[madrox]

I was a horrible student as a child, and in my 20s I strongly held the belief that education was broken. Now that I'm a few decades older I wonder if my problem was not education but life. I did not fit in at most schools, and that had a negative effect on my desire and ability to learn. That's what led me to teach myself computers as a teenager...education and online socialization combined. Win/win.

I think the author is right that education isn't the problem, but they don't really discuss is the social element of schools. Bullying. Ostrification. I'm not really sure how schools are expected to fix that.

[pokstad]

There’s something lopsided about education for boys. The system appears to favor girls heavily. There’s projections that college student populations will have shrinking male population. I think this is a systemic issue with school being built to favor a certain philosophy that isn’t well thought out for 50% of the population.

[fasterik]

It's not that the system favors a particular gender. The system favors personality traits like self-regulation, organization, and conscientiousness. These traits develop earlier on average in girls than in boys.

[parpfish]

i'm not sure if it's an issue of the educational system, but for at least several decades there has been a societal push to correct historical gender imbalances by encouraging girls to do well in school, go to college (especially STEM), get a career.

This has resulted in kids seeing a lot of messaging along the lines of "Girl Power! Girls can do anything!". Which to an adult looks like a shift in the tides of history, but for one of the kids that's all they've ever seen and i think that has an effect.

[komali2]

> This has resulted in kids seeing a lot of messaging along the lines of "Girl Power! Girls can do anything!". Which to an adult looks like a shift in the tides of history, but for one of the kids that's all they've ever seen

This feels too vibes-based. I never saw messaging like this when I was a teacher, nor when I visited the schools my mom taught at, nor when I visited schools to help with kid hackathons. This would be in California, Texas, the PRC, Japan, and Taiwan. Mostly I saw little nonsense alphabet stickers, famous buildings, chemical symbols, or like, comically diverse but in the end harmless bits of bric a brac like an astronaut in a wheelchair.

What specifically have you been seeing that would lead you to think boys in schools are being held back by messaging?

[fasterik]

It turns out that when you level the playing field, girls do better than boys. I don't think it's about the "girl power" nonsense, it's about the ability to sit down, focus on something, and produce work that meets a certain standard of achievement.

I would say the more harmful slogan has been "you're okay just the way you are." I'm not saying we go back to harsh discipline and abuse, but there has to be a middle ground where we hold children, especially boys, to a higher standard.

[SubmarineClub]

> It turns out that when you level the playing field, girls do better than boys.

Why is it that when boys/men where outperforming and out-earning women, people were willing to move heaven and earth to correct this terrible injustice, but now when outcomes have reversed (for years at this point) it's considered acceptable to say "Welp, that's just how it goes. Boys just aren't good enough."

Hmmm...almost like, it's not a level playing field??

[ckw]

Approximate shares of undergraduate enrollment by sex:

  Year    Male     Female
  1970    58%      42%
  1975    53%      47%
  1980    48%      52%
  1985    46%      54%
  1990    45%      55%
  1995    44.5%    55.5%
  2000    43.9%    56.1%
  2005    43.3%    56.7%
  2010    43.0%    57.0%
  2015    43.6%    56.4%
  2020    42.7%    57.3%
  2025    42.7%    57.3%

So men have been in the minority for at least 46 years, and the skew is as large as it was in 1970, but reversed.

[bluGill]

Until someone can show a real biological difference we should level the playing field.

We do know boys mature later which may be reason to not level the field completely, but we should still not allow that as an excuse.

If someone shows another difference I will have to think in depth about the details before I can comment.

[rustcleaner]

Structural misandry. I'm telling you the Zoomer/Alpha boys have taken notice and are checking out of the system. Chickens coming home to roost in a few more decades as the West goes longhouse and gets economically pounded by the East. I was an early bird in MGTOW, but now it's common knowledge and operating strategy for most young men.

Boys don't owe society squat, and now they know it!

[saadn92]

I disagree. There's cases where girls do better and cases where boys do better. This blanket statement is just as bad as saying that all men/boys are smarter than girls.

[bawis]

Exactly, girls and women can do astonishing work in fields that favour more or less their mutual traits and vice versa, no need for "hehe we are better because GPA said so".

[TheOtherHobbes]

Boys have been sitting down, focusing, and producing work that meets a certain standard for most of recorded history. That ability is really not a uniquely feminine trait, and suggesting it is is honestly bizarre.

Boys have also been doing more destructive things, but that's a different issue.

Boys and girls do struggle with different issues socially and culturally, which is upstream of struggling with them academically.

What's consistently missed that education is downstream of socialisation. The experience of learning as a first introduction to culture shapes consequences more than individual techniques do.

Part of that is challenging all gender stereotypes. The traditional stereotype was that girls were frankly rather stupid and couldn't handle anything rigorous and challenging.

Now the stereotype is that men lack focus, are disorganised, and have poor communication skills.

One stereotype has been challenged, the other seems to have replaced it, and younger men have almost been encouraged to live down to it.

