Noticing in the school newsletter that 80% of the 7th graders with a 3.75, and 75% of those between a 3.5 and a 3.75 were girls, I asked my daughter why she thought this was. She retorted something like “duh, what do you expect?”. Then, adopting her pre-and-(I hope)-post-teen persona, she said that she thinks it is partly that the teachers like girls better (not because they are nicer — this my daughter rather sensibly doubts — but because they prudently reserve their nastiness for people who don’t control their grades) and partly because the boys just mess around because they don’t care about doing well.
So I was very interested in the findings in Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities
Taking timely college completion as their central indicator of college success, they discover not only that high school GPA is a (much much) better predictor of college completion within 4 and within 6 years than ACT or SAT scores, but also that once you control for the high school the students attended, GPA has even more predictive power, and ACT and SAT scores even less. (The study restricts itself to public universities, which they group by selectivity — the predictive power of high school GPA is even larger for the moderately selective 4-year public universities than for the most selective flagships (like Madison, Berkeley, Michigan, etc). Their focus, naturally enough, is on the implications for access to college. Because high school GPA correlates significantly less than ACT and SAT scores with the SES background of students, increasing the relative weight placed on high school GPA would, other things equal, both increase the socioeconomic diversity of public flagships and other selective colleges but would probably improve the completion rates at those universities. (By the way, as bianca pointed out in the earlier thread, and the authors gently suggest, these findings undermine the claim that the beneficiaries of affirmative action are harmed by being placed in universities where they can’t cope).
That high school GPA has considerable predictive power (after controlling for high school attended) within similarly selective institutions (so we’re not talking about the whole range of GPA points) that suggests that, despite having no common examinations, a diffuse curriculum, and little common conversation about standards, high school teachers are doing something fairly systematic in their grading practices. That it has predictive power even without controlling for high school attended suggests the more amazing conclusion that even across high schools grading practices are far from unsystematic. Exactly what they are doing that is systematic is not so clear — they are probably not purely rewarding achievement measured independently of the person who produces it but, as my daughter (and the authors) suspect, rewarding personality traits (traits that, observing the parents around me, they cultivate much more carefully in their daughters than their sons). Here is what the authors say:
Our interpretation…is a simple one. High school grades are such a powerful predictor of graduation rates in part because they reveal mastery of course content. But the “in part” formulation is critically important. IN our view, high school grades reveal much more than mastery of content. They reveal qualities of motivation and perseverance–as well as the presence of good study habits and time management skills–that tell us a great deal about the chances that a student will complete a college program. They are one measure of coping skills and whether a student is likely to “stay the course”. They often reflect qualities such as the ability to accept criticism and benefit from it and the capacity to take a reasonably good piece of work and reject it as not good enough….It is hardly surprising that doing well on a single standardised test is less likely to predict the myriad qualities a student needs to “cross the finish line” and graduate from college.
[1] Disclosure at the end of this post.
{ 136 comments }
dsquared 09.21.09 at 2:38 pm
she thinks it is partly that the teachers like girls better
clever lass. IMO, this also explains a lot of the well-known correlation between physical attractiveness and educational achievement – the pleasant-looking kids simply get more education than ugly kids in the same class.
Henry 09.21.09 at 3:00 pm
Writing as someone who knows absolutely nothing about this area beyond what I have learned from reading your posts and hearing casual anecdotes – isn’t there a danger that as soon as high school GPA becomes a more important indicator for colleges, it will simultaneously become a less valuable one, because of the greater incentive for teachers to game the system? This would seem to me to be especially likely in schools in privileged areas – I could see easily see them applying a version of the Ivy League ‘we give all our students A’s and A-‘s because they are all dealing with much tougher competition than less selective institutions and deserve to have that reflected in their academic records’ rationale to justify pumping up their students’ grades. Of course, there are possible countermeasures that could be taken (weighting the GPAs against class averages or other plausible indicators), but I would love to know whether the authors (or you, or someone else) has thought this problem through and has good solutions (or reasons why this is a non-problem).
alex 09.21.09 at 3:12 pm
D2, what explains it? “Liking girls better” =/= “preferring attractive people”; unless you are implying something rather shameful about the teaching population… That girls behave better, in the general sense of causing less physical disturbance, we can all agree on.
SamChevre 09.21.09 at 3:20 pm
It’s my understanding (and I’m very open to being corrected) that the male/female achievement differences are fairly methodology-sensitive. The more weight is placed on homework relative to tests, the better girls do relative to boys.
Note that college grading is much more “homework-based” than it used to be.
Chuchundra 09.21.09 at 3:38 pm
Let me get this straight then. Higher GPAs tend to skew more female. The proposal is to make GPA a stronger consideration in college admissions. This would have the effect of male under representation in undergraduate studies even more pronounced.
And…everybody’s OK with this?
Tom West 09.21.09 at 3:39 pm
Isn’t much of high school success correlated with conscientiousness more than any other attribute. Since the girls exhibit more of this trait, I’d expect them to do better (and be better liked by the teachers as well).
Likewise, since for most modern jobs conscientiousness is more important than physical strength or endurance, I would expect to see women doing better than men in a modern economy. (Indeed, I suspect that there is a fairly small percentage of jobs where high skill is more important than average skill and conscientiousness.)
Looks like men better pull their socks up :-).
bianca steele 09.21.09 at 3:42 pm
Harry’s last para is obviously the standard media narrative again (and could have been taken straight out of a David Brooks column).
Personally, I am annoyed by statements like that (Mark Bauerlein uses a similar argument, slyly, I think, in The Dumbest Generation): if you disagree, you may feel free to consider the possibility that your own work habits may be less than optimal, and come back when you’ve done so. Of course, it’s important to know that there will be people who think and act on that, and in a tough, unfair world and a tanking economy, good work habits may be just what you need, so that may be the point they’re trying to get across.
Henry’s point @2 could be tested empirically by examining whether good work habits are seen more frequently among the graduates of prep schools and other private schools than among public school graduates.
Tom West 09.21.09 at 3:44 pm
And…everybody’s OK with this?
I think it would depend on whether males are being excluded because of social pressures and restrictions, or whether it’s just that they’re less capable of handling higher education.
Maybe we’re moving to natural ratios now that we’ve removed artificial socially-placed constraints on women’s education.
bianca steele 09.21.09 at 3:45 pm
I think it’s also obvious that encouraging your graduates to undermatch has the effect of impressing undergraduate instructors with the rigor of your curriculum.
Salient 09.21.09 at 3:46 pm
“Liking girls better†=/= “preferring attractive peopleâ€; unless you are implying something rather shameful about the teaching population
Eh, it’s easier to understand if you take the form “liking X better” and substitute in “attractive persons” for “girls” — treat the statements as independent. Those who are better liked (for whatever reason) get better grades.
That high school GPA has considerable predictive power (after controlling for high school attended) within similarly selective institutions (so we’re not talking about the whole range of GPA points) that suggests that, despite having no common examinations, a diffuse curriculum, and little common conversation about standards, high school teachers are doing something fairly systematic in their grading practices.
Truly, the curriculum in my state is sufficiently undemanding to be a limiting factor only in the most extreme cases. Grades overwhelmingly correspond to hoop-jump-willingness.
Marc 09.21.09 at 3:46 pm
Adopting policies that favor one gender of students over another, regardless of sign, is something that you just shouldn’t do. And, yes, there is the matter of homework vs. testing, as well as the elephant in the room (diagnosis of ~15% of school-aged boys in the USA as having a personality disorder requiring medication, e.g. attention deficit/hyperactivity etc.)
There is also a pretty significant point related to selection effects in the samples: you can’t use a sample controlled for by test scores + grades and extrapolate to what a sample selected for on the basis of grades alone.
Salient 09.21.09 at 3:47 pm
I would love to know whether the authors (or you, or someone else) has thought this problem through and has good solutions (or reasons why this is a non-problem).
Henry, supposing that my bolded statement above is reasonably accurate, your concern is probably a non-problem due to teacher recalcitrance. It’s now commonplace in schools (in my state) that if a student doesn’t earn a top grade, they have an acknowledged right to work with the teacher until they have done enough work to boost their grade to a top grade. Any new teacher who is unwilling to do this can expect a dismissal; tenured teachers can find their grades just overwritten by administrative fiat if they are uncooperative (and new teachers too, as I learned).
With the exception of two districts, assigning a grade lower than “C” or even “B” to a student who is willing to keep working at material is unheard of. The parents complain, the administrators/principal call you in to “discuss the situation” and a deal is struck. Tests can be re-done, etc.
(The kids who don’t do this, but who are willing to work, may sometimes still end up with a lower grade, because they don’t have parents who don’t understand how that game is played. Depends on whether the teacher solicits a meeting with parents and student to begin the process and discuss potential make-up work, which in turn depends on how well-liked the student is by that teacher.)
Thus, a high school grade (from my state) reflects a willingness to work and to continue working until the grade is satisfactory. This, combined with a rather undemanding curriculum, ensures that grading across schools is a reasonable predictor of student willingness to work.
By the way, I endorse most of this as legitimate practice. I believe high school students have a right to learn from their mistakes and improve their scores through repeated effort to master the material they are studying, and if anything, I would encourage a policy that ensures all students have a stated right to re-try work and exams, subject to whatever various conditions need to be set in place to prevent abuse.
On the one hand, this may mean that high school grades become disassociated from inherent academic talent, and even from the ability to keep pace when developing proficiency with course content (since the re-try essentially allows for one to develop proficiency at a slower pace.)
On the other hand, I suspect that “willingness to continue working until success is achieved and play by the rules” results in a student with a decent-perhaps-not-exemplary foundation of knowledge, and frankly, results in a student who eventually develops the study skills that allow them to succeed: the freshmen who gratefully took advantage of special re-try arrangements developed into seniors who didn’t need such arrangements.
Salient 09.21.09 at 3:51 pm
So, in the above, teacher recalcitrance = unwillingness to give a higher grade to a student who is unwilling to work for it. That’s a pretty strong anti-gaming measure.
Marc 09.21.09 at 3:52 pm
Tom: back in the day, people looked at gender discrepancies as indications of problems to be solved, e.g. that girls and boys had the same intrinsic talent but that girls were not being served by the system.
We’ve now seen that policies can invert these ratios. Either you’re a proponent of remarkably rapid genetic changes, or you have to be able to recognize that we’ve now just adopted policies which serve boys poorly and should fix them.
Cryptic ned 09.21.09 at 4:06 pm
When I was in middle school and high school (grad. high school 2000), the collective wisdom seemed to be that girls were innately smarter and better organized and more hard-working, as a sort of genetic counterbalance to men being stronger physically. This was definitely borne out in all the honors lists. Some boys and even some girls thought of this as a situation that left boys with a disadvantage in our modern world where physical dominance did not appear to help people earn money.
