General admission bias in favor of male applicants

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let’s look at the underlying data and see what is happening. At the college age level men and women are about a 50/50 split in population.

With more women are applying to colleges across the board men do have an overall admission advantage in the mid to upper single digits on a percentage basis. Just look at a few college common data sets and do the math. Sure still a challenge to get into CS, engineering and business, because that’s what men tend to want to study.

So with more women applying and schools wanting keep a reasonable gender balance, admission rates for women will be lower than that for men. Yes woman will have an advantage in STEM because it is not a “traditional” female path.

Why do colleges care about gender balance, because they want happy customers and that occurs with a balance between men and women. Woman although seeking professional degree to a greater extent, but still pursue traditional field such at teaching, nursing and the ultimate tradition degree “Mrs.” So schools need to have at least a 40% male base to be able to fulfill all major tracks for their female students.

LOL at this mess of basic arithmetic dressed up as some kind is meaningful insight with a dash of 1950s sexism at the end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Women control k-12 education and now college. They design the experience and set the expectations. When girls do relatively worse on standardized tests, they de-emphasize standardized tests. Everything about education these days is hostile to masculine energy which is of course considered toxic. Look at the books your son has to read in English class. The college application process itself favors girls- cultivating relationships with teachers for recommendations where they divulge all their feelings and dreams, getting involved in all these silly organizations. The system is dominated by women and rigged against boys.

Leadership positions at both k-12 and college level are overwhelmingly male.

"Leadership" at K-12 doesn't even matter. If your kid's school has a male principal, your kid will never even see him. The teachers your kids interact with all day every day are overwhelmingly female. In short, as the PP said, women control K-12 education where it matters - at the pit face - they control the experience from end to end. That female teachers have failed boys is certainly a plausible argument based on the outcome.

My son has done great in public school with almost entirely female teachers. No one’s failed him. Expectations for behavior and academic performance begin at home. So many parents letting their boys play video games and watch YouTube for hours and hours every day and then complaining that the school system is rigged against them. Pathetic.

Your education has failed you if you think muh anecdote means anything. Writ large, the education system has clearly failed boys. And that system is run by women.

Oh yeah, who makes the rules and sets the expectations at home? Also women.

You are fooling yourself. Boys have almost always been educated by women. The system is not failing boys. Rather boys are rejecting education.

Boys are very definitely educated differently now than they were when I was a kid.

And if one accepts the (asinine and false) claim that boys are rejecting education, I guess that means your conclusion is "oh well let's give up on boys then"? One could note that over the past decades, whenever girls are "underrepresented" in any educational area (most notably STEM) there is a huge push to fix this and to encourage girls to study the subject. But when boys fall behind, the reaction from women is shrug, "oh well, what can you do."

Disgusting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Equity" at work. Trying to achieve "balance" instead of just going with the best candidates.

What do you do then if your student body is 80% mostly middle class, white or asian, female applicants?
I am all for an academic meritocracy, but if all colleges do this, what are the consequences on society for the next generations?
The article tries to get at this.

I understand we are in a patriarchy. It's hard to accept that we need men in college, even if they don't do as well in school as women. Why would we give them a break if they don't have the best academic profiles as a group, and if the people at the top are mostly all men anyway? But then what do you when hardly any men go on to graduate college, and take menial positions in society?

It would be a very interesting experiment, but perhaps not with the result you have in mind.

+1. It doesn’t even have to be an experiment. It’s already happening. Just look at the black community and how the lack of eligible men is having ontheir families.

Well, that’s the result of.. not so much an experiment but a deliberate policy of imprisoning Black me to keep them from voting.

The deliberate policy is to put people in prison as punishment for their crimes and to prevent them from committing more crimes. This is a good policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Women control k-12 education and now college. They design the experience and set the expectations. When girls do relatively worse on standardized tests, they de-emphasize standardized tests. Everything about education these days is hostile to masculine energy which is of course considered toxic. Look at the books your son has to read in English class. The college application process itself favors girls- cultivating relationships with teachers for recommendations where they divulge all their feelings and dreams, getting involved in all these silly organizations. The system is dominated by women and rigged against boys.

