Fox News host: ‘Feminism is to blame’ when boys do poorly in school

[Igel]

36. One of those things that can't be discussed.

Merely fought. It's personal, ideogical, moral, and therefore not yielding to logic and nuance.

Girls have pretty much always done better as far as grades go as boys. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-a0036620.pdf

Boys typically do better on STEM-related achievement tests.

There's a nice polarization that takes place.

You can think that it's only fair girls do better than boys; that's not discrimination, it's life. But when it comes to boys doing better, that's prima facie evidence of discrimination.

It's the same for when young women outnumber young men at college. If the split is 45-55%, it's fine if it's 55% women but horrible if it's 45% women. One is a problem; the other is justice.

It's flipped if you reverse the "polarity" of the arguer. Then it's just natural when boys do better and boys are 55% at college, nothing to be upset about.

Justification can be found in biology (testosterone's related to increased ability to mentally manipulate 3-D images, for example--whether you're a straight male or not). It's horrible to point this out, even if you say that it affects high-testosterone females the same as males, or that the difference is small.

Then again, boys act out more, they mature at different paces. That's unfair when it leads to AA males getting higher referral rates in school; but the underlying disproportionality, that males are more disciplined (but not self-disciplined) than girls remains. This, IMHO, is a kind of institutional sexism--boys need to be dealt with differently because, on average, they develop differently. "Everybody's the same" is much the same as "everbody's a girl" in the public schools.

It's only "licit" in many forums to point out biological effects that might account for why boys do worse. It's ill-advised to point out biological effects that might say why girls do better. And you mustn't ever point out biological effects that might justify girls' doing worse. That asymmetry means it's problematic to point out any biological effects, and there are some. (The same asymmetry when it comes to culture makes that a toxic landfill of a minefield to argue over. Again, it's personal, emotional, and disinterested and dispassionate are considered bad.)

We can't rule out role-model effects, either. In a study with boys and girls being instructed by men or women teachers, it was found that boys did better with male teachers and females better with female teachers. However, the *difference* in performance was asymmetric. Boys with a female teacher had a bigger decline in achievement than girls with a male teacher did. (Result, even if absurd: Having only male teachers in a school currently staffed 1/2 male and 1/2 female would raise the overall achievement levels.) In a race-obsessed society we like the claim when it involves race.

We acknowledge it when we overlap race and sex--we need more black male teachers. But we don't like that white males are adversely affected if the teacher cohort is disproportionately female. We even ignore some counter-intuitive results--Asians seldom see Asian teachers and still outperform whites.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/57901230-68/students-teachers-percent-american.html.csp focuses entirely on race. Even then, part of the difference in achievement by race of teacher is ultimately cultural and behavioral--black male teachers interact differently with their black male students and have slightly different norms for behavior, so it's not all student-side effects.

It's a vexed mess. Not being able to discuss it without it degenerating into two sides slinging poo at each other doesn't make it any easier.