Bruce 09.21.09 at 4:09 pm
Henry’s point @2 could be tested empirically by examining whether good work habits are seen more frequently among the graduates of prep schools and other private schools than among public school graduates.”
This, as it ties in to the “homework issue” is a hot topic among parents of middle and high schoolers. Many parents I encounter seem to measure “academic rigor” by how hard their kids are working. Simplistically, this becomes “how much homework is my kid doing?”. The prestigious private schools in my area along with the public “magnet” schools have reputations for giving the most homework, as well as the best success at getting kids into good colleges (obvious chicken/egg effect…). However, I seem to recall that homework (regardless of “quality”) has not been shown to correlate with academic success (outside of perhaps math computation and foreign languages; sorry – no cites for this). Could the pay-off for homework be further down the road, showing up in college work habits? Surely this has been studied.
Witt 09.21.09 at 4:21 pm
Adopting policies that favor one gender of students over another, regardless of sign, is something that you just shouldn’t do.
Amen.
And, yes, there is the matter of homework vs. testing, as well as the elephant in the room (diagnosis of ~15% of school-aged boys in the USA as having a personality disorder requiring medication, e.g. attention deficit/hyperactivity etc.)
This too.
SamChevre 09.21.09 at 4:23 pm
I don’t think homework vs tests analogizes to conscientious vs skilled, so much as to what kind of work environment you like. Tests are the “hours of boredom and moments of terror” style, and homework the “hours of attention” style.
Some jobs need one, some the other.
Harry 09.21.09 at 4:31 pm
Henry — they anticipate the problem, and don’t have a solution to it, but use it as a caution against assuming that the obvious policy implication of their findings is to give GPAs more weight. They say we should explore using, and giving more weight to, more content-based evaluations (where the evaluation is not done by the classroom teacher). But, in general, they are very cautious about issuing prescriptions.
Bianca — you mean the para I quote, right? I have two reactions. One is that to some extent teachers should try to encourage the kinds of traits that they have good reason to expect will be rewarded in the society that the children will enter, because to do otherwise rather cruelly mis-shapes expectations. My other reaction may seem somewhat self-serving because in school I was exactly the kind of kid that Brooks likes, getting consistent B’s (and one or two well-deserved C’s and A’s, depending on the subject) only by working pretty much as hard as I could, trusting that there was value in the work that I found boring, and assuming that I could overcome seemingly insuperable barriers because otherwise the teachers wouldn’t have put them there. But for the vast majority of us, for whom effortless brilliance and thinking outside the box etc is not going to yield results in pretty much any social environment, many of the traits that they identify really are needed, not only because the particular environment rewards them, but because they actually help us learn and develop skills.
Chuchundra — we already practice significant affirmative action for boys, and it will no doubt deepen as girls continue to take over the world. Most students don’t seem to be aware of it yet, which may be a mercy.
dsquared — she is alarmingly on the ball. She’s got me completely figured out already, and isn’t yet 13.
Harry 09.21.09 at 4:44 pm
My parenthetical comment about parenting was mere anecdote. And I totally agree that policy should respond to background disadvantage so as to promote more equal prospects for achievement. But it was enormously easier to eliminate the practices that inhibited girls from achieving than it is, for example, to eliminate the features of the environment that inhibit achievement in poor kids. And the parenthetical comment was supposed to suggest that social norms about masculinity may play a significant, and hard-to-counteract, role. (Social norms about femininity no doubt also played a role in low achievement of girls, and they have changed dramatically, but I doubt schools have been the drivers of those changes).
Steve LaBonne 09.21.09 at 5:14 pm
True, though if we’re evaluating academic work (which is supposed to be what teachers are primarily concerned about, not their students’ future work environments), privileging a willingness to plow through often chickenshit homework assignments over demonstration of actual competence on exams (assuming the latter are well designed) seems somewhat perverse. Ironically given the way gender entered this discussion, my daughter hates wasting time on chickenshit and earlier in her school career (until she was mature enough to accept that sometimes you just have to play the game to get what you want- luckily that happened by 10th grade when the grades really start to count) she had some disappointing grades as a result.
Chuchundra 09.21.09 at 5:15 pm
Harry, I have no doubt that there’s a certain amount of male affirmative action going on and that, for obvious reasons, it’s mostly happening below the radar. I have to wonder if this isn’t exactly the wrong thing to do, simply masking the problem so that nobody has to deal with it.
It’s apparent to me that the K-12 system has never served the needs of boys particularly well. It was always the girls who did better in school. Boys have mostly succeeded more than girls in the past due to the oppressive sexism that kept girls down.
I think this is particularly true in the earlier grades, K-4 or K-6. I think of the many problems I had in my elementary school years in the middle of the 1970’s and my son who had very similar problems in the late 90’s. It seems to me that there’s been a lot of changes in the way schooling was done in the intervening period, but most of those changes have been pretty superficial. At the core, I think that the method of schooling is pretty much the same and it’s something that just doesn’t work as well for boys as it does for girls.
Steve LaBonne 09.21.09 at 5:19 pm
Our elementary school setup- expecting small children to sit passively for hours on end- is insane for both sexes, though probably even harder on boys.
chrismealy 09.21.09 at 5:58 pm
This reminds me of the “I’m a bad doctor” sketch.
Substance McGravitas 09.21.09 at 6:05 pm
Tying funding to testing:
Chris Bertram 09.21.09 at 6:08 pm
Just picking up on a couple of points:
Alex @ #3 _That girls behave better, in the general sense of causing less physical disturbance, we can all agree on._
The teaching profession in the UK at least has become increasingly female in composition. My sense is that there has been a general drift towards coding fairly normal boy behaviour at break times and the like as dysfunctional. Certainly I thought my own sons (not really rowdy at all) got a hard time from some teachers along these lines.
Harry @ #19 _to some extent teachers should try to encourage the kinds of traits that they have good reason to expect will be rewarded in the society that the children will enter, because to do otherwise rather cruelly mis-shapes expectations._
Well yes, “to some extent”. Makes me wince though. After all, children will be entering a society that is unjust on all kinds of dimensions (race, class, gender) and many of the traits that this society rewards are vile.
bianca steele 09.21.09 at 6:08 pm
Harry,
you mean the para I quote, right?
Yes.
teachers should try to encourage the kinds of traits that they have good reason to expect will be rewarded in the society that the children will enter
Okay. But as a response to criticism of a particular program, what this means is that you believe the program promoted by your interlocutor is or should be unrewarded.
Some schools, I think, focus more effort than others on preparation for a life. I’ve seen, however, people for whom this worked for five years, maybe ten or twenty years. They discovered that the people they were now associating with didn’t meet their teachers’ expectations, or even that members of the opposite sex in the same community didn’t. They discovered that they could hold down a job but others were being promoted over them. Maybe they would have been better off going into health care and avoiding the profit motive altogether, but not everybody is able to: most people have to earn a living in the economy we have.
I don’t think Brooks is worried about you or your daughter, so much as he’s concerned about the education of the poor and working class kids who aren’t yet integrated into the national economy.
Harry 09.21.09 at 6:44 pm
Oh I think that’s right about Brooks — he is, rightly, worried least of all about kids like my daughter is and I was.
Okay. But as a response to criticism of a particular program, what this means is that you believe the program promoted by your interlocutor is or should be unrewarded.
Sorry, I didn’t understand this. Either you’re being too terse, or I’m being obtuse (or both).
I agree with the subsequent para, but suspect, then, that we are understanding the quoted paragraph a bit differently from one another, with you interpreting it in quite narrow economistic terms, and me understanding it in much broader humanistic terms. I don’t think they are valorising a narrow preparation for maximal effectiveness in the economy, but (in so far as they are valorising anything at all) a richer preparation for life. Plenty of achievements that are valuable in themselves but not at all for the narrow economy rely on the traits they name.
CB — yes, it makes me wince too, and I find myself in situations where I say it reasonably often. The morally responsible educator has to balance the obligation to give his/her students the ability to navigate a world that may remain unjust and hostile with the obligation to give them the resources to change it. To go back to the offending quote, though, I’m reasonably confident that the traits in question are absolutely necessary for effecting social change.
bianca steele 09.21.09 at 6:58 pm
Harry, I don’t understand what you mean about broad humanistic principles, etc., in the context of graduating on time from a four-year program in a state university.
bianca steele 09.21.09 at 7:00 pm
Or, if it’s just that graduating from a four-year program requires traits that are also useful in life, that makes sense.
Harry 09.21.09 at 7:03 pm
Yes, that’s all I meant (I think; I was inundated by children when writing that and they’re still around). What did you mean by the italicised sentence in 27? (Don’t worry if you don’t have time, I’m just trying to think about what you’re saying).
Western Dave 09.21.09 at 7:22 pm
Schools are as well set-up for boys as they are for girls. What has changed is societal expectations for girls and boys. Think about the kids and teen shows with good boy role models where boys are smart, kind, good leaders, creative etc.. After Leo on Little Einsteins, Jimmy Neutron, and Phineas and Ferb what have you got? Now think about it for girls, ICarly, True Jackson VP, Sonny with a Chance, Hannah Montana, Horseland, Strawberry Shortcake, and the rest of the CBS Saturday morning line-up, That’s so Raven etc. etc.. Now think about shows with lead characters that are boys who screw things up because they try to be to smart etc. Let’s see there’s Corey in the House, Drake and Josh, the High School Musical franchise (although a girl is the evil protagonist), Zeke and other loser, Spongebob, etc etc.. The Saturday morning line up on Fox is Power Rangers and Pokemon – fighting will solve your problems. Why do boys suck at school? Why are girls good at school. Could it be that boys and girls are merely reflecting the values that popular culture tells them they should have? I say this a feminist, a teacher at a girls’ school and a parent of a girl (1st grade) and 2 boys (pre-school, baby). We simply aren’t asking that much of boys, and then saying it’s okay because “boys will be boys.”
Tom West 09.21.09 at 7:23 pm
Or, if it’s just that graduating from a four-year program requires traits that are also useful in life, that makes sense.
I think that goes without saying. Why else would so many jobs require a degree when the job requirements are utterly unrelated to skills acquired at university. The degree is simply a signal that you exhibit the sort of conscientiousness that is required by most employers.
Likewise the same is true of GPA, write small.
Tests are the “hours of boredom and moments of terror†style, and homework the “hours of attention†style.
Some jobs need one, some the other.
Agreed, except the number of jobs that require handling ‘moments of terror’ is fairly small, and growing smaller every day.