Leadership positions at both k-12 and college level are overwhelmingly male.

"Leadership" at K-12 doesn't even matter. If your kid's school has a male principal, your kid will never even see him. The teachers your kids interact with all day every day are overwhelmingly female. In short, as the PP said, women control K-12 education where it matters - at the pit face - they control the experience from end to end. That female teachers have failed boys is certainly a plausible argument based on the outcome.

My son has done great in public school with almost entirely female teachers. No one’s failed him. Expectations for behavior and academic performance begin at home. So many parents letting their boys play video games and watch YouTube for hours and hours every day and then complaining that the school system is rigged against them. Pathetic.

Your education has failed you if you think muh anecdote means anything. Writ large, the education system has clearly failed boys. And that system is run by women.

Oh yeah, who makes the rules and sets the expectations at home? Also women.

You are fooling yourself. Boys have almost always been educated by women. The system is not failing boys. Rather boys are rejecting education.

Boys are very definitely educated differently now than they were when I was a kid.

And if one accepts the (asinine and false) claim that boys are rejecting education, I guess that means your conclusion is "oh well let's give up on boys then"? One could note that over the past decades, whenever girls are "underrepresented" in any educational area (most notably STEM) there is a huge push to fix this and to encourage girls to study the subject. But when boys fall behind, the reaction from women is shrug, "oh well, what can you do."

Disgusting.

It is disgusting but boys are not stupid. They know what time it is. My DS tells me the majority of boys at his high school now lean right; we live in a very liberal town.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys. The bar has gotten lower and lower, but I guess it’s not low enough.

My dad who was educated by nuns, likes to say he's glad he had daughters because boys need to be beaten into submission. Perhaps the removal of corporal punishment is the liberalism PP is bemoaning? None of this is my experience, I have a son and daughter who've both made it to college. DD has graduated with honors, and it's too soon to know if DS will match that, but he is plenty studious. If he's had a beef with some of the classroom management along the way, that's for him to sort. Actually, both had some of the same teachers, and mostly agreed in their gripes. This included male teachers with weird foibles, too.

I'm a man, and when I was a boy I was frequently beaten by teachers and by my parents. I completely disagree that boys need to be beaten. I have never needed to hit my sons. However, it ought to be obvious that boys need a different teaching style than girls, and you motivate boys differently from girls. I guess it's not obvious, though, at least to women, because women teachers invariably use the same teaching style on boys as they use on girls. This doesn't work but women teachers don't care, or just think the problem is the boys and not their teaching.

Teachers don’t have time or resources to differentiate their teaching style for every type of learner. (Because it goes way past girls vs. boys.) If whatever’s happening isn’t working for your boy, you can seek out single-sex education or homeschool.

I'm paying taxes, and that means teachers should do their jobs. Which includes teaching everyone not just some kids.

Shall we have teachers adopt a teaching style best suited to boys, and see if you're still indifferent when girls don't like it and start doing badly?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys.

How exactly is that happening? I'm not seeing it. Schools are bending over backwards to make learning and especially reading hateful to boys.

How is reading hateful to boys? Didn't they used to teach boys to read but not girls? Aren't most classical authors men? There is no reason boys can't read at the same level as girls. You have to be able to sit and concentrate in order to read. Boys need to learn how to do that.

You obviously don't have a son. If you did, you would know there are books that boys actively like to read - they will do so voluntarily - and books that boys actively hate to read. Women English teachers (a redundant formulation, I know) are seemingly only capable of assigning the latter as class reading. I suspect it's because they are only assigning books they like without any thought for what boys like. Last year DS said his teacher told the class they could choose from among five books to write a report on - she said "you will really like these books!" - and every single one of them was a book designed to appeal only to girls. Talk about completely oblivious.

