Save the males. The girls-boys gap in education is widening!

In what seems like eons ago, when my daughter was in high school, I began sensing ground-level data on my intuitive understanding that girls were beginning to outperform boys in school.  The data was this--my daughter was one of the girls who got elected to the student body.  That year, not a single boy in any elected position in their student government.  The girls then felt the need to bring on at least one male, and they made sure to recruit one into an appointed position.  "Affirmative action" I recalled joking with her.

Since then, I have closely watched what I refer to in this blog as "save the males."

The intuitive understanding, and the ground-level data, had pretty much only one solid intellectual support--from Christina Sommers, about whom I had a lengthy post a year ago.  A year into my daughter's undergrad program, when she was home, I asked her for feedback on this piece that Sommers had written.  She barely read the first page and then gave the magazine back to me with a comment along the lines of "tell me something that I don't know."

Teaching at regional public universities, first in California and then in Oregon, I have witnessed nothing but more of the same trend--female students outperforming males.  To begin with, the gender ratio is highly skewed.  Even more so when it comes to certain programs--in one class that I am teaching this term, the female/male students ratio is nearly six to one!  I am not the only one,of course, to note these trends. There are those who even write satirically about these--like my favorite "Valentine's Day note to amorous undergraduate females."

Of course, through all these, the observation that led drove Larry Summers out of the presidency at Harvard continues to persist.  Summers made a mistake of loudly thinking about an intellectual point in this gender issue: he wondered what the reasons might be for boys to outperform girls at the highest end, and to underperform girls at the lowest end, while girls occupy a vast middle.

I am reminded of all those and more thanks to this piece in the Economist, which notes: "Boys are being outclassed by girls at both school and university, and the gap is widening."

Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls, and were more likely to graduate from university. Now, across the rich world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted the other way.

 As my daughter did, I too should merely shrug my shoulders.  But then, I can't!

The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank. Boys’ dominance just about endures in maths: at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of three months’ schooling ahead of girls. In science the results are fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for some time, a gulf has appeared. In all 64 countries and economies in the study, girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of schooling.

Sixty-four country data!

I often wonder whether the "gender studies" programs--including at my university--address such issues, or whether they continue to operate as if the world has not changed in the last fifty years.  What do you think is the case? Hint: their world has not changed ;)

The average 15-year-old girl devotes five-and-a-half hours a week to homework, an hour more than the average boy, who spends more time playing video games and trawling the internet. Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens draw eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that, among boys who do as much homework as the average girl, the gender gap in reading fell by nearly a quarter.
Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as likely as girls to report that school is a “waste of time”, and more often turn up late. Just as teachers used to struggle to persuade girls that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and policymakers to steer boys away from a version of masculinity that ignores academic achievement.

Will you be ok if I wrote, "I told you so?"  I just did! ;)

Women who go to university are more likely than their male peers to graduate, and typically get better grades. But men and women tend to study different subjects, with many women choosing courses in education, health, arts and the humanities, whereas men take up computing, engineering and the exact sciences. In mathematics women are drawing level; in the life sciences, social sciences, business and law they have moved ahead.

Hey, what?  I have been correct all along?  Tell me something that I didn't know already! ;)

the return on investment in a college degree for women was lower than or at best the same as for men. Although women as a group are now better qualified, they earn about three-quarters as much as men. A big reason is the choice of subject: education, the humanities and social work pay less than engineering or computer science. But academic research shows that women attach less importance than men to the graduate pay premium, suggesting that a high financial return is not the main reason for their further education.

Come on, enough already.  Anything new at all for me?

At the highest levels of business and the professions, women remain notably scarce. In a reversal of the pattern at school, the anonymous and therefore gender-blind essays and exams at university protect female students from bias. But in the workplace, says Elisabeth Kelan of Britain’s Cranfield School of Management, “traditional patterns assert themselves in miraculous ways”. Men and women join the medical and legal professions in roughly equal numbers, but 10-15 years later many women have chosen unambitious career paths or dropped out to spend time with their children. Meanwhile men are rising through the ranks as qualifications gained long ago fade in importance and personality, ambition and experience come to matter more.

Seriously, anything new at all?

The glass-ceiling is the only thing left for the males to hold women back.  But, as Hillary Clinton (gasp, I am quoting her!) famously said:

Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it.  And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.

On this International Women's Day, here is to hoping for a better future, where gender will not be an issue at all.

Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters

A few days before the snow/ice freeze happened last December, the first Sunday of that month I was perched in front of the television set, to watch one of my favorite television programs: In Depth.

That Sunday guest for three hours?  Christina Hoff Sommers.

For years now, I have been in the camp that Sommers and a few others are in, worrying that the entire education system is making boys underachieve in class and in life.  I have often blogged here even with the tag line of "save the males."

It is not that I am any macho, macho man--far from that.  I am a wuss. A wimp. Further, as many of my blog posts will show, I am one heck of a supporter for rights for women, especially in the poorer countries where the treatment of women is atrocious.  But, all those are different from the evidence and logic upon which I draw my conclusions that align me with people like Sommers.

