Is MCPS biased against boys?

[Anonymous]

I have a boy and a girl at Bradley Hills Elementary in Bethesda. Neither kid is an angel, but my daughter never gets in trouble for anything. If my boy is assertive in any way he gets reprimanded or sent to the office. This same behavior is never punished with my daughter.

Other parents seem to have similar experiences with athletic and high energy boys.

[Anonymous]

It depends on the teacher and principal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a boy and a girl at Bradley Hills Elementary in Bethesda. Neither kid is an angel, but my daughter never gets in trouble for anything. If my boy is assertive in any way he gets reprimanded or sent to the office. This same behavior is never punished with my daughter.

Other parents seem to have similar experiences with athletic and high energy boys.

There have been lots of studies done on this occurrence so it is possible. However, if you aren't witnessing every single thing happening during the day there could be a difference in their behavior.

[Anonymous]

K-12 education, since the beginning of medieval group learning by monks, was never meant to be accommodating towards non-compliant behavior. For centuries, kids used to be physically punished for misbehavior or failure to memorize their lessons. Nowadays, some people decry the chaos in classrooms where misbehavior is out of control and teachers are not allowed to enact consequences, and there are no suspensions or expulsions.

So in that context, OP, I would think twice about what your son might be doing that's different than your daughter. If you're sure he's not doing anything different, maybe his classroom's atmosphere or his teacher's control are different and require different measures.

But fear not. It is an established fact, proven by numerous interviews, including most recently an article in the New York Times, that boys are favored over girls in the college admissions process. This is because girls tend to be higher-achievers with better academic profiles, but to sustain gender balance on campus, colleges need to lower the bar slightly for male applicants.

So your son will come out alright in the end

[Anonymous]

I actually didn't realize this was an issue until we saw how teachers treated boys and girls online during covid time. Both my boys are fairly quiet so they rarely if ever get in trouble, but there was definitely a difference in treatment for the same types of behaviors, from both male and female teachers that we observed.

As my kids get older and are in high school, they see less of this in class but can recount numerous times how they felt the male peers were more likely to get called out for the same types of infraction. For the girls, the teachers seem to view any sassiness as leadership and for the boys it was considered nuisance and rude. Kinda strange that this is the reverse of what we stereotypically consider the case in the current upper management workforce. Maybe the pendulum is starting to swing the other way. I just hope it's not swinging too far over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a boy and a girl at Bradley Hills Elementary in Bethesda. Neither kid is an angel, but my daughter never gets in trouble for anything. If my boy is assertive in any way he gets reprimanded or sent to the office. This same behavior is never punished with my daughter.

Other parents seem to have similar experiences with athletic and high energy boys.

Non athletic, but high energy boy. Experienced same at Wyngate. Learned from two other parents of boys in years following after we'd moved that theirs suffered same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:K-12 education, since the beginning of medieval group learning by monks, was never meant to be accommodating towards non-compliant behavior. For centuries, kids used to be physically punished for misbehavior or failure to memorize their lessons. Nowadays, some people decry the chaos in classrooms where misbehavior is out of control and teachers are not allowed to enact consequences, and there are no suspensions or expulsions.

So in that context, OP, I would think twice about what your son might be doing that's different than your daughter. If you're sure he's not doing anything different, maybe his classroom's atmosphere or his teacher's control are different and require different measures.

But fear not. It is an established fact, proven by numerous interviews, including most recently an article in the New York Times, that boys are favored over girls in the college admissions process. This is because girls tend to be higher-achievers with better academic profiles, but to sustain gender balance on campus, colleges need to lower the bar slightly for male applicants.

So your son will come out alright in the end

Not all true with the admission process. If you want to enter engineering, the chance decrease if you are of a certain gender/race.

[Anonymous]

Many adults are less tolerant of boys than girls, especially young boys. If you believe that your son is being discriminated against or is receiving disparate treatment, advocate on his behalf.

[Anonymous]

Of course it is. Progressives follow the pyramid of oppression and discriminate against anyone who isn't a victim. They call it equity.

[Anonymous]

I have a son and a daughter in the system and I have not seen or felt like MCPS treated my son unfairly because of his gender.

[Anonymous]

Most ES teachers are women and often young women so they dont “get” boys. The one year my so. Had a male ES teacher was his best best year!

[Anonymous]

I have a son and a daughter in mcps. My son who is more of an independent spirit did get in trouble occasionally for acting wild with other boys in the early ES years. From what I could tell, I think the corrections from the teachers were appropriate. I don’t think he was treated unfairly. I think he needed to be told, no you cannot do this or that at recess for example. He needed to learn those boundaries and needed behavior reinforcement. My daughter on the other hand is a people pleaser and I cannot imagine her acting out in the same ways my son did. So she hasn’t had to deal with occasionally missing recess or making apologies or not getting behavior incentives etc like he did. But I don’t think the overall situation has been unfair.

[Anonymous]

Didn’t you post about this a while ago?

If I could afford it, I would put my boys in an all boys’ school in a heartbeat to prevent gender discrimination and increase likelihood they would have male teachers.

[Anonymous]

It's not MCPS. It's schools in this part of the county and the entitled teachers who have never had kids themselves and expect every child to be a little angel.

This does not describe every teacher. There are some great ones but DC has too many like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a boy and a girl at Bradley Hills Elementary in Bethesda. Neither kid is an angel, but my daughter never gets in trouble for anything. If my boy is assertive in any way he gets reprimanded or sent to the office. This same behavior is never punished with my daughter.

Other parents seem to have similar experiences with athletic and high energy boys.

Yea everyone is soo biased. They need to be out in the woods, hanging from trees, magically learning about science.