I don't think as a culture we're emotionally mature enough yet to handle these issues in an effective way, and both education and socialisation will remain problematic until we do.

[rootusrootus]

> One stereotype has been challenged, the other seems to have replaced it, and younger men have almost been encouraged to live down to it.

Orthogonal to age and gender both, we got to witness an entire third of the US take "deplorable" as an aspirational goal and live down to it.

> I don't think as a culture we're emotionally mature enough

You can say that again.

[SubmarineClub]

> There’s projections that college student populations will have shrinking male population.

We're well past that. In fact, the gender gap in college graduation is now worse than it was when Title IX was passed. But because the gap favors women no one gives a shit -- many 'progressives' even celebrate it and continue to insist we need all these programs specifically to get women into college.

[rootusrootus]

> projections that college student populations will have shrinking male population

Projections? Aren’t we already there in reality? That future is today.

[XorNot]

What philosophy? The gender based outcomes people never seem able to come up with any coherent explanation of what they think the problem is other then to play to stereotypes.

[rootusrootus]

The explanation that I’ve seen floated is behavioral. Boys are active and physical and don’t focus as easily as girls, who are more amenable to sitting quietly and paying attention. The idea is that the current predominant K12 style favors students in the latter behavior group.

I have two kids in K12 and I don’t think it’s that simple. Not that I have a good explanation of my own, mind you.

[jplusequalt]

>who are more amenable to sitting quietly and paying attention

Is this explanation not making a blatant assumption here that girls are statistically less hyperactive and distracted than boys?

[rocmcd]

"Hyperactive and distracted" is not necessarily the exact reason, but there is a large, well documented gap in performance for boys vs girls in elementary school (at least in the US).

[rootusrootus]

Is that controversial (assuming otherwise normal children, excluding anybody with ADHD, etc)?

[smelendez]

What confuses me is that the education system, especially the college track, was designed for men and boys. Lots of colleges didn’t even admit women, and they were largely excluded from learned professions like medicine, law, the ministry, engineering, etc.

I haven’t really seen a good argument for what changed. I guess it’s possible that the school system was originally designed to teach young men skills, like quiet study and deference to authority, that women either learn more naturally or get reinforced in other contexts, and the schools no longer effectively teach those skills but still reward them.

[Avicebron]

> What philosophy?

They might be referring to the TED Radio Hour "Beyond the manosphere" by Richard Reeves. I think it was on NPR a while ago, I looked it up because the "school isn't designed for boys but girls" sounded familiar.

[bilbo0s]

This.

A math test is a math test is a math test.

What's the math teacher supposed to do?

I hate to be that guy, but I think it should be pointed out that asian boys don't seem to have much of a problem. If there's a gender bias, why do they succeed?

[HDThoreaun]

So the issue with this take imo is that one of the primary goals of schooling is to socialize kids and force them to interact with others they dont get along with. There needs to be some conflict among the students so that they can gain and practice conflict resolution skills that are absolutely vital. I agree that the current system can be improved, it's just not clear how.

[madrox]

My issue with saying socializing is one of the primary goals is that schools leave kids to figure it out on their own. Hard to know how schools are performing at that goal when it is going unmeasured.

[bluGill]

Schools do better than home schooling. Those kids constantly do great on tests but it doesn't take long to figure out they are lacking socially.

I don't know how to teach socialization other than kids figure it out, but I'm open to the idea.

[bigstrat2003]

Some of those kids are lacking socially. It's not 100% by any means. The thing is that if you are home schooling your kids, you have to be intentional about socializing them in a way that you simply don't have to if you have them in a formal school setting. Obviously, some parents are going to fail at that but not all will.

[HDThoreaun]

Well the thing is if youre home schooling it's really easy to just never have your kid interact with someone they dont get along with. Thats the most important part of the socialization though. If you dont put effort into making your kids life a little uncomfortable Im not sure how theyll gain those skills.

[zozbot234]

As an adult, you can mostly choose to simply not interact with whomever you don't get along with, and this is exactly the right thing to do in that situation. Especially if the "not getting along" part involves severe abuse, as it often enough does among unsupervised kids. Why shouldn't kids get the same choice?

[bluGill]

More importantly someone you get along with even though they are a [Democrat, Catholic, or a long list of other groups that people have strong beliefs in]

[bluGill]

Not 100% is claimed often, but I have personally never seen an exception.

Maybe some exist but I don't know of any

[bentley]

Do you make a point of interrogating all the “normal” people you know about their pre‐adult educational history?

You’d be surprised how many people you’ve met who were homeschooled but never happened to bring it up in casual conversation.

[winterbourne]

Homeschooled kids can socialize outside of homeschool and be perfectly well-adjusted. There's something to be said for avoiding the hierarchical social structure present in schools.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Any time you try to randomly assort 30 children of the same calendar age into a room with a single (or even several) teacher, it's going to be bad for nearly everyone except those in the very middle of the curve. A very narrow portion of that middle too. It can't not be. And if the teacher tries to cater to the slow kids and the "gifted" kids even a little, then the middle-of-the-curve children will suffer for that too.

