to be totally bored hearing this same old trite trotted out

[curryfreak]

Get this all the time from parents of boys.
How difficult they are, how much more of a handful they can be in relation to girls, how much they eat in comparision to girls ffs,- who cares.
The one though, that has been in vogue for a while,(courtesy of daily mail headlines and the like) is how terrible boys are faring in the education system, and how these dreadful female teachers are feminising the poor little mites,- how they have no male role models, because there are so few male teachers (particularly in primary schools)
Yawn yawn yawn...
Simple facts are girls have been on the backfoot for years. Nobody gave a toss, when they were lagging behind educationally, and in some cases activly discourgaed from taking subjects which were considered male dominated.
Boys are having to wake up to the fact that their sense of entitlement is no longer acceptable.
So, thoughts.

bamboostalks - I agree that teaching is a low-paid profession but know a few lawyers who see teaching as a far more valid profession than their own, despite earning 4 times as much as I do. (some of them didn't even manage a 2:2 either)

Hear hear Scottish Mummy!

is it really bamboostalks??? well i have a 2:1 in maths as do all of my department...maybe we could have made more money doing other careers but you know what, good teachers don't enter the profession to make money...i love my job but i don't do it for the money...the pay is actually quite decent when you go through the threshold but that's irrelevant

Teachers should have good degree classification and all of that scottishmummy - have seen some PGCE students (as a mentor) down the years with quite shocking subject knowledge.

Just because education was or was not different in the 1950s is irrelevant. Education is very far from perfect and improvements need to be made.

YABU. And pretty damn nasty. And rather anti-feminist.

I love thefact that curryfreak has now disappeared. I'm going to do the same and will remember to give any of their future posts a wide berth.

"Get this all the time from parents of boys"

Yes, dear, of course you do, it must be so tiresome

Dear o dear, such a sensitive lot. Cant really cope wirth a genuine difference of opinion can you?
Nighty night.

did you know you accidentally put the word "genuine" in that sentence?

no hang about curryhead,dazzle us with your bus stop wisdom

larks - possibly not, actually. Girls always did better in primary school, but then lost that lead in secondary. This was why the 11+ exam was weighted against girls, and grammar school places reserved in greater numbers for boys - it was felt to be fairer, in the circs, if the mark required for a boy to get a grammar school place was lower than that for a girl. Comprehensives slowly whittled that lead away, and as mixed sex grammar schools now don't apply positive discrimination in favour of boys it actually wouldn't be surprising if the girls outnumbered them, as would always have been the case before.

I don't know why boys tend not to do as well all the way up to degree level, now, and I don't think anyone really does. Though the fact fewer and fewer people are taking science/engineering courses may have something to do with it - they're still very male dominated subject areas, whereas law and medicine and so on are increasingly female. (Interestingly this performance gap isn't present at Oxbridge, or wasn't when they researched it a few years ago. Men tend to either do dreadfully or brilliantly, with male clusters at the 3rd and 1st levels, and women falling far more into 2.1 territory. The reason usually given is that they tend to "take risks" - commonly known as "bullshit" - in exams. Sometimes this pays off; if a lot of work underlays it it becomes flair and impresses. If it doesn't, it becomes a massacre of misplaced self-belief.)

paddyclamp You are in a minority, the % of maths teachers with 2:2 or lower is higher than for teachers of any other subject.

YABU

I've quite enjoyed this thread despite not liking the original post, and several others. It is a topic that, as a teacher and a new parent, I think about a lot. Cheers all!

interesting perfectstorm- makes total sense to me

says who?

maybe that's cos maths and sciences are bloody difficult degrees

Good debating skills there, curryfreak. Hats off and all that.

Not disputing they are difficult, although that is subjective in the extreme. Many talented mathematicians struggle with English or art. It's all about aptitude.
The Teacher Training Agency says so.

The OP seems to like stirring up controversy and then disappearing I'm fairly new and have spotted this . Her tone is always very confrontational and when she has stirred things up she vanishes . Just an observation

My favourite bit was that when the OP got REALLY angry and when it all turned out...had only been posting for a day

bamboostalks - are you a teacher? I do agree with you - it is all subjective . I am sure there are 'easier' science and maths degrees out there just as there are 'easier' degrees within my subject area and as I say I have witnessed some PGCE students with very weak subject knowledge over the last 10 years or so.

Good spot hobnobs.. but I think I am speaking for many here that her input has been so, er, trite, that no one is particularly stirred. More bored