PP. I don't have a son your age. From my experiences 20 years ago it was the complete opposite. All of the books were about nature, seafaring, war and other masculine stuff. Most assigned reading bored me to tears but I still had good grades. It was great to read anything a bit modern like 1984, which was still male oriented but at least had psychological themes. I can hardly remember a time that we read anything that would tend to appeal to girls other than some scenes Romeo & Juliet. And it was for precisely the reason you stated: boys will only voluntarily read boy stuff but girls will tolerate boy stuff, so we, girls, had to read stuff like Call of the Wild. However, we survived and did our assignments.

That was back when boys were doing roughly as well as girls in school. Sure that's making the point you think it is? Sounds like we need to go back to that era to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Women control k-12 education and now college. They design the experience and set the expectations. When girls do relatively worse on standardized tests, they de-emphasize standardized tests. Everything about education these days is hostile to masculine energy which is of course considered toxic. Look at the books your son has to read in English class. The college application process itself favors girls- cultivating relationships with teachers for recommendations where they divulge all their feelings and dreams, getting involved in all these silly organizations. The system is dominated by women and rigged against boys.

Leadership positions at both k-12 and college level are overwhelmingly male.

"Leadership" at K-12 doesn't even matter. If your kid's school has a male principal, your kid will never even see him. The teachers your kids interact with all day every day are overwhelmingly female. In short, as the PP said, women control K-12 education where it matters - at the pit face - they control the experience from end to end. That female teachers have failed boys is certainly a plausible argument based on the outcome.

My son has done great in public school with almost entirely female teachers. No one’s failed him. Expectations for behavior and academic performance begin at home. So many parents letting their boys play video games and watch YouTube for hours and hours every day and then complaining that the school system is rigged against them. Pathetic.

Your education has failed you if you think muh anecdote means anything. Writ large, the education system has clearly failed boys. And that system is run by women.

Oh yeah, who makes the rules and sets the expectations at home? Also women.

You are fooling yourself. Boys have almost always been educated by women. The system is not failing boys. Rather boys are rejecting education.

Boys are very definitely educated differently now than they were when I was a kid.

It's more permissive now. In my day the boys had to sit their butt down and work quietly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys. The bar has gotten lower and lower, but I guess it’s not low enough.

My dad who was educated by nuns, likes to say he's glad he had daughters because boys need to be beaten into submission. Perhaps the removal of corporal punishment is the liberalism PP is bemoaning? None of this is my experience, I have a son and daughter who've both made it to college. DD has graduated with honors, and it's too soon to know if DS will match that, but he is plenty studious. If he's had a beef with some of the classroom management along the way, that's for him to sort. Actually, both had some of the same teachers, and mostly agreed in their gripes. This included male teachers with weird foibles, too.

I'm a man, and when I was a boy I was frequently beaten by teachers and by my parents. I completely disagree that boys need to be beaten. I have never needed to hit my sons. However, it ought to be obvious that boys need a different teaching style than girls, and you motivate boys differently from girls. I guess it's not obvious, though, at least to women, because women teachers invariably use the same teaching style on boys as they use on girls. This doesn't work but women teachers don't care, or just think the problem is the boys and not their teaching.

Teachers don’t have time or resources to differentiate their teaching style for every type of learner. (Because it goes way past girls vs. boys.) If whatever’s happening isn’t working for your boy, you can seek out single-sex education or homeschool.

The problem is that the overall teaching is not designed to work well for most boys. While some people can switch their kids to private school or home school, that is not an option for most people. it is bad for all of us if boys in public school are not learning.

Poor boys.

Exactly. You hate boys. Like many of their teachers, to some degree or another.

I love boys. I have one of my own and he’s killing it in school. Sorry yours is having problems.

Another dimwit who thinks that because one particular boy (hers) is succeeding, there must not be a problem with the educational system despite abundant evidence it is failing boys writ large.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys.

How exactly is that happening? I'm not seeing it. Schools are bending over backwards to make learning and especially reading hateful to boys.

How is reading hateful to boys? Didn't they used to teach boys to read but not girls? Aren't most classical authors men? There is no reason boys can't read at the same level as girls. You have to be able to sit and concentrate in order to read. Boys need to learn how to do that.

