Boys have now fallen behind girls academically in the U.S. (for example in the number getting bachelor's degrees), and some have speculated that removing competitive elements from the classroom can turn off boys. What about meeting their needs?
I'd answer this (because as a post-secondary science educator, I do have some insight) but it seems kidna off-topic.
Suffice it to say that I think that your point is an entirely valid one
for an extreme environment-- for example, one in which no quantitative grading or individual assessment occurs. Those environments, thankfully, are somewhat rare. What seems to be much more commonly toxic to boys is an expectation of rigid conformity to not-entirely-age-appropriate impulse control, activity levels, etc.
On the other hand, it's probably not a bad thing that the 'average' classroom practices in primary and secondary resemble something that doesn't favor either extreme (neither exclusively competitive nor ANTI-competitive) at this point. It's much more reflective of future professional environments in STEM at this point, in my opinion (and my DH's, who is much more competitive by nature than I am). Now, the relative rigor of
curriculum presented is another matter entirely, and I think we can all agree that this particular problem is helping nobody at all. {sigh}
STEM is still the one place where I think that this balance is about right. (Between the prosocial/collaborative/unranked/we're-all-winners-here assessment model and the winner-take-all/strict Gaussian grading/name-and-shame ones, I mean.)
Not coincidentally, it's also the one where there isn't a lot of gender disparity favoring female students in higher ed. If anything, male gender is still normative in the physical sciences and engineering.
Back to the practices that Val is seeing, though-- this kind of thing just seems a bit like
shaming and divisiveness rather than healthy competition. I'm not sure that is
good for any of the students, given the other issues related here; I strongly suspect that this isn't tied very closely to content mastery in the first place, and is probably REALLY punitive for any students in that class who have slower processing speeds or deficits that limit the neatness of their work or their relative attention to detail (math comprehension notwithstanding).
If you wouldn't give an A to a student for being well-groomed and pleasant, then maybe giving an F for not writing
neatly enough doesn't make any sense either, KWIM?
I'm really concerned for your DD, Val.
