discrimination doesn't look so nice when it works the other way, does it?

viraptor 5y ago
Most of programs that could be described this way are about giving underprivileged people a better chance. For example by reaching out to specific groups to bring more applications, or funding scholarship to allow poorer people to attend. They're rarely about strictly changing passing scores to adjust the balance. Yes, I know there are exceptions like this one. You can still fight for adjusting chances (what people also describe as positive discrimination) and criticise this idea.
- xvector 5y ago
  This is objectively incorrect. Multiple lawsuits have shown that most affirmative action measures directly lower the required test scores for “disadvantaged” groups significantly, and discriminate against so-called “model minorities” by raising their entrance requirements. Affirmative action is simply discriminating against groups society cares less about in favor for groups society cares more about. As shown here, where men are valued over women. As shown in the US, where AA/LatinX have a higher cultural value and far more positive cultural portrayal than Asians. So on and so forth. It comes down to who you can devalue enough to deem an “acceptable casualty” in favor of the “greater good” of promoting your preferred racial/gender/other group. Never mind the children whose adolescences were wasted as they poured countless hours into a struggle to reach asymptotically high admissions thresholds, because they were binned by affirmative action policies before they were even born. Acceptable casualties, according to the promoters of AA. No, if you want to bring certain groups out of poverty, spend tax dollars on that pre-admissions instead of placing the burdens of your historical societal failures disproportionately on the shoulders of my people’s children.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway78877 5y ago

wodenokoto 5y ago

The reasoning is something along the lines that a college education is more important to boys than girls, which kinda makes sense in a world where jobs require college degrees and men are the sole breadwinner. Basically, the logic goes: giving a seat to a girl at a high school robs the seat from a boy and therefore his chance at getting into a good university, and since the girl is going to be a homemaker anyway ...

Tobu 5y ago
That was the explanation given for rigging medical school scores so 70% of doctors could be male: - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/08/tokyo-medical-school-admits-changing-results-to-exclude-women https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/08/tokyo-medical-... - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/12/two-more-japanese-medical-schools-admit-discriminating-against-women https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/12/two-more-japan... - https://apjjf.org/2019/07/Schieder.html https://apjjf.org/2019/07/Schieder.html
LatteLazy 5y ago
No, the logic here is that there is systematic discrimination against boys and that this corrects that. They say as much in the article: >The numbers at each high school are based on the ratio of boys to girls at public junior high schools in Tokyo.

ganzuul 5y ago

If this is a real problem they are having and not a cultural artefact boys and girls need a different curriculum. Lean on strenghts instead of weaknesses.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]