Remember the girl crisis? These days educators are trying to redesign classes to engage boys but it wasn't long ago that all the talk was about how to keep girls from being ignored, silenced and turned off to math and science. On The Quick and the Ed, Sara Mead reviews a 1993 Washington Post Magazine article on the problem of "smart girls" who are "hesitant to speak up out of fear that they'll look foolish if they're wrong." Newsweek's boy-crisis story raised the same point:
Middle-school boys will do almost anything to avoid admitting that they're overwhelmed. "Boys measure everything they do or say by a single yardstick: does this make me look weak?" says Thompson. "And if it does, he isn't going to do it."
Mead asks:
(Would it be too radical if I suggest that everybody, regardless of gender, really dislikes and tries to avoid appearing wrong, foolish or weak?)
Montgomery Blair, the high school attended by the exceptionally "smart girl" in the story, "added group work and downplayed competition to attract girls." Now schools are "being urged to do the opposite in order to better serve boys," Mead writes.
Most significantly, both the boy crisis and girl crisis stories seem to rely heavily on rather dubious research and anecdotal reports about individual boys and girls whose experiences, while they make for compelling narrative, are often not representative. Today the girl crisis issues that garnered so much attention in the 1990s are often dismissed as wrongheaded analysis based on bad research that has since been debunked, or folks say that the achievement gains girls have made mean whatever problems there were have been resolved. Reading this 13-year-old article, I couldn't help but wonder if, 13 years from now, we'll see today's boy crisis hype largely the same way.
The difference is that stories about the problem with girls focused on high-achieving girls with the potential to become leaders in science, technology and business. The boy problem is about low-achieving boys, who "aren't obtaining the basic skills and knowledge they need to make a decent life for themselves in the mainstream economy today."
In The Trouble with Boys and Girls, released earlier this year, Mead looked at the data. Overall, boys are doing about the same in school, but girls are doing much better.
I wonder how much of the problem for non-achieving boys stems from the absence of fathers in so many families: Boys find it difficult to learn self-control without a responsible male role model. (Girls are hurt too but in other ways.)
I never bought into the idea that girls are "silenced" in adolescence or that they lose confidence. Girls grow up faster than boys and abandon grandiose ambitions at younger ages. Smart girls are competing successfully with smart boys. We need to worry about the average and left-behind boys who aren't meeting new and higher expectations.
Single-sex education can work for some students — especially in middle school when the hormones are raging — but it's not going to be the solution. (It's a lot more likely to be the fad we look back on 13 years from now.) We have to do a better job with boys and girls.
As for the boy crisis, I have lost track of the number of boys of friends who are on ritalin and other garbage. I don't recall BigPharma making billions on the "girl crisis."
It's just a matter of whether people want to do it or not. Everything is an option.
1) Schools are spending much more time measuring outcomes. Poor minority boys have always struggled in school. Now we are noticing because we have data.
2) More girls are going to college than in the past because they are encouraged to attend and are encouraged to seek jobs that require a college education. In the 60's and 70's many middle class families did not encourage their daughters to attend college. Now they do. There may not be the same growth in the number of boys attending college because there are more good jobs for young men that do not require a college education. Although these jobs are in theory open to women, they are generally not sought by women (e.g. plumbers, skilled trade workers, truck drivers).
On the other hand, I do notice a trend to push higher expectations for academic performance to earlier grades. I think boys tend to mature later and develop academic skills later than girls. So when boys struggle in the earlier grades with higher expectations, they may become discouraged with academics. By the time they catch up developmentally, they may have already concluded that school is just something they are not good at.
Girls apparently are much more likely to be interested in pleasing the teacher and doing good on class measures of performance. Likely because girls social environments apparently encourage this sort of behavior (several papers have noted that girls peer groups are more likely to approve of doing well in school).
Now you might think this is a total loss for boys but in my opinion this isn't so. In fact I'm afraid this is a serious harm for girls. In my experience teaching math in college I have noticed one of the biggest obstacles (for all my students) is getting over their tendency to look for the 'approved' way of doing this sort of problem and if they don't know one give up rather than try to figure out a way of solving it.
