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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 Can

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?
- jollybean 5y ago
  Could be that teacher-assigned are more likely to be English whereas standard tests Math so it's possible a difference in subjects. Girls do really well in languages. But it would be interesting to test.
  - bluepizza 5y ago
    > Girls do really well in languages. There is no evidence that proves that girls do better than boys.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      There is a ton of evidence that girls do better in reading and writing, to the point where it's not even controversial. Here from PISA [1] Also APA [2] It's the same story across cultures, after kindergarten, most girls accelerate past most boys in languages. Boys are generally a little bit ahead of girls in math. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342344680_Examining_gender_DIF_and_gender_differences_in_the_PISA_2018_reading_literacy_scale_A_partial_invariance_approach https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342344680_Examining... [2] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/09/girls-read-write https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/09/girls-read-w...
- viraptor 5y ago
  It's an evidence of a difference. If you can identify what causes the difference, that can tell us if it's structural sexism.
- 0x737368 5y ago
  Nature happens to be structurally sexist, if you haven't noticed.
  - bloqs 5y ago
    This is the only valid observation here.
  - cpcallen 5y ago
    I'm sure the journal's editors would deny this outrageous allegation. ;-)
  - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
    I always felt that the key to harmonious development is first, to acknowledge this fact (by both genders), and second, to agree that because of that, we as a society need to implement some countermeasures to somehow reduce this biological inequality. This already happened in several countries, to a degree. However, there is a counter-trend saying we're totally same and all differences are due to social conditioning - and this creates all sorts of new problems.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    Yeah, but we live in society and society doesn't operate on "whatever nature says"...
- simion314 5y ago
  It could be a personality or some other trait here not the gender, so finding the causation not the correlation would help then understand and maybe fix the issues.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  One aspect that I've seen in pedagogy literature is that those evaluations evaluate slightly different things - in addition to pure competencies at a point of time evaluated by standardized tests, teacher-assigned grades are influenced also by "learning process" factors (e.g. diligence and disruptiveness in class) and girls at school age on average tend to have an advantage in those factors or at least in teacher perception of these factors. I recall reading material attributing this to differences in biological development during teenage years which are relevant not only to sexual characteristics but for general body&mind&behavior changes and gender/hormones influence not only the type of changes but also their timing - so adolescent girls are not exactly equivalent in development to adolescent boys of the same year/grade; asserting that they are slightly more "psychologically mature" (or more adult-imitating/conforming behavior?) which affects study performance in adolescent years, and the boys 'catch up' a bit later. However, I'm not certain if this material I read has a solid evidence basis or is driven by speculative stereotyping.
- tomp 5y ago
  No. It could be that girls on average score better at whatever makes you do good in teacher exams - things like verbal ability, agreeableness, ... - whereas boys score better (or just the same) on the actual subject matter. The difference could very well be biological (although some would call that "structural sexism" as well).
lmilcin 5y ago
I studied theoretical math (here in Poland). When we started 1st semester, there were about 120 students of which about 30 were men (well... boys, really:) The competition for entry was fierce, there were 17 people for every opening. In Polish education system we had point system which allowed selecting students, even having maximum points did not guarantee entry. You can be sure that every one of 120 students had equivalent of straight As on all subjects and the same for their exams, plus additional points for competitions, etc. They probably were best in their schools. After 5 years only 20 students were left of which 15 were men. I had distinct impression that the guys who went there went there because they loved math. We would talk to each other about math, meet to discuss interesting information, trivia, etc. Gals, on the other hand, I had distinct impression that the went for math because they did good at previous school. They would meet with other students, but in my observation much more rarely and the talk would be exclusively about current assignment. They got max grades in everything at their previous school and they just happened to choose math as something they had good grades. They had no particular interest so they just chose one of the topics they thought they are good at. They were not interested to spend future with math, to teach math or work in research. Those girls worked harder than guys but this was just work for work sake. They had no love for math and it is pretty difficult to stick to a demanding topic like that if you are not really interested in it. The tragedy of this is nobody told them what they had in their previous school wasn't really math and they were not interested enough to realize that memorizing formulas or "solving" problems by memorizing solutions and substituting numbers is not math. As somebody who was doing quite well (I may have been asked by prof to do one or two lectures in their absence), I met with a lot of people who were desperately seeking help to understand the material. Guess what, almost all of them were women who were incredulous they always "did good at school" and don't understand why they are not anymore. That's it, my subjective opinion on the matter. I was one of the guys who dropped after 3rd semester and went to work in IT.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  I saw the same in France: the ones who choose Maths at Uni want to be teachers, vaguely. The guys we all wanted to program computers, fpga chips, make 3D game. You would see us compete like madmen to do the most open assignments to have the most insane stuff (I won once after doing a 3D engine able to parse, draw, texture and navigate inside arbitrary counter strike map, with skybox and ok perf but no physics). The girls they d send you the last day of vacation a plea to send them the response to some basic assignment. It's hard now to take seriously my company trying to make us diversify the workforce. We either get no one or once we got a girl who look half interested she leaves after a year because she doesnt find it so fun, the daily code grind. We have to do fake interviews with our female friends to pass the rule "each male hire must be preceded by an attempted female hire". And God I wish they d persist,the girls, because I d love to see something different at work. And I sure hope my daughter will see the joy of talking to and making algorithmic machines, but I guess it's on me
tester34 5y ago
>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. Poland here and I can agree on that. Additionally it felt like boys put a slightly more effort into caring about what to do right after school (high) - 1st job, but I cannot prove it, it's just more or less random thought Maybe it kinda affected grades?
zajio1am 5y ago
Similar results here in Czechia, girls outperform boys on teacher-assigned grades, but boys outperform girls on standardized tests (high school final exams).
dexen 5y ago
There is a relevant passage embedded, but not expanded upon, in the original article: >Whether a student passes or fails is dependent on a combination of two assessments; >a report from their junior high school marked out of 300 points >and a written test covering Japanese, math, English, science and social studies and scored out of 700. The report is worth up to 300 points which is about 10x the typical differentials mentioned in article. Going by the condensed explanation in article, is created by the junior high teacher(s?) of the pupil. I suspect a scoring inflation, quite possibly gender-selective - specifically to prop up pupils the teachers perceive as worthy moving onward.

