Teachers and education system bias towards girls

[asdmumandteacher]

What do you all think? I am a teacher (secondary) of 14 years and feel the secondary curriculum (and primary too) is heavily weighted towards girls' natural skills and less so to boys' skills. I have taught all girls for most of the last 14 years in selective (grammar)and high schools (the equivalent of secondary moderns) and i have two sons. We are forever hearing about girls outperforming boys (when in O level days twas the other way around and the 1967 Plowden report sort to redress the balance) I think it has gone way too far in the other direction.

Anyway am off to bed now - great chatting with everyone!xx

Well, that's your opinion. It's not at all what I see around me. I don't think a less than 10% gap is huge and is easily accounted for by a small cohort who do very badly. The paper you linked to talked about boys being more likely to have special needs and to be aggressive to authority and to play truant.

Am gonna go now - got distracted by another post - a 10% gap is huge considering the numbers involved in taking GCSE's (a 1 to 2% difference would account for the hoodie bad boys)The paper is a lot more in depth than talking merely about AEN, and hoodie culture (truanting/refusal to adhere to authority). I still stand by what i have witnessed over last 14 years or so and i think its getting worse - the mere fact there is a paper discussing this question in the first place must mean there is an issue within the educational establishment.

asdmum this is a very interesting discussion but your argument is not very coherent. Your op says: "I think it has gone way too far in the other direction" but as other posters have said, in ye olde days people sat in rows and learned by rote.

So, to cut to the chase: What do you think should be retained/reintroduced from previous practice?

It's funny but when I was st school it was usually the boys who did better than the girls. So what has changed?

I went to a girls' grammar school in Devon and it never did quite as well as the neighbouring boys school. It still doesn't. Maybe teachers around the country need to visit the boys' school and see what they are doing right?

We need more male teachers (not going to happen in our new "everyone's a paedophile hysterical society" though).

Maybe less coursework and more exams? Or, even better, let children choose their method of assessment depending on what they are better at with a minimum of 25% of each?

I also agree that girls get into the workplace and find that the boys are suddenly on top....

I think it is indicative of the huge sexism in society that despite the fact that for generations boys outperform girls, they still get more firsts and undoubtedly earn more in the workplace, there is this big panic about girls starting to do marginally better in terms of exam results. And yes, I do have a son.
I also think it is sexist to suggest that women teachers aren't appropriate or good enough to teach boys.

"And why, precisely, has Sitting Down only become a problem in the past couple of decades, when AFAIK it was acutally more of a prerequisite in previous generations? I wasn't aware that desks were a post-1970 introduction."

Oh good - I see Motherinferior has written out what my instant thought was.

Off to read the rest of the thread as this is a subject, not only as the mother of 2 girls, but as a woman, that riles me also.

Ooh, just came back to this thread. Thanks Motherinferior for writing exactly what I wanted to say but my sleep-deprived brain couldn't articulate.

Hellywobs, why must it be that people must visit your local boys' school to see what it is doing right? Why not visit your local girls' school to see what they are doing wrong? There does seem to be an underlying assumption that girls doing worse than boys is normal but vice-versa is a disaster.

Actually, not just a disaster, but unnatural. THe idea of women having fluffy, inferior brains clings on, I see. The only way girls could possibly be doing well is nothing to do with raised expectations and decades of feminism finally making girls feel confident, determined and ready to achieve their potential. Oh no, it's those horrid women teachers oppressing poor little boys. Sorry, but

Yes, yes, Mabanana! Gosh, am so glad others can explain just what it is that makes me SO angry about the OP's assumption (we had it during teacher training - how to get boys interested etc etc).

Yes, the word 'fluffy' as used further back up the thread to describe how the primary-curriculum favours girls is rather offensive.

I would also like to know what is girl-centred about the modern curriculum. Why is it presumed that boys are doing worse and not just that girls are doing better? Perhaps boys are doing the same as they have always done but girls have now improved? Why infer that by girls doing better the boys are somehow being hard done by?