You obviously don't have a son. If you did, you would know there are books that boys actively like to read - they will do so voluntarily - and books that boys actively hate to read. Women English teachers (a redundant formulation, I know) are seemingly only capable of assigning the latter as class reading. I suspect it's because they are only assigning books they like without any thought for what boys like. Last year DS said his teacher told the class they could choose from among five books to write a report on - she said "you will really like these books!" - and every single one of them was a book designed to appeal only to girls. Talk about completely oblivious.

PP. I don't have a son your age. From my experiences 20 years ago it was the complete opposite. All of the books were about nature, seafaring, war and other masculine stuff. Most assigned reading bored me to tears but I still had good grades. It was great to read anything a bit modern like 1984, which was still male oriented but at least had psychological themes. I can hardly remember a time that we read anything that would tend to appeal to girls other than some scenes Romeo & Juliet. And it was for precisely the reason you stated: boys will only voluntarily read boy stuff but girls will tolerate boy stuff, so we, girls, had to read stuff like Call of the Wild. However, we survived and did our assignments.

That was back when boys were doing roughly as well as girls in school. Sure that's making the point you think it is? Sounds like we need to go back to that era to me.

If the boys can't adjust to even reading something that's not their favorite type of book, why should they be doing as well in school? What if they decide history, science, and math are boring too? Do they just get to play action figures then?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys.

How exactly is that happening? I'm not seeing it. Schools are bending over backwards to make learning and especially reading hateful to boys.

How is reading hateful to boys? Didn't they used to teach boys to read but not girls? Aren't most classical authors men? There is no reason boys can't read at the same level as girls. You have to be able to sit and concentrate in order to read. Boys need to learn how to do that.

You obviously don't have a son. If you did, you would know there are books that boys actively like to read - they will do so voluntarily - and books that boys actively hate to read. Women English teachers (a redundant formulation, I know) are seemingly only capable of assigning the latter as class reading. I suspect it's because they are only assigning books they like without any thought for what boys like. Last year DS said his teacher told the class they could choose from among five books to write a report on - she said "you will really like these books!" - and every single one of them was a book designed to appeal only to girls. Talk about completely oblivious.

PP. I don't have a son your age. From my experiences 20 years ago it was the complete opposite. All of the books were about nature, seafaring, war and other masculine stuff. Most assigned reading bored me to tears but I still had good grades. It was great to read anything a bit modern like 1984, which was still male oriented but at least had psychological themes. I can hardly remember a time that we read anything that would tend to appeal to girls other than some scenes Romeo & Juliet. And it was for precisely the reason you stated: boys will only voluntarily read boy stuff but girls will tolerate boy stuff, so we, girls, had to read stuff like Call of the Wild. However, we survived and did our assignments.

That was back when boys were doing roughly as well as girls in school. Sure that's making the point you think it is? Sounds like we need to go back to that era to me.

If the boys can't adjust to even reading something that's not their favorite type of book, why should they be doing as well in school? What if they decide history, science, and math are boring too? Do they just get to play action figures then?

I’m sorry but parsing the emotions of some woman of color after she was allegedly raped just isn’t that interesting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Women control k-12 education and now college. They design the experience and set the expectations. When girls do relatively worse on standardized tests, they de-emphasize standardized tests. Everything about education these days is hostile to masculine energy which is of course considered toxic. Look at the books your son has to read in English class. The college application process itself favors girls- cultivating relationships with teachers for recommendations where they divulge all their feelings and dreams, getting involved in all these silly organizations. The system is dominated by women and rigged against boys.

Leadership positions at both k-12 and college level are overwhelmingly male.

"Leadership" at K-12 doesn't even matter. If your kid's school has a male principal, your kid will never even see him. The teachers your kids interact with all day every day are overwhelmingly female. In short, as the PP said, women control K-12 education where it matters - at the pit face - they control the experience from end to end. That female teachers have failed boys is certainly a plausible argument based on the outcome.