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?

jollybean 5y ago
Could be that teacher-assigned are more likely to be English whereas standard tests Math so it's possible a difference in subjects. Girls do really well in languages. But it would be interesting to test.
- bluepizza 5y ago
  > Girls do really well in languages. There is no evidence that proves that girls do better than boys.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    There is a ton of evidence that girls do better in reading and writing, to the point where it's not even controversial. Here from PISA [1] Also APA [2] It's the same story across cultures, after kindergarten, most girls accelerate past most boys in languages. Boys are generally a little bit ahead of girls in math. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342344680_Examining_gender_DIF_and_gender_differences_in_the_PISA_2018_reading_literacy_scale_A_partial_invariance_approach https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342344680_Examining... [2] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/09/girls-read-write https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/09/girls-read-w...
viraptor 5y ago
It's an evidence of a difference. If you can identify what causes the difference, that can tell us if it's structural sexism.
0x737368 5y ago
Nature happens to be structurally sexist, if you haven't noticed.
- bloqs 5y ago
  This is the only valid observation here.
- cpcallen 5y ago
  I'm sure the journal's editors would deny this outrageous allegation. ;-)
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  I always felt that the key to harmonious development is first, to acknowledge this fact (by both genders), and second, to agree that because of that, we as a society need to implement some countermeasures to somehow reduce this biological inequality. This already happened in several countries, to a degree. However, there is a counter-trend saying we're totally same and all differences are due to social conditioning - and this creates all sorts of new problems.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Yeah, but we live in society and society doesn't operate on "whatever nature says"...
simion314 5y ago
It could be a personality or some other trait here not the gender, so finding the causation not the correlation would help then understand and maybe fix the issues.
PeterisP 5y ago
One aspect that I've seen in pedagogy literature is that those evaluations evaluate slightly different things - in addition to pure competencies at a point of time evaluated by standardized tests, teacher-assigned grades are influenced also by "learning process" factors (e.g. diligence and disruptiveness in class) and girls at school age on average tend to have an advantage in those factors or at least in teacher perception of these factors. I recall reading material attributing this to differences in biological development during teenage years which are relevant not only to sexual characteristics but for general body&mind&behavior changes and gender/hormones influence not only the type of changes but also their timing - so adolescent girls are not exactly equivalent in development to adolescent boys of the same year/grade; asserting that they are slightly more "psychologically mature" (or more adult-imitating/conforming behavior?) which affects study performance in adolescent years, and the boys 'catch up' a bit later. However, I'm not certain if this material I read has a solid evidence basis or is driven by speculative stereotyping.
tomp 5y ago
No. It could be that girls on average score better at whatever makes you do good in teacher exams - things like verbal ability, agreeableness, ... - whereas boys score better (or just the same) on the actual subject matter. The difference could very well be biological (although some would call that "structural sexism" as well).