As I watched it, I got so excited that I tweeted. Like this one, for instance:

Am watching @CHSommers on @BookTV and reviewing my own blog posts: Do #professors think and say foolish things? http://t.co/R7HuPyKuz6
— sriram khe (@congoboy) December 2, 2013

I didn't have time then to blog about her comments.  So, why now?  Because I was reminded of Sommers when I read this piece about Camille Paglia in the WSJ.  During the interview, Sommers commented about "her friend" Paglia during the interview and I was all the more excited because I am a huge fan of Paglia's commentaries.  Paglia's take on Sarah Palin was a classic.

Camille Paglia, too, has been worried about the war against masculinity.  She is one heck of a feminist herself, and so is Sommers, which is all the more why their commentaries are that much more insightful.

Ms. Paglia argues that the softening of modern American society begins as early as kindergarten. "Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It's oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys," she says, pointing to the most obvious example: the way many schools have cut recess. "They're making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters."  

In my years of reading and listening to public intellectuals, only one other person was so brutal and powerful in conveying ideas--Christopher Hitchens.  Oh, how I miss his commentaries!

She is not the first to make this argument, as Ms. Paglia readily notes. Fellow feminist Christina Hoff Sommers has written about the "war against boys" for more than a decade. The notion was once met with derision, but now data back it up: Almost one in five high-school-age boys has been diagnosed with ADHD, boys get worse grades than girls and are less likely to go to college.
Ms. Paglia observes this phenomenon up close with her 11-year-old son, Lucien, whom she is raising with her ex-partner, Alison Maddex, an artist and public-school teacher who lives 2 miles away. She sees the tacit elevation of "female values"—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.
By her lights, things only get worse in higher education. "This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it's all about neutralization of maleness." 

Yep!

Do professors think and say foolish things?

YES, they do. A lot more than we let the public know. Unfortunately.

Christina Hoff Sommers has a wonderful essay, again. When she writes about the lack of professional and academic integrity, I cannot think of any flaw in her argument. Her comments below, in the context of feminism, are applicable to any field:

Why should it matter if a large number of professors think and say a lot of foolish and intemperate things? Here are three reasons to be concerned:

1) False assertions, hyperbole, and crying wolf undermine the credibility and effectiveness of feminism. The United States, and the world, would greatly benefit from an intellectually responsible, reality-based women's movement.

2) Over the years, the feminist fictions have made their way into public policy. They travel from the women's-studies textbooks to women's advocacy groups and then into news stories. Soon after, they are cited by concerned political leaders. President Obama recently issued an executive order establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls. As he explained, "The purpose of this council is to ensure that American women and girls are treated fairly in all matters of public policy." He and Congress are also poised to use the celebrated Title IX gender-equity law to counter discrimination not only in college athletics but also in college math and science programs, where, it is alleged, women face a "chilly climate." The president and members of Congress can cite decades of women's-studies scholarship that presents women as the have-nots of our society. Never mind that this is largely no longer true. Nearly every fact that could be marshaled to justify the formation of the White House Council on Women and Girls or the new focus of Title IX application was shaped by scholarly merchants of hype like Professors Lemon and Seager.

3) Finally, as a philosophy professor of almost 20 years, and as someone who respects rationality, objective scholarship, and intellectual integrity, I find it altogether unacceptable for distinguished university professors and prestigious publishers to disseminate falsehoods. It is offensive in itself, even without considering the harmful consequences. Obduracy in the face of reasonable criticism may be inevitable in some realms, such as partisan politics, but in academe it is an abuse of the privileges of professorship.

"Thug," "parasite," "dangerous," a "female impersonator" — those are some of the labels applied to me when I exposed specious feminist statistics in my 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? (Come to think of it, none of my critics contacted me directly with their concerns before launching their public attacks.) According to Susan Friedman, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, "Sommers' diachronic discourse is easily unveiled as synchronic discourse in drag. ... She practices ... metonymic historiography." That one hurt! But my views, as well as my metonymic historiography, are always open to correction. So I'll continue to follow the work of the academic feminists — to criticize it when it is wrong, and to learn from it when it is right.

Oh, yes, save the whales, er, males :-)

Sommers mentions Sarah Blaffer Hrdy as one of the models for scholarship. Interestingly enough, it was yesterday that I was reading a review of a book by Hrdy--the book is an anthropological exploration into why humans might be interested in raising children who are not their own.

Save the males

A few years ago, I remember reading a lengthy essay by Christina Sommers in the Atlantic, on how girls were outperforming boys in school. I asked my daughter, who was then in high school, what she thought of that argument. Her response was essentially something like, "duh!"

Left leaning faculty don't like Sommers though. But, then left leaning faculty do not like any kind of dissenting opinion anyway. (Don't know about right leaning faculty--they are so few that it is a rare opportunity to even spot on, leave alone have a conversation with them!) So, the result is that instead of engaging in discussions on the content, well, .....

After I returned to academe, I have been only in teaching institutions. And in both the universities I have been--in Oregon and in California--female students outnumber males by 2:1. In the Honors Program, well, let me put it this way: one student commented that perhaps we ought to recruit male students with the tag line that they will get to meet lots of females if they joined Honors :-)

Which is why I am not at all surprised with this graph from Mark Perry.

All the more I think there is more than simple laugh line in save the males.