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Girls are taking the nation's colleges by storm. They're streaming to campuses in greater numbers, earning better grades and graduating more often. The same phenomenal success shows in high schools, where girls dominate honor rolls, hold more student government spots and rake in most of the academic awards.

So says a just-released report from the U.S. Department of Education.

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The problem has already grown so severe that three out of every four private colleges (an informal estimate from admissions directors) quietly practice affirmative action for boys, favoring them over girls in admissions to get near balance.

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Increasingly, success requires verbal skills, which everyone agrees come more naturally to girls. ... Even in technical fields, verbal skills are at a premium. An auto mechanic or TV repairman now needs to master complex technical manuals.

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Yet for most educators — from kindergarten on up — the problem is invisible. Any teacher looking for national research that might define classroom solutions won't find any. They don't exist.

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Michael Gurian, author, Boys and Girls Learn Differently: ..."The teachers are therefore not fully prepared to take on boys' minds in schools. Our school classrooms themselves — at all grade levels — favor the female mind's way of acquiring and processing information. Many boys are simply set up not to succeed."

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Barbara Sprung, co-director, Educational Equity Concepts: "Boys pick up cues from the world around them — from the toys they are given to the TV programs they watch — that reading and writing are more for girls than boys. This attitude has negative consequences for their future education. The problem begins before kindergarten."

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Phew. That was a lot of quotes.

I think that the reason for boys failing to succeed academically is just a lack of interest. I can't ever remember a time in class when a female would flip another students bookbag, throw paper airplanes, or shine the reflection of the sun from into a teacher's eyes.

Come to think about, males and females only differ by one chromosome - the males have the Y chromosome. And if I remember correctly, this chromosome basically deals with mental/physical development and shouldn't have anything to do with how intelligent one is.

If academic stimulation in males comes at a later time than females, maybe the solution, if possible, is to make it somehow more appealing.

[ December 06, 2004, 05:20 AM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
 

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Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
 
I thought the official practice was to grant easier standards for women.
 

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Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
 
Almost makes me want to go back to school.

-Trevor
 

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Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
 
American culture, as a whole, is going down the tubes. Mind you, I do not say this with a negative bias. I loved America, I love liberty, and just hearing a patriotic song can make me cry. I say this from the cynical, pessimistic observation that grand empires, such as Rome, Greece, Persia, Bablyon, Assyria, Ottomans, USSR, tend to reach a high-point and from then deteroriate over a period of time.

I personally feel that Americans have become lazy, that they have lost touch with what made them once great, the love and strength and ethic of the people Who Once Were. Americans now are increasingly becoming apathetic, turning to TV, stuffing fat on food, and lazy...

Please prove me wrong. It would make me happy .
 

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Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
 
That's quickly falling by the wayside - except in physical issues and even then, that distinction won't last long.

-Trevor

Edit: Replying to NFL, not Phanto.

[ December 05, 2004, 09:34 PM: Message edited by: TMedina ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
It seems that the common logic is that the only possible explanation for a difference in achievement between two groups is discrimination against the group doing worse, suggesting that our society has become anti-male...
 

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Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
 
Actually, I'm working on an extended project in which I modify actuary equations to deal with the lifespan of a society. Right now I'm not too accurate, but America, based on recent statistics, is scoring around one or two hundred years.
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
Without information to the contrary, the probability that we are in the middle 90% of any given phenomenon is 90%. By that logic, America will last at least another 11 years, but probably no more than 4500.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
None of those quuote said girls are better or smarter overall than boy, but that the teaching stlyes in schools are more geared to the way most women learn.....verbal interaction.

In my family it was the other way around...I was the more verbal kid, very interested in reading, while my sister was the one who had a tough time in schools because she was very visually orientated and learned better through hands-on learning...a technique usually reserved for shop classes and auto classes.

There are very real differences in the way most boys and most girls learn, and the best teachers are the ones who learn what works and what doesn't for each student.

As far as toys, most ofthe boys toys are guns, trucks, planes..things that cater to their "innate" desire to be more active. There are some studies (sorry, I can't link to them, but they are in the book mentioned in your quotes) that indicate that a lot of that behavior is learned not innate...hence the quotation marks around that word earlier. Boys have different expectations upon them form the first time they meet someone to play with them...it is almost always assumed that as a boy they would rather be playing dodgeball or baseball than reading of learning.

There is also a lot of boys that see learning as something distasteful and unmanly. I loved school, but a lot of guys hated it and assumed that any boy who liked it was being "girly", and picked on the boys who liked learning and reading. It was seen alomst as a stigma to be smart instead of a good athelete...and it wasn't just the young boys that thought that way, some of the teachers would be fairly obvious about what they thought about smart boys.

Not that women don't have their own burdens to carry in the educational field, but in the last couple of decades it ahs become acceptable for girls to excell, at least in comparason with the past years. I have seen no such relief for boys though, they are often seen as inferior if they prefer Shakespere to comics, and music trather than Shop class.

Kwea
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"Americans now are increasingly becoming apathetic, turning to TV, stuffing fat on food, and lazy..."

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking...
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 
I still don't see how the tendency to be physcially active in boys has anything to do with their academic success.

Live obviously isn't just pure academics, that's why schools have sports teams.

Even if the "cues" that boys pick up from around the world "that reading and writing are more for girls than boys" are present, what about the cues from going to school 8 hours a day?
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Your bias is showing....the exact bias I was talking about.

Boys are discouraged from mental activity and encouraged in Physical activity....both by the other students and by the facilty, and even parents.

We just need to do a better job of showing both to be neccessary for everyone, and that starts by expecting all kids to meet minimum standards in education....everyone has to be able to read and write, atheletes are not exempt.

And not all atheletes are dumb either...my dad is one of the smartest people I have ever met, and he played basketball and ran cross country...he set the PA State record for Cross Country when he was in school....but his teachers made fun of him and literaly told him "Bobby, just put your head down and don't worry about it...you will pass. I don't want to have you in my class again next year."



Kwea
 

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Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
 
Because school requires students to be quiet and sit, paying attention to the teacher and absorbing the information through visual and auditory stimuli.

Boys that have been encouraged to be athletic, energetic and generally rambunctious may and usually do lack the self-discipline to make themselves do something they might otherwise not want to do.

-Trevor
 

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Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
 
Okay, this has brought up something I've been noticing in my classroom, and I'm wondering what other people's take on it is. (especially Irami, if he's around).

There's been much publicity about an achievement gap in this country between white students and minority students, specifically black students. Test scores, performance - a lot of indicators show that white students are outperforming black students, and I have seen the same in my classroom despite my best efforts.

There are a lot of factors here, but I think it significant that this gap is not nearly so much a problem with black girls as it is black boys. And I have a theory that I wanted to bounce off hatrack.

