
Girls Get Better Grades Than Boys - throwaway344
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/why-girls-get-better-grades-than-boys-do/380318/?single_page=true
======
minimaxir
I recently did an analysis of Harvard and MIT's MOOCs to determine which
gender gets the better grades in classes. (full post:
[http://minimaxir.com/2014/07/online-class-
charts/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/07/online-class-charts/))

Turns out, there's no statistically significant difference between male and
female grades. [http://minimaxir.com/img/online-class-charts/gender-
grade.pn...](http://minimaxir.com/img/online-class-charts/gender-grade.png)

~~~
mqsiuser
> 311,534 male students (73.3%) and

> 113,571 female students (26.7%).

> The fact that it’s not even close to 50:50 is surprising.

It didn't surprise me, I went there & searched for it. How can it be
surprising (you see these ppl all the time on campus!). And it shows that
there are ~3 times more men at Harvard than woman.

So thank YOU so much for nearing to a problem: Girls do better early on (cf.
orig. article) & men later in live (cf. your analysis)

Why did you screw that? Political correctness? You are dishonest (you'd have
my downvote).

An important aspect: We need to make sure to not loose males [which would do
fine later] during early years.

~~~
minimaxir
...the article is about _online_ courses.

------
yummyfajitas
tl;dr; Girls work harder than boys and are more diligent about getting things
done. Awesome for them. What's the problem?

The article does raise one real issue - grades in school are based on more on
obeying arbitrary rules than on actual mastery of the knowledge. That's a
problem worth fixing. But it's a problem worth fixing because grades are
measuring the wrong thing, and it's worth fixing regardless of it's affects on
statistical gender disparities.

But I guess "modern grading systems measure the wrong thing" is far less of a
clickbait topic.

~~~
alukima
To try to be fair, life is often more about obeying arbitrary rules than
mastering certain subjects. Many of the things named in the article are
important life skills that should be taught and encouraged.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
Becoming an acceptably rewarded cubicle drone requires obeying a lot of
arbitrary rules for many years. I wouldn't say _life_ is about that.

School sucks and boys feel that more acutely, is the long and short of it in
my view. Girls tend to tolerate or even like it because subservience is more
in their nature. Women also tend to like moderate status corporate drone jobs
that make a lot of men want to blow their brains out.

~~~
idexicon
Dude,

Subservience is forced, has been forced, due to biology, until the very recent
past. Women could not even control having children until birth control. No one
likes "corporate drone" jobs. No one likes being a servant or a slave either.
Sometimes you take what you can get at the time just to survive.

~~~
tomp
But this doesn't answer the question why _now_ , in _this_ day and age, girls
are (in average) more subservient than boys (EDIT: according to this article)
(obviously, they don't _need_ to be in order to survive).

------
gph
This article brings up an important point about our education system. How much
is it about teaching a subject versus teaching you how to work.

I always did well on tests and in any class I didn't totally hate I felt like
I gained the knowledge I needed to. However, I never did all the homework.
Hated it. Most of it felt like busy work, or just plain unimportant.

Not that I think self-discipline is worthless. It is a very important life
skill. But they don't really teach you how to be self-disciplined so much as
attempt to force it on to you by making your grade dependent on a ton of extra
work. I like the idea of splitting grades into knowledge and self-discipline
like the Minnesota school did.

~~~
lutorm
The whole point about forcing kids to do homework is that they are not in a
position to judge whether something is important or not. For everyone like
you, I'm pretty sure there is someone saying "I didn't want to learn X in
school but I'm sure happy they made me now that I know how important it is."

~~~
gph
That wasn't really my point. If you don't want to learn something, you
probably aren't going to. But even classes I enjoyed like Math and Science, I
wouldn't do all the homework. I still learned all that I needed to. The fact
is that a lot of homework just isn't necessary all the time, especially for
quick learners.

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ps4fanboy
I wonder if this has anything to with the massive decline in male teacher
population.

