did anyone read the article in last sunday's observer about raising boys...

[beforesunrise]

... and thought it was really, well, a bit crap? it was all about boys are being shortchanged by society, are much more likely to go to jail or be knifed etc. so far so good.

but then it went on to identifying the reasons as an increasinlgy "feminised" education system and teh fact that boys don't get to run around enough.

no mention of the huge impact of fatherless households, or of the stark divides of those crime stats by racial and economic background.

but, more fundamentally, i just don't think it is true that boys have it so hard. i mean, girls get into trouble in ways that don't make the headlines- ie they get pregnant, for example. and women are still marginalised and discriminated against in many parts of society. i reckon it's still harder to be born a girl than a boy. and raising girls is as hard if not harder, in the long run.

maybe because i am a mother of two girls, but i am still annoyed by it- so superficial, and so WRONG...

anyone else?

BBBB many many girls have a predisposition to have a male brain - many boys have a female brain.Its not male brain = always boys, female brain=girls.Its not like that.I was a tomboy when i was little never into girls' things at all, loved football and playing with the boys - didn't wear a skirt until i was 11. A girl a few years below me in school had her hair cropped at the age of 7 and wore Y Fronts (personally i think thats a little at so young an agebut if thats what made her comfortable good for her).It wasn't environmental - it was my nature. It was her nature too. I think testosterone, oestrogen and everything else that floats around our system shapes us as well as external influences this is all i have said really and tried to point out. It is not as easy as saying boys' brains are solely wired to engineering, maths etc...thats patently untrue as we all have different levels of ability, environmental influence etc

"BBBB many many girls have a predisposition to have a male brain "

I'm sorry but don't you realise how cray that sounds. A girl has a female brain by virtue of the fact she is female. Just because that brain might have characteristics that someone has labelled as being male doesn't make it a male brain. It makes it a female brain with certain characteristics.

"many boys have a female brain"
Same for the boys.

In fact, Stillenacht, reading your last post I think you are agreeing in a roundabout way that children are children and can have certain behaviours regardless of whether they are male or female. This being due partly to their physiological make-up and partly influenced by outside factors and their reactions to them.

It's not as simple as saying he's a boy that's why he behaves like that and she's a girl that's why she behaves like that.

I do think that children start to behave in a way that is expected of them or go completely against what is expected.
And then there are levels of expectation. Parents expectations, peer expectations, teacher expectations, society expectations.
It's a complicated mix imo and not just down to the individual being male or female.

Unfortunately i can't find any o-level results... I don;t remember doing coursework for GCSE - but it was a long time ago - and maybe the subjects i took had less than other choices.

Anyhoo....

Firstly, I believe that you have said that boys are cleverer than girls. You have described them as having in interest in how things work and that that is a male characteristic. As far as I am concerned anyone who has no interest in how things work certainly does not have an inquiring mind and frankly must be rather dim.

Secondly. Why can't we all just have brains? What is this male/female stuff? You realise that you have said that girls who enjoy subjects like maths and science are liable to have cropped hair and wear trousers? Presumably girls who enjoy wearing dresses are unable to understand those subjects due to their "female brains"???

This is all getting very odd and utterly baffling...

I have not once said boys are cleverer than girls - not once

juuule I agree with your conclusion in that children are children and will react or behave in a way children would iyswim. I too feel that, for some children, be them boys or girls, cannot cope or thrive in our current education system or with the attitude our society have towards our kids.

I lived in mainland Spain for 3 years and Italy for 2. I cannot tell you enough how those two countries differ from the UK in their approach to small children. Boys and girls are allowed to be 'children'. I never once met a 'helicopter' parent or witnessed mums interfering with their kids social dilemmas - they were literally left to fend for themselves (within reason, of course). In contrast, I see so often here, mums hovering around their little darlings sorting out disputes etc - often before anything has even started.

I also watch, in horror, at adults of all ages tutting if my kids so much as open their mouths in restaurants etc. I would have never witnessed this in the above countries, because all adults accept that children are children and not some bloody alien sent to annoy, wind up and generally irritate the hell out of them. We also dislike old people too here, but that's another thread

I also did not draw the link between fashion choices and aptitude for science either BBBB - i saying its not as simple as that...i don't find it odd or baffling i just don't find it as clear cut as you do.

i am saying

I thought I might do a bit of a trawl for evidence on this one.