What I've noticed is that girls ask more questions than boys, and not always because the girls are more verbal. It seems that girls are more willing to admit they do not understand, and are therefore more open to having someone explain things to them. Boys very often want to seem as though they know everything and don't need any help, which means they end up with gaps in their learning.

This is especially the case with my black students. The boys seem to think that either a) they know it all and don't need any help, or b) it's not worth knowing, so they're not going to try. Both seem to stem from some a sense of machismo, in that the boys can't allow others to see them fail or do poorly.

So, if they talk big and say they know everything, it gives the impression that they do. And if they do no work and still manage to pass, they can say that if they actually *tried* they'd be smarter than everyone.

Both show an unwillingness to admit weakness, or to admit that they need help. Male students in general, but specifically black male students, do not like admitting they are confused and can't do something on their own. So they don't ask.

On the other hand, my female students ask a hundred questions. They have no problem admitting when they don't understand a concept and work hard to shore up those weak points. Even if it's just an exclamation that they don't understand, that gives me the cue to explain a topic more - which benefits the student having difficulty.

The first step is admitting you have a problem, they say, and it is as true for education as it is for those suffering from addiction. If you can't admit that you don't know something or that you don't understand it, then your mind is closed to that knowledge and understanding.

My black female students are some of my best and brightest, whereas my black male students are on the entirely opposite end of the scale.

My theory is that, for some reason, black male students (and to a lesser extent, all male students) have a more difficult time admitting flaws to others, and therefore are less open to improving themselves.

Any thougths?

[ December 05, 2004, 09:58 PM: Message edited by: FlyingCow ]
 

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Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
 
TomDavidson: My arguement is that America is mirroring the same pattern of social degeneration that other empires suffered and led to their downfalls. It is not judging any of the more liberal attitudes towards race, gender, and sex that have come about. I personally like those attitudes, actually.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Also, the main point of those articles wwas that the overall teaching style of modern shhools is geared more to verbal skills, which is something that girls excel at compared to boys. There ARE ways of getting past that, but it all starts with making it more accepted for a boy to like learning those things.

There are ways of teaching subjects using hands-on methods, and that helps boys to comprehend faster too....and even some girls, like my sister.

She went to a tech school after high school, and now has a 4 year degree and is a recruiter for that college. She loved learning Radio and Video Production and Editing because it was hands on....she made the deans list for the first time in her life there, and graduated with a 3.4 GPA.



Kwea
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 

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Boys are discouraged from mental activity and encouraged in Physical activity....both by the other students and by the facilty, and even parents.

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I'm from a different region of the country than you, I guess . Never have I seen any member of any school's facility I've been in discourage mental activity, nor any parents either. Apathy I've seen, but never discouragement.

[ December 05, 2004, 10:15 PM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 

quote:

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Because school requires students to be quiet and sit, paying attention to the teacher and absorbing the information through visual and auditory stimuli.

Boys that have been encouraged to be athletic, energetic and generally rambunctious may and usually do lack the self-discipline to make themselves do something they might otherwise not want to do.

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That may be true. But if these students do things that the teachers don't approve of, are they not punished? And who likes punishment?

And I still think that cues from school encourage learning, even to students who don't pay 100% attention.
 

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Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
 
I don't think that attitude is limited strictly to black males - how many women lament that men will not stop and ask for directions?

We don't like to appear weak - and "weak" can be defined in a number of ways for this context.

By exposing a vulnerability, we invite other males to take advantage of that weakness - in the classroom, that aggression will take the form of snickering, laughing and ridicule. And we do it for no particular reason - because someone asking a question is rarely funny.

-Trevor
 

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Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
 
First let me say that anecdotally, I agree with the quotes from this recent report about girls in school. It certainly seemed to me that girls are more studious, and raised their hand more than boys did.

But the quotes fly in the face of accepted teaching: The "Reviving Ophelia" theory, which claims that boys demand more attention from teachers, and girls learn to be invisible in classrooms. Thus girls start sliding behind boys in academic areas.

Some schools have gone so far as to have all girl classes so the girls don't have to compete with boys, especially in the traditionally male dominated math and science courses.

HUH?

So which one is right? It seems to me that both sides are only looking at a part of the picture, and we need a more overall look in order to get a real sense of what's going on.

Flying Cow's questions about black students (again my anecdotal experience is similar to hers) makes me think that it may break down along socioeconomic lines. White upper middle class girls may suffer the Ophelia thing (for example) more than other social groups. (or maybe just blondes... I'm only half kidding. Do pretty girls fall into a trap of learned helplessness?) Also, teachers have been taught to make special efforts to include girls. Are they not bothering to include boys now? Are we going to swing back and forth every 20 years?

This is one I have no answer for. So I'm throwing out lots of questions as a brainstorming excercise.
 

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Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
 
In general girls do better in an academic writing classes and boys do better in a more hands-on environment. I've read that splitting classes improves boys' scores, especially in math and science, although I'd never want to be in an all-girls class *shudder*.

I've never heard of girls doing worse, just because they don't make a ruckus . I also have this belief that in many cases, male teachers are more successful in getting results from male students.
 

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Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
 

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Never have I seen any member of any school's facility I've been in discourage mental activity, nor any parents either. Apathy I've seen, but never discouragement.

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Oh I have. But you have to know what you're looking for. The worst offenders are math teachers, who will tell a student to follow a rule (i.e. stay-change-flip) without telling them why it works. (a lot of the time it's because the teacher doesn't know either) When the student says they don't understand, the teacher just reiterates the rule, without encouraging thought. "Don't think about it too hard, just follow the rule, and it works."
 

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Posted by raventh1 (Member # 3750) on :
 
Wait, you mean to tell me there are GIRLS at school?!

WHERE DO I SIGN UP!? !!!
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 
Edit:

[ December 06, 2004, 12:02 AM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
kai,
I was talking about people on Hatrack and I shouldn't have. I had no expectation of what I said having a good effect. It was just an expression of strong emotion. I pretty immediately thought better of it. I'd appreciate it if you'd clear out the quote from it, but it's totally your right to do whatever with it you want.

edit: I'll leave this up though, because I did do that and I'll own up to it.

[ December 06, 2004, 12:03 AM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
 

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Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
 

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And I still think that cues from school encourage learning, even to students who don't pay 100% attention.

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Sports!! Thats what school is all about!

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This is especially the case with my black students. The boys seem to think that either a) they know it all and don't need any help, or b) it's not worth knowing, so they're not going to try. Both seem to stem from some a sense of machismo, in that the boys can't allow others to see them fail or do poorly.

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grades matter to the point that the administration will be in trouble if we didn't get good grades, and sports matter in that EVERYONE REALLY CARES ABOUT SPORTS.

You can quote funding, statistics and percentages all you want. The message that has been picked up by the student body of my high school is that our administration and community does not care about learning.

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I agree with Alcon.
Now Alcon, can you explain why you care about learning?

The fundamental problem with NCLB is that Bush started administering tests without making the case about why the material on these particular tests is important.