Tom West 09.21.09 at 7:36 pm
*sigh* write small -> writ small
BrendanH 09.21.09 at 8:08 pm
On the gender front, has anyone here written about Ireland’s “fun with gender and medical education” episode this summer. For the first time, entry to undergraduate medical school was based on an aptitude test (in addition to state exam results, where the cutoff threatened to reach the ceiling of six A1 grades). While the aptitude test was obliged to be “gender neutral” it seems to have compensated to some degree for superior female performance in state exams, and shifted the gender mix substantially male-wards. There were some really nice fireworks when someone in the medical establishment commented that this was a desirable outcome. Everything from “old boys network rigging the system” to “medicine needs 80hr weeks, if you want part-time work become a primary school teacher”, plus a little thought about justice (who deserves a place in med school? aptitude or diligence) or what society needs in its medical staff.
bianca steele 09.21.09 at 8:41 pm
Harry,
You’re right, I was too terse. I didn’t put your statement in the correct context either when I answered you. Sorry. Maybe something will have come across anyway.
Salient 09.21.09 at 11:10 pm
Schools are as well set-up for boys as they are for girls. What has changed is societal expectations for girls and boys… Could it be that boys and girls are merely reflecting the values that popular culture tells them they should have?
As to the first statement, I think the “boys will be boys” mentality has been “around” since at least the time of Joyce and Dickens and I don’t have any reason to believe we tolerate any greater antics or restlessness nowadays than did the headmasters of a hundred years ago. As for the second, it’s true: there will always be factors outside a school’s purview that have a differential effect on performance; one task for those of us inside the educational system is to intentionally and effectively mitigate those effects.
I would appreciate the chance to hear more details from folks who have identified boys as poorly served by our current system — for example, is it possible to isolate which needs are going unmet and describe them (or some of them)?
I find the point about gender-based discrepancy in conscientiousness plausible, at least as a rough first approximation. So, do we need to
* teach boys to be more conscientious, or
* restructure our evaluation system to place less emphasis on conscientiousness, or
* …is the isolation of “conscientiousness” as the principal difference inapt/inappropriate?
Western Dave 09.22.09 at 1:14 am
My solution would be to expect more from boys. I can’t dig up the citations right now, but 100 years ago to about 40 years ago, the rhetoric around boys in school was largely that they kept the boys will be boys to the playing field or face a consequence (usually corporal punishment) and that girls were considered flighty and ill-suited to do much homework because that much thinking would tax them inappropriately. (Maybet this was in Meanings for Manhood?). See also, all the literature on manliness and masculinity. Anyway, by 20 years ago, or maybe even more recently, the boys will be boys moved from the locker room to the classroom and nobody cared. I think people, including myself, thought boys had all the advantages and we didn’t need to worry about them. In the meantime, we went from John Wayne in the Sands of Iwo Jima (he may have been a tough bastard but his most important job was father) to Rambo (all he has to do is kick ass) as our masculine ideal with disastrous consequences.
Doctor Science 09.22.09 at 2:36 am
Western Dave wins the thread, as far as I’m concerned. I really really hope he’s a he, too.
I, too, blame the patriarchy. My specific theory is “substractive masculinity”: our culture has constructed masculinity such that masculine virtues *must be* qualities that women do not exhibit. Any behavior or quality exhibited by women is “girly”, or at least is not “manly”.
So when women weren’t allowed to go to be learned or go to college or get advanced degrees or practice medicine, those activities were perfectly manly and masculine. But now girls sometimes do these things, so it gives a boy no manliness credits or cookies or whatever you males use to measure these things. Any girls doing it = girl cooties all over, or something.
All that’s left is war, football, and fathering children, and even war isn’t as single-sex as it used to be. So boys of course concentrate on sports, where they never have to fear the dread contamination of losing to a girl, and we see a lot of the kind of behavior I call “the only way to prove you have a dick is to act like one”.
The only way I can see for the definition of masculinity to change is for you men to change it. Step one, of course, is admitting that it needs to be changed. Step two is apparently to clone Western Dave — I’ll get my minions right on that.
Marc 09.22.09 at 2:38 am
Expect more from boys? We apply inflexible discipline rules on them (zero tolerance, or sense). We expect them to sit still for hours instead of giving them opportunities to run around. We diagnose them with conditions like adhd (and apply ferocious pressure to parents) and medicate them very frequently. We even adopt strategies (such as group homework projects instead of solo ones) which do not tend to favor their styles.
When girls were not doing well we looked at how girls learned and adjusted. We didn’t decide that we had to make girls adjust to the system. Why should that be the solution for boys? I’d argue, in fact, that the “boys should tough it out” attitude has been a major component of the problem – and that all of the issues above are far more severe for minority than majority boys, at least in the US.
Western Dave 09.22.09 at 3:31 am
Look, all kids, not just boys, benefit from having recess. At the K-12 girls’ school I teach at, my first grade daughter has recess every day, plus gym, plus environmental ed in the woods twice a week (weather permitting, which means anything short of a hurricane) plus a new physics play lab, plus a new video production studio. Boys wouldn’t benefit from these things? All that would be good for boys. Sitting still and doing nothing but drill and kill is bad for girls and boys. And if boys can’t do group work, then why were they traditionally better at science labs than girls, continue to dominate in many tech fields and continue to excel in team sports, the ultimate group work milieu? And if they can’t sit still and concentrate, why can they play video games for hours? True boys are overmedicated, but girls meidcation numbers are creeping up as well.
When we looked at how girls learn, we discovered (shock) there is no girl learning profile. There is no boy learning profile. There are kids and they all learn slightly differently. The more you consciously try to reach different kinds of learners, the more success you have as a teacher. The more you consciously try to teach skills, the more success you have as a teacher. But why is it that the teenage girls I know all want to be doctors and biomedical engineers and the boys “want to do something in music production?” That isn’t because teachers hate boys, it’s because boys are getting the message, “it’s ok, you’re just a boy, we don’t expect that much from you.”
Western Dave 09.22.09 at 3:33 am
And yes, Dr. Science, I am a father and a husband. As well as a teacher and historian.
J. Otto Pohl 09.22.09 at 4:15 am
When I did my post-graduate studies at SOAS I noticed that most of the students, especially undergraduates were women. Currently I teach at AUCA in Kyrgyzstan and I notice that the gender ratio of having more women undergraduates to men is even more pronounced. For some nationalities it is particularly blatant. This year I have no male students from Afghanistan, but I have a lot of Afghan women students. It may be that the skills necessary to secure acceptance at a western style university are ones that tend in most societies to be exhibited to a greater deal by females.
christian h. 09.22.09 at 4:18 am
I agree with Chris Bertram – in fact my first reaction to the post was “screw this, all it proves is that conformism pays both in HS and college”. (And yes, again patriarchy is to blame for the observed gender difference, which expects women and girls to be submissive. As an aside, can we drop the “you men” thing? All of us didn’t dream of being a sports star growing up.)
This is not to support standardized tests either, by the way. I support open enrollment.
PTS 09.22.09 at 5:03 am
I also wonder if there is something to the idea that the new prevalence of group work has something to do with it.
This is purely anecdotal, but almost every male honors student I was friends with hated group work, thought it was pointless, and usually took it as an opportunity to goof around (I was definitely guilty of this, but I will say that I do think that most high school and middle school group projects are a complete waste of everyone’s time). My female honors student friends, on the other hand, almost always excelled and built really nice pyramids or some other thing.
If you have seen an honors curriculum at a normal high school, especially in the humanities, ill-thought out group work is exceedingly common. And I do wonder whether this has gendered effects.
yoyo 09.22.09 at 5:09 am
they ‘want to do something in music production’ because those are the people who get attention/validation/money/fame/women/etc.
people want to be whats valued.
also, i’m totally pro-ritalin.
Helen 09.22.09 at 6:37 am
There’s another elephant in the room here which hasn’t been adequately – to build on what Doctor Science said: yes, we have to expect more from boys in that they need to accept female adults’ authority. A lot of the whining in the media about the “feminisation” of teaching and schools is feeding, and reflects, community perceptions that if a bunch of women are in a profession, then you don’t have to pay them or that profession any respect. And that is a stinky little idea which should be whacked with metaphorical baseball bats wherever it rears its ugly head.
There was a push a few years ago to get more men into school teaching because of this perceived “feminisation” and the assumed deleterious effect on boys. Teaching boys to treat women as fully human and display some of the “gender neutrality” that everyone reckons we have these days, was not an option, apparently.
Helen 09.22.09 at 6:39 am
hasn’t been adequately something or other. Covered? Er… *goes off to make coffee*
Chris Bertram 09.22.09 at 7:03 am
There’s something very _a priori_ about some of the comments above!
nickhayw 09.22.09 at 7:21 am
Wait wait. Plenty of workplaces are still prejudiced against women (hiring practices, harassment, unequal pay). Why is it a bad thing that girls are doing better than boys? One less thing that can be used against them. (‘oh, sorry…he just had a better academic record’)
Lisa 09.22.09 at 12:12 pm
My late father-in-law went to Central High in Philadelphia in the 1950s. It was a honors high school for boys and produced quite a number of extremely successful young men, including Noam Chomsky. You should all hear the tales of how these boys were educated. One teacheralways lectured from the back of the room, while the students were forced to face the front. In English, they were required to recite long passages from literary works from memory. They were expected to behave perfectly and so they did.
I teach at a university populated mainly by students with middling GPAs from the Philadelphia public school system. They are capable of much more than they can produce. In my judgment the main thing keeping them from academic success is their unwillingness to do any work, i.e., their lack of discipline. If they would simply put some work into their work…
Marc 09.22.09 at 12:17 pm
We see evidence that metrics of achievement have developed strong gender differences. When I look at comments from folks like Dave and Helen I see a devaluation of boys as a group and a blanket dismissal of their issues. Yes, men can devalue boys, just as women can devalue girls. Judging from the comments *all* boys need to respect their female teachers more; none of them have higher aspirations. There is no problem with a system where girls have much higher K-12 grades than boys do; in fact, the problem is that boys are insufficiently respectful of female teachers, we don’t expect enough of them, and so on. This is the precise mirror of math teachers (male and female) thinking that girls were just no good at math, and that lower female math scores just reflected biology. I think that there is a real issue with teachers needing to respect boys more and be more sensitive to what works for them.
The fact that the trends are much more severe for minority populations in the USA (e.g. the gap between boys and girls is both larger and growing more rapidly) should also concern people more than it appears to. We know, from long and hard work on improving test scores for girls, that large imbalances can be removed and that they usually accumulate from a series of small differential effects. There are some pretty obvious differential effects in the US system, and solutions (like not cooping kids up without a chance to run around) are not zero sum.
