A friend of mine posted her daughter's homework, which had a math problem like "What is 17 - 9?" then "Explain." Her daughter wrote something like "because it

A friend of mine posted her daughter's homework, which had a math problem like "What is 17 - 9?" then "Explain." Her daughter wrote something like "because it is". Which is all the damn explanation that should require. The friend did admit that her daughter later added an explanation. (To be fair, I think they were looking for something like "because 9 + 8 = 17" which isn't entirely unreasonable.) This is a pattern I have seen more, and I think is part of Common Core more generally. It makes some sense, but it also feels like they are aping good education. Yes, it is important that students have more than one way to approach a problem, that they understand the truth of the answer and not just the mechanism to produce it, and it is good if a child can work at articulating their thought processes. But, acknowledging that, the Common Core response is: add some more questions requiring the student to do those things. It's not supportive. Now, back to boys and girls. These vague requirements, these attempts to induce "critical thinking", are not well defined, and the only demonstrable result is whether you can please the teacher. (IMHO in a better approach a student would use multi-step thinking, construct and answer their own problems, and ultimately produce a result that could be externally and objectively validated, ideally supporting iterative development and adding complexity.) Boys are not very good at pleasing teachers, certainly not nearly as good as girls are. A boy would be less likely to amend his answer to satisfy the absurd question, less likely to try to read the teacher's mind to figure out what output the teacher was trying to get. A boy is less likely to match the girl on language skills at some of those ages, and then can't even excel at something that isn't language based, like math. Everything becomes an essay question, and if you aren't good at essays not only won't you be graded well, you may not enjoy the work itself. And the harder you are pushed towards performing the more you will be pushed towards your weakness (the flaw that is keeping you from being graded well); this may improve your grades at that moment, but at the cost of long term learning. Kids have a lot of time to learn what they need to know. So much time... when people talk about lengthening school days and years, it makes me think about expecting people to work late to increase output. It's not smart. But worse it reveals a lack of value being placed on the time already spent. But if you let a child learn what is right for them to learn, when it is right to learn it, there's so much time for them to become eventually well rounded. It sucks for girls too. They cope better, they are better equipped to conform. They are also cursed with that ability to conform. The bad results for boys often involve obvious external measures, like failing, disciplinary measures, testing poorly, struggling after school. The bad results for girls are often more internal, a fragile identity, not nurturing their own autonomy, feeding on external rather than internal validation. This is why as a parent I opt out of public education.