~~~
cwbrandsma
Was that population that big to begin with? Most of my male teachers in
highschool were actually just wanabe-sport coaches. My male history
teacher/basketball coach just played movies every day.

~~~
cafard
In my middle-school days, there were some very sharp guys teaching in part
because of the Vietnam draft. (No, I'm not young anymore.) At my high school
(all boys, Catholic), the coaches had to teach real subjects: Algebra I, Trig,
Plane Geometry, Biology, Chemistry. Now, one of the wrestling coaches sent a
classmate of mine hurrying to the other class with his statement that a
milligram was one million grams, but most of them seemed to do OK. Not all of
the other male teachers were in orders, either, and most of them, lay or
religious, ranged from adequate to good.

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fdsary
As a man who left school not that many years ago, I'm amazed how well I feel
this describes the situation back then. I remember being frustrated by grades
being all about who (I then thought) manipulated the teacher best by acting
like a "Good Boy/Girl". By being neat and by being timely rather than the one
who knew what the grade requirements asked of the students.

I wonder, is the article true or does it just appeal to my feelings?

------
cafard
It seemed to me many years ago that there was an odd pattern in the schools,
perhaps exaggerated in Catholic schools, but probably present in the public
schools also. In the earlier grades, the girls, who sat still better, had
better small-muscle coordination, and were more verbal sooner, pulled down the
As, while the boys did more poorly. Somewhere in the middle school years, neat
handwriting counted for less, and the boys started to catch up on other
fronts. The girls, not always unwillingly, fell back. A cousin of mine
infuriated me by saying that she got Bs in high school--boys didn't like girls
who got As.

But, as they say on HN, the plural of anecdote is not science.

------
cyphunk

       She’s found that little ones who are destined to do well in
       a typical 21st century kindergarten class are those who 
       manifest good self-regulation.
    

The first question is what determines "doing well"? This was not clear to me
from the article. Is it grades? High-School completion? Entrance exam levels?
Completing University? Getting a PhD? Making their first billion $?

For a very long time (40+ years) we know that girls have done better in grades
and boys have done better in standardised admission tests. The quality of
"good self-regulation" others may describe negatively as a false reward for
"girls keep quiet". In open format classes boys dominate and demand attention.
Teachers may be rewarding girls "self-regulation" because they are more
considerate of the teacher and fellow students. But as a result teachers give
more attention to the students that are worse at "self-regulation". see:
"Failing At Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls" from 1995

    
    
       Kenney-Benson and some fellow academics provide evidence 
       that the stress many girls experience in test situations can
       artificially lower their performance, giving a false reading
       of their true abilities.
    

The Kenney-Benson study I believe is this one from 2006:
[http://news.illinois.edu/news/06/0220mathdivide.html](http://news.illinois.edu/news/06/0220mathdivide.html)

This field of study appears to me to be a mess.

Here is a study on the male grade crisis with a counter conclusion. Pretty
much the similar research results but different conclusion and language:

    
    
       The researchers examined 369 samples from 308 studies,
       reflecting grades of 538,710 boys and 595,332 girls. ... The
       study reveals that recent claims of a “boy crisis,” with boys
       lagging behind girls in school achievement, are not accurate
       because girls’ grades have been consistently higher than boys’
       across several decades with no significant changes in recent
       years, the authors wrote. 
       
       http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/04/girls-grades.aspx

------
onewaystreet
It's been a while since I was in high school, but looking back I would say
that this was true. It doesn't surprise me when you factor in puberty and
maturity (girls at that age tend to be more mature at least when it comes to
school work). Boys also spend more of their time on extracurricular activities
(sports).

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fsk141
Is anyone bothered that this has no references, seems like a nice helping of
hearsay to me.

