Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Why Girls Tend to Get Better Grades Than Boys Do

Why Girls Tend to Get Better Grades Than Boys Do
ENRICO GNAULATI
The Atlantic
SEP 18 2014, 10:58 AM

This trend helps girls on average relative to boys, although there are conscientious boys and less-conscientious girls. It may also result in gifted students not getting grades that indicate their potential. In addition to overall letter grades it may be a good idea to show grades based on tests in each subject. Maybe overall grades should be a nonlinear function of homework and test grades. If you can solve every algebra problem your teacher throws at you on a test, arguably you should get an A for the class, even if you did not do many homework assignments.

My sentiments exactly.

Is the point of school to teach material, or to force kids into a mold their teachers and administrators prefer?

I still struggle with what the purpose of school is. I would have agreed that just showing you know the material should be sufficient - if the only focus of school for K-12 was to learn subject matter and show you know it, regardless of how you get there and if you continue to learn new subject matter.

But... it just seems like schools' role has greatly expanded beyond just subject mastery. As my children start their journey, I really do struggle with what I really want from school. It just seemed so much simpler and black/white when I was a child, and it just seems to have gotten so out of control with what I sometimes think is trivial nonsense that school admin get so hung up over.

So - is school just to teach academics, or is the schools' role to prepare a child for the outside world and life skills they need for college and beyond? Skills like managing time, organizing themselves, responsibility, leadership, team work and so on... seem to be increasingly more and more emphasized in classrooms and grades than pure mastery (until college, when the bucket of cold water tends to hit students that depended on the micromanagement style of so many "top notch" schools through high school)

so... I don't know - I still struggle with trying to figure out what I would consider "best educational setting" for my kids would be and balancing their strengths with weaknesses that needs to be dealt with early on and my expectations over whether school is to be focused on subject mastery and making sure the child is working towards their potential and whether those non-academic "skills" should be so critical to the environment or not.

and when I look at parents in my DD's daycare, I find so few parents really asking about what role they want educational institution to play in their and their child's life... and yet I know I would have never even second guessed our public school system (we live in a highly rated district) - until we had our 3.5 DC reporting boredom, and his testing result that stunned (and scared) us. And so now, I find myself really trying to answer this question.

as for boys vs girls, it always seemed like it favored girls... even when I was a kid, I recall boys always being sent to the principal's office because they could not sit still. It does seem to trend towards average girls' strengths - even at daycare/preschool level, it already seems like the environment is slanted toward the average girl (and "calm or mellow" boy).

To extend this why not just take a test when one is ready (at 14, 16, or whatever) and get a HS Diploma? Competency based credentials make more sense to me than ones earned by serving a certain period of time (especially for the academically precocious).

This is the argument you're going to get, and to some degree I have to agree with it. (I find myself a little surprised to be saying this.) I do think the pendulum has gone too far in this direction, though. But we do get back to a question of--well, what is school for?

You have to do *something* with kids.

Otherwise they run around and gum up the machinery that makes the diet coke.

I think the Ellis Middle School example is a solid approach. Study skills, note taking, self-regulation, and such may be valid skills to learn but they need to be wholly separate and accounted for outside of subject mastery.

If they did that, then maybe those sorts of things could be taught directly and remedially as needed without completely undermining other subject areas. With that model, then you can pull out other meta-skills for focus, too.

I would say that it's not a schools job to conflate organization and time management skills with traditional academic subjects like math and history. If the schools want to grade students on such skills, create a separate category for it.

As it is schools are injecting too much English into math class with the common core curriculum.

To a certain degree, I do agree that school does teach time management, responsibility, etc.

DS5 goes to after school care until 5pm. He used to pay at after school care and did homework after dinner (and whined the whole time).

School does teach him that homework is his responsibility, so he has to do it even if he whines. So now he does it during after school care, and when he gets home, he gets to play!