Salient 09.22.09 at 12:42 pm
Wait wait. Plenty of workplaces are still prejudiced against women (hiring practices, harassment, unequal pay). Why is it a bad thing that girls are doing better than boys?
Why is it a bad thing that boys are doing worse than girls?
* Because we want to serve every subpopulation / maximize our society’s “human capital”
* The problems holding boys back might also be holding girls back, just less so
* If the discrepancy is due to gender norms and not biology, as is almost certainly the case, then girls who “act boyish” may be underserved
* Solving this problem might reasonably result in a greater proportion of boys who are less sexist and more compassionate
* Part of the point of education is social indoctrination (teaching values like conscientiousness, compassion/sensitivity, rigor) and if boys are disengaged/underserved, they are not receiving that indoctrination (which should especially worry Dr. Science and Western Dave, because that means the indoctrination the boys will receive comes exclusively from Rambonian sources)
Harry 09.22.09 at 12:44 pm
Gosh, I don’t see Dave and Helen as dismissing boys and their issues, far from it. My read of WD’s (speculative, rather than a priori) account is that miserably misdirecting norms about masculinity pervade our culture and shape boys in ways that are bad not only for their capacity to achieve in school but also to enjoy the intimate and meaningful relationships that are at the core of a life worth living. If that is true then there are big issues and boys are victims. Me, I’d be surprised if there were no truth in it. Now, how schools should respond to that — yes, of course teachers and schools should be responsive to the problems children bring to the school. Exactly what form that takes is not clear, and their take is one possible take on it.
I’m not at all sure, though, that the issue of boys underachievement is as tractable as the issue of girls underachievement was: I suspect right now boys underachievement is more like underachievement by SES and back then girls was more like underachievement by race.
Salient 09.22.09 at 12:48 pm
Copy-paste fail: “a greater proportion of boys who are less sexist and more compassionate” should say “a greater proportion of boys who are less sexist and more conscientious” (though, of course, there’s nothing wrong with developing greater compassion in our population either).
Tom West 09.22.09 at 1:00 pm
“screw this, all it proves is that conformism pays both in HS and collegeâ€
as well as for the rest of your life.
Not to be too cynical, but for the vast majority of human beings, conformity (without going stupidly far) is exactly what is likely to make them economically and socially successful, and thus give them the greatest chance at happiness.
Education is useful as well, but let’s not be silly. Without conformity to harness it, most education is useless to society as a whole and thus unlikely to be subsidized by it.
Every academic here has had to conform to the enormous set of hoops that allow one to join academia.
Of course inculcating conformity doesn’t always succeed. We’ll always have our free-thinkers. Many will be considered criminals (failure to conform to our social concept of property laws being a common failure of conformity), a number of others will “do their own thing”, and a few will end up refashioning society (hopefully for the better).
Steve LaBonne 09.22.09 at 1:13 pm
I’m not too sure there’s any crying need for the (American) educational system to promote conformism any more vigorously than it already does. Looking around me I see a lot more evidence for a deficit of basic competence in our society than a deficit of conformism.
Salient 09.22.09 at 1:13 pm
“screw this, all it proves is that conformism pays both in HS and college†…as well as for the rest of your life.
To be fair (and especially fair to a fellow supporter of open enrollment), christian h. never disputed this (the “screw this” could be interpreted as “screw this study for telling me nothing new” after all). Of course, in christian’s statement I’d replace “conformism” with “being pleasant, cooperating with reasonable demands made on you, and taking interest in how other people think and why.” (But then I’m not very good at being pithy.)
Salient 09.22.09 at 1:16 pm
Looking around me I see a lot more evidence for a deficit of basic competence in our society than a deficit of conformism.
Eh, I see plenty of evidence of lack of pleasantness, failure to cooperate with reasonable demands made by others, and lack of interest in how other people think and why… and I suspect you see this too ;-) It’s all in how we precisely define the word.
Steve LaBonne 09.22.09 at 1:19 pm
No, actually I encounter a lot more pleasant but incompetent people than surly but competent ones. Perhaps I live / work in the wrong environment. ;)
Tom West 09.22.09 at 1:28 pm
I think Salient and Harry make very good points. However, I have a question about the concept of Masculinity. Is it assumed here that the concept is entirely socially determined (as seems to be implied by Helen et al)? And if so, why not simply work to redefine masculinity to be essentially conformant to the needs of modern society given most of the traditional masculine traits are either nearly useless or can be replaced with conscientiousness (at least until the next war).
they need to accept female adults’ authority
My recollection from my school days was not that there was a rejection of female authority by the more ‘masculine’ boys, but there was a rejection of authority by anyone who couldn’t “command” authority, either by the implied threat of beating the hell out of the miscreants or by simple command presence (which the successful female teachers used).
I think Helen’s phrase would be more accurately replaced with “they need to be deferential to authority”, which may sound bad, but is absolutely required for conventional success in society.
Chris Bertram 09.22.09 at 1:37 pm
One of my proudest moments as a parent was when one of my sons confronted a teacher (female as it happens) who referred to another pupil as a “spastic”. (We have a cerebral palsy sufferer in our extended family, so he knew what he was talking about.) It earned him a detention after school, but she had to apologise in the end. I’m afraid the enthusiasm from Helen and Tom for “deference to authority” leaves me cold.
Substance McGravitas 09.22.09 at 1:44 pm
I’ll be damned. All of ’em?
Tom West 09.22.09 at 1:45 pm
Apologies if I came on a little too strongly in defense of conformity. It seems like everybody kicks at conformity, but at least in my social experience, I see conformance as pushing people (and children) to much better behaviour than they would otherwise exhibit.
Conformity is what led me to have to explain to my horrified, almost-unbelieving 11 year old son (who is Asian in appearance in a mostly white neighbourhood) what racism is and that yes, when I was young, some of my friends were taunted for the colour of their skin.
Conformity is what help keeps an exhausted parent of an infant from saying “To hell with this, I’m going out with the guys. I may be back.”
Of course, I suppose it is because society and the schools try to teach conformity to values that I admire, so I may be biased…
Steve LaBonne 09.22.09 at 1:50 pm
Conformity != behaving ethically.
Tom West 09.22.09 at 1:51 pm
One of my proudest moments as a parent was when one of my sons confronted a teacher (female as it happens) who referred to another pupil as a “spasticâ€.
And of course, you give the proper riposte to my over-wide declaration.
Your son was certainly deserving of praise.
(Of course the teacher was failing to conform to modern standards of behaviour :-) Sad that it took a student to call her on it.)
Tom West 09.22.09 at 1:55 pm
Conformity != behaving ethically.
It (mostly) does if the norms are ethical behaviour. And since that’s what I see around me, I’m rather suspicious of the automatic virtues of non-conformity. Again, probably a product of my Canadian middle-class urban liberal background.
Salient 09.22.09 at 1:57 pm
Walking back around to the original thread topic:
That it has predictive power even without controlling for high school attended suggests the more amazing conclusion that even across high schools grading practices are far from unsystematic.
Even more amazing, to me, was the overwhelming predictive power of seventh grade scores. Apparently the study authors could extrapolate college graduation likelihood from this alone almost as well as if they had high school GPA and SAT/ACT scores available. Still need to reread that chapter and determine if I’m understanding correctly.
Somewhat less amazing was the fact that the rigor of the high school curriculum didn’t have a powerful/all-that-substantial effect on college success. The authors expressed surprise at this that I didn’t feel. Knowledge deficiencies from high-school level content can be made up in a semester of study, if the college is supportive and the student knows how to learn. I’ve encountered things all throughout life that I allegedly “should have learned in high school” — plenty at U.W. Madison! — and it never was too much trouble to go pick up a book and self-teach and fill in the deficiency (because I had already learned how to do this and it didn’t seem overwhelming).
Many of the kids in my dorm did come into U.W. with the rigor of high school physics and calculus but without the self-teaching skills (having “survived” their way through those classes with middling grades). Such folks ended up struggling in college a lot more than I did, especially in second-semester calculus.
Salient 09.22.09 at 2:01 pm
No, actually I encounter a lot more pleasant but incompetent people than surly but competent ones. Perhaps I live / work in the wrong environment. ;)
No no no, indeed, you live in the better environment of the two!
Harry 09.22.09 at 2:03 pm
One of my colleagues promised his daughters $20 if they would get themselves into enough trouble to get sent to the principal’s office. They never took him up on it. Look, no-one is saying that conformity in itself is something that’s valuable. The point is that we want to develop the ability to navigate the social world effectively. This normally requires the capacity to know when to conform and what to conform to, and to actually act on that knowledge, as well as the capacity and inclination to challenge authority when appropriate in effective rather than self-defeating ways.
Experience does shape our responses though. I recently heard Stuart Lee (who must be around my age) talking about what a good thing political correctness was because he remembers a school teacher consistently referring to the one black kid in the class as “the dark one” (as in “Let’s hear what the dark one has to say”). I remember similar in one of my schools (but, I emphasize, only one of them), and find Chris’s anecdote unsurprising (and would share his pride). The schools my own kids attend, though, for all that is wrong with them (and its a lot), promote much more appropriate attitudes and behaviours — my kid tells me, eg, that no-one is taunted (as I was) for being queer, effeminate, a poof, whatever, and if anyone did that the teachers would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
Tom: Masculinity. yes, we should try to reshape it, absolutely. You got a plan?
Steve LaBonne 09.22.09 at 2:03 pm
That’s merely a tautology. And if you take conformity as defining ethical behavior you’ll be left with no way to say that people are behaving ethically when they REFUSE to conform in an unethical milieu. Your ideas on this seem to need a little more work.
Salient 09.22.09 at 3:11 pm
Perhaps this is being contrary, but I’ll note that Chris’ son’s laudable behavior can be reasonably interpreted as an act of enforcing conformity (in the sense of demanding that others show appropriate respect for disabled persons).
Otherhandedly, I get that this interpretation wouldn’t have been appropriate or reasonable, say, a few generations ago, and definitely do recognize that most social progress is achieved through systematic organized refusals to conform to oppressive conditions.
Tom West 09.22.09 at 3:21 pm
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant if the norms that one is being pressured to conform to are ethical. Not that anything that is a norm is ethical.
Or to rephrase entirely, in my experience, the behaviour to which schools and society are attempting to get us to conform is for the most part ethical. My experience (in the academic world, anyway) has been that in the large majority of confrontations between authority and the non-conformist, the authority is the one taking the ethical position.
Obviously this is not always the case as multiple examples such as your own can attest, but I do think that a push to conformism in our modern society results in greater amounts of ethical behaviour than a rebellion against authority.
Obviously reasoning for oneself from (ethical) principles is to be encouraged, but again my experience has been that the those most likely to rebel against conforming to school/social expectations were often the ones least likely to use reasoning to come to ethical conclusions. (The ethical lone wolf seems quite outnumbered by the hoodlums.)