lmilcin 5y ago

I studied theoretical math (here in Poland). When we started 1st semester, there were about 120 students of which about 30 were men (well... boys, really:) The competition for entry was fierce, there were 17 people for every opening. In Polish education system we had point system which allowed selecting students, even having maximum points did not guarantee entry. You can be sure that every one of 120 students had equivalent of straight As on all subjects and the same for their exams, plus additional points for competitions, etc. They probably were best in their schools. After 5 years only 20 students were left of which 15 were men. I had distinct impression that the guys who went there went there because they loved math. We would talk to each other about math, meet to discuss interesting information, trivia, etc. Gals, on the other hand, I had distinct impression that the went for math because they did good at previous school. They would meet with other students, but in my observation much more rarely and the talk would be exclusively about current assignment. They got max grades in everything at their previous school and they just happened to choose math as something they had good grades. They had no particular interest so they just chose one of the topics they thought they are good at. They were not interested to spend future with math, to teach math or work in research. Those girls worked harder than guys but this was just work for work sake. They had no love for math and it is pretty difficult to stick to a demanding topic like that if you are not really interested in it. The tragedy of this is nobody told them what they had in their previous school wasn't really math and they were not interested enough to realize that memorizing formulas or "solving" problems by memorizing solutions and substituting numbers is not math. As somebody who was doing quite well (I may have been asked by prof to do one or two lectures in their absence), I met with a lot of people who were desperately seeking help to understand the material. Guess what, almost all of them were women who were incredulous they always "did good at school" and don't understand why they are not anymore. That's it, my subjective opinion on the matter. I was one of the guys who dropped after 3rd semester and went to work in IT.

xwolfi 5y ago
I saw the same in France: the ones who choose Maths at Uni want to be teachers, vaguely. The guys we all wanted to program computers, fpga chips, make 3D game. You would see us compete like madmen to do the most open assignments to have the most insane stuff (I won once after doing a 3D engine able to parse, draw, texture and navigate inside arbitrary counter strike map, with skybox and ok perf but no physics). The girls they d send you the last day of vacation a plea to send them the response to some basic assignment. It's hard now to take seriously my company trying to make us diversify the workforce. We either get no one or once we got a girl who look half interested she leaves after a year because she doesnt find it so fun, the daily code grind. We have to do fake interviews with our female friends to pass the rule "each male hire must be preceded by an attempted female hire". And God I wish they d persist,the girls, because I d love to see something different at work. And I sure hope my daughter will see the joy of talking to and making algorithmic machines, but I guess it's on me

tester34 5y ago

>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. Poland here and I can agree on that. Additionally it felt like boys put a slightly more effort into caring about what to do right after school (high) - 1st job, but I cannot prove it, it's just more or less random thought Maybe it kinda affected grades?

zajio1am 5y ago

Similar results here in Czechia, girls outperform boys on teacher-assigned grades, but boys outperform girls on standardized tests (high school final exams).

dexen 5y ago

There is a relevant passage embedded, but not expanded upon, in the original article: >Whether a student passes or fails is dependent on a combination of two assessments; >a report from their junior high school marked out of 300 points >and a written test covering Japanese, math, English, science and social studies and scored out of 700. The report is worth up to 300 points which is about 10x the typical differentials mentioned in article. Going by the condensed explanation in article, is created by the junior high teacher(s?) of the pupil. I suspect a scoring inflation, quite possibly gender-selective - specifically to prop up pupils the teachers perceive as worthy moving onward.