Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Boys overrepresented at GT magnet

I think it may be less male-identified and more 'our school' identified at a boy-heavy school.

Every school has different dynamics, and it would be good to go in and observe what the dynamics at the particular school actually are. There are usually some talkitive kids who will be more than happy to answer this sort of question. Of course somewhere around middle school age, children once again participate in co-ed groups, at least for academics. By 8th grade my son's social group was about 50% female as far as lunch table friends. Very different from 4th grade.

Smiles,
Grinity

Not only do our bodies come in different sizes and shapes, so does our brains. Unlike the body, there is not a specific brain type handed out to a specific gender, but the proportions of different types of brains are definitely not equal between the genders.

The IQ test has been modified over the years to produce similar average results for both males and females, but it would be very difficult to design a test to produce an even gender distribution across the entire ranged of IQ scores. In order to have equal numbers of each gender having IQ scores over 130, they would have to specifically design the IQ test for this range. As some have said, there would still be school specific variations due to the relatively small numbers in this range.

One of the problems with IQ tests are they are a timed test of very basic questions. A lot of people think it is only common sense that in order to perform more complex work, a person must first be able to perform simpler work. In some ways, this is true, but not in the way most people think. What a lot of people judge to be more complicated work is not in fact more complicated.

Males on average are better suited to rapidly changing daily activities. A person in the early stages of a career are often put in roles where this is a valuable skill. Females on average are far better at long term planning. If this was understood, long term planning would be an entry level position for those who are born with the brain type suited to this particular skill. Instead, those who do the long term planning are often choosen by their skills in these so called entry level positions.

A brain type suited to one area of math is not necessarily suited to another area of math. An engineer does not necessarily make a good architect. The brain is a neural network and the way neural network design varies the strengths of the system is not at all similar to how we organize information or separate skills into subjects.

From the linked study:

I think that pretty much invalidates this data for judging anything about the right tail.

Yes, this is a valid point. However, the other study I linked addresses this very comprehensively. There are differences at the right end of the tail, but they are by no means consistent from nation to nation and have changed rapidly in a very short time. I am not arguing the fact that there is a currently a m/f imbalance at the 95th and 99th percentiles, but based on the evidence I do not believe that the current ratios reflect a biologically predestined difference. There may in fact be some small gender differences that are valid, but we are not yet in a position to judge what they are. If 99th% boys outnumbered girls 13 to 1 less than 20 years ago and now outnumber them only 2 or 4 to 1, clearly this question is in flux.


I'd be interested to see the data you are drawing this from.

Here are some summaries of the second study, whose full text is behind a pay wall:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/uow-cnb052709.php

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketsc...ven_by_social_factors_not_biological.php

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201002/girls-and-math-part-1

Girls being discouraged to even consider math at early stage is a real concern. That will close so many doors for them. My daughters were competing in Geo Bee and Mathcounts in middle school, so they knew quite well about male domination in certain areas. DD17 was county Mathcounts winner (only girl for many years). But she was hopelessly out-competed at CA State Finals. That was not a pretty sight for girls (all top 10 are boys and Asians). At some point of time in high school, both pretty much rule out match/science/engineering.

Fortunately that was not the end of the story. For some reason, both girls had a dramatic change of hearts at college. My older one DD18, more known as a pianist and writer, declared math major after trying out history/lit and Russian study. She still love writing as ever, just felt that she needs a degree that is more substantial. DD reported that Harvard Math department has about 20 students a year and one third are girls.

Younger DD17, to our amazement, declared Operational research and financial engineering major (actually more math than engineering). It is a hard major for sure, she complains about endless P-SET and projects every other days. But things are looking up as DD17 just landed an internship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, quite feat for a freshman.

I base this first on a lifetime of observation, followed by years of trying to find the pattern of variation in human behavior, cognitive strenghts and weaknesses. Have done some work in coorelating what I have been doing to other studies, but this is still fairly preliminary.

Basically throughing out the odd idea to see how people react to it. Not necessarily suggesting the ideas are necessarily accurate, but sometimes throwing them out there can stir up some useful feedback. My primary goal however, is to make an attempt to communicate these ideas in a way others can understand them. More a communications exercise than anything.

Another area I am struggling with is to find a source of people who might actually understand the more unique areas I have been working on. This is not my real career, but I have at times in my career found myself the lone person working on certain types of projects within the organization. I don't personally consider the work I have often done in the past to be any more complex than what others do, but some of it has definitely been rather unique in nature.

I learned over the years it never hurts to throw out ideas into the places many people would least expect to get good information from. This forum has some amazing minds on it, so in my opinion, this is a place where I expect to find some real gems of information. My purpose for being on this forum is not related to throwing out these ideas, but I just couldn't resist the temptation.

Didn't have any intention of speaking of this, but since you asked where this is coming from, you now have my answer. The reason I am on this forum is the paid work I am doing is not really my cup of tea at the moment. Sometimes when I am running into difficulty working through this type of work, I do something interesting and suddenly I get paste my mental block. Some of the techniques I have used over the years to work through these problems came from recommendations on how to work with gifted children when they have similar issues.

I thought I might find some new useful techniques on here, but it turned out just communicating with all the interesting people on here has been working for me.

That is wonderful news, as your dds clearly have astonishing math talent. I hope that they are able to find professors to mentor them as they continue their studies. I wish them all the best.

chenchuan, I hope my daughter can achieve as much as she dreams or wants in math, science, or whatever. Good for your girls for perservering in male-dominated environments.

To be honest, I don't think a 60/40 ratio is really that bad. It would be different if it was 90% male. But if she is interested in math and science, she will be in college classes with a much higher ratio of boys, and may as well learn to deal with it now. I was very often the ONLY girl in my college classes, mainly because I chose a subject that attracts mostly men. Even in high school, when I took AP chemistry and Calculus, my classes were mostly male. I got used to it, as did the other girls in my classes. If you don't make a big deal of it, neither will she.