My son has done great in public school with almost entirely female teachers. No one’s failed him. Expectations for behavior and academic performance begin at home. So many parents letting their boys play video games and watch YouTube for hours and hours every day and then complaining that the school system is rigged against them. Pathetic.

Your education has failed you if you think muh anecdote means anything. Writ large, the education system has clearly failed boys. And that system is run by women.

Oh yeah, who makes the rules and sets the expectations at home? Also women.

You are fooling yourself. Boys have almost always been educated by women. The system is not failing boys. Rather boys are rejecting education.

Boys are very definitely educated differently now than they were when I was a kid.

And if one accepts the (asinine and false) claim that boys are rejecting education, I guess that means your conclusion is "oh well let's give up on boys then"? One could note that over the past decades, whenever girls are "underrepresented" in any educational area (most notably STEM) there is a huge push to fix this and to encourage girls to study the subject. But when boys fall behind, the reaction from women is shrug, "oh well, what can you do."

Disgusting.

No, exactly opposite. You made a wrong assumption! Perhaps I didn’t string my argument together coherently….we absolutely do need to fix what’s going on with boys, and we need to make adjustments to public education. I suggest we look to private schools as a model bc they’re doing an excellent job educating boys. Public school classrooms are big, noisy and have no rules. We should give them lots of room to goof off and horse around outside of class, but inside the teachers need to hold them accountable, and create an environment where it’s ok to be smart. Someone upthread suggested school is oriented toward females, with the implication being that if we relax the classroom boys will thrive. Earlier I pointed out the classroom environment has been loosened considerably, but boy performance has only gotten worse.

Why are they seemingly not interested? I think for social reasons. Outside of private school environments, there is not social cache to being smart. At my child’s public school the smart boys are almost entirely kids of immigrants! Which is another interesting dynamic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Women control k-12 education and now college. They design the experience and set the expectations. When girls do relatively worse on standardized tests, they de-emphasize standardized tests. Everything about education these days is hostile to masculine energy which is of course considered toxic. Look at the books your son has to read in English class. The college application process itself favors girls- cultivating relationships with teachers for recommendations where they divulge all their feelings and dreams, getting involved in all these silly organizations. The system is dominated by women and rigged against boys.

Leadership positions at both k-12 and college level are overwhelmingly male.

"Leadership" at K-12 doesn't even matter. If your kid's school has a male principal, your kid will never even see him. The teachers your kids interact with all day every day are overwhelmingly female. In short, as the PP said, women control K-12 education where it matters - at the pit face - they control the experience from end to end. That female teachers have failed boys is certainly a plausible argument based on the outcome.

My son has done great in public school with almost entirely female teachers. No one’s failed him. Expectations for behavior and academic performance begin at home. So many parents letting their boys play video games and watch YouTube for hours and hours every day and then complaining that the school system is rigged against them. Pathetic.

Your education has failed you if you think muh anecdote means anything. Writ large, the education system has clearly failed boys. And that system is run by women.

Oh yeah, who makes the rules and sets the expectations at home? Also women.

You are fooling yourself. Boys have almost always been educated by women. The system is not failing boys. Rather boys are rejecting education.

Boys are very definitely educated differently now than they were when I was a kid.

And if one accepts the (asinine and false) claim that boys are rejecting education, I guess that means your conclusion is "oh well let's give up on boys then"? One could note that over the past decades, whenever girls are "underrepresented" in any educational area (most notably STEM) there is a huge push to fix this and to encourage girls to study the subject. But when boys fall behind, the reaction from women is shrug, "oh well, what can you do."

Disgusting.

I am a woman in STEM and volunteer and mentor young women to encourage them to follow my path. I also mentor any young men that want to speak to me - but women seek me out more which totally makes sense.

If I were a man, and saw that many boys didn’t do well in school and had some thoughts about why, I would roll up my sleeves and volunteer/find ways to contribute. I am not sure why you are blaming women rather than men who should be stepping forward with ideas.

