Wide and lasting consequences: Teachers give girls higher grades than boys

https://scitechdaily.com/wide-and-lasting-consequences-teachers-give-girls-higher-grades-than-boys/

by RafelMri • 4 years ago

116 33 4 years ago

This was already a commonplace occurrence in my own school days -- especially in the middle grades. It's nice to see someone finally willing to study it.

adrian_b• 4 years ago

I was also commonplace when I was in school, especially in the elementary school, much less in the high school.

However, I believe that this bias was not caused directly by the gender, but mostly indirectly.

The girls had a much more submissive behavior towards the teachers than the boys, who did what they were told to do by the teachers mostly only when they feared that they would be caught otherwise.

Most teachers were biased into giving better grades to those who were perceived to have better behavior, than to those who were perceived to be problematic, even when the latter demonstrated better knowledge of the taught subjects.

cafard2• 4 years ago

In the 1960s and 1970s, it seemed to me that there was an implicit bargain: girls would shine and boys be put upon through the elementary grades. In the secondary grades, girls would feel peer pressure to fall back.

spywaregorilla2• 4 years ago

They compared anonymous standardized test scores to non anonymized classroom test scores.

Seems worth pointing out that these are not the same kinds of tests and that the latter presumably has subjective elements like partial credit for answers. I would have liked to have seen the classroom tests scored anonymously.

I'm willing to believe that people with better communication skills generally test better on tests with partial credit.

sinuhe69• 4 years ago

Grading in school is never anonymous so it’s hardly bias-free. My theory is teachers like obedient pupils and that’s why they prefer girls over boys.

naijaboiler• 4 years ago

This is the most likely factor. A teacher has to teach a decent class size. Overall, boys are more disruptive. So yeah, it makes sense that teachers consciously or subconsciously reward those who make their work easier, by behaving better and following instructions

spywaregorilla2• 4 years ago

That's not the question though. If the grading were made anonymous, and girl's continued to receive better grades, that would diminish the claim a fair bit.

CraftingLinks• 4 years ago

Funny how findings like this get almost no attention at all, isn't it? In Europe at least I fear we lose a generation of boys. Dropout rates among young males are very alarming, and yet doesn't get the attention it needs. Future generation will not look back kindly on how we currently normalize desastreus results for overall young male education.

hjgjhyuhy• 4 years ago

Yep, apparently equality matters only when it’s girls/women who are disadvantaged.

Glawen2• 4 years ago

Well we need more boys for the army as we need to defend against Russia. We also need boys to construct heavy infrastructure / equipment. The fact that only boys are obliged to fight on the front line and do the ultimate sacrifice bother no equality champion.

adammarples2• 4 years ago

The demographics of Russia are so bad that there will not be a Russian army for your boys to fight.

yobbo• 4 years ago

It's sometimes given attention. The usual defence is "yes but girls are better and they deserve some help given they have been historically held back".

prisoner655321• 4 years ago

Funny how findings like this get almost no attention at all, isn't it?

Not really. Without metrics for attention and a definition of “findings like this,” your intuition is as good as mine.

I’ve seen dozens of articles and quite a few best selling books about the plight of young men. I’ve even read a few. So it seems our anecdotal intuitions cancel out.

snowpid2• 4 years ago

From which country are you from? Can you give any major outlet article from your country discussing the topic? I can only name BBC (=England) for that topic. Usually I read FAZ in Germany (reputable source, conservative - liberal) and they havent mention it. The only male equally topic in Germany currently discussed is fatherhood (which is actually quiet important topic to discuss).

djohnston2• 4 years ago

I was doing poorly in jr high and was forced into a same sex school that ultimately saved my life. I think it's better tbh, and I will probably do the same for my kids if they are having academic issues.

reilly30002• 4 years ago

I'm curious about how this played out for you. Having never experienced almost anything gendered in school aside from sports I just don't understand what the dynamic would be like.

I do recall reading a piece by a black author who was lamenting school desegregation. They wrote how black schools in the south were a place of community, empowerment, and organizing. The education could be about the subject, and not focused on behavior correction to fit within 'majority culture', or learning 'canonical' language idioms. In this author's view, desegregation was a means for scaling white supremacy, codifying it into curriculum and making it universal. It was about squelching and scattering communities that threatened their power.

When I read that somewhere around 2002, I wasn't able to accept it. I am a biracial adoptee that was raised in a suburban northwest evangelical home. My parents, teachers, community, and I embraced "I don't see color" and other "post-racial" forms of magical thinking. I was taught that white supremacy was about the people on the extreme fringes- sure they threw a parade for themselves a few towns over, but only a dozen people showed up. I was often told just how fortunate I was to be with my adoptive family, and how morally upright our community is. It went unspoken (or literally spoken in Small Group Bible Studies) that whites have a moral high ground, and that others are beneficiaries of their superior canon.

Its 2022 now. The masks are off. Its a lot easier to understand how widespread and institutional racism can be. As of this year, a school district could be fined 2% of its annual budget if a teacher shared what I read in 2002. I have seen naked racism all over the web (Snopes alum 2018-21)and and not just "dozens of people" a few towns over. I counted about ~215 vehicle convoy of pickup trucks and humvees drive though my neighborhood waving their rifles and insurrection flags just over 2 years ago. Now its plain to see how desegregation ultimately gave whites more power over policies and narrative vs segregated schools.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/10/10/why-are-all-the-bla...