I think a reasonable hypothesis is that the sort of teaching we see pre-college strongly encourages rote learning rather than understanding. Boys who are less motivated by this sort of teaching may do worse in total but those who make it through this system will probably be on average more independent and more interested in understanding than girls who have stronger encouragement to do well on class metrics. In other words yes I think elementary/HS math and science classes squelch creativity and interest. So it's entirely possible that girls 'advantage' in HS and elementary school partially explains their disadvantage when it comes to upper division math.
Alternatively it could just be some common cause.
What's wrong is that the homosexual community strongly pressures current homosexuals to stay, former homosexuals to return, and bisexuals to reidentify as homosexual.
I had a roommate who decided at school to be bisexual. He wanted to have sex with the girls, but all the rules and security made that too difficult, and there were a half dozen boys who would gladly have sex with him. This made him much happier. Ten years later, I ran into him at a bar and he frantically lectured me for over an hour about how he had been lying to himself all this time and had really been a homosexual all along.
I suggest that maybe this is not true. I suggest that maybe, just maybe, he couldn't get out of the gay community because he depended on them. Many of his friends were now gay. If he offended the gay community, he'd lose them as friends. So he had to choose between sex with women, which he had done without for at least a year, and the friends he'd made. He made a rational and reasonable choice. A series of such choices led him to deny his true sexuality (I believe he was quite naturally bisexual, but needed the all-boy environment to admit it), leaving him a desperate and self-deluded man whose entire spirit was dominated by a massive inner conflict of natural and nurtural sexuality. He was, in my opinion, no longer entirely sane.
It's not gay people that frighten me. It's the gay community, which operates in every respect like a doomsday cult. They draw people in with promises of acceptance and unconditional love, then trap them with draconian policies and community disapproval. Once you've explained to everyone you know that this is what you want to do with your life, they leave you to it, and when it all goes horribly wrong there's no one there to save you.
I would be much happier with a gay community that lets people leave every bit as readily as it lets them join. I believe the vast majority of them don't want to leave the community, and never will want to leave the community - but it's the tiny percentage who do and can't that fuel the religious "conversion" programs and comprise the lunatic fringe that really does scare the crap out of people. Unchain the exit, and I honestly believe most of the people who want to leave will walk out, look around... and come back.
Homosexuality really isn't a choice. If you walk out the door, but you're homosexual, you'll end up coming back. The only people the gay community will "lose" like this are people who aren't really homosexuals in the first place.
Dragging this back onto topic, we need a better gay community before we can seriously contemplate single-sex schools, because it would be irresponsible to do something which has the side-effect of diverting a significant portion of people into an oppressive and intolerant social community.
Wow.
> deal different from mine in the 60's and 70's.
This statement frightens me.
Among other things, what would you say were the chances of being shot or bombed in a public school during the 1970s?
Are they the same today?
Today, a lot of students walk through metal detectors as they arrive, then through halls liberally equipped with security mirrors and cameras. Armed security guards patrol some schools. Sometimes they put security officers on the bus that transports the children. A friend of mine recently noticed as he walked past his old elementary school that it looked very much the same - except for the barbed wire they've added on top of the playground wall, and the cameras over the doors.
There should be a big difference between a school and a prison, but it's getting a lot harder to see one.
- Drugging boys to act like girls, esp. ADHD, etc. through Ritalin.
- Change of emphasis from tests to homework for grades. Overall, it seems that girls are much better at getting their homework in than boys are.
- Group projects - someone above suggested that they helped the boys, but I don't see that. Girls seem more collaborative.
- There do seem to be some communities where studying, etc. is seen as not that manly. Silly, but possibly true.
I am reminded of a bunch of sophomore HS girls, who were friends, spending their Sunday working as a study group for their upcoming AP History. And when these girls spent an hour on the phone at night with each other, probably half of it was spent working together on homework. This is just not the type of behavior you see in the boys their age.
I think a great deal of the problem is that people fail to understand the difference between single-sex and co-ed programs. It's not "the same thing only without [girls|boys]", it's an entirely separate dynamic that demands an entirely different approach, but we don't have the time or energy or funding to figure out what that approach is.
Boys by nature are more physical, more confrontational and more likely to challenge the teacher, the material, and the status quo.
Their differences are no longer being accomodated, and in fact, are now being repressed. When was the last time you heard, "Boys will be boys."