Children (at least in our neighbourhood) seem to have become infinitely more civilized on the playground. I suspect that much of it is not due to the ethical awakening of those children who would 40 years ago have been slinging racial slurs so much as their relatively mindless conformity to ethical social standards. (There is certainly an astonishing amount of ethical awareness among a number of the children, but not, I think, among those who would have been the bullies of 40 years ago.)
Phil 09.22.09 at 3:23 pm
my kid tells me, eg, that no-one is taunted (as I was) for being queer, effeminate, a poof, whatever, and if anyone did that the teachers would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
My 9-year-old daughter told me today about a boy in her class who was wont to use ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ as terms of abuse. A ton of disciplinary bricks duly materialised. The interesting thing for me was that, from the way she talked about him, the kid was obviously unusual – i.e. there was only one of him.
A while ago I asked my 14-year-old son about stereotyping & victimisation at his school. He struggled to think of anything at all, even after prompting (ethnicity? class? gender orientation? disability?)
Change happens.
Ben 09.22.09 at 3:26 pm
Maybe they should start thinking of taking medical coding classes. If you can get a job in a medical office early and know that skillset, you can be a valuable asset.
Salient 09.22.09 at 3:30 pm
Change happens.
Not everywhere at once, unfortunately. I remember a teacher (where I used to work) who was very upset that her students were calling homework “gay” — not out of respect or tolerance but because the word represented “an abomination” and it wasn’t any more appropriate than calling something “damned.” Sigh.
engels 09.22.09 at 3:31 pm
Tom: what? People 40 years ago conformed (mostly) to the racist norms of the time. Now they conform (more often) to the anti-racist ones. Why would that be an argument in favour of ‘conformity’ in general? That doesn’t make any sense, dude.
Tom West 09.22.09 at 3:32 pm
Masculinity. yes, we should try to reshape it, absolutely. You got a plan?
To be honest, I don’t think that masculinity is entirely a social construct. Which is why I think your comparison to changing outcomes for low SES students is an apt comparison.
This applies to both genders. I strongly suspect if we could magically change the social standards of masculinity, it would not strongly change the attractiveness that traditional masculine traits would have for many women, despite those traits inappropriateness in modern society.
(Of course I could be wrong about social malleability of masculinity. I was recently appalled to find that ‘alpha male’ seems to in the process of being redefined from ‘family or social protector’ to ‘sexual predator on insecure females’.)
engels 09.22.09 at 3:42 pm
I do think that a push to conformism in our modern society results in greater amounts of ethical behaviour than a rebellion against authority.
How did you measure this?
Tom West 09.22.09 at 3:42 pm
Why would that be an argument in favour of ‘conformity’ in general?
It’s not. It’s an argument for conformity here and now :-). Of course those who find the present social values sufficiently awful will disagree.
And I will say that 40 years ago racist slurs were punished, at least in my school. However, the pressure to conform to the anti-racist standards was pretty low. (The difference being now you get punished *and* get rejected by your conforming peers.)
Tom West 09.22.09 at 3:46 pm
How did you measure this?
Personal observation, especially comparing my schooling with my children, which were geographically and socially similar, and yet light-years apart.
Marc 09.22.09 at 3:56 pm
The past is a different world, and some things are certainly better left back there. It’s not clear that all changes are good however. In particular, there certainly seem to be downsides to the inflexible application of disciplinary rules in schools, mass incarceration of minority youths, and the ability to refer unruly schoolchildren for medication. I think that the social acceptance of police brutality, torture, and in general the low regard for civil rights in the USA are all very good arguments that we have placed too much emphasis on deference to authority rather than too little.
engels 09.22.09 at 4:14 pm
Tom, it seems like in general you have a picture of people as having natural tendencies towards bad behaviour, which are kept in check by internalised standards of behaviour deriving from external authority. As the power of this authority increases so their behaviour improves. Perhaps that’s plausible for some kinds of behaviour (eg. aggression) but it seems extremely tendentious in the case of racism.
The comments above on homosexuality are striking. For those who are praising the moral benefits of conformity progress has come through the generation of new moral norms proscribing expressions of homophobia. But surely for most people the more salient progressive development has been the destruction of moral norms condemning homosexuality.
Salient 09.22.09 at 7:25 pm
For those who are praising the moral benefits of conformity progress has come through the generation of new moral norms proscribing expressions of homophobia. But surely for most people the more salient progressive development has been the destruction of moral norms condemning homosexuality.
My own take on this has been to recognize “conformity” as an inapt word to describe what characteristics we do want to see in schoolchildren, hence the recharacterization upthread. (shrug)
Mike C 09.22.09 at 7:42 pm
I would be interested to see how people think this is related to the fact that, despite comparable progress made at lower income levels, men still drastically dominate the high-end of the wage scale. It could be because of the “old-boys network”. Or, it could be because women, having learned how to dominate an educational environment where their own success was directly related to the success of their superiors, have developed a skill set that inhibits them when they enter an environment where their own advancement puts them in direct conflict with their higher-ups. In addition, success as a high-level entrepreneur often depends on the ability to tell everyone “You’re doing it wrong”.
Tom, I personally think that you have your principles reversed. As you say, teaching unqualified conformity is only a positive in an environment where the social norms are “right”. However, I think it would be far more valuable to teach logically consistent ethics, and the value of doing what’s best for the group, as it relates to an individual’s well-being. A generation well-schooled in these concepts would be more likely to naturally conform, as they would see the value of holding themselves to the same standards to which they hold everyone else. This would also make them better equipped to identify situations where conformity was less beneficial, so as to know when best to make use of their individuality. Like anything else, we shouldn’t be teaching children how to do it, without teaching them why they should (and shouldn’t).
Regarding masculinity, I agree that it should be changed. I agree with Doctor Science that the concepts of “masculine” and “femine”, at least in current society, share a binary relationship, and because of that, I feel that one of the largest miscalculations of the feminist movement, to date, was to underestimate the necessity of shifting the male identity in order to achieve the equality they desire (not that I would know how to have “done it right”, but a certain path was chosen, and this is where it faltered). However, as any working mother who feels guilty for not putting her children first will tell you, changing the essence of gender identity is easier said than done.
Tom West 09.22.09 at 7:45 pm
But surely for most people the more salient progressive development has been the destruction of moral norms condemning homosexuality.
Again, middle class urban Canadian here, but I haven’t seen homophobia being socially acceptable for at least 20 years. I’ve seen proscriptions against homophobia suppressing public expression of such sentiments since the late high school (late seventies). Privately of course is different, but even that dies down over time.
Sadly, the I still occasionally hear the term ‘gay’ used to mean ‘not fun’. It gets suppressed pretty quickly once the kids hit school (and actually learn what the word ‘gay’ actually means.)
Of course, norms against homophobia get stronger with each year, and yes, there’s a reason we need free-thinkers. However, I think we get them no matter what :-).
By the way, I’m not advocating a greater emphasis on deference to authority, etc. than we have presently. I am, however, agreeing with Engels first sentence of his assessment. As far as the second sentence: invoking common sense, obviously any policy taken too far is detrimental.
As for conformism not suppressing racism, I’d heartily disagree. Everything I’ve observed has indicated the success of political correctness, which is a one form of pressure to conform. I honestly don’t see the angry, sullen child who would have been hurling racist epithets 40 years ago as having decided nowadays that racism is bad. I think that that particular misbehaviour has simply been written out of his realm of plausible activity by social pressure.
(I’m still fond of an interview of a Asian Canadian playwright who wrote an autobiographical play of growing up in Vancouver in the 80’s. In the interview she found it rather odd to have to explain what all these strange epithets that appeared in the play meant to the 12 year old girl who was playing her.)
Mike C 09.22.09 at 7:56 pm
Tom – One could say that there’s a difference between conformity suppressing racism, and conformity suppressing the open expression of racism. Far from being valuable, the latter can be quite dangerous without the former.
leederick 09.22.09 at 8:06 pm
“There is no problem with a system where girls have much higher K-12 grades than boys do; in fact, the problem is that boys are insufficiently respectful of female teachers, we don’t expect enough of them, and so on. This is the precise mirror of math teachers (male and female) thinking that girls were just no good at math, and that lower female math scores just reflected biology.”
You’re being far too kind. There’s a distinct moral dimension to criticisms of boys. Girls were just thought to be mentally deficient, we’ve got people arguing here that boys have brought misfortune upon themselves by being actively evil.
Mike C 09.22.09 at 8:27 pm
Evil is probably a strong word, but you’re right in that the criticism of boys tends to be more that they are unwilling to cooperate, as opposed to the old criticism that girls were incapable. It likely plays a large role in the fact that people seem far less eager to do something about this problem.
It also bears noting that, from what we’ve all been discussing, any change in the system implimented to cater to the tendencies of young boys (being energetic, competetive and confrontational) would likely end up being a lot of work for teachers, so it’s not surprising that the education system wouldn’t be jumping all over this one.
Harry 09.22.09 at 8:28 pm
we’ve got people arguing here that boys have brought misfortune upon themselves by being actively evil
Who is saying this? I haven’t seen anything in this thread suggesting this.
Sebastian 09.22.09 at 8:35 pm
Two comments: In Germany, the GPA equivalent (“Abi Schnitt” – a weighted average of the final two years of highschool as well as final examinations (think A levels)) has long been the only measure for access to competitive university programs. That’s slowly changing, because it was perceived as unjust and is being substituted by a diverse set of application processes. My sense is that these are very ad-hoc, administered by people who have no clue of the literature on educational testing and the like (i.e. usually assistant professors of the resepctive department). It’s interesting that this is generally assumed to be fairer than the old system.
Two, on boys: I thought the better average performance by girls was largely explained by the fact the low performing boys perform a lot worse than low performing girls – is that not true? It would kind of fly in the face of “boys are different” type of theories. I’m also not sure that teachers really punish non-conformity of the Chris Bertram type (OK – in his son’s case they did – but generally I doubt that) – and I would say that there are few places in life were the type of disruptive behavior typically displayed by lower performing boys is going to be super helpful. In my experience, you were most likely to see the type of “standing up to the teacher” behavior from students in the top 20%.
Sebastian 09.22.09 at 8:36 pm
One more thing – as to Henry’s reservation with respect to adopting GPA more widely – while there are/were countless problems with the German system, I think the GPA-equivalent never lost any of its value (predictive or otherwise) in spite of decades of use.
Harry 09.22.09 at 8:44 pm
My impression (from talking to various researchers, not any systematic study) is that Sebastian’s take on the lower average performance of boys is not quite right. What it is similarly good performance near the top, then systematically worse performance by boys than girls all the way down.