Here is an interesting paper
eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=HagpzfgMmR8%3d&tabid=239&mid=1051&language=en-US
Note that the research this is based on died out after the 80's (although this paper is from 2003, and more research may have been undertaken in the last few years) - most studies now are on the "failings" of boys - although evidence suggests that social class and ethnicity are more important when it comes to educational difference:

'Gender is not the strongest predictor of attainment:

• The social class attainment gap at Key Stage 4 (as measured by percentage point difference in attainment between those eligible and not eligible for free school

meals) is three times as wide as the gender gap.

• Some minority ethnic groups attain significantly below the national average and their under-achievement is much greater than the gap between boys and girls.'

If people started saying that race or social class affected brain wiring I am not sure it would be as easily accepted a theory - oh wait, they did, and then were proved wrong. In any case even if brain wiring was different you could still consider that this might be a nature issue, given that we know brain wiring is affected by nurture in the very early years (shown in children who have been badly abused and/or neglected).

Interesting paper here:
www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RTP01-07.pdf

Lots of detail about different subjects and gender attainments over many years.

There are lots of interesting texts on gender and education, but some of them are not very accessible. From another one you can read part of (it's a Google text thing) is an interesting discussion on GCSEs and course work, which suggests that it is not so much that girls were already improving their results (mostly as a result of the National Curriculum forcing them all to do subjects like Maths and Science and so making them less "boys subjects" where girls who did take them had a hard time - of and GCSEs were introduced to make all standards go up, not girls attainment. In fact the more interesting stat is that even when the proportion of course work went down and examinations went up, girls still out performed the boys (should go down surely if girls are crap at exams and boys unmotivated to do course work).

Girls tend to do better in the majority of GCSE subjects:
The largest gender differences (a female advantage of more than ten percentage
points on those gaining an A*-C GCSE) are for the Humanities, the Arts and
Languages. Smaller gender differences (a female advantage of five percentage
points or less) tend to be in Science and Maths subjects.
Some of these achievement patterns have been relatively stable over six decades of
exam results, particularly in English Language and Literature, French, Art and Design
and Religious Studies.
There have been changing patterns over the years. In Maths, there has been a shift
from a male advantage averaging 4 percentage points prior to 1991 to a slim female
advantage of 1-2 percentage points in recent years. In Geography, there has been a
widening of the gap in girls? favour, and in History, there has been fluctuation but
with girls now doing much better than boys.
Attainment at each end of the distribution of grades also varies by gender. Girls are
more likely than boys to gain an A* grade at GCSE. Boys are a little more likely to
gain a G grade at GCSE or to gain no GCSEs at all.

Have so far only ready the intro so far...will come back to it

Reasons for the Gender Gap
The literature on the reasons behind the gender gap reveal a complex story:
Girls and boys tend to use different styles of learning. Girls tend to show greater levels
of motivation and respond differently to the materials and tasks given to them.
Overall trends indicate that girls and boys seem to relate differently to schooling
and learning and girls find it easier to succeed in school settings.
Type of school does not appear to influence the gender gap: across schools in
England, there are hardly any where boys make greater progress than girls.
However, one study found that there are a large proportion of schools where boys
and girls make similar progress but these tend to be schools where school
performance is weak (i.e. for both boys and girls). The corollary of this is that the
gender gap is wider in better performing schools.
Boys are more likely to be influenced by their male peer group which might devalue
schoolwork and so put them at odds with academic achievement.
A recent study found that the introduction of the National Literacy and Numeracy
Strategies had an impact on the gender gap by improving the attainment of boys
(more than girls) in English, and girls (more than boys) in Maths. However, the gap
persists.
The use of coursework in examinations may advantage girls but analysis does not
find that this alone accounts for the gender gap.
Other aspects of the curriculum, assessment structure and content have also been
implicated. For example, reading assessments which focus on narrative may
accentuate the gender gap compared to more factual-based assessment. A study
has shown that boys performed significantly better on a reading comprehension
task involving factual content compared to one based on narrative content. Girls?
reading comprehension scores were less influenced by the content of the task.

As a mum to two DS's i find it deeply saddening....