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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]13:17 here (posting at the gate on my phone so cut me some slack).  I appreciate your taking the time to read the NIMH study. As I understand your blogger's point, Sax overstates the sex-based differences found in the study. Fair enough. I am in no way a scientist, just reasonably literate.  Poking holes in anyone's science is easy to do. However, if the logical leap you are suggesting is "Sax overstated the differentials in the NIMH study, therefore male and female brains are exactly alike", I do not think your blogger or the NIMH team would agree. Sax explored a number of theories for why boys have done poorly academically in comparison to girls over the past 30 years.  He was looking for answers, one of which was that there are inherent biological differences. I think the NIMH study and, frankly, common sense, support this. The fact that Sax assigns more significance to the NIMH study than your blogger doesn't invalidate his theories for me. [/quote]

PP at 14:42 here -- my point actually was not "Sax overstated the differentials in the NIMH study, therefore male and female brains are exactly alike". My point was that when you look at the scientific papers that Sax cites to support his claims, those papers -- at minimum -- do not say what Sax says they say.

As for "inherent biological differences", I second the recommendation of the PP at 15:01 for Lisa Eliot's "Pink Brain, Blue Brain".[/quote]

15:01 here again.  Eliot's position (IIRC) is that although boy & girl brains are different, the difference is incredibly small and not nearly enough to justify major differences in how they are treated in education and other aspects.  She thinks the differences society sees between boys and girls are mostly nurture, and less nature.  Indeed, Eliot proposes that to the extent some researchers find physical brain differences, some of those brain differences may have been [u]caused[/u] by the plasticity of brains responding to boy/girl feedback early in life.

But getting back to the underlying point ... even if boys are neurologically capable of learning just as quickly as girls, it often seems obvious many of them do not progress as fast as girls in the early years.  Although different researchers present different opinions on whether that's driven by nature or nurture, the differences between those researchers is really moot for deciding whether boys should be held back when they are struggling.

FWIW, I personally have no problem with parents choosing to hold back a boy who they think is not ready for the social/academic challenges of school.  If they think it's going to help the child, I've got no reason to question their decision.  [/quote]

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