I’d bet that Sebastian is right about the “standing up to teacher” behaviour though, and that’s part of what I was getting at with the comment about wanting to produce effective challenging of authority.
Tom West 09.22.09 at 9:00 pm
Who is saying this? I haven’t seen anything in this thread suggesting this.
I think this is a paraphrasing for effect of Helen’s comment:
yes, we have to expect more from boys in that they need to accept female adults’ authority.
and
Teaching boys to treat women as fully human and display some of the “gender neutrality†that everyone reckons we have these days, was not an option, apparently.
Her comments imply that boys do not respect women as authority figures or consider them fully human, which can, with a little (okay, a lot of) hyperbole, be categorized as evil.
sg 09.22.09 at 9:04 pm
My vote’s in favour of more conformity. All I see in London is non-conformity, not doing what others expect of you, even on basic levels like not throwing your rubbish away. It just makes life so hard for everyone. People arguing over trivialities, kicking against nothing in particular, and the continual hassles that arise from it. In school it mostly means boys disrupting class while the rest of us try to study; or getting beaten up or insulted or left out because you enjoy studying or just want to study so you can do something worthwhile.
Funnily I never kicked out against the sportspeople, who were constantly disrupting my studious little life. Why did they bother? More conformity and less toxic male roles would go a long way to making the world a better place.
Also, hasn’t teaching always been a mostly female profession? Has it really been “feminised”?
Harry 09.22.09 at 9:07 pm
I thought Helen’s comments implied that adults were seriously failing to do right by boys!
Mike C 09.22.09 at 9:15 pm
sg – The thing is, I see the instances you cite as a sign of conformity. It’s just that they’re conforming to each other, and to society’s expectations for them. Conformity doesn’t mean “doing what’s right”. If you want them to do what’s right, teach them why it’s right, and teach them how to figure out right from wrong on their own.
Unless, by conformity, you mean “what I want them to do”, which isn’t really conformity at all.
lemmy caution 09.22.09 at 9:18 pm
I don’t think boys did particularly better academically in the past. Male college attendance rates are going up, just not as fast as female college attendance rates. The surprising thing is that just how well women are doing.
sg 09.22.09 at 9:24 pm
That sounds like a nice kind of conformity, Mike C!
But every one of these idiot conformists thinks they’re being original. I don’t believe for a moment that people who yell “You can’t tell me what to do” at other people have got together with each other and told each other to yell this. When the arsehole on my street corner leaves their dog poo for me to step in every day [1] they aren’t doing it because they agreed with a bunch of other arseholes to be non-conformist. They’re doing it off their own back because their “society” (I use this term loosely about the bottom dwellers in Finsbury Park) has told them that there is no consequence to behaving like a filthy pig.
I see lots of hints hereabouts of a society which values/tolerates/rewards non-conformity, not through a coherent project of setting out the areas of rebellion (e.g. dog poo, running over cyclists, stabbing people) but through a lacksadaisical project of telling people that their individual opinion of what is in the public good either matters or can be tolerated or (worst of all) can’t be confronted. When it should be persecuted. Or prosecuted. Or something.
—
[1] I mean they do it every day – I don’t step it in every day
Phil 09.22.09 at 9:25 pm
there are few places in life were the type of disruptive behavior typically displayed by lower performing boys is going to be super helpful. In my experience, you were most likely to see the type of “standing up to the teacher†behavior from students in the top 20%.
Yes – we’re using one word for two different things. Disruption can be a purposeful and effective intervention, or it can just be an attempt to screw things up. The trouble is, kids who are permanently in the bottom 20% (or 50%), and know it, aren’t likely to have the sense of subjective efficacy necessary to assert oneself with a purpose.
Mike C 09.22.09 at 9:36 pm
sg – What you call non-conformity, I think would be better termed “self-centeredness”. I think we would both agree that everyone would benefit from a greater understanding of how the health of society enhances individual well-being, and thus how self-centered attitudes are actually detrimental to personal goals. Also, I think we would agree that the golden rule – treat others as you would like to be treated – has fallen by the wayside, to say the least.
Phil – I entirely agree. The issue with these people isn’t that they’re non-conformist, but that they haven’t been taught how to advocate for themselves effectively, how to properly create and achieve long-term goals, and the value of making the best out of less-than-ideal situations instead of fully rejecting them.
Salient 09.22.09 at 9:46 pm
The issue with these people isn’t that they’re non-conformist, but that they haven’t been taught how to advocate for themselves effectively, how to properly create and achieve long-term goals, and the value of making the best out of less-than-ideal situations instead of fully rejecting them.
Except many of these folks we’re deriding aren’t interested in self-advocacy. Their non-conformism is more sociopathic (I suspect in general we underestimate sociopathic impulses in the human population). To such folks, for example, it’s downright fun to make people angry (in the same way that it might be fun, to some of them, to poke a small animal with a sharp object until it squeals), and in general it really is fun to be negligent (less work).
I didn’t see very much incompetent advocacy in the day-to-day school life, unless we’re allowing for “advocacy for the right to do whatever I want, which is to not participate in education and verbally harass people I don’t like with impunity.” Such advocacy is antisocial and doomed to failure. Such folks quite clearly took pleasure in wounding people, and certainly had no incentive or desire to be pleasant or to be reasonably cooperative or to consider others’ perspective.
Salient 09.22.09 at 9:49 pm
(Also: how do you “expect more” out of an uncooperative 17-year-old, if you have no coercive leverage? What does this mean, and how do you accomplish it?)
Also also: I need a better word than “sociopathic” for “taking pleasure in causing others pain” but don’t know of one. My apologies for the use of a term denoting psychological disability judgmentally and/or in cases where that disability has not been verified, and I would be grateful for a suggested alternative word.
Phil 09.22.09 at 10:02 pm
many of these folks we’re deriding aren’t interested in self-advocacy
I agree. But that’s not inconsistent with what I said, which was that those kids “aren’t likely to have the sense of subjective efficacy necessary to assert oneself with a purpose”. They’ve got the will to assert themselves, they just don’t believe anything good or useful is ever going to come of it – so they don’t aim for anything good or useful, and in some cases end up taking satisfaction in being aimless and destructive. They’re not empty vessels sitting there waiting to be filled with self-actualising goodness by some teacher out of Dead Poets’ Society or Mr Holland’s Opus; they’ve been living in a world they don’t have any control over since they were born, and they’ve learnt how to get by in it.
Marc 09.22.09 at 10:24 pm
Boys are strongly under-represented in the USA in the cohort with the highest GPAs; the statistics at the top of Harry’s post are fairly typical. All of the 10 highest GPAs in my daughter’s graduating classs were girls, to add another data point. So it isn’t a small group of underperforming boys – if you used grades alone as your metric very few boys would be admitted to highly selective colleges.
I think people are mixing up “taught to respect other people” with “subject to arbitrary rules” and “expected to perform rote assignments cheerfully.” Pedagogy in many K-12 US systems is heavily geared towards standardized test scores now, with the attendant repetitive drills, which is a major change from past practice. Art, music, and physical education classes have been drastically trimmed back to devote more time to getting good scores. Students with disabilities get special test score dispensations, driving a significant correlation between the rate of ADHD diagnosis and the existence of high-stakes testing in school districts.
I also don’t think that folks outside the USA may realize just how far around the bend things like zero tolerance rules are; in many systems there is absolutely no discretion on the part of administrators when it comes to punishment. Sullen obedience to arbitrary rules can be enforced, but the virtues of that approach elude me.
engels 09.22.09 at 10:26 pm
To such folks, for example, it’s downright fun to make people angry
You mean it isn’t? But why else would I comment here?
Substance McGravitas 09.22.09 at 10:29 pm
To make me happy, obviously. You should consider the idea that in not posting enough you are doing nothing to oppose the tyranny of my working environment. Can you live with that on your conscience?
Steve LaBonne 09.22.09 at 10:37 pm
Marc @104- outstanding comment, with which I agree in its entirety.
sg 09.22.09 at 10:54 pm
well Mike C, I think maybe one person’s non-conformity is another person’s self-centredness. What’s the difference between refusing to pick up your dog’s poo because of your “rights” or because “it’s something the council should do” or “you should just walk around it” and “I can’t be bothered”? It all seems much of a muchness to me. Similarly talking loudly on a phone in a public place (“but it’s public! why should you tell me what to do?”). Or my favourite, when I asked a guy to move one seat over in the cinema so my friends could sit in a line together and he refused. Why? Because (as he took great delight in informing me) “you can’t tell me what to do”.
These are the same people who were going out of their way to disrupt my study, or to make my quiet attempt to hang out with my friends in the playground difficult. Why couldn’t they just leave well enough alone? Self-centredness doesn’t seem a sufficient explanation.
Western Dave 09.23.09 at 12:34 am
Hey, Harry knows how to read better than I know how to write!
Gosh, I don’t see Dave and Helen as dismissing boys and their issues, far from it. My read of WD’s (speculative, rather than a priori) account is that miserably misdirecting norms about masculinity pervade our culture and shape boys in ways that are bad not only for their capacity to achieve in school but also to enjoy the intimate and meaningful relationships that are at the core of a life worth living. If that is true then there are big issues and boys are victims. Me, I’d be surprised if there were no truth in it. Now, how schools should respond to that—yes, of course teachers and schools should be responsive to the problems children bring to the school. Exactly what form that takes is not clear, and their take is one possible take on it.
Helen 09.23.09 at 1:49 am
@52
When I look at comments from folks like Dave and Helen I see a devaluation of boys as a group and a blanket dismissal of their issues.
Oh Bollocks. Pointing out a problem with the attitude to men and boys to women in authority (the “girl cooties” factor” is not tantamount to devaluing them. That is a pathetic and (to use an adjective that’s more often used against women) oversensitive misinterpretation.
I think that there is a real issue with teachers needing to respect boys more and be more sensitive to what works for them….the gap between boys and girls is both larger and growing more rapidly…
Yes, you have a point there; we MUST address this imbalance because the tendency of women to earn more income and occupy the top jobs is getting quite out of hand. Oh, wait…
@62
One of my proudest moments as a parent was when one of my sons confronted a teacher…etc…I’m afraid the enthusiasm from Helen and Tom for “deference to authority†leaves me cold.
This reading is so off kilter I find it hard to believe it comes from one of the CT writers. Of course I didn’t mean “defer to authoritah at all times”, I meant “accept women in positions of authority, bosses, teachers, or whatever, the same say they would accept men in the same positions.” With the possibility, of course, that you would challenge a boss of either gender if the circumstances were right. Do you always expect every commenter to cover every possible edge case in their necessarily short comments? I’m sure most people understood what I was getting at. Chris your comment represented a heroic attempt to put the ugliest spin possible on a comment.