One would think that someone who has been derided by the intelligensia would be especially sensitive to administering standardized tests without thinking hard about the worth of the standard.

[ December 06, 2004, 07:02 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 
Well Alcon, we're talking about different things. You're talking about your high school experience. I think I can say for the majority of junior high, high, and university schools that the main focus is NOT sports, but rather academics, for the following because:

- Teachers have the most influence on students.
- Teachers are especially trained to teach students academics.
- Schools receive funding based on academic success, at least where I am from.

[ December 06, 2004, 01:19 AM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
 

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Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
 
Irami... I don't really know... and sorry your quote looks weird now. I editted my post cause it was leaning more towards yelling unhelpful rant than anything helpful.

But I've always just been one of the geeks. When I was in elementary school I loved being considered one of the smartest kids and one of the weirdest kids. In middle school I was in the Alps(gifted and talented or accelerated learning program) program and fell in with a group of brilliant students who valued the weird and the inteligent over everything else and stuck with them. I was never the smartest amoung them, but I was always a geek and considered one of the smartest. And I love that. And... I dunno, even before I discovered I liked being considered smart, I loved learning. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that both my parents are university professors and they managed to instill that value in me. Or maybe I'm just weird
 

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Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
 
And Kaioshin... maybe for some it is true. But for a lot of the public ones... I'll bet you find it isn't true. Its certainly not at my local university either. Where the school's athletic department gets more attention than any other. At least from the surrounding community. And this is a Big Ten university. I'm talking from observational expierence, from what I see of students and from the message I get.

How do you know what message is being picked up in other schools? Are you in school right now? Or have you been in the past five years or so? Have you talked about this to students who are?

The statistics you seem to be going off of would suggest the same conclusion you are coming to: that academics are the focus for my school as well as all the others. But that is not the message that reaches students. That is my point. We are not talking about different things, becuase I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that a similar message, maybe not quite as strong reaches students all over the country.

EDIT: (to account for your edit )

quote:

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I think I can say for the majority of junior high, high, and university schools that the main focus is NOT sports, but rather academics, for the following because:

- Teachers have the most influence on students.
- Teachers are especially trained to teach students academics.
- Schools receive funding based on academic success, at least where I am from.

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Schools receive funding based on grades. Grades and academic success and teaching students to care about learning are all completely different things.

If you are trying to teach students to care about learning then you have them take the hardest classes and push themselves to limits of their learning ability academically. You want them going into detail on subjects and pushing to get farther and learn more. BUT if they do that, grades will probably drop. If they take the easier, boring classes where the teachers say: you are here to get a good grade, we all know it. Then they will get good grades and not have to work as hard.

The good teachers in my experience, the ones who care about their students and how their students learn generally teach the higher level more difficult classes. The teachers most students get are teachers like Mr. Green in my high school. He's been nick-named the walking potato - becuase he looks like one and he has the brains of one. For some reason he was assigned to teach AP US History so some of my friends were forced to have him. They caught him on all kinds of errors. And there are other teachers like him in my school.

Also, can teachers really compete with the fact that:

-the principles know the sports teams by name. As do many of the teachers!

-the papers print the sports teams successes and failures in the paper everyday, with their names. The result: most of the town knows the names of the basketball players.

-The teams successus and failures are stated on the morning announcements every morning, and there are always big pushes to go out and support the teams at games. Students are named and given fame.

Are students named for getting good grades? No. Are they named for taking hard classes? No. Are they named for doing both? No. Does anyone seem to care besides the teachers? No. Do even all the teachers really care? No, in fact most don't.

It took me four years at my high school to sift through the teachers and find the good ones. Many see so many students that they don't even bother to learn all of their students names during a class, they just learn the names of the loud ones. Which are often the sports players and the cheerleaders.

[ December 06, 2004, 01:30 AM: Message edited by: Alcon ]
 

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Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
 
The big issue is how you happened to be weird in all the right ways.
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 
Heh - I'm a sophomore at the Univ. of Florida.

My HS experience was very much the opposite of yours. I, too, was one of the geeks, I was on the county academic as well, but my school cared about learning.

Of course my school was ranked #40 best High School w/an IB program in the nation by Newsweek magazine(they REALLY rubbed that in). Academics, especially the FCAT test which determines the school funding, were stressed much more than sports. And since our school repeatedly got "A" ratings from the FCAT test, we got more and more funding, and this only further stressed academics. Heck, we didn't even have a football team.

I guess I'm just lucky.

[ December 06, 2004, 01:34 AM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
 

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Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
 
Kaioshin... you did get lucky. Your school sounds awesome. But somehow I suspect that my school is far more representative of the nation at large...
 

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Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
 
Yep. You're right. (That's a fun one to drop into any debate if you're just watching it. )
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 
And moreso, my school was intentionally located within a black neighborhood, so that people living nearby would automatically be zoned in to the school.

For students not in the zones, the parents have to put their children on a waiting list years prior to enrollment.

Do the schools with football teams get this? Nope.

So yes, my experience is that parents from around the county care, and faculty care.

Edit: to account for your edit of my edit

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Schools receive funding based on grades. Grades and academic success and teaching students to care about learning are all completely different things.

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Getting oriented in school is the tricky part, and there are all sorts of assumptions that even regular white kids bring to school to which black kids are oblivious.

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What assumptions do you speak of? Isn't the whole process of school sitting down at your desk, taking out your notebook, and listening and writing down what the teacher says?
 

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Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
 
No.

But I'm not sure what assumptions he's talking about... and I really really really need to go to bed now. I have school tomorrow

[ December 06, 2004, 01:57 AM: Message edited by: Alcon ]
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 
Alcon, you say that for you, the group of students that desire to learn, you get the message that sports are more important.

But what about those students who aren't at the peak of academics like you, and are neither on a sports team. Is the average student better at academics than at say, basketball or football? I think so. Therefore I think they favor academics over sports.

edit: g'night

[ December 06, 2004, 01:59 AM: Message edited by: kaioshin00 ]
 

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Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
 

quote:

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What assumptions do you speak of? Isn't the whole process of school sitting down at your desk, taking out your notebook, and listening and writing down what the teacher says?

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It's deeper than that. Let's say that it were 2000 years ago, and the teacher starts teaching about how across the sea is the end of the world, and if you cross, you are going to fall off because the world is flat.

Of course the world is flat. Everything seems as if it's flat. And the entire society is built around the world being flat. Now let's say that you don't think that the world is flat, and you can't really understand why everyone assumes that it is flat. You don't have a reason why you think it's round, but you can't see the reason to think that it's flat. And if everything in school is predicated on this assumption, you are kind of suspicious about the worth of school.

The issues that lead to the achievement gap between races lie in the fundamental assumptions that white kids and teachers and administrators don't even view as assumptions. It's a difference in dispositions. It's deep. It's as deep as if I were to say, "2 + 2 = 4" is neither true nor false, but a matter of convention dependent upon the preconditions for our understanding of the world, but since the statement itself is not of anything in the world, it is neither true nor false.

