Boys and girls learn differently?

As to whether humans can be lizards or not...

Jury is still out.

David Icke was right about Jimmy Saville so maybe there's some mileage in this whole lizard business.

As a working evolutionary Biologist I would like to point out:

Humans aren't marine iguanas
Humans aren't clownfish
Humans aren't peacocks
Humans aren't even chimpanzees or bonobos (which, by the way, are both very different from each other - one's matriarchal-ish one's highly patriarchal)
Humans are humans, nothing more and nothing less.

We are anisogamous (2 kinds of unequal gametes) with separate sexes (no hermaphrodites). In terms of behavior, we have relatively high levels of biparental care and cooperation and low levels of sexual dimorphism compared to other great apes. Evolutionarily those two things (low dimorphism and high levels of biparental care) are usually connected so this is fully consistent with evolutionary biology.

Unsurprisingly, we have found that the assumptions about "how humans always were biologically" and interpretations of the extremely limited anthropological data from ancient hominids have changed drastically as society has become marginally more egalitarian.

Humans who want to live and die alone can be selfish and violent.

Humans who want to live in a civilized society have to learn cooperation and social skills.

"attributing absent opinions to my posts."

Yes, there were no opinions in that post. Just a dump from a google search presented with no comment, analysis, interpretation, opinion or argument. What did you expect people to do?

Why Scott has decided this means that human males are content to fight for and win food to the detriment of the females and young in their group is an interesting question.

I've decided nothing of the sort and I think you're massively overanalysing this/attributing absent opinions to my posts.

I was simply questioning whether there may be some evolutionary differences between the sexes which is a fairly feasible possibility which may or may not be true. Stop trying to turn it into a battle of the sexes.

Jellyfrizz, those links are interesting and I'm going to have a proper read later when I'm home from work. They point to a possible egalitarianism which I've read before may have been the case in many primitive societies.

I wasn't by the way trying to argue that 'men did all the hard work and hunting' or anything of the type but rather that there may be some intrinsic differences between the sexes caused by differing activities over the evolutionary period.

This is also a good read on the differences between men's and women's brains:

cosmicshambles.com/words/blogs/deanburnett/male-and-female-brains?fbclid=IwAR2BS2CxZABHQxrLHHhtqdEPRy10btSwjmh9n0arrvLyNCO-tDuwdCI0dvc

Lizards.
Fucking lizards.

Are you a lizard scott? Havae you been watching V again?

No no hold on. I know what it is.

You are David Icke and I claim my £5

Haven't read the whole thread, but some people, especially Aspie, have made some very good points. I would also agree with the recommendations to read Cordelia Fine and Angela Saini.

It's so depressing, though, that education is so in thrall to these stupid fads whether it's brain gym or the idea of seven learning styles. The idea that you can make huge generalisations about how someone learns based on their sex is just ludicrous. If you have a class of 30 children, they will all have different aptitudes, will all learn at a different pace, will all have bursts when they learn more quickly, will all be at different developmental stages, with some being early and some being late developers, they'll all have different home backgrounds with families that do or don't support learning...to try and divide that into two big groups of "boys" and "girls" and say they learn differently is nonsensical.

Read the article.

It is talking about lizards.

Why Scott has decided this means that human males are content to fight for and win food to the detriment of the females and young in their group is an interesting question.

Why do you think so badly of human males, scott?

"also operates within the same species when males and females compete for the ecological resources available in different habitats, such as bushy areas or stony patches with abundant food"

This assumes that when food is limited, males will compete for it against females (and children) in order to survive.

This undermines the popular theme of "man the provider"!! And also of humans as social animals/tribal types that work together for the good of their group.

In Scott's vision, the men compete against the women and children for food.

I suppose this attitude would explain sometihng else we discussed on a thread the other day >> why male humans murder "their" womenfolk, their own children, women who are pregnant with their children. From a genetic survival perspective, this makes no sense. However Scott has explained that human males, unlike most other mammals, are content to see their partners / mates / offspring die so that explains that one then.

I must admit, this is a very stark view of men as a group, not one that I concur with. I've not been in a starvation situation though, to be fair. I did read that somewhere there was difficulty and the men locked the grain stores and fucked off, leaving the women and chldren to die. (Much harder to be mobile when you are pregnant, got kids with you,and of course women face more risk than men in these situations, we see this effect frequently with migration).