The boy I care most about, my son, is doing great in school. He is not failing. He had to read some truly bozo books (his words) last year. Like “the secret life of bees”. I was unsympathetic - suck it up and get your stuff done. You aren’t going to like everything you are asked to do in life - no time like the present to learn how. No different than what I said to my daughter. I don’t coddle him (and neither does his father). I expect from him what I expect from my daughter. Because of my personal experience with him, I have nothing to contribute to the broader societal issue we are discussing. So I would hope men who see the issue and can provide some mentoring/ideas step up like I did for women in STEM.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys.

How exactly is that happening? I'm not seeing it. Schools are bending over backwards to make learning and especially reading hateful to boys.

How is reading hateful to boys? Didn't they used to teach boys to read but not girls? Aren't most classical authors men? There is no reason boys can't read at the same level as girls. You have to be able to sit and concentrate in order to read. Boys need to learn how to do that.

You obviously don't have a son. If you did, you would know there are books that boys actively like to read - they will do so voluntarily - and books that boys actively hate to read. Women English teachers (a redundant formulation, I know) are seemingly only capable of assigning the latter as class reading. I suspect it's because they are only assigning books they like without any thought for what boys like. Last year DS said his teacher told the class they could choose from among five books to write a report on - she said "you will really like these books!" - and every single one of them was a book designed to appeal only to girls. Talk about completely oblivious.

PP. I don't have a son your age. From my experiences 20 years ago it was the complete opposite. All of the books were about nature, seafaring, war and other masculine stuff. Most assigned reading bored me to tears but I still had good grades. It was great to read anything a bit modern like 1984, which was still male oriented but at least had psychological themes. I can hardly remember a time that we read anything that would tend to appeal to girls other than some scenes Romeo & Juliet. And it was for precisely the reason you stated: boys will only voluntarily read boy stuff but girls will tolerate boy stuff, so we, girls, had to read stuff like Call of the Wild. However, we survived and did our assignments.

That was back when boys were doing roughly as well as girls in school. Sure that's making the point you think it is? Sounds like we need to go back to that era to me.

If the boys can't adjust to even reading something that's not their favorite type of book, why should they be doing as well in school? What if they decide history, science, and math are boring too? Do they just get to play action figures then?

I’m sorry but parsing the emotions of some woman of color after she was allegedly raped just isn’t that interesting

Weren't you going to share your son's reading list?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Women control k-12 education and now college. They design the experience and set the expectations. When girls do relatively worse on standardized tests, they de-emphasize standardized tests. Everything about education these days is hostile to masculine energy which is of course considered toxic. Look at the books your son has to read in English class. The college application process itself favors girls- cultivating relationships with teachers for recommendations where they divulge all their feelings and dreams, getting involved in all these silly organizations. The system is dominated by women and rigged against boys.

Leadership positions at both k-12 and college level are overwhelmingly male.

"Leadership" at K-12 doesn't even matter. If your kid's school has a male principal, your kid will never even see him. The teachers your kids interact with all day every day are overwhelmingly female. In short, as the PP said, women control K-12 education where it matters - at the pit face - they control the experience from end to end. That female teachers have failed boys is certainly a plausible argument based on the outcome.

My son has done great in public school with almost entirely female teachers. No one’s failed him. Expectations for behavior and academic performance begin at home. So many parents letting their boys play video games and watch YouTube for hours and hours every day and then complaining that the school system is rigged against them. Pathetic.

Your education has failed you if you think muh anecdote means anything. Writ large, the education system has clearly failed boys. And that system is run by women.

Oh yeah, who makes the rules and sets the expectations at home? Also women.

You are fooling yourself. Boys have almost always been educated by women. The system is not failing boys. Rather boys are rejecting education.

Boys are very definitely educated differently now than they were when I was a kid.

And if one accepts the (asinine and false) claim that boys are rejecting education, I guess that means your conclusion is "oh well let's give up on boys then"? One could note that over the past decades, whenever girls are "underrepresented" in any educational area (most notably STEM) there is a huge push to fix this and to encourage girls to study the subject. But when boys fall behind, the reaction from women is shrug, "oh well, what can you do."

