WIBU to print off this article and give it to the teacher.

[Imalldonethanks]

DD (8) came home from school at the end of last term talking about the differences in male and female brains (not relating to their weight or structure!). Her teacher had declared she has a 'male' brain because she is logical and rational.
This sort of talk boils my blood.
My next child is in her class this year and I don't want her to listen to this sort of crap.

I get on reasonably well with this teacher, but there are very few opportunities to chat.

So WIBU to print off an article from The New Scientist debunking that theory and send it in with a note saying 'thought you might find this interesting'?

I read some studies on mathematical problem solving last month. One of them showed that girls had less confidence in their abilities and performed less well because of it. Even so, differences were minimal and only evident in certain types of problem.

Is this the same study series that showed girls performed better when they were told the mathematical/problem tests were for a stereotypically feminine job (nursing/caring) than when they were told the same test would show how good they would be at a job they associated as male (I think it was engineering)?

chicken when I was at school the teachers used all sorts of delightful words to describe dc and their behaviour. Words like retarded, foreigners, thick council house scum, spaz, tarts, their kind, etc. Such a shame the poor teachers now have to negotiate the pc mine field of not using these lovely phrases nowadays.

kirsty75005

There are many issues with PISA, besides the fact that there are lies, damned lies etc.

www.oecd.org/gender/data/notamathperson.htm

I absolutely agree that society plays a massive role in shaping what a person is 'good' at. I think it's a combination of nature and nurture and this seems like the logical position to take when scientists much cleverer than we are are still debating the issue.

The rather untenable position of strident females seems appears to be that it is entirely nurture and that the ever-increasing number of observable differences in the brains play no significant role.

Surely the sensible money is on a combination of acknowledging differences but over a massive range and that society has an effect on brain development?

Saudi Arabia is a fascinating example of a country where most people would agree, feminism is still needed. However, compared to many other countries where feminism perhaps isn't, they have near equality in many STEM subjects in HE.

I can't find the link at the moment but there's a strong negative correlation between women entering STEM in HE and gender equality. It suggests that women don't want to enter these subject areas when they have a choice.

ChickenVindaloo2

It's not about being politically correct, it really isn't. Nor is it about treating everyone the same, specifically (although that's the result), because males and females at puberty obviously have biological differences.

It's about stopping treating girls and boys so very differently from one another. It's disadvantageous to both sexes, but mostly for girls.

Lurked, language evolves and innocuous words can be misused. If I may comment on each one:

retarded - this is just a standard word in the dictionary which has been abused and utilised as an insult so is now avoided by polite people. (See "poof", "gay", indeed the mis-used word "deviant" in that context just means "to deviate from the norm" and is not in fact meant to be judgemental...)

foreigners - what's wrong with that? Are we supposed to pretend we didn't notice?

thick council house scum - I don't think anyone polite/respectable would ever say this.

spaz - see retarded. Is short for "spastic" which is/was a medical term but was wrongly used as an insult.

tarts - judgemental. Not something anyone polite would ever have said.

their kind - just an old fashioned term. Can't get over-excited about it.

I don't think I read that CabernetSauvignyoni but very interested if you have a link? It was a bit of a tangent from what I was actually studying, workplace behaviour in IT. Everything on that said much the same, especially that women are less confident. The difference was far less apparent in countries where gender equality is more advanced.

I wait for someone to give me an idea about their brain before I assume.

For example if someone says "pc brigade" I can assume they're at least occasionally sexist and racist and ALWAYS a bit thick.

I think in some ways we treat boys and girls TOO similarly.

I would have enjoyed PE much more if it were gym machines or aerobics. Not violent bloody hockey or football!

when I was at school the teachers used all sorts of delightful words to describe dc and their behaviour. Words like retarded, foreigners, thick council house scum, spaz, tarts, their kind, etc. I never once heard a teacher use these terms. That was in the dreaded 60s and 70s. Generalisation and hyperbole as ever on Mn.

ODFOD

A not very original man

But I enjoyed hockey and hated aerobics. I suppose they could treat children as individuals if that's not too airy fairy?

I can't find the link at the moment but there's a strong negative correlation between women entering STEM in HE and gender equality. It suggests that women don't want to enter these subject areas when they have a choice.

It depends what the choices are. In some African countries, it's a job open to women, because it's a new industry - and it's clean, so it's preferable to cleaning or agriculture, which are the other main options.

One of the main reasons for the high rate of attrition for women in tech roles in their 30s and 40s is not because of the work itself, but because it gets so tiring fighting against the culture, all the mediocre men who are in management and so on. It's a culture problem, not an ability problem.

Datun

The key is in the word 'verbal'.

View it as the method of assessment which varies as opposed to huge differences in what is being assessed and you'll understand the differences. It's about framing the logic in words.

I studied logic / set theory and computer code at a high level but on a debating team I'd pretty quickly be relegated to 'book stand'.