Because boys are more important than girls of course!

Yes I think last few posts have touched upon the ASSUMPTIONS that are so important - if we ASSUME things about children, then they generally happen.

E.g. yesterday at parent's evening I was told by DD's teachers that "We find every year that by Christmas there will be a small group of boys that will shoot ahead of the girls academically."

HMM - so what a surprise that studies show that... ermm yes there is a small group of boys that will shoot ahead academically. Which came first?

Oh, I'm so glad there are a whole bunch of people pointing out the flaws in the 'poor ickle boys are being discriminated against by evil female teachers' argument.

Have been on threads before where it's been me and MI against a whole load of bizarre people. Presumably parents of boys who are not exactly academic trailblazers and want a handy excuse (oh, poor little Tarquin, of course he's being held back by those awful teachers making him sit down, shut up and pay attention...).

• disclaimer - am the mother of a boy who seems to be quite capable of sitting down and paying attention.

Am also PMSL (here and on those previous threads) at the allegation that it's all because of Literature. Which, I can attest from my degree in the stuff, is largely written by Blokes.

Yes, because men hate talking, debating, reading and communicating about their feelings etc etc etc and we know this because none of the great orators, no politicians, no philosophers, no composers, playwrights and romantic poets were ever male, were they?

I don't think anyone expects boys to do better than girls - they want equal achievement by both sexes. What's wrong with that? The curriculum should suit both genders and teaching should be differentiated, not just on gender grounds but also by the way children learn. Some kids like team activities, others don't. Some like "doing", some like "listening".

But I totally agree that there is an expectation now that boys will do worse. My son is 6 and when I used to say "oh he's no doing x yet" I just used to get either " all children develop at different rates " (well maybe they do, but they don't all achieve the same in the end, that's wishful thinking (and is something the government is very guilty of) or "don't worry, boys do things later than girls". (well only if you expect them to). So if boys are becoming disaffected, I can't see the problem in suggesting that teachers look at examples of good practice in schools where they clearly are not. Just because women have been discrimininated against for centuries (and still are) doesn't mean we should suddenly start discriminating against men. My son came home from school the other day saying that boys are all naughty and the girls do what they are told. I don't think that's a healthy view to have at the age of not quite 6.

In my son's class there are some very high achieving boys - probably because expectations are high.

And of course female teachers can teach boys, but boys need male role models. So do girls! I stand by my comment that we need more male teachers. It's not sexist at all. How would we feel if all the teachers were men? We'd want more women in the classroom, of course we would. I went to an all girls secondary school with some male teachers. The boys' school had some female teachers. you need both - society has both!

And men can't sit still or deal with coursework either. I can't think of any men who have desk jobs and who have to complete written work, by themselves , on an ongoing basis.

Hellywobs - how are boys being discriminated against?

Yeah well, I suspect the reason there are fewer male primary teachers is because the pay is not as good. If you look across any profession/vocation/job you'll see men in general go for more money/higher status. Not sure we should blame women for that.

Maybe we should pay primary school teachers more and that might drag a few men in?

(I can't help thinking this new description of 'kinaesthetic learners' or whatever the phrase is refers to the sort of people who would have been called, um, less academic when I was at school.)

I'm sorry, but the education system simply favours children who sit down and get on with their bloody work, be they girls or boys.

If male pupils are having problems with this, we should address the causes of their behaviour, not overhaul the whole bloody curriculum to suit them ffs.

Agree with MI, good behaviour and academic achievement is not somehow easier for girls. Lots of girls work extremely hard for their grades, and it irks me a great deal that some feel it just 'comes naturally' for females.

Hellywobs - you acknowledge in your post that expectations of boys contribute to their schooling success. Might the same not have been true of girls?

Also, if the system was broken, then NO boys would be achieving and ALL girls would be achieving - which is certaonly not the case.

True Edam - there are less male teachers because men generally have better options in the workplace and basically CAN EARN MORE despite the whole education system being against them

it's not THAT bad a deal for the boys then, is it?