~~~
azakai
The article gives one major reference near the top, to
[http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/04/girls-
grades....](http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/04/girls-grades.aspx)

------
j2kun
If the difference is just by one year, as one of the studies suggests, why not
shift grade/age by one year for boys? So six year old boys will be
kindergarten age with five year old girls, etc.?

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donatj
So much of school is based on blindly doing what you're told and I think young
boys have trouble doing what they're told. I know I personally wanted to know
the _reasoning_ behind things. In the army they have to break young men down
before they blindly follow orders.

Even as a nearly 30 something I don't like being _told_ what to do. Ask, don't
tell.

I know I could see this was pointless charade and would rather do something of
actual value, whereas most of what you do in school is pointless busy work
with no real educational value at all.

~~~
tptacek
Let me take a wild guess here:

You're male.

It seems like according to your premise, if we could just get over our
prejudices, we could drastically streamline military training by simply
selecting docile, compliant females instead of petulant, inquisitive males.

~~~
donatj
I just know these to be the reasons _I_ and my friends didn't do well in
school.

~~~
tptacek
The psychological attraction towards retrofitting a formative experience of
failure into an indicator of innate unique value does indeed seem
irresistible. Which is a good reason to be suspicious of it; it's a meme that
has evolved countermeasures to all of reason's defenses.

I did terribly in school, by the way.

------
graycat
Well, the article is beginning to understand!

Some recently reported research (I apologize for lack of a reference) explains
that already in the crib girls are paying attention to people and boys, to
things.

Then what the OP is describing about differences in K through the early grades
is essentially just that the girls are more interested in people, e.g.,
pleasing the teachers, and the boys are more interested in the material, at
least if it has to do with things, which in those grades it mostly doesn't.

In particular, of course the girls are _much_ better _behaved_ in class: From
the crib, the girls are _much_ better socially than the boys, and that means
girls do better in groups, e.g., the social behavior in a classroom.

Next, in those early grades, the girls have much better verbal aptitude so do
better at reading and writing, learning languages, etc.

Next, by paying more attention to people, girls have much better understanding
of people in the fictional reading that is common and, thus, do better in that
reading. Also the girls have much better understanding of emotions and, thus,
better understand the emotional content of fictional readings. Also, as in D.
Tannen, the girls are much more active in talking with their friends, i.e.,
their girlfriends, with gossip, and, thus, get still better at understanding
people and social situations, including what is in the fictional readings, the
classroom _social_ dynamics, etc.

The OP also claimed that the girls are better at "math", but here I start to
question. Sure, for math in K-8 or so, the girls are much better because they
have much better clerical accuracy and much better handwriting (better at
getting the columns of digits lined up important for accuracy). And, again the
girls are better at and more interested in pleasing the teachers.

And, with some teaching and grading styles, the girls might be able to seem
better at math through grade 12 or so. It can continue to be a really big
advantage to be really good at sensing how to please the teachers, and girls
are better at that.

But my experience in math (and I was a math major in college and my Ph.D. is
in applied math), really, for much of anything like real math, the girls are a
big step down. Somehow they don't _get it_ ; here maybe the main problem is
lack of interest due to cultural stereotypes that girls are not supposed to
concentrate on STEM subjects.

Last I heard, on the math SATs, the boys still do much better than the girls
and, yes, on the verbal SATs the girls do better than the boys.

Then for the girls/women along come marriage and babies, and then on average
their ability to compete with boys/men in most of more important work fades.

------
aidenn0
Well we can always console the boys by telling them they'll get paid more once
they get a job.

~~~
barry-cotter
Men work more overtime than women. Men work more hours than women. Men work
more dangerous jobs than women. Men work in more physically demanding jobs
than women. Men are more likely to move for a job than women. Men are less
likely to take career breaks than women.

You think maybe that might have something to do with it?

~~~
aidenn0
I'm not sure what that has to do with my statement.

~~~
barry-cotter
The fact that men earn more than women has more to do with differing patterns
of job choices and interests than the usual explanations proffered.

