The intersectional feminist rewriting the national curriculum

[IwantToRetire]

" ... The tendency of those with XX chromosomes to prefer empathising and working with people and the tendency of those with XY chromosomes to prefer systematising and working with things is something that’s true of all human societies – but it’s got nothing to do with biology, obviously. The way to dismantle the patriarchy, then, is to teach boys that masculinity is toxic and get girls to stop playing with dolls.

... Sixty-three per cent of girls meet the expected standard in reading, writing and maths at the end of primary school, compared with 56 per cent of boys. Last year, 68 per cent of girls in state schools achieved both English and Maths GCSEs at grade 4 or above, but only 63 per cent of boys. (By that metric, the lowest-achieving demographic in England are white British boys on free school meals.) Just 40 per cent of 19-year-old males were in higher education at the last count, compared with 54 per cent of women. Moral panic? ... "

Full article at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-intersectional-feminist-rewriting-the-national-curriculum/

This article for me shows the problem when some of the points made seem more than valid, but then when you find out the reasoning of the authoring for saying them, realising you can reach the same conclusion from very different starting points.

What was it that impressed you?

Before we get too carried away on the underachievement of boys, let’s not forget there is still a big pay differential between men and women once they are adults … ;)

Some of the statistics sound very meaningful like the difference in higher education participation, but this relates a lot to women wanting to be primary teachers and nurses. They make up a lot of female undergrads. It doesn't mean men are doing badly. They might have gone into construction and be earning well.

The SEN comments below are interesting. 75% of ehcps are awarded to boys.

How so? Explicit teaching should appeal to boys since it lays down a framework. Girls are 'supposed' to be 'creative' and do well at coursework, which is less structured. (No me - hated coursework because you must put in continuous effort with no time for anything else.)

They might have gone into construction

Therein lies the issue though, not enough vocational courses. And that's not to say that literacy and numeracy isn't hugely valuable there, especially if you wish to run your own business. A big issue for education is that some children need more of a context and 'reason' to learn. They need to see the point of the academic stuff.

When I was doing GCSEs in the 90s in a rural area the school i attended had some sort of gcse type qualification for kids who wanted to go into agriculture. (Meant we had a number of easy farm animals on site! Including lambing.) all disappeared when the school became an ICT school or whatever they were called.

Structure and order, explicit teaching of the 'I do, we do, you do' format, and inclusion of the arts and humanities in the core of education rather than just STEM subjects, would help raise achievement.

Speaking from the 'chalk face,' this describes the approach we take in MLD send, most of the children are male, autistic and have varying level of learning difficulties and/ or speech and language, social interaction and emotional regulation difficulties.

There's too much demanded by the curriculum though. We need to include general self care and life skills too.

UK GCSE results (not including resits) 2023:

English GCSE grade 4+
Boys: 65.9%
Girls: 77.6%

Maths GCSE grade 4+
Boys: 72%
Girls: 71.4%

There is a massive disparity between girls and boys performance at English GCSE. This lack of literacy will feed into almost every other subject (looking at 2023 stats boys also slightly outperformed girls in physics, economics and statistics).

Construction, engineering, computer science, food tech, design tech, drama, PE, all the subjects that are meant to 'engage boys' - girls do better. I don't think progressive teaching methods are to blame there.

WarriorN she came into the DoE to do a presentation on inequalities. She was fantastically articulate and persuasive, and insistent on the centrality of class (not popular at DoE at the time). But also spoke brilliantly about sexism. I contacted her a couple of times after for help with work I was doing on girls in school and she was very responsive and generous. Memories are fading, but I think she also chaired a meeting we did on sexual harassment.

Anyway, I don't know her well, and don't know her views on everything, but I found her a class act.

she has been dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement.

If this is a fair summary, it's a fools errand. Unless she can break the correlation between parental IQ and family income, or between IQ and educational achievement, or between parental IQ and student IQ. None of those seems either feasible or desirable.

The voodoo belief system of blank-slateism strikes again. Absolutely, try to improve the life chances of people of all types and backgrounds. But don't start from such an extraordinarily unsupported scientific basis.

Young is such a berk. Defines himself in opposition to his father, who wrote the 1945 Labour Party Manifesto.

No, I don't think downgrading the arts has had any effect on disengagement of ethnic minorities, either. But children are no longer getting a rounded education, they are getting a lop-sided one which only fits them for the job market. That is not the purpose of education.

Of course blank slate-ism is stupid. intelligence is highly heritable. But it’s a complete nonsense to think the ‘most intelligent’ do best in life because of their intelligence and genes, and those who do poorly so so because of a lack of braincells.