Just because it's stereotyping does that mean it isn't correct?
Dear ____,
Upon annual review of your gayness, we have found a number of troubling statements and actions. Please consider us officially offended. As a result, we regret to inform you that we can no longer be your friend. We have removed you from all of our friends lists, including myspace, facebook, and all instant messenger programs. Please dispose of all Cher albums promptly.
Sincerely,
The Gay Community
Seriously though, there is one problem and Houston Lawyer nailed it. Many boys without fathers behave horribly. I also lament the loss of physical activity, which was a major seditive for boys. When I have in school, we had one hour of PE every day. We ran, played dodgeball and basketball, etc. Good medicine for the unruly.
In my hometown (st. louis, MO) there are a number of private catholic single sex intitutions, (at least 10-15, in a fairly small city, about equal numbers of boys and girls schools) Many of these schools are highschools, and middle schools, which is imho the best time for single sex schooling, because it takes away the distractions of sex, and leaves nothing but learning to occupy teenagers.
There ARE singles sex education programs that work, you just have to look outside of the public school system to find them. An important factor in this situation is that the decision to go to a single sex school is a choice. The students and the parents choose it. And since there are a number of single sex schools there are still good outlets for co-ed socialization (so people don't end up terrified of the opposite sex).
Also, I am a bisexual, and me being bisexual had NOTHING whatsoever to do with attending a single sex high school. I know this because I exhibited behaviors that indicated I was bisexual long before highschool (thank you Dad's playboy stash). The gay community is a diverse group of people and making broadbased assumptions based on one individuals experience is not likely to lead to reliable results.
If I pick stocks based on astrology, I might get lucky and strike it rich. That doesn't make astrology a sound investment strategy.
My experience in Texas is exactly the opposite of this - my daughters' school has more TAG (talented and gifted) programs, more recess, and more PE (state-mandated) than mine did. The kids today also have more homework, more testing, and more pressure than when I was in school. They are also learning more, and I believe will be better equipped to face college and beyond than we were.
When I asked whether single-sex education is an option in public schools, I was asking if there was any constitutional barrier to it. In which case, it wouldn't be a matter of public choice.
> Thanks for hijacking the thread, Caliban...
> that was really pathetic.
I'm just approaching the question from a different angle. I believe there are massive social implications in changing the way we school our children, and those implications need to be evaluated before we make any changes.
I chose to consider the question of homosexuality because it has the most unacceptable consequences: the involuntary conscription of youth into a community where they do not belong, at a time when acceptance is critical to their self-esteem. This is not even remotely related to their academic performance. School is more than a place that assigns grades, it is also a testing ground for social behavior.
> I was asking if there was any constitutional barrier
> to it.
It is a matter of some debate whether the first question we need to answer in cases like this is "can we" or "should we". I'm of the opinion that these decisions are a three step process:
1. Should we use this solution?
2. If so, how could the solution be implemented?
3. Of the potential implementations, which is the most acceptable?
Whether the idea is constitutional fits into step 3, which cannot be answered without step 2, which cannot be answered without step 1. The first step answers a number of critical questions about what implementation really means. If we take for granted that school is about academic performance, neglecting entirely the role of school in teaching social skills and tribal subcommunities, we implement the curriculum very differently.
It is clearly beneficial for the academic curriculum if classes are longer, all work is done within the classroom, and summer vacation is discontinued. But all of these things have social implications. If those implications are unacceptable, it simply doesn't matter whether the changes are constitutional.
Your dislike of this perspective doesn't invalidate it.
> gifted) programs
No. The GAME. "Tag, you're it." Schools are eliminating it because it's all about touching people who don't want to be touched, which is always assault and potentially sexual harassment or a hate crime.
Don't even ask about "smear the queer".
As for single-sex schools, I suppose someone would have to address the pressing issue of chickenhawks in the coop. About a mile from my school a wonderful all-girl school offered plenty of reasons to both behave (to avoid detention) and play it straight.