Ooh, I'm definitely a bit sexist and racist. I absolutely love the daily mail. Dunno about the thick part though. I do have a law degree and 2 post graduate qualifications meaning I'm entitled to practice in 3 different jurisdictions. I've actually been a solicitor for 12 years so I certainly hid my thickness well. Or perhaps the educational system has just got worse in the last couple of decades, correlating, in fact, with the uprising of the muesli-munchers.

...just think, Lurking, I could be YOUR solicitor!

It's about framing the logic in words.

Yes, I understand that. But without the logic there, you wouldn't be able to express it.

ChickenVindaloo2

I think it's more that you're unaware of how gender stereotyping damages children, particularly girls. It's not a new thought.

That might be because whatever gender stereotyping you were exposed to, certainly hasn't held you back!

But you managed to buck a system, that not everyone can. Anything one can do to alter the system, so that girls are not disadvantaged, must be a good thing.

I'd have been very angry if any daughter of mine had been told by their teacher that they must have a male brain because they are logical and rational.

I spent a lot of my childhood, teenage years and young adulthood thinking I was abnormal and not perhaps a proper girl/woman because people kept telling me I had a "male" brain. Turns out I'm just a normal woman with a woman brain, with features/abilities that are stereotypically and strongly associated (wrongly) with being male. I genuinely thought I was somehow a defective woman for a fair few years and worried a lot about whether I'd ever find a partner that would appreciate me for who I am. This kind of crap comment made by the teacher can do real damage, it's totally unnecessary and not based on any kind of clear cut, robust probable evidence.

I can't find the link at the moment but there's a strong negative correlation between women entering STEM in HE and gender equality. It suggests that women don't want to enter these subject areas when they have a choice.

I don't think this is current thinking. The government is bringing in student finance elq exemptions for all STEM subjects because the interest is there and it helps address the balance (women are more likely to apply part time later in life).

On a personal level I've always been interested in STEM and been steered away on numerous ocassions because it's 'for men' or 'too male dominated'. The interest is there but society told me repeatedly that I wouldn't be welcome. I've no doubt others have experienced the same.

*provable.

Thank you Datsun. But I have actually read that boys/men are now the disadvantaged gender! They feel lost because their typical asset of physical strength is now no longer as prized. And whereas girls often tend to be clustered together around average intelligence with fewer outliers at the extreme ends, more men are outliers on the chart - meaning you get some very non-academic boys. And of course, men are not even necessary for us to have babies any more!

Says who Datun?

They are different subjects or areas of intelligence.

great Quora explanation of the differences

Out of interest, despite proven and measurable physical differences of activity in the brain and structure and chemical composition, do you maintain that at birht male and female brains are not different and any apparent traits are 100% nurture?

ChickenVindaloo2

It's absolutely true that men tend to be the outliers with most geniuses and most AEN people being male.

Until this year, females have been steadily outperforming men in all areas of education and employment until child-bearing age for a decade or so.

Again, I'm no biologist but I'm fairly sure that artificial sperm is yet to be viable. Men are still needed for baby-making.

chicken I'm early 30's so it wasn't just language evolving. And even if you assume the teachers were outdated in theirs, spastic only ever referred to those with that condition, not a slur for dc that even as kids we could see had sn, rather than being bad & thick and thus deserving of insult. Foreigners is also insulting if the person isn't foreign.

My point is twatty and ignorant opinions would still be openly shared with pupils if people had not 'got all pc'. Which is exactly why op was right to tackle this ridiculous viewpoint.

derxa good for you. I never said it happened at all schools, and certainly not by all teachers, even at the hell hole I attended it was a minority.

I once had a Mum scream at me and complain to the headteacher because I said that I clean my teeth as soon as I get up in the morning. Apparently I was wrong because you're supposed to clean your teeth after breakfast.

And do you think that's comparable with telling girls they are illogical?

I'm sure you're very clever vindaloo, it's just your posts give the impression of that of someone who has never picked up a newspaper, or read anything at all. I'm actually shocked that someone who should be capable of looking at information from all angles would have missed the huge amount of evidence showing that boy/girls brains was largely cultural and mostly based on shit science.

Solaris. I am not disputing that Pisa has flaws. But it is some hard data, without which this discussion can never be anything except trading insults and anecdotes.

I am not prepared on the basis of the available evidence to swear that if all social factors could be stripped out there would be absolutely no residual difference between average female and average male capacity in mathematics (which is not the same as enjoyment of). I am convinced on the basis of availiable evidence that such difference as may exist is tiny compared with differences between individuals and compared with differences between countries. (Look in the Pisa graph - the OECD wide difference in grade average between girls and boys in 8 points. The difference between the highest scoring country and the lowest scoring country is 200 points).

So if we're talking about anything, we're talking about very small differences in average performance. Is that what the teacher said ? That it is possible that the average boy is very slightly better than the average girl in maths, but this difference is swamped by individual differences ? No, she said that logic is a "male" characteristic. I would understand that as meaning that there is a male advantage in logic so large that women that are good at logic are unusual. And that is quite plainly nonsense.