You see, since we assume that truth is correctness of assertion, the statement "2+2=4" is true. But it's perfectly reasonable-- and I think more appropriate-- to understand truth as the greeks did, as aletheia, or unconcealing, and there is nothing about pure arithmetic that is a matter of the world revealing itself to us, therefore, there is nothing about mathematic propositions which can be judged as true. These propositions can be judged as merely correct, orthos, but that's not the same, or nearly as dear, as truth. *shrugs* If you followed all of that, then good for you, but most people probably shut off half way through the paragraph, and that, my friends, is an example of black males in school.

It's these kind of deep assumptions that happen everyday in our classrooms that caused Bush to believe that the Iraqies would welcome us with open arms. This is about disposition and comportment. People bring a fundamentally different understanding of the world and each other to the classroom. Some of it is addressed, but some of it isn't.

And since we are talking about social mores and priorities instead of the flatness of the world or the nature of truth, it poses a special set of problems.

[ December 06, 2004, 03:34 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
 

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Posted by signal (Member # 6828) on :
 
I don't know how representative this is of the rest of the nation, but my high school was very similiar to what Alcon is talking about. I was relatively average as a student grade-wise, but I took a ton of advanced classes. I was friends with many different people from all over the spectrum of cliques. Many of the teachers were coaches for various sports teams and they would always announce meets or wins in class. Sports were also announced every week over the PA system. Academic events were barely given a footnote. I also participated in different extra-curricular activities throughout my high school career, some sports, some academic, some arts related. Let me tell you that the majority of funding went to sports. Some of the larger academic groups were secondary, and if there was anything left, then the rest of the academics, special interest groups and arts related groups split the rest.

When I was in college, I also noticed the same thing. I was a teasurer for the school's chapter of the United Nations Association for a while. I did a lot of research into the school's spending practices and frankly, I was appalled. On top of everything, the student government controlled activity money so the situation was worse than it should have been. Of the activities money alone, at least 20% was spent on the student government themselves. Most of the expenses weren't even legitimate. There were things like "team building or leadership retreats" to ski resorts with airfar, hotel and food paid for. Sports activities recieved the majority of the remaining funds and other clubs were lucky if they got anything at all. The school itself spent most of its money on newer sports facilities (as in they already had some, but wanted an upgrade) and sports teams. I could concievably understand if our school was good at any of the sports, but we sucked. Horribly. Many of the programs at the school suffered due to lack of funding for teachers and facilities to even hold class. I know of at least two of the majors losing accreditation because they just didn't have the funding to maintain themselves.

As for the original topic, I was part of a scholarship program and 95% of the people accepted were female (the majority were in fact black). I think there were only two guys in the whole group (myself included). I don't know if this shows anything, but thought I'd throw it out there.

[ December 06, 2004, 02:40 AM: Message edited by: signal ]
 

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Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
 
I hate it when I read through a discussion and then realize that I no longer have the heart to post the stupid, flippant (yet strangely funny) comment I intended to when I first saw the topic.
 

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Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
 

_____

My work here is done.
 

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Posted by signal (Member # 6828) on :
 
Annie, Post it anyways. You can't just say you had something funny to say and then not say it.
 

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Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
 
Incidentally, I really liked your work here, Irami, and am now all motivated to go re-read a lot of my educational psychology texts.
 

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Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
 
What I was going to point out is that one of the fundamental things I learned in grade school was that "boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider."
 

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Posted by signal (Member # 6828) on :
 
Funny, I always remembered it the other way around. lol

Oh, and you have to know where Jupiter is in order to go there, but that involves paying attention in school. So there!
 

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Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
 
And I, big surprise, have never heard it before.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Irami, I'm saving this thread. Fascinating.

Thanks for the insight so clearly worded and carefully thought out.
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 

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It's deeper than that. Let's say that it were 2000 years ago, and the teacher starts teaching about how across the sea is the end of the world, and if you cross, you are going to fall off because the world is flat.

Of course the world is flat. Everything seems as if it's flat. And the entire society is built around the world being flat. Now let's say that you don't think that the world is flat, and you can't really understand why everyone assumes that it is flat. You don't have a reason why you think it's round, but you can't see the reason to think that it's flat. And if everything in school is predicated on this assumption, you are kind of suspicious about the worth of school.

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And when fewer men earn college degrees there are fewer partners whom educated women find desirable to marry. That's a debilitating social phenomenon African-American women have struggled with for years.

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History, English, Math, and Science. It seems that one can only dispute the math and sciences, but everything taught until the high school level is explicitly proven.

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And why would this innate doubt of schooling only occur in black males?

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It's got something to do with the formal concept of American english, history, and education being essentially springing from white culture, and it's a fundamental lack of trust and understanding. The understanding isn't that big of a deal, but without trust, everything falls apart. And in my esteem, the white American law, business, and policy-makers have only earned so much trust. I'll be honest, for a lot of black people, it's a question of staying on the outside or giving up a sense of morality and joining in. And when you don't have money, the question is better said, do you want to keep your soul, or do you want to sell it for a chance for a little more coin. When 89 percent of black people vote for one candidate and white people come out overwhelming for the other, you don't think there is a disconnect? It's an effect, not a cause. You don't see it, but then again, you think the earth is flat, so to speak.

And being a permanent minority in a democracy doesn't help. It's the same reason that black males have more run-ins with the law. Strangely enough, it may be the downside to integration. If not for integration, we probably just would have formed our own society. That is, until white people were threatened and put the smack down. It's the difference between being brought here by force and immigrating, and blacks don't have the same drive to assimilate as other immigrants, for good reason.

[ December 06, 2004, 06:40 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
 

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Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
 
Wow, Irami! I find your thoughts and your posts in this thread impressive.

Eduardo Sauron was telling me the other day about something cool he was studying about teaching kids from minority cultures that went along with what you are saying. This applies to any case worldwide, in which there are two cultures blended in schools. Whichever is the dominant culture in society will have a whole set of behaviors and assumptions (for instance, dress codes, styles of speech, music, etc.) that are considered "right" by the teachers and so are rewarded. The minority culture will have different behaviors and assumptions which the teachers implicitly think and tacitly communicate are "wrong", for no other reason than they are not from the dominant culture. Thus, the minority student is constantly given messages that his family, his neighborhood, his entire culture is invalid and incorrect. So then in order to learn from that teacher, the student has to basically abandon his own culture for a foreign one. This is a huge barrier to learning.

On the other hand, if the teacher will make the effort to learn to appreciate and enjoy the non-dominant cultures, such that all students understand that they are not outsiders here, that their neighborhood, family, and culture are valued, then the barrier is overcome. Basically it should be the teacher who jumps the barrier, to reach the kids on both sides, rather than insisting on and waiting for the kids to do so. I thought that was a great idea, and I hope Eduardo will post here explaining it better than I can.