The problem isn't "education"... everyone not destined to be a feral caveman needs one. The problem is "public schools". The idea itself is wrong, and it can't be made to work. But our single-minded pursuit of it to the detriment of all other alternatives just compounds the trouble.

Of the 50 people who end up reading my comment above, every one of you will read it a different way, and it's unlikely very many of you will read it as intended.

[jubilanti]

> Of the 50 people who end up reading my comment above, every one of you will read it a different way, and it's unlikely very many of you will read it as intended.

Because that's how language works. Stop being a pompous self-righteous ass and take responsibility for your own words.

[5upplied_demand]

> Of the 50 people who end up reading my comment above, every one of you will read it a different way, and it's unlikely very many of you will read it as intended.

Isn't this admission a sign that you should be more clear on the intent of the comment? There are many countries with well-functioning public school systems.

[in-silico]

> The problem is "public schools". The idea itself is wrong, and it can't be made to work.

Do you have an alternative idea in mind?

[layman51]

It might have worked in the very distant past. I learned that there was once a monitorial system of education where a single teacher might be in charge of many students, but only because the teacher would get a lot of help from skilled students who would teach what they had learned to other students in their charge.

[kajecounterhack]

Isn't this just solved by better student teacher ratios, which you could totally have in public schools if they were funded better and societally we valued teachers more?

What are private schools doing that you couldn't implement in public schools with adequate political will and money?

[programjames]

Your question is easily resolved by looking up how much American schools are funded, compared to historical funding, other countries' funding, and their relative successes.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Outcomes aren't any better with lower ratios. The best-funded public schools have funding higher than anywhere else, in the world, and have poor outcomes... it's not a funding problem. And it's difficult to "value teachers" when we learn of these outcomes, it runs counter to human nature.

Private schools are (excepting the truly 0.01% which are the most elite schools meant for the children of billionaires and statesmen) are nothing more than public schools dressed up in $20,000/yr tuition so that the upper middle class can feel special. They draw personnel from the same pool of teachers, they use the same textbooks and pedagogy. They are essentially public schools with a new label. But that you think I might be talking about private schools shows how you can't even really think about alternatives. You don't have the mental language to do so.

[yongjik]

Meh, it's not like before public schools most children had access to tutors tailored to their individual needs.

Badly misquoting Churchill, public schools are the worst form of education, except for all the other forms.

[bilbo0s]

I think I should also gently suggest here that the issue could also be expectations. The idea that you put 30 random children in a class and that therefore there must be some who are "gifted", and there must be some who are "slow".

I don't know man? I'm just saying that sometimes sure, all the kids in your neighborhood could be above average. But most of the time, all the kids in a class are just average. And now the poor teacher has to explain to irate parents that their kid's not any more special than the other kids in the class. (Only we don't. We acquiesce to their insanity and label average at best kids as "gifted" and then have everyone be shocked when those kids don't gain admission to Ivies. Ma'am, that kid was lucky to get into his/her state flagship. And even at that state flagship, s/he probably ain't gonna be majoring in ChemE or anything if you want my honest opinion.)

Sure, you can have slow kids in a class. But, really? 30 random kids? Is it statistically likely that any are "slow"? Or is it more likely you're dealing with no good parents who don't work with their children at home? Then those same parents come to berate the teachers for not doing enough to teach a fourth grader addition and subtraction. With absolutely no reflection on why a fourth grader, with no learning disability, doesn't understand addition and subtraction.)

I don't envy teachers because these are the attitudes they have to deal with.

Public Service Announcement: No people, your children aren't "gifted". And it's very unlikely that your kids are "slow". Your kids are very likely, (horror of horrors), just average. Every one of them.

If we can just get past those things we can start looking at some of the real issues.

[hunterpayne]

Don't have kids huh...gifted is just a classification for those with test scores in the top 1-5%. So if you have 100 kids, there is a pretty high likelihood you have 1-5 gifted kids (yes its not that simple, whatever).

And the research on the topic says that tracking (the idea you are criticizing here), improves educational outcomes. What to know the real problem with education? Its people like you who don't have kids and know nothing about the education system driving their own ideology and biases into the system. You have no stake in this, yet you want your opinion heard despite the fact that you put no effort into learning about the topic of education other than going through the system yourself which hardly counts.

PS You don't even know the term for the thing you are criticizing.

PPS By definition, every kid can't be average. So you don't understand statistics either.

[bilbo0s]

>Don't have kids huh...

I'm a grandparent.

>people like you who don't have kids and know nothing about the education system

You know when I did my student teaching stint to certify? 1993.

PS: You know why they say tracking works? Because we throw out data from after high school graduation. Ever wonder how those, uh, "gifted", kids who got "A"s in high school Calc typically do in Calculus streams at the University level? I can assure you there are many many professors out there dealing with the results of our tracking system, (that being where the proliferation of "gifted" programs came from), who would not say that it is "working".