Disgusting.

No, exactly opposite. You made a wrong assumption! Perhaps I didn’t string my argument together coherently….we absolutely do need to fix what’s going on with boys, and we need to make adjustments to public education. I suggest we look to private schools as a model bc they’re doing an excellent job educating boys. Public school classrooms are big, noisy and have no rules. We should give them lots of room to goof off and horse around outside of class, but inside the teachers need to hold them accountable, and create an environment where it’s ok to be smart. Someone upthread suggested school is oriented toward females, with the implication being that if we relax the classroom boys will thrive. Earlier I pointed out the classroom environment has been loosened considerably, but boy performance has only gotten worse.

Why are they seemingly not interested? I think for social reasons. Outside of private school environments, there is not social cache to being smart. At my child’s public school the smart boys are almost entirely kids of immigrants! Which is another interesting dynamic

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is though that high school and middle school favors girls because they go through puberty earlier and that leads to changes in the brain that are advantageous for doing well in school. Boys do catch up eventually, but the current system does make them look like weaker college applicants (esp now that it is so competitive to get into top colleges).

I’m not disagreeing, but when I was in high school boys were just as competitive academically as the girls. There was not this gender imbalance in the classroom. Boys today are particularly disengaged from academics - so I do believe something additional is going on. Chalking it up to simple brain maturity means you’re leaving other explanations on the table.

As school in general has become more drill and kill with lots of worksheets and less fun and creative work and more teaching to the test, it favors girls and boys disengage. As my 7th grade son said in reference to a friend of his who is very smart but constantly forgets to bring the correct materials to class or finish his homework "there are lots of smart boys, but the smart girls are better at school." Their school doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around and they only have a couple times a day to go to their lockers, so even that requires a level of organization I didn't have to have in middle school.

My experience has been completely different— teaching methods used to be more “kill & drill” when we were young. Most schools have moved toward project-based assignments, collaboration, and application of knowledge instead of memorization/drills. Teachers are also more accommodating now! Many allow kids to talk quietly, listen to music on headphones, and have a higher tolerance for noise & movement.

So, again, something else is going on. I’m not sure why boys are faltering, but I think it can be fixed.

+1 Schools are bending over backwards to accommodate boys.

How exactly is that happening? I'm not seeing it. Schools are bending over backwards to make learning and especially reading hateful to boys.

How is reading hateful to boys? Didn't they used to teach boys to read but not girls? Aren't most classical authors men? There is no reason boys can't read at the same level as girls. You have to be able to sit and concentrate in order to read. Boys need to learn how to do that.

You obviously don't have a son. If you did, you would know there are books that boys actively like to read - they will do so voluntarily - and books that boys actively hate to read. Women English teachers (a redundant formulation, I know) are seemingly only capable of assigning the latter as class reading. I suspect it's because they are only assigning books they like without any thought for what boys like. Last year DS said his teacher told the class they could choose from among five books to write a report on - she said "you will really like these books!" - and every single one of them was a book designed to appeal only to girls. Talk about completely oblivious.

PP. I don't have a son your age. From my experiences 20 years ago it was the complete opposite. All of the books were about nature, seafaring, war and other masculine stuff. Most assigned reading bored me to tears but I still had good grades. It was great to read anything a bit modern like 1984, which was still male oriented but at least had psychological themes. I can hardly remember a time that we read anything that would tend to appeal to girls other than some scenes Romeo & Juliet. And it was for precisely the reason you stated: boys will only voluntarily read boy stuff but girls will tolerate boy stuff, so we, girls, had to read stuff like Call of the Wild. However, we survived and did our assignments.

That was back when boys were doing roughly as well as girls in school. Sure that's making the point you think it is? Sounds like we need to go back to that era to me.

If the boys can't adjust to even reading something that's not their favorite type of book, why should they be doing as well in school? What if they decide history, science, and math are boring too? Do they just get to play action figures then?

I’m sorry but parsing the emotions of some woman of color after she was allegedly raped just isn’t that interesting

Book title please!