[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.

[stickfigure]

This is true and interesting but it's also incomplete. Men still dominate most STEM degrees, and unlike law or business it doesn't seem to be evening out over time. I'm not sure what conclusions we can draw from this.

[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.

[rootusrootus]

> 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.

I am quite a long ways from right-leaning but this sure does lend credence to their claims of discrimination. If it weren't boys, we'd say that a biological disadvantage is absolutely acceptable as an excuse, and we should try to correct for it.

[rimliu]

So you claim that biolgically males and females are the same?

[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!

[DonHopkins]

OK Incel.

[Silamoth]

MGTOW nonsense most certainly is not the common mode of operation for young men. Where are you getting this idea?

[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?