Since girls and later women are not supposed to be strong this allows for much mental, emotional, social support from an early age along with much love honor and respect simply for being girls. In the information age, this support not only allows girls to mature faster but to do better in academics. This support continues through adulthood and now is showing up in economic advantages for women.

1. I fear the use of Male classrooms with more discipline and more time on task will only lead to more stern and even more harsh treatment and more stereotyping of Males to perform more physical or menial labor to match the growing caste system being portrayed in the media against Males today. These attempts to focus on genetics, learning differences, male role models, or cater to more activity or instruction are destined to failure. The problem is sociological from day one. It is differential treatment Males experience that is creating this problem. Please read Learning Theory and other related articles on this subject.
Complete theory to all

Ah, we all carry the mark of Cain to greater or lesser degree, don’t we?

I googled this to understand what you meant. I still don’t understand. It seems to be a religious reference. Could you explain how this is relevant to the discussion?

And last but not least, your earlier points about men earning more are very valid–so even if there are going to college the earnings gap is still there.

It was interesting to go to a school that didn’t have to give a shit about any Federal rules, but used that ability in a positive fashion. I obviously didn’t meet too many women on campus; one of the guys at my fraternity house distinguished himself by having a co-ed as his girlfriend. It wasn’t remarkable in any negative connotation; there just weren’t that many of them, and some of them had enough of the “classic MIT personality” to make them less than desirable dating potential.

I do admit that it was a bit of a shock, after 12 years of formal schooling, to meet with girls who were as good as I was in science and math. I found it a little intimidating at first, but I grew intrigued.

The professor that had the most lasting impression on my life at MIT was female. She didn’ t teach a technical course; she was one of the few Humanities professors. Humanties courses were all those taught with books with no equations; I had to take 2 in my 4 years there. She was teaching a course in Fantasy and Science Fiction. We had to read two books a week and write 2 or 3 pages on each, and then we discussed them in class. After a week, she walked into the room after we were all there. She said, “I have your papers here.” Then she heaved them across the room. She then excoriated our writing skills, skewering our illusion that long sentences with big words represented great writing skills. She said, “I’m turning the next 6 weeks into a writing course; you’re all going to learn to write declarative sentences.”

She proceeded to do exactly that, and I learned to write. Thirty-0ne years later, I use almost none of the technical knowledge I learned at MIT. But no one I work with can write and explain technical issues to technical and non-technical people better than me. And that’s why I get paid what I get paid. She taught me more than just about any professor there (except a few of the Bio faculty).

but less of the classic MIT personality) from the (mostly men) in prior classes

Ah, we all carry the mark of Cain to greater or lesser degree, don’t we?

Girls are not naturally more suited to sitting still and being quiet. They just get punished more severely with social disapproval than boys do for acting out. I feel actual hate towards people who promote this kind of spurious reasoning about gender stereotypes which was a huge contributory factor in my not being diagnosed and all the concomitant suffering, which was really immense– untreated ADD in girls is also very likely to be comorbid with depression.

Also, one thing I have never, ever understood is how the “neurological differences” BS is even intellectually interesting. I mean, it’s not, and I’m afraid a bit of a rant follows:

There are differences: it is largely impossible to tell if they are innate or social, except that nature and magnitude of the differences shifts across time and culture, so whatever, I know where my money would go, and certainly no one with science smarts can make any definitive claims about what’s “innate”. But that is NOT THE POINT. The point is, who the hell actually cares except for a handful of whiny freaked out conservatives? And what does it say about them that they care?
The differences are minute compared to the variation across individuals in the population, and obsessing about them is really quite offensive to those of us who don’t fit the stereotypes. I mean, just because I have been known to objectify my sex partners and sometimes prioritise sex over affection and am good at maths and rarely enjoy long phone calls, and, oh yeah, really really HATE being forced to sit still and listen to boring tedious teachers who are less smart than me, does not in any way make me masculine. I have girl parts. I love my girl parts. And I am not some kind of rare, statistical freak. Even in the unlikely instance that there were very strong innate differences, there would still be many, many women out there who were smarter, (or less sympathetic, or more athletic, or whatever the anti-stereotype of the day might be), than the average man. Harping on about the differences makes these women feel like there is some kind of innate conflict between their femininity and their intelligence, and thereby of course reinforces the differences, (as faced with a false choice, some women will choose to be “feminine” and dumb) as well as making the women in question unhappy. Which, is, of course, the reason that conservatives obsess about this BS in the first place; there is no useful informational content in all this speculation about gender difference but it does serve as an excellent tool of social control.

PS Nice blog, Amp. Thanks for writing it.

The majority of National Merit scholarships, as well as college academic scholarships, go to girls and young women.

I have not been able to find current info on the gender balance of National Merit Scholars. However, in the early 90s only 40% of National Merit Scholars were female.

Does any dropping by here have any more recent information?

[No prob. Thanks for posting the info. --Amp]

The numbers in the table above don’t make sense. In the years this study reports, 57% of US undergrads were women. That doesn’t square with the “all students” line unless the proportion of students with family incomes above $30K is minute. (Also, I cannot find the article Rachel cites at the Chronicle of Higher Education website.)

My figures come from this report:
Gender Differences in Participation & Completion of Undergraduate Education and How They Have Changed Over Time which I am still looking through.

Here is a summary of the educational gender gap (which I’m now going to call the EGG, because typing the whole thing is boring) from that report, by income and year:

Percent of US undergrads who were women
Income level 1989″“90 1995″“96 1999″“2000
Low income 59.3 60.2 60.2
Middle low income 56.3 56.5 56.3
Middle high income 55.7 55.7 56.0
High income 50.9 54.5 53.4
All students 55.3 56.8 56.3

(see the table at my blog if this isn’t clear)

Note: the Standard Errors for the 95-96 and 99-00 figures are 5 to 10 times what they are for 89-90 (sample size), so be careful what kind of trend conclusions you draw.

I have not yet found statistics about the EGG by race *and* income, so I cannot answer the question: “Is there an EGG for medium-to-high-income white students?” The fact that there is still an EGG for high-income students (who are overwhelmingly white & Asian) strongly suggests that the EGG is not just about race & income, but affects well-off white boys too, though to a lesser degree.

My personal guess about the gender-specific component of the EGG is summarized by the title of this book by Mariah Burton Nelson: The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football. IMHO is it not possible for the average US boy to do as well academically as the average US girl, so long as he spends a great deal of his time, energy, and ambition on sports.

And yes, there are significant neurological and hormonal differences between boys and girls.

And yes, schools are not helping boys.
We’ll have a website up in 2006 on SmartBoysBadGrades devoted to this issue. And a report out on March 8 on the solution.

I never figured it out at the time, but I recently ran into a professor there who had been at MIT at the time, and had been involved with the decision. Apparently the administration had been planning to start an affirmative-action program that would have let women in with lower test scores than, and the faculty threw a collective fit and nixed the idea. Instead, they raised their standards on the verbal part of the SATs, which they previously hadn’t considered much at all. The result was a much more gender-balanced class, and the professor I talked to said that they were generally quite happy with the change in the student body.

My facts here come from gossip — if there are any MIT insiders with a more accurate version of the story, I’d be very interested.