As for boys and girls, I find it interesting that nobody has yet asked the question "are girls simply smarter?" When boys excel over girls at things (including math and science) the assumption always seems to be that they are just better at that thing. I hear the assumption constantly that boys are just better at math and science, and I'm told all the time that I think like a man. (Since I'm good at math and science.) Obviously that assumption sort of grates me.

I am just laughing at the assumptions that I see here about what boys and girls excel at, and how boys and girls are different. None of this is based in reality, that I can tell. When we try to correct our prejudices it seems that we only migrate to new ones, and never learn the lesson that all prejudices are suspect.

[ December 06, 2004, 06:33 AM: Message edited by: Tatiana ]
 

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Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
 
In my engineering school, too, in classes in which spatial thinking, logic, math and science are heavily weighted, the girls were about 30% of the class but the top students were always girls, and girls overall did better. I attributed this to self-selection. That lots of guys wanted to be engineers but the girls who went into engineering against society's biases usually did so because they excelled at such things.

I'm not entirely sure that girls aren't simply smarter than boys on average, though. We have an awful lot more genetic material. Girls have fewer learning disabilities, they are less likely to have color blindness, hemophilia, and basically across the board in developmental disorders, boys outnumber girls in every one.

If that's the case, what should we do?

[ December 06, 2004, 06:42 AM: Message edited by: Tatiana ]
 

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Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
 
Just dropping in to say...

Though I am several years out of high school,I am quite a geek, and I was by no means the only one in my high school. Our academic team routinely did very, very well; our orchestra was also routinely recognized for very high quality (I participated in both). Though the principal (<grammar nazi>NOT principle! </grammar nazi>) vaguely knew who I was and who my friends and fellow geeks were, he was FAR more interested in the school's quarterback my senior year...who (as was listed in a newspaper article about him) had, by the age of seventeen, produced the astounding achievements of a 970 on the SAT and less than 2% body fat. And our football team didn't even do that well.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think Alcon's experience is FAR more representative of the norm for this country than your situation, kaioshin (which, btw, sounds absolutely wonderful). And the impression I got wasn't that these "athletes" were discouraged from thinking...but that they were never required to do it. They, as (male) athletes tend to in this society, got a bye when it came to academic achievement. It was never impressed upon them that hey, it might be good to develop some life-skills outside of sports and critical thinking in general.

I, however, have an admitted bias against athletics in schools, because I think they DO become an unhealthy draw away from the actual purpose of the school.

Warning: rant below

<rant>
(and I think this is true at both the high school and college level; witness the new athletics fee added for ALL IU students in order to make up for the shortfalls of the athletics department. We aren't going to raise ticket prices, no, no, we'll make the STUDENTS pay for it...even the ones who never go to games, don't give a rat's tuckus about sports, and even those who firmly believe that athletics in schools represent the main source of the sucking of all intelligent life from sooo many Americans.)
</rant>
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
What evidence is there that sports detract from academic success? To the contrary, sports tend to teach responsibility, discipline, and hard work. I would suspect, based on my memories of school and knowledge of the atheletes there, that if you are on an atheletic team you are actually more likely to do well academicly and more likely to succeed after school. Most of the more successful student were also on atheletic teams, and most of the dropouts or very poor students were not participating in anything.

It is not like pthe eople who were involved in atheletics would have pursued more academic things during that time instead. Rather, they would normally pursue nothing instead.
 

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Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
 
Xap, in my experience from school, most of the athletes were successful academically--if they were, and not all were--only because they took the REALLY easy classes (there were exceptions, of course, but there were no athletes in the top 10 or even the top 20 percent of my class when I graduated).

The idea that athletics promotes "responsibility, discipline, and hard work" may have been true at one point in history, but now it seems that to most people it's the fast, easy way to lots and lots of money. The athletes I knew in high school exhibited none of those qualities; they were the ones partying and goofing off in the one or two classes I actually had with them. Witness the fellow who was so proud of his 970 on the SAT.

I can't speak for athletes at the collegiate level, since I don't know them personally. However, since they get special services from the University, special discounts, perks, etc., I don't imagine it's that different. If anyone has firsthand information that can correct that impression, I would be glad to hear it.

I don't have specific evidence per se, other than my observation of public education at every level up until post-graduate work. I do believe, however, that this society's public schools celebrate the quick-and-easy sports celebrity route much more than they support academic achievements.

[ December 06, 2004, 08:59 AM: Message edited by: Megan ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
I think that is a stereotype that doesn't hold true. I took many AP and advanced courses during high school, and they had no shortage of atheletes. I'd speculate that the majority of the top 10% of my class were involved in some sport or another (I knew most of them), which I highly doubt was the case for the bottom 10%, who I'd suspect were involved in very little.

Keep in mind when you make comments about the 970 SAT score and partying attitude, that the majority of people in the school in general (athelete or nonathelete) are going to fall into that category. Thus, the majority of atheletes will probably fall into those categories as well. However, I don't think it's fair to say atheletics makes them LESS smart. Rather, it just takes unintelligent and intelligent people alike and helps them become a little bit more smart, disciplined, and skilled.

Just look at how colleges weight it... Do they penalize you for being on a sports team? No - they give you bonus points. That indicates it is a positive indicator of success, not negative.

quote:

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The idea that athletics promotes "responsibility, discipline, and hard work" may have been true at one point in history, but now it seems that to most people it's the fast, easy way to lots and lots of money

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Have you been an athelete? Players get no money for playing, and normally don't expect to ever(unless they are really gifted and dedicated). It involves practice every day (which is usually difficult), weight training, maintaining grades, and a high degree of dedication... or else you will get cut, or no playing time. There is nothing easy about it.
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
Its hard to do studies on high school athletics of this sort, but studies on college athletics routinely find inferior grades and inferior coursework even within those grades.

Not for every athlete, but on the average.
 

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Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
 
In my school (I went to the same school as Alcon) our class ranking system was very screwed up*, so I'd rather like to use the example of my AP classes. There was my second year calculus class, which was probably the most academically advanced class in the school. There were no athletes in it, at all. In my other AP classes there were some athletes, but not a huge amount. And I'd say about half of the students at my school were involved in some athletic group (does that sound right, Alcon?) so according to your model, Tres, all of the AP classes should have been about 50/50, they weren't. I'd say they had about 25% athletes, with more in the easier AP classes.

*Our school began weighting our grades in my senior year, but did not weight them retroactively. A lot of the really good students had taken a ton of the weighted classes (AP, advanced languages) in their first 3 years, and had moved on to taking classes through IU their senior year. College class weren't weighted at all. So basically, the system disenfranchised a lot of the really good students, and instead awarded the students who hadn't taken any AP classes until their senior year.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Yes, but college atheletes are different in that colleges lower standards to accept them - we would expect them to do worse in academics. Furthermore, a college athelete often is in school to become a better player moreso than to learn.