And Tom West @ Leederick @93 – My comment, that we need to expect more from boys in accepting women as authority figures through teaching them to see women as fully human, equals saying they are evil (with a qualifying maybe, as he’s presumably got an inkling of how silly that is, but he pressed the submit button regardless) – Oh please. Has Crooked Timber been taken over by Hello! magazine overnight?
Western Dave @ 109 miserably misdirecting norms about masculinity pervade our culture and shape boys in ways that are bad not only for their capacity to achieve in school but also to enjoy the intimate and meaningful relationships that are at the core of a life worth living.
Thanks WD, you have articulated pretty well where I was coming from. “Masculinity” does NOT equal boys, any more than “femininity” equals women.
Tom West 09.23.09 at 6:05 am
“Masculinity†does NOT equal boys, any more than “femininity†equals women.
Okay, I’ll bite. What *should* masculinity equal? And how would it differ from femininity?
Sebastian 09.23.09 at 6:57 am
Helen,
I think a lot of what you say is well taken, but this:
“Yes, you have a point there; we MUST address this imbalance because the tendency of women to earn more income and occupy the top jobs is getting quite out of hand. Oh, wait…”
Is a stupid, canned argument that misses the point. No one (here) denies that gender relations are anything but just and that women get the raw deal in a lot of ways.
But man are also about 10 times more likely to go to prison, more likely to be killed in a violent crime, more likely to kill themselves… etc. And obviously, women usually aren’t the “winners” in these scenarios either, but show up as victims, widows, involuntary single moms etc. This isn’t a competition on who’s worst off!
So addressing the poor performance of boys – and the imbalance between boys and girls – would seem like quite a good idea for anyone involve. And part of that should definitely include a redefinition of “masculinity” – e.g. I think the idea (popular with some of the “boys pedagogy crowd) that boys need to physically fight to be real boys is a bit bizarre. But it also needs to include taking boys specific gender needs seriously. And just as, for example, I think it’s important for girls to have powerful female role-models (school principals for example, which still afaik under-represent women), boys need male role-models (ideally role-models that identify a more positive masculinity): The scarcity of male primary school teachers is a real problem.
@marc (104)
“I also don’t think that folks outside the USA may realize just how far around the bend things like zero tolerance rules are”
That may be true (I went to highschool in Germany, my US highschool experience was at Berkeley High…). And if I abstract from what I believe are the effects of “teaching to the test” among the students I teach at a top 20 private university I’m very inclined to believe that the whole testing obsession does a lot of damage across the board.
Chris Bertram 09.23.09 at 7:15 am
_I’m sure most people understood what I was getting at. Chris your comment represented a heroic attempt to put the ugliest spin possible on a comment._
Well I’m relieved that I misread your intentions and that you don’t have the crazy view I thought you did. However, I think that the natural reading of “they need to accept female adults’ authority” is what I took it to be. If you’d written “female adults *in* authority” then I would not have taken you as meaning other than you did.
nickhayw 09.23.09 at 10:05 am
To interrupt the discussion for a moment – thank you to Salient for a patient and thoughtful reply (#53) to my not-so-thoughtful, shoot-from-the-hip comment way above.
Harry 09.23.09 at 10:39 am
Hey Helen, that was WD quoting me! I love the idea of us being taken over by Hello magazine overnight. Maybe we should approach them to include us as their house blog.
Tom. I agree with you that masculinity (and no doubt femininity) have some basis in sex, and are not entirely socially constructed. They are, though, partly socially constructed, and we don’t know how much. Its quite another question how we as a society, or as agents in society, can effect change in the norms associated with them. I very much suspect that some of the changes to femininity that have occurred over the past few decades are very unwelcome (while some are welcome) to the feminists who tried to make the changes.
Chris 09.23.09 at 9:03 pm
I need a better word than “sociopathic†for “taking pleasure in causing others pain†but don’t know of one.
I suggest “cruel”. It’s emotionally loaded because what it describes is a characteristic people have strong emotional reactions to, but I think it means precisely what you want to say.
There have been many places and times in history when cruel people could and did express their cruelty in a way that conformed to the norms and expectations of society (surely I don’t need to list them), so I don’t think this issue is really related to the conformism one.
(Also, I second the idea that conformism is frequently unethical, and is not in itself a virtue, although it may be a survival trait. Whether we should therefore attempt to inculcate it for the latter reason, or refrain for the former, goes to deep issues about the role of education.)
leederick 09.24.09 at 12:48 am
“Leederick @93 – My comment, that we need to expect more from boys in accepting women as authority figures through teaching them to see women as fully human, equals saying they are evil (with a qualifying maybe, as he’s presumably got an inkling of how silly that is, but he pressed the submit button regardless) – Oh please. Has Crooked Timber been taken over by Hello! magazine overnight?”
Go on then Helen. What’s your moral evaluation of people who don’t view women as fully human? Do you (a) think this a noble and morally praiseworthy position to take? Do you (b) think this is a morally neutral matter of taste, and reflects no more badly on someone than, say, not liking mushrooms. Or maybe (c) you think it’s a bad thing and downright morally objectionable.
I’ve got to say I’m guessing you’re going to go for (c), perhaps I’m reading too much into your comments but you don’t seem very enthusiastic about pre-feminist social mores. Not that I’m complaining. It’s very interesting reading your and Harry’s comments together, you both seem on the same page with regard to gender relations, but while he’s all very ‘they know not what they do’, you seem willing to be a bit more judgemental.
I do have to say though, that firmly challenging their attitudes towards women in authority and trying to re-educate them away from the view that women are sub-human is possibly not going to be the most effective way of helping developmentally delayed six year olds. If I had a child in that position, I’d be thinking that remedial maths and literacy lessons might be slightly better bet…
Helen 09.24.09 at 1:32 am
Is a stupid, canned argument
It’s a SOTBO
What’s your moral evaluation of people who don’t view women as fully human? Do you (a) think this a noble and morally praiseworthy position to take? Do you (b) think this is a morally neutral matter of taste, and reflects no more badly on someone than, say, not liking mushrooms. Or maybe© you think it’s a bad thing and downright morally objectionable.
Boys don’t make eevul plans in their own heads to view males as the default human and women somehow lesser. It’s there in the million and one instances of social attitudes which they encounter from parents, peers, the media and society at large which feed into the kind of situation where a preponderance of women teachers is viewed as a Problem. (Oh noes! Feminisation!) To paraphrase Madge in the old Palmolive ad, “they’re soaking in it”.
Sebastian 09.24.09 at 2:42 am
well Helen as a statement it is “bloody obvious”, but as an argument it’s bad.
Women are underpriviledged and discriminated against in society thus we shouldn’t be concerned about failure or boys in education is simply a non-sequitur.
A massive presence of undereducated boys may well turn out to be a major impediment for more gender equality (among other things for the reasons stated above). And the weird thing is that somehow you seem to agree – but not really? I’m not even sure what your position on the specific educational question is, except to “expect more of the boys”.
magistra 09.24.09 at 6:29 am
I do have to say though, that firmly challenging their attitudes towards women in authority and trying to re-educate them away from the view that women are sub-human is possibly not going to be the most effective way of helping developmentally delayed six year olds. If I had a child in that position, I’d be thinking that remedial maths and literacy lessons might be slightly better bet…
Remedial literacy is going to be hard work if such boys have already formed the view that reading is a boring things that only girls do. By six, children already know what count as ‘girl’ or ‘boy’ things to do in society (even if like my daughter they don’t agree with these ideas). If boys have been brought up in a home where the men they see around them never look at a book, if they get told that they ought to be outside kicking a football rather than reading, if they are in cultures where it is mothers who get them to do things they don’t want to do and fathers who encourage them to break rules, then they are likely to go to school and see teachers who want them to learn to read as repressive and arbitrary and remedial lessons as simply more of the same torment.
There are issues of developmental delays and the tendency to start school ever younger (as in the UK) doesn’t help boys in particular. But pretending there aren’t cultural problems as well does nobody any favours.
Phil 09.24.09 at 10:36 am
if they get told that they ought to be outside kicking a football rather than reading, if they are in cultures where it is mothers who get them to do things they don’t want to do and fathers who encourage them to break rules
Oddly enough, it was my mother who goaded me to get out there and play with the rough kids, and my father who encouraged me to be a snotty academic know-all who didn’t care what anyone else thought. Cheers, Dad.
ScentOfViolets 09.24.09 at 6:13 pm
I make no apologies for preferring female students. And this is why:
Along with my other duties, I usually end up teaching two sections of remedial math in the fall semester to incoming freshmen. And it is my overwhelming experience that the girls are simply better students than the boys. They are more likely to do the assigned homework, more likely to attempt more problems, less likely to be absent, and more likely to actually use the resources – such as office hours – available to them. Iow, trying to even up the playing field as it were, is discriminating against the qualities that make a good student, the qualities that classes like mine are intended to inculcate along with maybe a little knowledge. Sorry, that’s just the way things fall out at this age. In my other math classes, say differential equations, the boys seem be as motivated and perform as well as the girls. It’s not just a selection effect, imho, but also the fact that someone taking diff eq is on average two years older than an incoming freshman, and for boys of that age that’s a huge difference in their level of maturity.
Western Dave 09.24.09 at 6:31 pm
Since I am the one who put the phrase “expect more of boys” into the discussion, I suppose I should attempt to define what I mean concretely. Unfortunately, I’m not good at that type of thing except through storytelling. And I don’t have the time and space to weave the story together. So, here goes an attempt at a description of “what expecting more from boys” looks like. 1) Hold boys to the expectations as girls. Comments, like “boys don’t write as well as girls” are as dumb as “girls aren’t as good at math.” We now expect girls (at least white girls from middle and upper middle class backgrounds) to be good at all subjects. We should have that same expectation for boys. 2) Stop holding onto the idea that boys will catch up later. For too many boys, good habits never develop and even best case scenario boys waste two years of college trying to develop the skills that girls learned in high school. 3) Recognize that although we 30 and 40 year olds (and older) lived in a world dominated by patriarchy, and that patriarchy still makes itself felt at all levels, this is not the world that today’s boys’ live in. They live in a world where girls are experiencing most of the success, honors etc.., and most of the images of everyday successful people they see in popular culture are girls and women. The boys are usually misfits, comedy relief, sex objects, or good with their fists. If 40 years ago, television was a wasteland for female role models, it is a wasteland of male role models now. This needs changed. 4) If a boy can sit still for three hours playing Madden 2010, he can sit still for a 40 minute math, english, or language class, no matter how boring, if it is a priority in his life. We need to quit medicating and make boys realize that school should be a priority.