As for the "very modest results" achieved by trial programs, one problem with "studies" and measuring performance at all is that we have different measuring sticks. Little Jane's parents may be happy if she can add a column of numbers and comprehend a Time magazine article. Little Jimmy's parents may want to see latin, greek, calculus and the ability to comprehend Homer. Similarly, little Billy might have what it takes to learn latin while little Buddy might be lucky if he can string together a coherent sentence after 12 years of education. In today's schools Billy and Buddy will be expected to advance lockstep, which will result in an underachieving Billy and a frustrated Buddy, single-sex or not.
And then there's those pesky issues of building character and a sense of honor -- but that's basically unheard of today. A poor student nowadays is too busy dodging diving chickenhawks and falling academic standards to worry about the pursuit of truth, happiness and the just life. That's sad.
> The gay community is a diverse group of people and
> making broadbased assumptions based on one individuals
> experience is not likely to lead to reliable results.
That's completely true, but since I don't want to post EVERY SINGLE STORY about EVERY SINGLE PERSON that ever supported this conclusion, you'll just have to trust me to be smarter than that.
I have a lot of contact with the gay community. The vast majority of them are good people. But the community as a whole has certain expectations; there is a "party line", and if you don't support some part of it, you are supposed to remain silent on the matter. They've traded the sexuality closet for a political closet.
Gay marriage is currently the big one. I meet very few gays who admit they don't support gay marriage, but they do so very quietly and clandestinely, occasionally with some preface like "don't tell anybody I said this, but". I think there are a lot more gays who don't support gay marriage, but choose to say nothing or evade the question or even lie about it - because that's what the community expects. We all do this with our communities. It's basic tribal behavior.
The problem is when your tribal standard is a hypocrisy. The gay community cannot claim to be about liberation and acceptance, then ruthlessly pressure its people to conform. I've been watching this gradually worsen for more than twenty years, and it's finally at a level where I've spent the last couple years saying "this is WRONG, you can't do this to people".
Nobody really likes it when I say that, but as long as it's true, I'm not going to stop saying it.
School homicide rates have experienced a long-term downward trend. I'm so sorry this frightens you.
I'm almost with Paul on this question. I graduated from high school in '72, and certainly there were plenty of girls in the top ranks of every scholarly endeavor. The reason I say "almost" is that, whereas I can't see that my female classmates were oppressed in their academics, some of the more recent changes appear to be actually discouraging to boys.
And can someone who speaks Educationalese better than I do please explain something? The phrase "added group work and downplayed collaboration" makes no sense to me; I would have thought those terms were near synonyms.
Nearly every study finds significant boy / girl differences, in physical activity levels required, in aggression, in social maturity at each age (girls gain 1 year of social maturity on boys for each 6 years of age is the simple rule).
For those who like to claim "sexist" at any real-life observation, I would urge them the consider age of puberty, as determined by any and ever measure (first hair, menarch vs nocturnal emmissions, ...) Calling those who make accurate biological and social observations sexists speaks more to the closed mind of the name-caller than the observer.
> the core gay community is akin to the core MADD
> community -- borderline psycho in its dedication
It's really not the core of the community. It's an emergent behavior that stems from a desire to be tolerant and accommodating, but creates an insane public image. It's difficult for anyone outside the community to determine what the real core beliefs are, and it's difficult for anyone inside the community to understand why people outside the community don't know them.
This really isn't relevant to schooling.
I'm guessing that what you really mean is that the gay community is hostile to Republicans. It would be astounding if this weren't true: the Republican party has embraced an agenda of direct hostility to gay people and their rights.
I'm married, to a man, and the majority of my friends from school are also either married or in serious relationships with men. And many of those who aren't have had said serious relationships in the past with men.
And I have also not noticed any increased rate of homosexuality amongst men who went to single-sex schools. My brothers are certainly not lacking on the girl-friend front.
Consequently I think concerns about people being trapped in some gay community as a result of going to a single-sex school are ridiculous. I mean, come on, we're not talking about locking kids up on single-sex islands during their teenage years. At school we met boys through sports, drama, other after-school activities and part-time jobs.
> School homicide rates have experienced a
> long-term downward trend.
Homicide is not the only way children are oppressed and traumatised in school. We have, in fact, introduced much greater consequences for misbehavior along with much larger rulesets to govern appropriate conduct.
I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why it is supposed to make our students feel safe to be searched and monitored throughout the day. Doesn't the searching and monitoring just serve as a constant reminder that someone is likely to be planning violence against the students?