I say all that to say I can see the same dynamic in education along the axis of gender. When the state has a de facto monopoly on the standards and practices of education it can become an instrument of oppression for whomever wields it. This supersedes the curriculum and goes to the structure of the school system itself. For example, a no recess policies and a school day that punishes movement openly discriminates especially against people who's bodies evolved to run, hide, fight, hunt, and explore. I can see gender segregation in education being really supportive to empower girls to step into roles that may have been otherwise filled by boys and visa versa.

All of this begs the question of which axes to segregate, if segregation is good. Race+gender? Neurotype? Religion?... The permutations really start to add up. How much is too much, if any?

xhkkffbf• 4 years ago

I've seen some discussion lately claiming that feminism and female-first schooling was designed to get women out of the house and into the workplace so their work could be taxed.

I can't say I really believe it or not, but this theory explains why the state would be pushing the idea so hard.

cafard2• 4 years ago

Black schools in the south were grossly underfunded. They did have the advantage that the limited opportunities for educated Black men were limited, and that teaching therefore wasn't a bad career option. (The Vietnam draft produced a similar but passing effect for White males: if you were teaching, they wouldn't cut off your hair and send you to Vietnam.) I really don't think that desegregation made the schooling of Black kids worse that it had been. That's pretty faint praise, of course.

I did go to an all-boys high school. It was OK. The main effect was to leave me feeling that I had had enough male bonding to last me a lifetime. An acquaintance in college suggested that I might join his fraternity, and I said, No way.

djohnston2• 4 years ago

I think there were two big consequences of switching into same-sex education when I was 15.

1/ The hormonal chaos of a bunch of teenagers was partially quelled. There weren't any girls around to impress, we could be more open with one another with less fear of judgement and no expectation to be the big man. I could ask more questions in class without being petrified of looking dumb in front of a girl I liked.

2/ Learning could become a sport. It may seem immature, but I grew up playing sports my entire childhood, pretty much every season. At my HS you had class rank, and that turned learning into a game for me, which is exactly what I needed for motivation to work hard and study. By the time I was 17 I really fell in love with math, but I wouldn't have gotten there without the competitive gaming component of my first few years. This isn't intrinsic to same sex schooling, but it wasn't available at my local co-ed schools.

jostylr• 4 years ago

It would be helpful to have other measures such as the median and the spread in scores. In particular, if the high end of the natural spread gets cut off, the average can be skewed as there is more room below 6 than above it in a 10 point scale. The median, quartiles, and standard deviation would help to alleviate those concerns. As a quick example, compare a spread of 2: 6,4,8 average 6 versus a spread of 6: 6,0,10 average 5.3ish where that 10 ought to be a 12 given some underlying real variability, but it gets cutoff by the upper limit of 10.

As for the claim of neatness, I can attest at having graded math for over 20 years that neatness of work is very impactful, particularly for partial credit. I have often caught myself just before giving different scores for essentially the same argument based on presentation. The variability in presentation can be immense, even at the post-college level. And the work often, though certainly not always, conforms to sex stereotypes.

This applies most to handwritten work, but even typed up work shows this variability in its organization and depth.

neets• 4 years ago

Liu Cixin showed us what the consequences of a society too far biased towards feminity looks like in The Three Body Problem Series.

staticman2• 4 years ago

You know that's fiction, right?

dnissley• 4 years ago

Possibly related to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect ?

supergirl• 4 years ago

water is wet. girls are treated with more care in general. that is how our society is. parents raise their daughters as fragile princesses while sons are constantly challenged. then later they wonder why pay is not equal, why all top achievers are men

evnix• 4 years ago

If you are a parent and your son doesn't do well in school but seems to be interested in tinkering and building things and looks like he might suit STEM but does not have the scores, sit with him and help him crack those exams. DO NOT send him to a tutor, I literally mean sit with him and make a plan and sit with him and help him execute it. schools and colleges are less about education and more about cracking exams with a high score. This does not help boys who know there isn't anything to learn and works well with girls who follow instructions to the dot to do those assignments, rote learn and spew.

I was suicidal at a point when I could write simple RDBMS servers in C++ and was constantly reading research around computing when in school but could not clear my school exams. and everyone including my parent and teachers made me feel I was stupid. This is the case with most boys out there. It was only when I went to university and research was more important than rote learning, I suddenly realized I had the highest scores with very little to no effort whereas girls would struggle and somehow get their assignments and projects done through the nice guys.

but guess what, I was a very lucky boy to reach the university, most are not. If you are a parent of a son, make time, sit with him daily and help him crack those exams. the society or the education system will not change, all you can do is to take advantage of the broken system.

+1 to parents who help their kids with their assignments even with their tight schedules, you deserve a lot of praise.

thewileyone• 4 years ago

It was only when I went to university and research was more important than rote learning

I saw this at university as well. The very few girls in engineering did well on homework and tests but the guys kicked ass in the lab work, but maybe not the lab reports.

Wide and lasting consequences: Teachers give girls higher grades than boys

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