Mike C 09.24.09 at 6:33 pm
To such folks, for example, it’s downright fun to make people angry (in the same way that it might be fun, to some of them, to poke a small animal with a sharp object until it squeals), and in general it really is fun to be negligent (less work).
Just about anybody, in their lesser moments, takes pleasure in showing their ability to put down others. For most people, it involves using a particular skill or area of knowlege that they’ve honed to a higher level than most people (fashion sense, musical accumen, ability to memorize the words to every movie they’ve ever seen). However, when children aren’t taught the value of their own abilities, and thus don’t develop them, they can only exert their natural human desire to put other people down in the most basic ways, like getting in the way.
Also, the way I interpret this statement implies that 1. these impulses can’t be mitigated and 2. “good” people are nice to others because they have innate instincts to treat people around them nicely. I don’t agree with either statement. My personal belief is that everyone behaves the way they do because it is what contributes best to accomplishing their personal goals, and upholding their sense of self. People with poorly conceived goals and personal identities tend to act in an illogical and unpredictable because they either don’t know what they’re trying to do, or don’t know how to do it. Quite plainly, they don’t understand why it might not be good for them, in the long run, to antagonize the people around them.
“Good” people, on the other hand, are nice to other people because they understand that if they ever need anything from these people in the future, whether it be a tangiable service or just companionship, being nice is the best way to accomplish it. This is why all babies need to learn how to share. If being “good” wasn’t learned, wouldn’t “good” babies already know how to do that?
ScentOfViolets 09.24.09 at 7:15 pm
Absolutely. The question is what counts as ‘conformity’, and ‘rebellion’ and ‘free thinking’. Rebelling for the sake of rebelling aka Brando(“What are you rebelling against?” “Whatta ya got?”) is just idiotic. And let’s face it, while there’s a long row to hoe still when it comes tolerance, culturally speaking, there is less and less to plausibly rebel against in the U.S. as time goes on.
Now, in my particular sphere, sorry to say, but good practice does require, well, practice, repetition. We require lots of homework simply because we have found that those who do a lot of it perform better and have a better understanding of the subject. That may be different for different subjects, of course, but the only way people seem to get good at integrating by substitutions, say, or with trig functions is to do a lot of them.
Salient 09.24.09 at 7:24 pm
Also, the way I interpret this statement implies that 1. these impulses can’t be mitigated and 2. “good†people are nice to others because they have innate instincts to treat people around them nicely. I don’t agree with either statement.
Neither do I, but I do think people feel different degrees of guilt if they discover they have hurt someone. Some folks tend to feel elation instead of guilt when they discover that their behavior has resulted in lasting or deep pain.
Quite plainly, they don’t understand why it might not be good for them, in the long run, to antagonize the people around them.
To be clear: It is good for them. They frankly stand to gain absolutely nothing they would want by being less antagonistic, and they enjoy the pleasure of antagonism. There is, I emphasize, categorically nothing desirable they could or would gain from being less antagonistic. They do not desire that which could or would be gained from benevolence. This is not a question of these individuals’ ignorance: it’s a question of what these individuals value and desire. I’ve learned the hard way that telling such students “you could get X if you did Y” is ineffective when they have no desire for Y and there exists no reason for them to desire Y.
“Good†people, on the other hand, are nice to other people because they understand that if they ever need anything from these people in the future, whether it be a tangible service or just companionship, being nice is the best way to accomplish it.
No, I disagree. Perhaps sometimes, but not always, not even predominantly.
Nice people, in the main, are nice because it feels natural to them; they find being nice feels pleasant. (That is learned, yes.) Obconreversely, not nice people, in the main, are not nice because it feels natural to them.
Mike C 09.24.09 at 8:37 pm
Salient,
Approximately what percentage of the population are you talking about here? Are you suggesting that a statistically significant number of people desire nothing but the pain of those around them? And if that’s true, are you suggesting that these people could never have been taught, at any point, the value of setting long term, non-destructive goals that can be achieved by working together with the people around them?
What I am trying say is that, while it’s true that there are people who behave and think in this manner, they reason they think this way is a function of failed socialization. It likely started before schooling, but that hardly means that it couldn’t have been corrected after the age of 5. Often it isn’t. What we end up with is a group of people who are aware of societal goals, but because they have no confidence in their ability to meet these goals, they intentionally shun them. In effect, they are failing on purpose, as opposed to trying and failing, because it allows them to take ownership of failure that they believe is imminent.
Regarding nice people, I strongly disagree that anyone is inherently nice or not nice. There are, however, inherent differences in people’s empathic abilities. People who are less capable of relating to those around them are more likely to come in conflict, and thus are more likely to develop antagonistic relationships with people, both specifically and in general. As their early relationships are turbulant and often unsatisfying (a poor work in/reward out ratio), they may see less value in interpersonal relationships, and thus are less inclined to make efforts to be kind to other.
Comparatively, people who are better at relating to those around them will have an easier time making friends, will get more out of their relationships for less, and thus will see positive interpersonal communication as beneficial and worth the effort. Not that people think these things when they make friends, or don’t. It’s unconscious. You don’t think “left foot, right foot” when you walk, but you learned how to do that, too.
But other of these tendencies, and the patterns that follow, can be subverted and reversed with proper (or improper) socialization. Children who lack social skills can still be taught the value of friendship. Children who struggle with learning can still be taught the value of education. It’s my view that the people whom you deem “sociopaths”, unless you’re talking about an incredibly small number of people, are really just poorly socialized, and schooling is an important part of socialization (to bring it back to the original topic).
Cranky Observer 09.25.09 at 2:16 am
> Approximately what percentage of the population are you talking
> about here? Are you suggesting that a statistically significant
> number of people desire nothing but the pain of those around them?
You are headed directly for the nature/nurture debate, but at least 2-3%, perhaps 5 in some places times and societies. It is not (necessarily, directly) pain that they desire to inflict but embarrassment, discomfiture, humiliation, generalized abuse, leading to emotional, physical, and social submission. In the state of nature the tormentors would eventually kill any males they are tormenting, or shun them to the point that they starved to death, but that doesn’t usually happen in modern society.
If you seriously do not think that there are a substantial number of human beings with these impulses then you have never been part of a community organization in a decaying neighborhood, attended/taught in a slum high school, worked as a supervisor in a factory in heavy industry, etc. There are more people than we care to think of for whom a glass window is nothing but an invitation to throw a rock.
Cranky
Cranky Observer 09.25.09 at 2:24 am
> “Good†people, on the other hand, are nice to other people because
> they understand that if they ever need anything from these people
> in the future, whether it be a tangiable service or just companionship,
> being nice is the best way to accomplish it. This is why all babies need to
> learn how to share. If being “good†wasn’t learned, wouldn’t “goodâ€
> babies already know how to do that?
That is a massively WASPy cultural assumption. There are several different cultures within the United States alone where toughness, fighting back, staying sharp, and not letting any insult go by unanswered are far more important than sharing or niceness.
My spouse is struggling with this right now in a new position at a school district that encompasses some of these cultures along with the lily-white (northern European descent) suburban majority; said spouse has never lived in or with such a culture and can’t figure out why the students aren’t simply too embarrassed to behave as they do. I point out that to these kids not fighting back against authority can be social, and in some cases literal, death, and I get looks of disbelief.
Cranky
virago 09.25.09 at 4:23 pm
Cranky,
There are more people than we care to think of for whom a glass window is nothing but an invitation to throw a rock.
Many of my classmates from grades K-12 fit this description, even though I grew up in “lily-white (northern European descent)” small town in a “lily-white (northern European descent)” state.
So I would hesitate to say that “lily-white (northern European descent)” = not likely to resist authority.
Salient 09.25.09 at 7:54 pm
Approximately what percentage of the population are you talking about here?
Back of the envelope calculation, about 1.4% of the student population, but there are schools I’ve attended which probably exceeded ten percent. (I live in a state with some exceedingly problematic middle schools.)
Are you suggesting that a statistically significant number of people desire nothing but the pain of those around them?
Students, not persons. And no, not quite. I’m suggesting they enjoy causing pain to those outside their social circle and especially to those outside their larger community of acknowledged peers.
And if that’s true, are you suggesting that these people could never have been taught, at any point, the value of setting long term, non-destructive goals that can be achieved by working together with the people around them?
No no no no no. That’s where we are in complete agreement. The most common way one becomes (learns) to be cruel like this, frankly, is by receiving years of unmitigated abuse or neglect. That is obviously completely preventable: no out-of-the-ordinary pedagogy is even required, just a safe & supportive & healthy environment at home and school. Furthermore, for those currently cruel, it’s easy to point to scalable programs with solid track records of helping such persons regain a sense of compassion and kindness.
What we currently lack is the social machinery to process these individuals, to match individuals to programs. We also lack the funding for such programs.
In my state, we lack the political will to finance these programs, basically because lots of white people honestly do think what you mistakenly^1^ believed I was thinking: that this problem is “inherent” and the black community (even though the problem is neither limited to this community nor predominant in this community) should deal with it itself (whatever that means).
^1^Not faulting you for this. Just emphasizing I don’t share the viewpoint.
Salient 09.25.09 at 7:56 pm
Also: what Cranky said, more or less, though like virago I don’t think it’s at all restricted to outside the lily-white-o-sphere.
Salient 09.25.09 at 7:59 pm
Also:
What we end up with is a group of people who are aware of societal goals, but because they have no confidence in their ability to meet these goals, they intentionally shun them. In effect, they are failing on purpose, as opposed to trying and failing, because it allows them to take ownership of failure that they believe is imminent.
This is a classical problem. You’re defining “success” and “failure” on your own terms, and then expecting the student to accept those terms or invert them (in other words, success = failure). If you automatically assume a definition of success with which you are comfortable, you lose everyone who disagrees with you about what constitutes success.
Lots of teachers have lost their non-gray hairs over this.
Cranky Observer 09.25.09 at 8:17 pm
> Many of my classmates from grades K-12 fit this description,
> even though I grew up in “lily-white (northern European descent)†small
> town in a “lily-white (northern European descent)†state.
>
> So I would hesitate to say that “lily-white (northern European descent)†= not
> likely to resist authority.
Thank you for that amplification. I won’t claim that #129 and #130 are the most coherent posts I have ever written , and on re-reading I did not make it clear that I was referring to only one set of cultural examples. Albeit ones fairly common in the United States.
Cranky
engels 09.27.09 at 12:53 am
You should consider the idea that in not posting enough you are doing nothing to oppose the tyranny of my working environment. Can you live with that on your conscience?
Thanks for the guilt trip, Substance. I wanted to stop but you’ve made me feel like I have to soldier on miserably, just for your sake. I don’t know how you can live with yourself…
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