[ December 06, 2004, 10:09 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
 
I would say that you probably get pretty good academic performance of athletes in non-money sports. Swimmers, for example, have one of the highest GPAs around because they all realize that there isn't any money in it.

You could probably argue that there is some self selection of wealthy people that put more emphasis on academics to the non-money sports and I might be willing to agree at least partially with you.

I have a tangetial theory about the "black" experience vs the normal immigrant experience too. My own bf is black, but his ancestors immigrated to New York from Jamaica and Cuba. I believe as a result of the fact they *chose* to go somewhere to better themselves, they integrated far more into the 'white' culture and experience than those who are the ancestors of U.S. slaves. You also don't find nearly as much of a disparity in Canada. But the black people there are the ones whose ancestors *chose* generally to take extroardinary measures to get to freedom.

Every other group of people here in the US other than the Native Americans and the majority of Blacks (and there are paralells between the two groups)had ancestors who were more adventurous than those who stayed behind in their countries of origin. I believe that there is some element of that adventuresome spirit (probably because of a bit of both genetics and nurture) passed on from generation to generation.

I don't think that the traditional Black experience necessarily has this same combination of traits from their ancestors. Because they didn't come here by choice. Yes they endured terrible hardships and their ancestors were the surviviors, but there is a difference between surviving and pushing forward to that edge voluntarily.

Note: I'm not saying that Blacks are in anyway inferior or lazy or anything. I'm just speculating on the origins of the differences in culture. I don't think it is all 'nature' or all 'nurture' but it is possible that the component of the culture that was the pushing things forward part, was massively selected against, both when captured for slavery (maybe they died rather than going into chains) and in slavery itself.

I think a population can renew itself and we have seen many great black leaders. But I think it is taking longer because of the inital selection against those traits, and because even the people in the initial population who had those traits, were the ones that left for Canada.

And now, someone like my bf, who came from a somewhat different culture and stock of "black" is ridiculed as a turncoat, because he has embraced the more mainstream culture because his family chose to move here and embrace it. Which is sad. It wasn't his choice really, either way, it was the choices of his ancestors.

Now he's even more of a sellout from the other side because he (as did his father) is dating a white woman, and therefore depriving a black woman of an educated husband and father. And from a cultural standpoint I agree. Though on a personal the reason he and I are together is because the large number of interests we have in common. Funny thing is, I, blonde hair, blue eyes and all, attended more traditionally black functions in college than he did (I don't think he attended any) and was actually invited to join a traditionally black sorority on my own merit.

AJ

[ December 06, 2004, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
 

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Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
 
Irami's posts reminded me of a principle that you cannot explain an obscure rule in a game without explaining most of the game.For example, the infield fly rule in baseball cannot be understood or explained out of context.
 

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Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
 
I'm curious how I suddenly became a "she". Maybe because I was asking a question?

Irami, your premise is definitely giving me some food for thought, and I'm sure it's going to be some time before I can fully grok it. And even more before I can somehow find a way to bridge that gap and reach out to form the trust that's needed to teach and learn.

You didn't really get to the point of black girls performing so much better than black boys, however, and I was wondering if you had any insight into that. If black male students and black female students are coming from a similar cultural background, not knowing the rules of the game so to speak, why are black girls learning them faster, or simply playing along better?

Now, I have a bit of personal history/anecdote to relay. I came into my school as a 7th grade teacher last year, and I am teaching the same students 8th grade math this year. My predecessor taught these students 6th grade math, in a manner that created higher stress levels.

Since I took over, the black girls in my class have shown amazing improvement - going from D's to A's in some cases, but showing quite a bit of growth across the board. Contrarily, the black boys in my class have shown little growth (with few exceptions) and many have backslid.

I don't understand why, and I've been struggling to figure it out. I'm still very new at this, and I am always entirely aware of how (or why) my teaching style works - so, pinpointing details of what I am doing right or wrong has been difficult.

Though I do look for insight wherever I can, and I've found some here. More would be much appreciated.



[ December 06, 2004, 07:21 PM: Message edited by: FlyingCow ]
 

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Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
 
On a matter of interest, by 2050 America will be roughly 50% white and 50% "other", which includes hispanic.



Presumably that would impact schooling as well as in later years the teaching staff.
 

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Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
 
It's everything I spoke about, and throw on top of it the fact that we are dealing with emmasculated boys. There is a reason why a couple of dudes shot up Columbine High School, not a pair of girls.

I accepted at a young age that, for the most part, if I were going to learn anything worth learning, I would have to obey white people. It didn't matter if they thought they were better than I am, it didn't matter if they called me nigger. The road to dignity in America goes through a few years of learning from very smart white jackasses, whether amid peers or instructors or even in books, and thank God I shut up and took it. If I limited my reading list to only authors who looked respectfully upon the Negro, I'd be in a bad way. Kipling is a wonderful writer, and Kant, one of the most powerful moral thinkers in the last 200 years, wrote this:

quote:

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"The Negroes of Africa have by nature no emotion that would transcend the foolish," (p. 880). The "Blacks are very vain, but in a Negro way, and so chatty, that they have to be scattered by using clobbers" (p. 880). Kant (1977, WA XI) further identified a "strong smell of the Negro which cannot be avoided through any hygiene" (p. 79), and stated that "all Negroes stink" (p. 22). He co-constructed the prejudice that the "Negro" is "strong, fleshy, agile, but under the rich supply of his motherland, lazy, indolent, and dallying" (p. 23).

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If you followed all of that, then good for you, but most people probably shut off half way through the paragraph, and that, my friends, is an example of black males in school.

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Isn't it possible that girls are just on average more intelligent than boys, and if it's true, what should we do about it?

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Does nobody else see any possibility that girls may simply be smarter than boys?

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Yes, and it's also possible that white people are simply smarter than black people. And perhaps Asians are smarter than Hispanics, and the rich are smarter than the poor, or natives are smarter than recent immigrants.

And perhaps, since men suceed more than women in the working world, we might say that although girls are smarter, boys are more productive and capable.

In fact, there's a good chance that all of these are true, although the politically correct usually like to phrase it differently. And if this is the case, the question becomes WHY?

Is it genetics? Not likely. Consider the fact that in the past boys did better than girls. Were boys biologically smarter than girls for decades and then all of a sudden girls became smarter? That doesn't seem likely. The real reason, I suspect, is because being smart is not something you are born with but rather something you develop over time. It is a skill. And if we arrange our society and schools in such a way that we encourage certain skills more in one group than another, then we will create a society in which skills are arranged unevenly.

