Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Girls' and boys' brains not so different

Here is the news release:


Review Highlights Flawed Logic Of Segregating Boys And Girls For Education Purposes, Based On Alleged Brain Differences

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/233040.php

This is the full text, but unfortunately I'm guessing that it can't be accessed if you don't have academic privileges. It's fascinating stuff, and a pretty thorough debunking. I'm not well-read enough to know what the author may or may not be leaving out, though.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/c63105666nw1788k/fulltext.html

quoting the article:

"There is no scientific basis for teaching boys and girls separately, according to Lise Eliot from The Chicago Medical School. Her review reveals fundamental flaws in the arguments put forward by proponents of single-sex schools to justify the need of teaching teach boys and girls separately. Eliot shows that neuroscience has identified few reliable differences between boys' and girls' brains relevant to learning or education. Her work is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles.

The first issue Eliot highlights is that single-sex school advocates often claim differences between boys' and girls' brains based on studies carried out in adult men and women. But such effects have rarely been found in children. It is also wrong to assume that children's brains operate like adults'. In reality, they are works-in-progress, and much of what influences adult neural processing is due to individuals' social and educational experience over their lifespan. Therefore the assumption that because gender differences in the brain are biological, they are necessarily fixed or 'hardwired' is incorrect."

<end of excerpt>

Single-sex education was around long before scientists were debating whether male and female brains differ in important ways. Some parents support single-sex education, especially for adolescents, because they think the presence of the opposite sex can be a distraction in the classroom. Others envision different roles for their boys and girls as adults, which leads them to educate them differently. I'm not saying those parents are right or wrong or that single-sex education is good or bad, just that it is as much a question about values as science.

Another reason is that being educated in a single-sex environment can, arguably, go some way to counter stereotypes prevalent in your society about what girls and boys "ought" to be interested in or good at. For example, it's often said that it's socially easier for a girl to be good at STEM subjects in an all-girls school than it is in a mixed school. In a single-sex school someone going against stereotype is being taught in a class with others who are also doing so (inherently challenging the stereotype), whereas in a mixed school, s/he may have to do so in a class which is mostly populated by the opposite sex and may find the stereotype reinforced rather than challenged. Some children find this no problem at all, others do find it an additional hurdle. Not saying this means single-sex education is good overall, but it's a consideration.

It's a lot more comfortable to schools, though, to be able to appeal to brain science to justify being single sex than to have to discuss touchy subjects like stereotypes and children being distracted by the presence of the opposite sex! Which is probably why they do it, and they'll probably carry on doing it...

Funny I never thought about single-sex education as being related to differences in male and female brain function. I see it as a way to counteract societal stereotypes. I'm not saying I'm a fan of single sex ed but can understand why some people might make this choice. I went to an all female high school and a co-ed university, the biggest difference I observed was how the sexes were treated by certain faculty.

In high school, we only had girls so girls could/had to do everything. We were socialized to take on leadership positions, play sports, receive academic awards, etc. No one treated our gender as a barrier.

As a computer science undergrad at an Ivy, I felt that gender did play a role with some faculty. I took a lot of math and some upper level engineering courses related to digital electronics. In the engineering classes in particular, I noticed female students were not called on by the all-male faculty. In group assignments, females weren't given the "hard engineering" roles but were assigned by one professor as "facilitators" or the "systems" person. During a group review, I remember the professor being shocked when I found a software error for a group of male students. Granted, this was about 25 years ago now. At the time, my female engineering-major friends said that this happened all of the time.

I totally understand the social/cultural argument, although I also feel that we should work harder to make coed education equal instead of giving up and retreating. I don't know if it's just my group of friends, but I DO know a lot of people who are big on "Boys and girls learn differently due to brain differences."

But how will you know when educational opportunities are equal? If you subscribe to the idea that male IQ scores are more variable, then you will expect to see males over-represented at the extremes. If you don't subscribe to that idea, then you might expect more equal numbers. If you don't even know what to expect, then you can't discern a bias.

You have to look carefully at the opportunities, rather than at the statistical outcomes. (This is essential anyway, because even if, e.g. you think that there's a statistical tendency for boys to be overrepresented in the PG population, you *still* want to be sure not to miss the PG girl.)

Generally this may be complex, e.g., an opportunity may be theoretically equally open to both genders but in practice one may be more dissuaded by e.g. material that appeals to stereotypes (e.g. if you set maths questions about cars and trains that very young girls have learned to think of as boy things, you tend to put the girls off maths too).

Sometimes it's blatant though. Example from my own childhood: I was at an all-girls school, and very into maths. However, I was never entered for a maths competition (well, not until the one in my final year that took place when I was ill) although later I found out that many had existed and that comparable boys schools used to enter the boys for them en masse. And then people wonder why the winners of these competitions are disproportionately male... (I know, the whole story isn't as simple as that, but that kind of thing is part of it.)

I think that girls and boys do think differently, but sometimes the "problem" with this is not the kids' differences, but the teachers' inability to think/explain things in more than one way. (The old "it's my way or it's wrong" issue.)
I say this from personal experience, as a student and a teacher. When I was an undergrad, majoring in physics there were 35 of us in the freshman class, 5 were females. We had to take a problem solving course, basically to be taught how to analyze and solve scientifically written word problems. Every problem set we turned in was graded by 1 of 2 prof's and then he met with you and discussed your work, how you did, what your errors were, how to improve, that sort of thing. Once I arrived for my discussion session to find 3 of the dept. profs there - all to discuss and analyze my way of thinking! (Talk about intimidating ). This ended up being the first of many discussions over my 4 yrs in college with the profs about the different approaches their female students took when solving problems, designing experiments, and completing labs. Through these conversations it became really clear that there was a definite difference between the way male and female students were approaching/solving and investigating physics. I was amazed and intrigued by all of this and began noticing how we interacted with each other and how the guys in my classes approached the problems and explained them versus how the females did.
It was similar in graduate school - the guys always thought differently than I did about almost all problems we had to do. It was only when I met my first female physicist and she actually understood where I was coming from and how I approached things did I begin to believe that there really wasn't anything wrong with me or my way of doing things.

Now, as a teacher, I see it all the time, whether I'm teaching middle school math or science or higher level physics. My male and female students explain themselves differently, often times quarreling with each other over a problem when they are actually saying the same thing, but can't see it from each others perspective.

I do not think that these differences mean that one is better than the other, and I do not have hard, empirical evidence to back this up, but I see the differences and see how those differences lead some teachers to react and act differently to boys and girls.

First, I think any female is capable of learning in the same methods as taught to males. Having taken engineering, a long time ago, I can support knute on some of the profs treating us differently. Though some didn't. I remember a prof singling me out and pushed me towards grad work in physics.

It is all individual. I am as much as a problem solver as my engineering brother and look at everyday solutions, since I have heard him say things I was thinking. But that is how my engineering father brought us up. I think too often, habits are just a factor of the parental influence and their attitude and for so long, girls were "not good in math and science" though we were expected to cook well...without being good at chemistry.

I had the same experience about 20 years ago. We did everything in the girls only school. But when we went to college and grad school it was all about stereotypes. I don't believe in different brain functions argument yet. I think single sex enviornment reduce the distractions in classrooms and provide same opportunities for both sexes.