The Genius Gap (Are Boys the Second Sex?)

New York Magazine ^ | Jun 4, 2010 | Hanna Rosin

[nickcarraway]

What’s happening to the boy genius? Outside of fantasy fiction, he seems to be a shrinking breed. New York’s gifted-and-talented schools are overstocked with girls, a recent Times study found. In some gifted classrooms, three-fifths of the students are female. Yes, we know girls are smart and dutiful and hardworking, but this phenomenon confounds what’s long been considered the natural order. Could it really be that boys are now the struggling class, in need of help or affirmative action?

Experts have been warning about the boy crisis for years, but the idea has never really taken hold—partly because it originated as a crusade of the anti-feminist right. (Christina Hoff Sommers introduced it as a culture-war issue with her book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.) Yet empirical evidence continues to mount that boys, as a class, may no longer have what it takes to succeed in school.

For at least a decade, a subtle shift has been happening in the educational system that seems to be working against boys, who tend to be later verbal bloomers. New initiatives have emphasized more literacy skills in preschool, long before boys are ready. And early standardized testing—now the norm—sets up boys to see themselves as academic failures. To apply for a gifted program, children as young as 4 are required to sit through hour-long verbal exams. The patience and communication skills required all play to the strengths of girls.

“It doesn’t take a degree in child psychology to see what’s happening here,” says Richard Whitmire, author of the new book Why Boys Fail. “A test heavy on verbal skills aimed at the very early grades is going to turn up more girls than boys. I’m surprised the gifted gender gaps aren’t larger.”

Whitmire’s book is full of anecdotes of honors classes full of girls, from elementary school on up. He blames a regime that fixates on preparing children for college starting in kindergarten. “Why are they testing for gifted that early?” he asks. “It’s not intentional bias, but the same question applies here as with race: Do you judge bias by outcome? If so, yes, this is bias.”

To be fair, boys do tend to catch up to their female peers on both math and verbal test scores by high school. New York’s eight gifted high schools—Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, etc.—have more boys enrolled than girls. But these particular statistics fail to capture the broader new reality for boys and men in the U.S.: They are less likely to graduate from high school and less likely to get a college degree.

Australia, New Zealand, and other countries have national initiatives to address the boy crisis—providing male teachers, boy-centric reading material, and lessons in technology. Here, educators have tried the occasional experiment—single-sex classes, for example—but they are resistant to the idea that boys, in a nation still ruled by men, are really in trouble. But as Whitmire likes to point out, this is a future problem: Men not achieving in school means men not going to college means men with no job prospects means men rejected as suitable marriage prospects by smarty-pants girls.

[Let's Roll]

"Put your own damn seat down."

I ALWAYS put the lid down. Looks 10 times better and toddlers and pets don't fall in.

To me it's not about the seat, I'd rather you put the lid down the way I do for the reasons given and the seat will take care of itself.

I am also the only woman I know who consistently defends treating boys like boys and not like women in training. I am particulary vocal with one of my sons, who is a teacher, because I know he is under a lot of pressure from the feminized education system to treat boys like girls. He doesn't, but I want him to know that not all women think that way.

Men and women are different from each other - not better or worse. Those different skills and aptitudes should be encouraged and developed not smothered because too many women can't see how much men bring to the table.

[februus]

Hahah - that bit of Vonnegut scifi came to mind to me too reading this.

[KEmom]

“the feminized education system to treat boys like girls.”

This is exactly what I see - my son says he hates to read, but the crap they want him to read in school is, just that, crap. He loves to read his SI for kids, he loves to read the “Bone” series (which is discouraged at school because it’s a “comic-book-type” series). Amazing, when he starts to read something that’s interesting...he actually enjoys it.

The long school day (with lots of non-learning going on) plus homework is ridiculous for boys who want to go out and play, which is what boys (and girls) should be doing.

[oldmomster]

In their effort to make education more girl friendly, they changed subjects that boys were strong in - math and science.

Take a look at the textbooks - what used to be number problems are now ‘word’ problems - and girls have always been early readers. I realized the problem when it took my son ten minutes to figure out the name of the tribe that was collecting a certain kind of bean (of course that was part of the multi-cultural connection, which adds $$$ to price of textbooks).

In english classes, comprehension tests are based on paragraphs of nonsense that I’ve had a tough time trying to figure out what they were looking for - and english/reading were the only subjects I was reallllly good at! It’s all touchy feely nonsense. Boys start to fail, get pushed into vo-tec classes. If they actually make it to college, things start to turn around in the math/science fields where boys excel. The trick is to get them thru high school.

[darkangel82]

A consequence of socialism.

[Jack Hydrazine]

You base 70 percent on your own experience in the public eduction field?

[Niuhuru]

Meanwhile the Chinese roll out the red carpet for their gifted and bright.

[MrB]

Actually, that IS the distribution -

female geniuses, and idiots, are rarer
than male geniuses and idiots.

The IQ distribution curve is fatter in the middle for females
than for males.

[MrB]

Institutionalize schooling just doesn’t work for boys, for the most part.