It is far cooler for a girl to be smart than for a boy to be smart, for instance. That's just how it is right now. The ideal boy from a boy's perspective is intelligent and atheletic, but also a slacker and someone who doesn't work to reveal his intelligence, someone who doesn't excel in school, someone who is a clown, etc. The ideal girl from a girl's perspective is more in line with the powers that be, doing school work, excelling at many things, being active, etc. Watch almost any TV show with kids involved and you will see this stereotype echoed back at children. Watch any cartoon, any show on the Disney Channel, or almost any kids movie. It should be no surprise that children develop the skills we tell them they should aim to have.

Nevertheless, in all this it must not be forgotten that, in fact, boys do rule and girls do drool. That's just a fact of nature.

[ December 07, 2004, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
 
Flying Cow says:

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I'm curious how I suddenly became a "she".

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given that girls have so much more genetic material

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Regardless of who has the highest average intelligence, I'll bet every cent I have that this has nothing to do with it. Its not the quantity of genetic matter that counts, it what it encodes for.

X-linked genetic disorders are more common in men simply because, if their mother is a carrier, men have a 50% chance of disease while women have only 25% since the father must be a carrier as well. (Yes, this assumes a recessive trait)
 

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Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
 
HE, it's my understanding that the reason girls have so much lower incidence of many genetically linked disorders is that when they have a single copy of a deleterious recessive gene on that chromosome, they also are quite likely to have a good copy of the gene on the other X. Males, having the much smaller Y chromosome, lack this "nature's backup version", and so the bad copy is the one that ends up being expressed. Is that not the case? Otherwise why would boys be many times more likely to have color blindness, tourettes, ADHD, learning disabilities, hemophilia, and so much else?

[ December 09, 2004, 10:02 AM: Message edited by: Tatiana ]
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
That's exactly what he just said.
 

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Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
 
So... girls have ... more ... genetic material. They have a backup copy, right?

More != higher quantity???

<confused>

How can learning disabilities not have anything to do with intelligence as tested in schools? And if we know it's true in big things, like dyslexia, for instance, then isn't it reasonable to guess that it's possible it could be true in hundreds of tiny ways as well? Adding up to overall lower average intelligence as tested?

Understand that I'm not claiming we know it's true. I'm just saying it's a reasonable scientific question.... and asking what would we DO if it happens to be true.

[ December 09, 2004, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: Tatiana ]
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
ak,
More does not necessarily equal better in genetics. In this case, there are two flavors of sex-linked characteristics (i.e things determined by gene sequences on the X chromosone that aren't found on the Y): dominant and recessive. Boys are more likely to present the characteristic with a recessive sex-linked gene sequence because, as you said, they don't have a matching dominant gene sequence to override it. So boys with mothers with the gene sequence are likely to show it while girls would need both parents. However, in the dominant case, girls are more likely to present the characteristic because they would have the gene sequence if either parent had it, while boys would only have it if their mother had it.

edit: Oh and describing girls as having "so much more" genetic material isn't really all that accurate. On a scale relative to the total amount of genetic material contained in an instance of human DNA, the extra gene sequences on an X chromosone compared to a Y chromosone isn't big at all.

On the topic of intelligence and education itself, we've had plenty of indications that straight intelligence isn't sufficient for determining academic success. Some studies have found that what's been called motivation or engagement dwarfs the effect of intelligence (although they've all (that I'm aware of) also shown significant conflation between motivation and intelligence, so it can be difficult to really tease out the causation here).

In a particularly dramatic empirical case, researchers applied motivation in the form of a token economy to remedial high school education in a prison and had a prisoner with an IQ of 65 complete an entire load of high school math, reading, and language in 5 months. (How much of it he retained is another matter, but he was able to pass the same standards as a high school student does, namely knowing it on test day.)

I could talk about how the school environment seems almost intentionally designed to disengage and demotivate children from the learning process and how I think that this effect is greater on boys than on girls, but to be honest, I know very little about sex-differentials in terms of engagement. Certainly not enough to talk about it with any sort of confidence.

I'll leave that to to people with either more knowledge or lower standards than I have.

[ December 09, 2004, 12:01 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
No, more != higher quality. There are many species out there with more genetic material than humans, for instance. Or there are genetic defects which result from additional genetic material (for instance, extra sex chromosomes).
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
FC is all man...err I mean steer.
 

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Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
 
Russell, I said quaNTity not quaLity.

I was trying to figure out why y'all were refuting my shorthand description of the underlying mechanics (which it turns out we all seem clear about) as "girls have more genetic material."

But it doesn't matter because we all seem clear about the mechanism we are discussing, which is what counts.

Since it's not being disputed that girls have far fewer learning disabilities and developmental disorders of all sorts for this very reason, I'm still not sure why it isn't reasonable to suppose that overall average intelligence could possibly be impacted in hundreds of tiny ways by this same process.
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
It was certainly an implicit link in your argument, though I admit I did misread.

More is by definition higher quantity. Whether or not that actually means anything worthwhile is up in the air.

The only way a sex linked thing would result in higher intelligence for girls is if there were a sex linked trait which impeded intelligence in boys.

The way that sex linked traits work is that guys are more likely to express recessive alleles for traits. Girls having an extra set of chromosomes increases their likelihood that they'll have the dominant allele, but its pretty darn likely as well that guys will have the dominant allele, just not as likely. IOW, sex linked traits are extremely unlikely to underpin a general intelligence difference, though they could result in a higher preponderance of males at the low end (just as they could result in a high preponderance of males at the high end, both are equally likely; there's nothing about recessive that means bad, for all we know there could be a recessive sex linked trait for brilliance).
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
ak,
I'm disputing that. You've presented no evidence that this is the case and what little I know about learning disabilities suggests to me that dsylexia, one of the most common learning disabilities, is not a recessive sex-linked trait. It is more commonly diagnosed in boys (as are many things that rely largely on disruptive behavior as a primary indicator), but careful studies of the problem have shown that there is no significant difference in the rates of incidence between boys and girls. As I said, my knowledge here is scanty, but you haven't presented me with a reason to ignore it.

Most genetic disorders are not sex-linked. As I said, comparatively speaking, the area we're talking about is not that big. You can't say that boys ar emorelikely to have any given disorder because they have a y chromosome where girls have an x.

And that's leavign aside the issue that it's a very difficult case to make to say that most learning disorders are related to intelligence. A person with dyslexia is not necessarily less intelligent to someone without. They have problems doing the visual processing that is involved in reading, but, properly diagnosed and treated through established training techniques, a person's intellecutal development will not be hampered by it. Untreated, it will likely have severe bad effects on their development and functioning, but that's because we live in a society that puts a strong emphasis on and makes great usage of literacy, not because they are unintelligent. In a pre-literate context, it would be near impossible to distinguish them from someone else.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
I'm still wondering why it's not equally possible that the poorer academic performance of black students means simply that black people are less intelligent than other racial groups? (Racial groups also differ on a genetic level, and also differ in the degree to which they are susceptible to certain diseases.)