> The phrase "added group work and downplayed
> collaboration" makes no sense to me
I had the same problem when I first saw it, but I did think of one way that makes sense: while the students work in a group, no person's grade depends on another person's performance. So while you and I might be told to work together on an essay assignment, we would be expected to write two distinct essays that are graded individually.
I'm not sure this is what Mead meant, but I can see how this might address a problem in collaborative groups: one person doing the work while everyone else kicks back and collects an undeserved grade. It sounds like a positive to me.
> how is this different from every other
> community in the world?
It's not. However, that's not all I said. I went on with this:
"We all do this with our communities. It's basic tribal behavior. The problem is when your tribal standard is a hypocrisy. The gay community cannot claim to be about liberation and acceptance, then ruthlessly pressure its people to conform."
The standard to which I hold the gay community is that they need to accept their members even if those members do not agree with them. It must be made completely unacceptable for gays to pressure other gays into a particular viewpoint "for the movement", because that feeds into the homophobic fantasy that gays want to "convert" heterosexuals.
We must not only say "it isn't done", we must also say "it isn't right". Fundamentally, this is coercion, and it simply cannot be seen as an accepted part of gay life. Coercion to support the gay politics is no different, to a straight observer, than coercion to join the gay community or coercion to try gay sex. It simply cannot be permitted.
And so-called "accurate social observations" that just happen to confirm societal stereotypes about sex roles say more about the partiality of the observer than they do about reality.
Since girls are menstruating at ever-younger ages, does this mean they are mentally, emotionally, and sociologically more mature than they were a generation ago? I can't make that sweeping judgment, but you seem quite willing. Drawing conclusions about behavior from biology is fraught with peril.
> ages, does this mean they are mentally,
> emotionally, and sociologically more mature
> than they were a generation ago?
Good question! Let's run an empirical filter over it.
I recently saw the movie "Hard Candy". In it, a fourteen year old girl tracked down a sexual predator on the internet and subjected him to various tortures. It was a reasonably believable movie. I can believe completely that a fourteen year old girl could in fact be that intelligent, make a plan of that complexity, and successfully carry it out. So let's take that as "kids today".
Do I believe the same things were within the grasp of a fourteen year old girl twenty-five years ago? Well, no, I don't. I think fourteen year old girls were much more girls and much less women in 1981.
So I would have to conclude that girls today are more mentally and emotionally and sociologically mature at fourteen than they would have been in 1980, and extrapolate from this that they are more so at earlier ages, too.
Do I see the same change in boys? Not really. I see something, but it's not as pronounced. It appears that children in general are maturing more rapidly, but that it's more evident in girls.
And hey presto, what do you know? Girls are supposed to mature faster than boys. Supports the stereotype, but then again it probably became a stereotype for a reason.
Ignore that the age of puberty is dropping, esp. with a lot of girls these days, thanks to drinking a lot of milk laced with female bovine hormones. But still it is striking to watch the girls going through puberty several years before the boys. In middle school, the girls seem to be finding themselves, but by high school, most of those who are going to get on track, are already there. Not so the boys. Many of them aren't finding themselves until a year or so into HS.
Also note that full brain maturity also seems to lag by a couple of years with boys, maybe 26 on average, compared to 24 or so for girls. And the last part of the brain to mature is the part that provides judgment.
Of course, my own experiences of adjusting to my male hormones as I tried to navigate HS paint my views here. But I remember a lot of self-destructive behavior that looking back, was most likely a result of having to all of a sudden deal with a lot of testosterone in my system. The result was that I would rebel or get stuborn, etc., even when I knew that it was self-defeating, in response to any number of imagined slights (notably that most of the female teachers seemed to greatly prefer the girl students, giving them what appeared to me to be easy A's by sucking up to the teachers).
I watched this sort of dynamic awhile back, as a very gifted male student was almost thrown out of a private school. He would routinely get the high grade on his tests, but wouldn't do his homework. Why should he? He considered it busy work, etc. So, because grading now gives a lot of weight to homework, he was failing out, despite getting A's on all of his tests. I saw myself there, except that I had gone to public school, where it is harder to throw someone out, and it was 40 years earlier. But he was having exactly the same sorts of problems I had had in his place 40 years earlier.
