On 11/23/06, Puppy <puppy(a)killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
Are trends changing? Or are we looking at
two different issues? The
articles I linked focused specifically on how female students were
treated as compared to how male students were treated - the self-esteem
issue was only "suggested by some researchers" and would not affect the
amount of attention given, questions, etc. The ratio of female to male
in science and math was also examined, and the studies found fewer
females. Computer use in one study was 3:1.
From what you are linking here, it appears that overall however males
are having difficulties. Is this a pendulum swing, or something else?
I think that both are true. Boys do get a raw deal in a lot of ways - boys
have two options - either internalise the idea of how horrible they are and
be left with no positive ideas about their gender, or they can embrace how
horrible men are, and live up the stereotype. Neither leaves much
self-esteem, which hurts them in school.
If
males are having more trouble due to information being
presented in a
fashion calculated to appeal to, and be more easily comprehended, by
females, this may be a factor. All of the studies I linked spoke of the
importance of presenting material in a fashion which was more directed
towards female learning patterns. This may be merely coincidence, and
given the limited data there is no way to know - but it is an
interesting possibility. If that is the case, then perhaps our
male:female ratio of editors is not without benefit - articles will be
more likely to be organized to appeal to the male pattern of learning
and thinking. It would be helpful to know the causes of the behavior
disorders. And once again, while interesting, I cannot see a way to
directly correlate this to anything we do on WP.
-kc-
I don't think that the decline in male performance has been due to shifts in
teaching styles. At the university level there has been a movement away
from top-down lecturing (which works better with male students than with
female students) to more interactive, "cooperative learning"-based ideas,
which resonate better with female students. But male students do well with
that as well - rather than favouring female learning over male learning,
what I have seen is a shift from something that favours male learning to
something that is less biased toward one gender or the other. Now that
eliminates a large virtual advantage for males, but it doesn't explain the
decline in male performance academically in absolute terms.
As an undergrad I had an older, very male-biased professor, who used to
lament the decline in young men. Of course, in a class of 25 majors there
were only 3 male students. But his main complaint was that his daughterss
female friends were intelligent people who you could carry out a
conversation with, while their male friends were only capable of one-word
communications.