Why Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys Do

[Recursion]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/why-girls-get-better-grades-than-boys-do/380318/?single_page=true

As the new school year ramps up, teachers and parents need to be reminded of a well-kept secret: Across all grade levels and academic subjects, girls earn higher grades than boys. Not just in the United States, but across the globe, in countries as far afield as Norway and Hong Kong.

This finding is reflected in a recent study by psychology professors Daniel and Susan Voyer at the University of New Brunswick. The Voyers based their results on a meta-analysis of 369 studies involving the academic grades of over one million boys and girls from 30 different nations. The findings are unquestionably robust: Girls earn higher grades in every subject, including the science-related fields where boys are thought to surpass them.

Less of a secret is the gender disparity in college enrollment rates. The latest data from the Pew Research Center uses U.S. Census Bureau data to show that in 2012, 71 percent of female high school graduates went on to college, compared to 61 percent of their male counterparts. In 1994 the figures were 63 and 61 percent, respectively. In other words, college enrollment rates for young women are climbing while those of young men remain flat.

...

As it turns out, kindergarten-age girls have far better self-regulation than boys. A few years ago, Ponitz and her colleagues confirmed this by putting several hundred 5 and 6-year-old boys and girls through a type of Simon-Says game called the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Task. Trained research assistants rated the kids’ ability to follow the correct instruction and not be thrown off by a confounding one—in some cases, for instance, they were instructed to touch their toes every time they were asked to touch their heads. Curiously enough, remembering such rules as “touch your head really means touch your toes” and inhibiting the urge to touch one’s head instead amounts to a nifty example of good overall self-regulation.

(I'd also throw out that girls may get better grades because they know they have to to make up for the pay gap they face...)

[Romulox]

1. When boys did better than girls (most of history) the answer was SEXISM!

Now, when the tables are turned, it's because girls are inherently superior. This is how hypocrisy works.

[el_bryanto]

5. It depends on why girls developed better self regulation skills

Perhaps they developed them because in our sexist society they need those skills more than the boys do.

Bryant

[Romulox]

7. The entire premise is flawed. Children are there to be taught according to their needs.

If the existing system doesn't do that, then it is the system, teachers, and administrators who are failing, not the children.

[el_bryanto]

8. Agreed - if the system treats males and females different

than the system is flawed.

Bryant

[Downwinder]

15. Computerization will make it worse because computers will only

teach one way.

[Le Taz Hot]

11. I would be interested in reading

about when boys did better than girls (most of history) as, in most of history women were prohibited from formal education.

Thanks in advance,

LTH

[treestar]

2. Being "good" and following instructions more?

It would be interesting to find out if it has always been this way or is it a more recent thing? I recall studies that teachers paid more attention to boys and maybe now after feminists have made so much progress, teachers are giving girls equal or more attention.

[LWolf]

3. My classroom doesn't fit those findings.

Don't get me wrong; I can see how girls could be getting better grades than boys on a larger scale.

Boys DO often have more problems with "self-regulation."

I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions reached in this article, though. The authors seem to be suggesting that boys not be expected to learn "self-regulation" because they don't do as well with it. I think focus and organization are skills and habits that are just as vital to life-long success as the academics being taught. I also think that, like everything else about growing up, that "self-regulation" falls on a developmental continuum that we ought to be taking into consideration when we structure our education system.

I'd point out that a factory system that puts large numbers of students in small spaces, and then demands that teachers "waste" no "instructional time" in the fierce battle to prepare them for high-stakes tests sets everyone up to fail, and the students that have the most trouble with focus and organization are going to have the most trouble in that system. We are constantly battered with that mantra about instructional time, and way too many admins want to see scripted curriculum and rigid pacing schedules that actual detract from learning.

Of course, suggesting a healthier structure, a healthier system, that kept schools and class sizes small, allowed plenty of space and movement, made daily PE and recess, made art and music and other kinds of learning and activities easily available, and allowed an overall more authentic and constructive way of dealing with time and space would cost money and would put the nose of the corporate reformers out of joint.

Meanwhile, most of my boys, like most of my girls, are doing pretty well. Some of them have to work harder at "self-regulation." Some of them need more patience and support from me than others. Some of them need more of my time than others. That's okay. That's what I'm there for. They've got everything I can give within the limits of the current system.

[Euphoria]

4. k & r

And thank you for your service -- at the forefront of our hopes and aspirations for all our kids.

[seabeyond]

6. interesting. what i have seen, school being easy for both boys, both "slide" thru school.

Last edited Fri Sep 19, 2014, 09:31 AM - Edit history (1)

my oldest did his first year in university last year. one of the thing he discussed was his focusing on his studies more. rollin' eyes. not like we did not have that conversation for 12 yrs and still having it with youngest.

oldest had two gf, straight A's. discussing that, knowing intellectually he is there and capable. but, (and this is the interesting part), he was complaining that both girls put in WAY more time in the studies than warranted. they would take a simple assignment that should only take half an hour and turn it into a three hour assignment

can you BELIEVE.

he wasnt connecting maybe THIS was why they were getting straight A's. maybe it was not really a half hour assignment.

[ProfessorGAC]

9. Good Story, Sea

That happened to my nephew too. Took him the first semester to realize that college wasn't as easy as he was used to.

[seabeyond]

13. ya. son took a lot of credits with him to college. this year he dropped a class

so he could focus more on the classes and get those straight A's. now we will see if he has it in him. he sat at high b's thru out his first year. couldnt make it over the A hump. the thing? he is highly competitive so that might give him the push.

[LWolf]

14. Maybe.

[seabeyond]

16. lol. ah ha. that was fun. nt

[4Q2u2]

10. Sometimes a Head is a Head

Maybe the boys thought it was pretty stupid to touch your toes when someone says touch your head. Even though they were given the instructions of the task. Because sometimes what is right is right no matter what someone tells you. This is the basis that they are going to use for developing a better educational system for all of our children?

Here is my experiment: Goerge Bush won the 2000 Election and was President. How many on DU would agree to that? Even though they lived thru those years. Sometimes you just know what is right no matter what someone tells you.

[KitSileya]

17. This lines up quite nicely with the differences in parenting

Research has shown that girl toddlers are sooner stopped and admonished not to do physical things like cllmbing an incline and other 'dangerous' things. In other words, girls are taught from they start to crawl to stop themselves bodily, to curb their curiosity etc. And then it's their fault they know this stuff better when they start school? Can't win for losing for girls, in other words.

And boys aren't taught the same self-regulation because our culture says boys are supposed to 'go their own way', be explorative, and slightly defiant. Parents are to blame, yet it seems too many would rather make things more difficult for the girls than accept that the way we raise boys is what needs to change.

[phylny]

18. THIS THIS THIS!!!

I work with children and families in Early Intervention. My general experience is that boys are allowed to not listen, to hit mom, to climb on everything, to take food and drink from parents' or siblings' plates, to toss their cups on the floor, and you know, he's ALL BOY! I start working with them and parents say, "He'll never sit to work with you."

But he does. Not forever, but he does. Because it's expected of him. Because I will help him, and praise him.

[jen63]

19. I think pushing kids into

kindergarten too early is a problem also. My son missed the cut-off by six weeks. I could have pushed him in, he was smart enough intellectually, but I knew that socially he may not be quite able to control himself. My sister in law, who is a teacher, did the opposite. My nephew missed the cut-off by a few months and she pushed him in early. He's had terrible problems with learning from the beginning. Instead of holding him back a year in kindergarten, they've struggled to keep him with his original class. I think she thought it would reflect on her as a teacher if she held him back.