Anyone have any ideas on how to confirm or refute this theory?
Nice goalpost shift. Sure, "homicide is not the only way children are oppressed and traumatised in school". However, this was your first, and most dramatic example, so it's the one I chose to focus on.
If you have anything other than a report you read at the last MLA meeting, bring it.
But how should we bo cautious in Biological evidence? Anyone who thinks that there are not cyclical swings in a woman’s temperament has never lived with a woman. Anyone who thinks that behavior and temperament are not affected by blood sugar has lived with neither a child nor with anyone with blood sugar swings. Anyone who has not seen behavioral swings that are associated with correlate with stimuli that effect testosterone swings in men. Please argue with someone in a swing of post-partum depression that Biology is irrelevant.
Anyone who thinks Biology has no effect on the brain should spend the summer teaching calculus to a Horse.
Now, in the multi-dimensional world in which any individual sits at the intersection of a thousand thousand bell curves, we should be reluctant to use Biology to say that any one member of a class of persons can never…well for any such statement a counterexample will be found. But groups of people do meet the stereotypes. And they are well documented. The countervailing arguments rely more on rhetoric than observation. And when someone argues that Biology does nto effect these things, I am reminded of the millions who starved because inheriting acquired traits was the preferred political position of Stalin.
My son and two daughters went to a very well regarded school, one that has been well known to the admissions officers at each college they have visited. And yet I always felt the boy was short changed. In grammar school, boys were expected to act like girls, quietly sitting on the floor in circles. If they were squirmed counselors suggested they be drugged. In middle school, at each and every parents conference, teachers explained they were using the latest most advanced girl-centric methods to make sure the girls were interested in math and science. Clearly this was at the sacrifice of a boy-centric method. If there was no difference, why were they bothering?
During this period, I coached boys rec-league teams and girls rec-league teams in a variety of sports. The difference was remarkable. Not in performance, but n what motivated them, how one encouraged top performance.
In high school this continues. The results across the board is that competitive number based schools (which means top state Universities, as privates use a little more leeway) the students are tight around two thirds female. At these schools (I work at one of the best) the faculty politics is always around “What can we do for the poor girls? They are stuck in some sort of time warp, fighting the battles of their twenties, unable to evaluate that situations have changed. (The school I work at has been 60 female undergrad since 1976)
This means twice as many females as males get in under these programs. That is not a minor outlier. Nor is it because of centuries of oppression. Nor is it because they grow up in different households. In the results that matter, the measurable outcomes, Primary and Secondary school have quite different effects on the kids. And you can still argue that there is no Biological component to differences?
Leaving aside that, the two sexes are distracting to each other. It may surprise you that this, too has a biologial component. Girls who are segregated do better than Co-ed girls/ Boys who are segregated do better than Co-ed boys. Both group have been able to do this and successfully breed for Millenia. The concerns about what it might do, and what sort of strange experiement it may be are over done.
The strange experiment, rarely tried, not demonstrably successful, and following the latest fad is educating the two together, subjecting the males to female discipline, and seeing what happens. THat is the fad.
That's not quite the impression I gather from the Mead article that Joanne linked to. It's a bit hard to decipher the vague trend descriptions, but it appears to me that both boys and girls have steadily improved, at rough gender parity, in all subjects--with one exception: reading, in which both boys and girls suffered a temporary decline starting (for younger children) some time in the 1980's, which has since reversed itself (again, for younger children). This decline appears to have affected boys more than girls, and has rippled through the age groups, so that This pattern seems to me to be potentially consistent with a temporary decline in reading skills that has disproportionately affected boys, and is in the process of working through the age groups and disappearing. This decline might correspond to the nationwide rise, peak and decline of "whole language" instruction.
Of course, I might just as easily be way, way off here. I'd like to see someone with a lot more knowledge and much more precise data consider the question.
Well... everyone but the current political class!
Girls ountumber boys in some good schools by a handful of percentage points, and it's CRISIS caused by the SCHOOLS being all FEMINIZED and stuff.
> Nice goalpost shift.
I never claimed that more children in school are dying.
I claimed that more of them are AFRAID of dying, because of sensationalised media reports, oppressive security measures, and overreactive faculty.