------
johngalt
The general trend in education is less competition and less physical activity.
Meanwhile there is more focus on educational minimums rather than maximums. If
education was about the 'highest score' rather than the 'best average' you
would see males doing better.

~~~
lutorm
Are you kidding, American education seems to be all about "highest score"
rather than "best average" to me. All these awards and whatever that reward
the "best" students.

------
DigitalSea
I find this incredibly sexist.

To say that girls worker harder than boys offends me greatly. These studies
are never accurate and somewhat biased, and I think work ethic is something
that can't be averaged out like this. I don't doubt a lot of girls out there
do work harder than boys, but making statements like: " _Girls succeed over
boys in school because they are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals,
and put effort into achieving those goals._ " is offensive and heavily
typecasting all boys into the same category.

There are boys out there who put effort into planning and setting academic
goals, because I am friends with many guys like this who care and put the
effort in, I also know as many women who do the same. If this study were
truth, why are there just as many male academics as there are female? If
anything, I have seen more male academics than female (in my experience and
field). Imagine if the effort that went into this study was put to better use,
to help solve a problem or achieve a result that would benefit society?
Studies like this are a waste of time.

I realise this is just a study and the whole point might be to highlight
issues with school curriculum and have no sexist undertones, but at the same
time, studies like this are relatively useless. The modern school system being
completely broken to the point kids are falling behind is a very well known
fact, and sadly, no study is going to change that anytime soon.

Maybe if we had less studies and more action on fixing things, then there
wouldn't be instances of boys getting left behind in the schooling system. Did
it ever occur to those responsible for this study that maybe, just maybe, the
system is actually broken? And maybe, just maybe, it has nothing to do with
what sex you are? I feel like society already has enough issues when it comes
to rampant sexism and gender equality without more fuel being thrown on the
fire. All studies like this do is take a handful of people, average and
collate the results and then proclaim they've made some kind of conclusive
discovery that applies to everyone outside of the sample group. Unless this
study leads to change or another longer and more conclusive study, the results
mean nothing.

Regardless of what sex you are, nobody should be getting left behind. If it is
true that boys learn differently to girls, then adjust the curriculum to make
it more flexible for different learning styles. When I went to school I
struggled, not because I am stupid or because I am a male, I struggled because
the curriculum assumed everyone learns the same way and when I couldn't fit
myself within the mould, I got left behind and taught myself everything I
needed to know. Everyone learns differently, we are not all the same.

Sorry for getting worked up, Studies like this do nothing to help resolve
gender equality gaps whatsoever.

~~~
calibraxis
Sexism is about power relations. Like racism and capitalism. Men dominate
society. Doesn't matter how meritorious women are. Women can be tacitly
competent and men buffoonish, yet incompetents routinely triumph.

After all, they're gatekeepers and enforcers.

Since society ridiculously built a massive infrastructure based on gender,
women and men are trained differently. To the intellectual destruction of men.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
This is true only if you use a specific sociological definition of "sexism",
which is absolutely _not_ to be equivocated with the one in common vernacular.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This is true only if you use a specific sociological definition of "sexism",
> which is absolutely not to be equivocated with the one in common vernacular.

I think you mean "equate". "Equivocate" means something quite different.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Actually, I do mean "equivocate". To quote Wikipedia, it is "the misleading
use of a term with more than one meaning or sense (by glossing over which
meaning is intended at a particular time)".

~~~
dragonwriter
I know what "equivocate" means -- but when you equivocate by conflating one
sense of a word with another sense of the word, its not described as
equivocating the first sense with the latter sense. You might equivocate with
a person (the person to whom you address the equivocation), or equivocate by
interchanging one definition with another.

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andyl
This society rewards restraint and conformity. Then there are the mood-
altering drugs. When my boys were in elementary school, the teachers wanted to
drug them into compliance because they were 'too competitive'. Nurse Ratchet
lives.