Some would rather read while hanging upside down off the arm of the couch.

[Nick Danger]

...if boys dominate at the level of graduate physics classes, as I belIeve they do, I don’t see the problem there either.

You're right, they do. What you'll never hear unless you look into it for yourself is that the vast majority of these are 'boys' from other countries, principally India and China. Do not be fooled: the boys in this country are being deliberately dumbed down by social engineers who are fashioning what they believe will be a feminist utopia. The slots in the graduate physics programs are going to Indians and Chinese males because our students -- male or female -- cannot compete. Other countries do not deliberately dumb down their male children. We do.

A lot of people around here were surprised that Socialists could form a voting majority in the United States in 2008, by getting the recently-educated to the polls. People just don't want to believe that the schools are as Orwellian as they are.

This isn't going to change. People don't really want to believe it, and ultimately they don't care. It'll be 20 or 30 years before the fact that all the advances in the hard sciences are taking place elsewhere comes back to bite us. By then, it'll be too late.

[wintertime]

There are far fewer good male role models at schools anymore.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I attended my grandson's kindergarten “graduation” this morning. The principal (a man) was wearing faded blue jeans and a polo shirt with the name of the school embroidered on it.

Actually, I had spotted this person in the principal’s office before the program and thought he was part of the janitorial staff. I was completely amazed when, at the kindergarten program, he was introduced as the principal.

Honestly...We live in one of the reddest of the red states. This principal is not in any way providing either the girls or boys a good role model for how professionals should dress on the job.

[Reeses]

While the average IQ for both sexes is the same

Only if the test is carefully engineered for that outcome by adding an essay section and removing certain types of questions. While individuals vary widely, for groups of similar people the average female brain is about 10% smaller than the average male brain. Since the invention of the birth control pill this delta is widening because the smarter the woman, the less children she will likely have. The reverse is true for men.

[JenB]

Not to be rude, but is that your oldest child’s child?

With the details you have posted about your younger three children’s academic accomplishments I have a hard time imagining them using government schools for their offspring.

[RobbyS]

Yes. I also concluded that most “educators” believe dogmatically that there the educational process is basically good and that there are no solutions outside the public school system. Private schools and charter schools offer nothing that cannot be achieved by modifying the present system, and they take from public schools the resources they must have to achieve necessary reforms.

[Straight Vermonter]

My son’s are chess enthusiasts (both have won state championships /bragging). At this year’s state competition there one, only one, girl competing. My oldest son competed in Scholars Bowl where there was about 3 times as many boys as girls.

When girls are in the classroom they are in an environment that allows the to exceed their boy counterparts. When actually competing in academics outside the classroom boys far surpass the girls.

[RobbyS]

No, it works for boys if you design it for boys. The schools expect boys to act like girls. They also expect an 18-year old boy to act like a 12-year old boy. Athletic programs succeed with boys and girls because they recognized that boys and girls must be coached differently. Look at Sarah Palin and her husband , who are both “jocks.” She is fiercely competitive but does not show it the same way that her husband, for instance, does. Neither do most female athletes. The unisex ideologues who deny that boys and girls are not very different creatures are fools. One reason why the schools are no worse than they are is because most administrators are male ex-jocks. Deep down they know better, even when they go along because that is how one plays the system.

[RobbyS]

The trouble is that such inter-school competition is not encouraged or adequately rewarded. In a rational world, interscholastic debating teams should be a big thing, at least on the level of golk and tennis competition, even though odds are against being put on a par with baseball, basketball, lacrosse, soccer and football. Maybe then we would get lawyers who can actually litigate in court, like the TV lawyers do.

[nickcarraway]

As a recruiter for high-tech, I completely see this. The majority of Computer Science students for advanced degrees in the U.S. are from outside the U.S.

[wintertime]

It is my grandson and son of my youngest.

Actually, I was flexible about kindergarten with my own kids. I saw it as a government sponsored play group( similar in many ways to the Department of Recreation summer programs for children.) If the child enjoyed it, I had no problem with it. My daughter has been homeschooling my grandson for several years now. He is reading fifth grade level books and is already well into second grade arithmetic even though he is only five. She is a wonderful mom and doing a great job homeschooling her kids.

I suppose my daughter is taking the same approach as I did. She's been doing the hard work of homeschooling at home, and sees no problem with kindergarten if the child likes it. One of my children didn't like kindergarten and only stuck it out long enough to participate in the Halloween school parade.

First grade, though, is an entirely different issue. I removed the oldest of my three homeschoolers after only a couple months (weeks?)( It was well before Christmas). Going to school chewed up far too much of his day. He came home tired. I felt obligated to continue our work at home which was several grades above what was being taught in school. The principal and teacher were completely unwilling to make any adjustments to accommodate his advanced level. We were doing both homeschooling and worthless school homework. Finally, I gave up and removed him from school. Homeschooling was looking pretty good to me, even though, as one of the earliest homeschoolers, I knew of no one who had or was homeschooling.

[tet68]

suitable marriage prospects by smarty-pants girls.

A smart boy will always figure a way to get his
hand in those smarty pants...