If anyone has attempted to move the goalpost, it's you. Or, on the other hand, maybe you just weren't paying attention... which is what got our schools into this mess in the first place.
"Among other things, what would you say were the chances of being shot or bombed in a public school during the 1970s?
Are they the same today?"
It's not hard to find out that the actual chances of being murdered in a public school are smaller. It's all too obvious that the chances of hearing about a school murder 3,000 miles away have multiplied enormously...
OTOH, maybe the reason kids my age and our parents didn't worry about shootings and bombings was that we were more concerned about The Bomb. We had weekly Civil Defense drills. (In case of nuclear attack, crawl under your desk, curl up, and kiss your a** goodbye.) I was nine years old when Kennedy and Kruschev went to the brink of nuclear war over missile sites in Cuba. It seemed like most best seller novels and blockbuster movies were about nuclear war - either the chain of accidents causing a war (from "Failsafe" to "Dr. Strangelove"), or the horrendous aftermath (from "On the Beach" to "A Boy and His Dog".)
If I had the time and patience, I could link to multiple claims exactly along the lines of what I referred to from the commenters on this blog.
More broadly, sure, some folks make more subtle arguments, but it's at least worth pointing out the way questions are asked: when girls or blacks do poorly, the question is generally, "what's wrong with them?" When boys do poorly, it's "what's wrong with the schools?"
It's worth debating why different groups can perform differently in various contexts, and I'm not suggesting there are always easy answers. But one thing law school taught me was to appreciate the significance of how questions are formulated.
> about being AFRAID of dying
How about this part:
"There should be a big difference between a school and a prison, but it's getting a lot harder to see one."
If I meant people were dying, I would have said "abattoir" instead of "prison".
The chance of a violent death in school has always been near-zero. The incidence of violence in general - even going as low as theft of lunch money - is less than half a percent. The vast majority of schoolchildren are not and never have been and quite probably never will be in imminent danger of dying. But children today are massively more aware and afraid of the possibility, because schools today are massively more overt about detecting and preventing it.
Which, incidentally, they don't. They just make a show of having the tools, and occasionally grab some unpopular student off the fringe to serve as an example, and then use whatever may happen as an excuse to whinge about needing a bigger budget.
> maybe the reason kids my age and our parents
> didn't worry about shootings and bombings was
> that we were more concerned about The Bomb
Compare the responses.
For the bomb, we were trained to take action. Here is how you protect yourself. This is how to find your designated fallout shelter. We will practice this every week, so you know what to do. This is how we will keep you safe.
For school violence, we subject every child to demeaning and depersonalising abuses of authority. Barbed wire, metal detectors, mirrors, cameras, armed guards, student police - this isn't a school, it's a concentration camp. I'd be suspicious of the showers.
Do these strike you as being in any way similar?
Somebody needs to be the control group. When your control group performs poorly, there is by definition nothing wrong with the control group.
How big is the psychological difference between expecting to die while doing something stupid and futile, and expecting to die while doing nothing?
> I also don't understand the "control group" concept.
Whenever you make a comparison, you have to have some basis for that comparison. In the earliest days of these studies, we picked white males as the control group. Whether that was the right decision or not is irrelevant; the success of our educational system has always been determined based on whether it can educate everyone as well as it educates white males.
If it does not educate white males sufficiently, the problem is in the system. The language is not prejudicial, it is simply the way the variables have been allocated in the equation.
@ markm:
> we didn't believe the recommended action
> would do a bit of good
It's not whether it did any good, it's whether it did any harm. The security measures at public schools today are nothing short of abusive to EVERY student that labors under them. Not just the dangerous ones and the violent ones, EVERYONE.
The fact that young women get into elite colleges at a slightly higher rate than young men is *not* evidence that the education system "does not educate white males sufficiently." Drawing that assumption from the data demonstrates the political problem.
Of course it's problematic/politically loaded to assume that white males are not only the "normal" group but also naturally superior. It's precisely that assumption that leads to the hypocritical arguments Eliot pointed out much earlier: when (white) boys to better in science, well, that's just the way things are, but when girls to better at getting into college, that's the fault of the schools.
To put it into your "control group" model, just because the group that's not the control group outperforms the control group, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the test.