So maybe Scott's point has merit. Male humans are inherently pretty awful.

Is that what you meant to say, scott?
Because on the other thread you are upset that when men murder women, some people talk about "male violence" - you contend that only a very few men are "monsters" etc

Which is it?

science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6236/796

From the front page of my google search:

www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists

Inferior by Angela Saini is a great book if you are really interested in reading all sides of this.

This was on the first page of a google search.

New research from the UK has shown that exactly the same mechanism of evolution that creates new species also operates within the same species when males and females compete for the ecological resources available in different habitats, such as bushy areas or stony patches with abundant food. The conflict between the sexes can lead to one sex becoming bigger, more colourful or adapting to eat different food, just like a traditional process of evolution by natural selection can lead an ancestor to split into two different species.

www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2018-02-conflict-males-females-evolution-species.amp

Can you post a link to those studies, Jellyfrizz?

I'm astounded if evolution hasn't shaped certain elements of each sex.

However, evolution is also a feasible cause of differences (e.g. men hunting etc).

Nah. Debunked.

But surely the point is, it's far better to find out someone's height and give them an appropriately sized stick based on their answer than to ask for their sex and give a 6 ft woman a short stick and a 5ft male a long stick.

Agreed, but we don't have the resources to do that on an individual basis.

A fairly recent discovery is that brains are plastic and can grow new cells, thus differences in male and female brains could be due to the way boys and girls are treated differently rather than innate sex based differences.

That's interesting and I've no doubt it could be a factor. However, evolution is also a feasible cause of differences (e.g. men hunting etc).

A fairly recent discovery is that brains are plastic and can grow new cells, thus differences in male and female brains could be due to the way boys and girls are treated differently rather than innate sex based differences.

Like, you might reasonably expect men to need a longer walking stick (daft example I know).

But surely the point is, it's far better to find out someone's height and give them an appropriately sized stick based on their answer than to ask for their sex and give a 6 ft woman a short stick and a 5ft male a long stick.

But my prior point remains, there seems to be something structurally wrong with a school system that takes children of supposed equal ability and consistently produces worse results for the male pupils.

Girls are socialised to be 'good'; to listen and to do their homework. Most studies I have read place this as the major factor in girls outperforming boys.

Bottom line

The constant search for hard differences in how male and female brains work is due to a strong desire across pretty much all soceities to validate and uphold, to reinforce gender hierarchy.

Someone says "sex differences in the brain boys learm like this girls learn like that and behavioural differenecs need to be taken into account boys are more active spacial awareness girls are more verbal blah etc" and I hear "Different but equal, each with their role to play in their own sphere. Now, let us pray"..

I read ages ago that teaching used to be much more male dominated and at that time had higher prestige and pay

As it became more female dominated the prestige eroded and so did the pay

You see the same in some areas of medicine I think.

Anyway

OP - like the slide lol

At work male colleagues are always keen that I use more colours and pictures on my slides
At default I like infomormation to be presented very plainly
Same with spreadsheets - some poeple love to colour them in drives me mad. I have not noticed a sex divide at work on prevalence of colouring bloody worksheets in.

PEOPLE are different and to make assumptions based on what's in your knickers will a. inevitably mean that all the boys and and the girls who don't meet whatever the thing is set as for their sex will struggle and b. it will inevitably disadvantage girls because whenever sex differences are raised about brains it always seems to boil down to girls being v good at sitting quietly caring for others and not earning much money... Which is why feminists twitch when teh subject is brought up.

Where are all teh studies looking for brain differences in humans along any other lines of segregation? Why this constant intense search for irrefutable differences in male and female brains? I can think of a few reasons and none of them will result in anything good for women and girls.

'Department for Education statistics show 26% of teachers in England are men - accounting for 38% of secondary and 15% of primary school teachers'

If men want a better outcome for the next generation of boys, perhaps they should be looking to increase the number of male teachers, particularly in primary schools, to give those boys some good male role models. But primary teaching tends to be seen as 'women's work', so low status. You can't blame that on women.