You are the one who is showing your ignorance of evidence. Lots of countries in Europe have a much weaker link between parental outcomes/ economic status/ education and child’s outcomes/ economic status/ education than does the UK. We are completely backwards. And lots of incredibly averagely-intellectually endowed children from ultra privileged backgrounds go on to be very successful. It really isn’t because of a genetic advantage!

And also, don’t forget the persuasive power of male privilege. None of the boys at my poor, white comp in the 1980s gave a rats nadge about education unless they had educated parents. They knew they could make plenty of money anyway in a trade, semi skilled profession etc. That’s what 80% did, and it appears things haven’t changed that much going on what I see in the destinations of male children of my school friends who stayed in our small town.

perceives options for girls in a similar position were and still are much more limited. Unskilled girls will be fucked unless they are OK with a gas fitter apprenticeship. Unskilled boys will probably be fine if they have a good work ethic and some common sense.

*percieved

Which point that you think I’m making are you disagreeing with?

Well, @GeneralPeter it rather reads as if you are saying children are inevitably predestined to a significant degree, to meet the same fates as their parents. Do explain if that isn’t what you mean.

@the2andahalfmillion I wouldn’t use the words inevitably predestined, but I do think that there are entirely non-nefarious reasons why we should expect family wealth and educational achievement to correlate to a significant degree.

I think trying to help all children achieve more (including those with ‘good’ factors and those without) is a very worthy cause.

But ‘breaking the link’ to me implies reducing correlation to materially zero (it wasn’t ‘weakening the link’).

That would imply unacceptably (to me) massive state intervention to achieve.

And even if incrementally, starting from the wrong model hinders attempts to produce policies that actually help.

From the right, for example, it justifies socially damaging up-by-bootstraps judgmentalism. And from the left, socially damaging insinuations that if people who come from any but the poorest homes succeed, they must be cheating.

If I took as my aim to break the link between height and basketball success, I’d waste a massive amount of effort, and produce a lot of frustration and blame, versus taking as my goal improving everyone’s sporting ability.

I have no idea what you're talking about. It's very difficult to follow your argument. You seem to be suggesting that only children from wealthy families can achieve at school and those from less wealthy can't and that's inevitable because of their background.

Is that correct?

No.

I’m happy to explain, but to help me do so, could you tell me first if you are familiar with the concept of correlation?

Of course, are you familiar with the concept of clarity of thought?

I think the point is clear @cupcaske123 . There is a link between the family of origin and children’s educational achievement, due to factors that can’t be eliminated (eg parental intelligence). Attempting to break this link completely is unrealistic.

I see. Is there evidence to back this up?

Hang on. I didn’t insult you. I asked what you were familiar with so I could help explain. It’s not a given that everyone on MN understands statistical concepts, especially if they’ve said they have no idea at all what a post means.

Anyway:

People who have a high IQ tend to have higher family incomes than average, and tend to have higher-IQ children than average. Higher-IQ children tend to have better educational outcomes. On average.

That means, all else equal, that we should expect a link between family income and educational attainment.

There will be many, many exceptions to this, of course. Tend to doesn’t mean must, but the pattern is there.

I support policies to help all children succeed to the best of their abilities, and I would expect many poor children to do extremely well, and that is a great thing to be celebrated. I also support policies that help people who don’t have high academic achievement too.

But to want to break the link between family income and educational attainment implies to me a desire to bring that correlation to zero.

I think that would be a very bad idea, as it would imply the state doing things that I think are too much.

For example, it could try to break the link between parental IQ and income (maybe by paying all jobs the same). Or between parental IQ and child IQ (really hard to see how this could be done). Or between IQ and educational attainment (perhaps by reducing the curriculum to the easiest bits only). I would strongly oppose all of those.

That means that the outcome we should expect in a fair world would still have a significant degree of correlation.

But, worse, I think if an expert is starting from the wrong assumption about what a fair outcome would look like, they are likely to come up with policy suggestions that actually do harm. Or that fail to do as much good as they could.

There could be many reasons why someone of high intelligence doesn't succeed for example, disability, deprived background, lack of encouragement from parents, poor teaching, addiction, abuse etc

There are also many examples of children from less wealthy backgrounds doing very well at university and going on to have successful careers. There are also many examples of children from wealthy backgrounds who don't do well.

Children tend to do well at school when they have supportive parents, irrespective of how successful those parents are. There is no evidence to back up the assertion that parents of low intelligence have unsuccessful children.

It's about providing flexibility of opportunities. Which needs a carefully constructed education system. It's a lot of work. (Unfortunately from my pov standardised testing creates the opposite focus within education.)

It also starts at eyfs. And a much much much better send system. I just don't think there's the money to do it.

It would be a brave government who really prioritised education in this way.

Also, the arts are well known for supporting better engagement, as is PE, but simply doesn't have the funding. And we also need teachers who are skilled in these areas, specialists, at primary level. And very skilled at eyfs level.