[ December 09, 2004, 12:34 PM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
Tres,
As I tried to point out, while it possible that a certain genetic group is different from another group in terms of intelligence but given current conditions and testing, it is pretty much impossible to ever show that with an acceptable level of confidence. I don't know of any reason why saying this could be possible is invalid, but I know of plenty that saying (with a high degree of confidence) that it is so is.

edit: And, given the probable large effects of other factors, base genetic intelligence of a group is almost irrelevant when we're talking about improving education. Writing off a group's poor performance because they may be less genetically inclined towards high intelligence is irresponsible if it is used as a way to avoid increasing all the other factors that we can say with reasonable confidence will increase their academic (and thus theoretically real world) performance.

[ December 09, 2004, 12:48 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
 

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Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 

quote:

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I could talk about how the school environment seems almost intentionally designed to disengage and demotivate children from the learning process...

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That's interesting, Dag. I thought artists had to learn all kinds of rules. Some of them can be broken, but the artist still has to know how objects interact in order to get it on paper

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Go to a poetry board sometime to see how much some budding young poets disregard this fact.

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Actually, the rules jibe was meant at the pseudo-brainwashing I felt was the implied purpose of school while I was there. Like these people, dress like this, take these classes.

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I hated rules I couldn't perceive the purpose of. I also hated the fact that rules that directly affected me or the learning environment were enforced poorly, while the rules I perceived to be less importantly were rigidly enforced. Luckily, I missed zero tolerance by a few years.

Sorry about your troubles at work.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Schools definitely do seem to be designed almost to create a hatred of learning. Why is this the case? It is not seem to be the intent of the teachers - teachers even seem to try to avoid it, but usually cannot, even if they are very good teachers. Instead, it seems like the whole structure of the school and how our society percieves it is at fault.

And if that's true, then the solution might be to totally redesign the concept of the school completely. However, nobody wants to experiment on their children to find out what works.
 

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Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
 
Flying Cow, it has taken me 15 years to get my husband to say "I don't know" when he doesn't know the answer to a question I ask. 15 years! He just makes answers up. For no reason. I never understood it, because most of the time, it was some stupid question that wasn't all that important, but that seemed to make it even more mystifying to me. However, when we were first married, I was talking about how KU always gets the butt kicked by some unknown school. At which point I used UTEP as an example. They'd beaten us the year before and I'd never heard of them before. What was UTEP anyway? He told me it stood for Utah, Eastern Pacific. Which I had no reason to doubt. We were newlyweds, and it never occurred to me that he would make something up. (One of those assumptions people keep talking about.) So, to this day, I will give him grief about Utah Eastern Pacific. But, he has, just in the last year, learned to finally say "I don't know." Which I feel is a huge victory.

Irami, is part of what you are talking about part of black culture and the whole weird thing about black kids, especially boys, being seen as trying to be white if they are smart? Like if a black boy wanted to do well in school and go to college, he would probably be actively discouraged on a daily basis by friends and family? "What, too good for us?" and the like? I really think you are on to something with the whole culture thing and assumptions.

Flying Cow, I think that might be part of your problem, too. While Anne Kate asked if girls were just smarter than boys, no one seems to have thought enough outside the box to ask the really obvious question. Do boys and girls need to be taught differently? Why do we go to school 9 months a year? Because the kids were needed on the farm. Yet, there aren't that many farmer's kids left that we really need to set an entire school calendar by them, are there? And who used to teach school? Women. And if you were going to teach something, wouldn't you do it in a way that you think it makes sense? Or perhaps in the way it was taught to you? Why do we assume that boys should be taught the same way as girls? We pass on the traditions of the way we were taught. For as liberal as everyone thinks the school are, they are very conservative when it comes to how to teach. Asking Irami is a great start to finding a way to reach these particular boys. But if you ever notice that the boys in general are having difficulties, you might try and find a man who used to be a spastic damebrameged boy and ask him how he would have liked to have been taught whatever they are having difficulty with.

I'll use the left-handed analogy. When I worked at McDonald's you had to be right-handed to work the fry station. Now, there is absolutely no need to be right-handed to make fries, but whoever designed the fry scoop was right-handed and made a fry scoop that worked for him. Then he made a bunch of them and everyone used them. Now, as a left-handed person, it took me a while to get the hang of it. But I'd been getting the hang of doing things right-handed all my life, because everything it made for right-handed people. Spiral notebooks, desks, scissors, and even the written language. Do you really think left-handed people would have been stupid enough to have the language go from left to right so they were constantly getting ink on themselves every time they wrote something down? (Do you right-handed people even know what I'm talking about?)

So, you learn to get by, buy why? A) there's no incentive for you to "get along" in a right-handed world and B)it's tiring having to do everything backwards all day long.

And another example. When I was in gymnastics, I did the routines left-handed. (Especially when you're younger, doing things to your bad side is really hard, it would be like asking a punter to use his other foot.) However, they usually only had right-handed guides. So I'd have to figure out how to do backwards. I suppose if you have good spatial whatever, this would have been easier, but it's like trying to trace a picture backwards for me. It would take me twice as long to learn the routine and that just put me behind in the coach's mind and everyone elses, including my own. (In the coach's mind, I should have just done what they did, but do it left. What she failed to realize was that figuring out how to do that was more difficult than it looked.) The right-handed girls had live demonstration showing them step by step how to do it. But with the floor exercise, if you're left handed, you can't even start the routine in the same part of the floor as the right-handed girls. I'm sure that nowadays, they do things differently, but back then, it was a pain in the butt. And I'm sure that everyone who learns differently today thinks the same thing. What moron decided this was a good way to learn this? I've got better things to do than to wrack my brains trying to figure out what the heck he is talking about. Much like I thought about the inventor of the right-handed fry scoop, the scissors inventor, and many others. I'm sure that had the obstacles been ingrained into my culture (You know, if 90 percent of the desks were left-handed, right-handed people would have a conniption fit. You do it for a ten generations and you'd figure out it had become a cultural icon. Much like my husband will never live down UTEP, I'm sure there are things in the black culture that even as they are a thorn in the side, they are also part of it.)

I'm not even sure this makes sense, but now my son's home and wants to read on-line, and since I'll do anything to get him to read, I'll come back later if you have questions. My main point was to question your assumptions, but since they are assumptions, it's nearly impossible for you to think of them. But maybe talking to that group of boys separately and asking them what they don't understand and how you could teach it so they'd get it might help. The only answer I ever got from my son was "I don't know," but at least he finally understood that I "got it" that it was hard for him to think that way.
 

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Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
 

quote:

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Irami, is part of what you are talking about part of black culture and the whole weird thing about black kids, especially boys, being seen as trying to be white if they are smart? Like if a black boy wanted to do well in school and go to college, he would probably be actively discouraged on a daily basis by friends and family? "What, too good for us?" and the like? I really think you are on to something with the whole culture thing and assumptions.

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