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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   39286 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Redshirt the Boys

The value of a later start, which many teachers and administrators call “the gift of time,” is an open secret in elite circles. And it’s a gift overwhelmingly given to boys. In the past few months, I’ve interviewed dozens of private-school teachers, parents, educational consultants, and admissions officers, largely in the D.C. metro area. I learned that a delayed school entry is now close to the norm for boys who would otherwise be on the young side. One former head of an elite private school who now consults with parents on school choice and admissions told me, “There are effectively two different cutoff dates for school entry: one for boys and one for girls.”

On almost every measure of educational success from pre-K to postgrad, boys and young men now lag well behind their female classmates. The trend is so pronounced that it can result only from structural problems. Affluent parents and elite schools are tackling the issue by giving boys more time. But in fact it is boys from poorer backgrounds who struggle the most in the classroom, and these boys, who could benefit most from the gift of time, are the ones least likely to receive it.

there was a discussion on ssc a while back about why boys underperform relative to girls in school. the most common explanation was that school is simply 'feminized', but maybe boys simply mature slower; the article certainly doesn't shy away from nature over nurture

The problem of self-regulation is much more severe for boys than for girls. Flooded with testosterone, which drives up dopamine activity, teenage boys are more inclined to take risks and seek short-term rewards than girls are. Meanwhile, the parts of the brain associated with impulse control, planning, and future orientation are mostly in the prefrontal cortex—the so-called CEO of the brain—which matures about two years later in boys than in girls.

Other relevant centers of the brain follow suit. The cerebellum, for example, plays a role in “emotional, cognitive, and regulatory capacities,” according to Gokcen Akyurek, an expert on executive functioning at Hacettepe University, in Turkey. It reaches full size at the age of 11 for girls, but not until age 15 for boys. Similarly, there are sex differences linked to the timing of puberty in the development of the hippocampus, a part of the brain that contributes to memory and learning.

this seems like a simple enough way to perhaps help boys stop falling behind in education.

  1. Redshirting of boys is a good idea for an individual parent. But I suspect there's a Red Queen aspect that's being ignored: relative age/size/development plays a big role in school outcomes, particularly for boys. (E.g. short boys put on HGH show improved social and emotional outcomes). If all of a sudden all boys in a grade level are a year older, no one really benefits. This relative hierarchy is also consistent with girls not benefitting as much from red shirting: if it was merely that people who are more developed tend to do better in school and boys are delayed a bit, girls who are redshirted would still show a comparable benefit just even more so. And single sex schools don't show as large a benefit for boys as redshirting does.

  2. Boys and girls develop differently. Areas where boys tend to develop faster (independence; exploration; spatial and analytical reasoning; objective tests) are increasingly deemphasized in schooling. If you judge boys and girls according to who develops the most like girls, it's not surprising when girls have better outcomes.

  3. Age-based grade levels are outdated: there are enough factors of development that targeting instruction at a given grade level at some hypothetical child who is average in all those factors is not a "one size fits all" or even a "one size fits some" model, but one size fits none. (cf the curse of dimensionality). If I were to have a kid, public schools are the last place I'd put him or her.

If all of a sudden all boys in a grade level are a year older, no one really benefits.

Sure they do, they have an extra year of brain development to use in tackling the material they're being given at that grade level.

My point is that it's a relative development effect as well as an absolute development effect.

Girls also undergo a year of development in a year, same as boys. But redshirting doesn't increase their outcomes nearly as much. If it were purely a matter of absolute level of development, girls who redshirted would improve outcomes compared to their one year lower peers, same as boys, but they don't.

A good test of this would be redshirting all boys in a year. My prediction is that the improvement in outcomes would be substantially less than for a class composition with a smaller proportion of redshirt boys, and the effect would be dose dependent.

There's this chain of logic I feel like I've sniffed out - don't think I've ever seen it laid out all at once (so it makes me suspicious that it's an uncharitable leap of logic on my part, but I'll still venture posting...) - but seems to undergird a good deal of group ("oppressor-oppressed") dynamics in modern politics:

  1. The fruits of oppression, justice demands, must be forfeit.

  2. Groups naturally can differ in terms of mean talents or abilities. Taken together, these imply that:

  3. Unless something good that an oppressor-group has can be proven to be 100% nature and 0% nurture (which is a standard that can never be met) it is morally tainted, presumed illegitimate, and must be taken from them. Conversely, anything good that an oppressed-group has is doubly legitimate: not only is it the fruit of their natural superiority shining through (it can't be illegitimate, as that would mean that the oppressed-group is the Real Oppressors, as this is a binary status) but shining through despite the oppression! Likewise, anything bad that an oppressor-group has is doubly-legitimate, as they couldn't make up for it despite all the oppressing of their rivals, and anything bad an oppressed-group has can also be presumed illegitimate, probably the results of the oppression.

This makes for a supremacist's ratchet, quite frankly. Once a group has the brand of "oppressor" upon it, its only just place is equal-to-or-less-than everyone else, about everything, probably forever.

This is particularly clear in boys-versus-girls at school: if any measure by which boys outdo girls is presumed to be sexist, or measuring the fruits of sexism, and so in order for justice to be satisfied, this situation needs to be undone, while any measure by which girls outdo boys can be presumed honest, showing their natural superiority - well, what is the only possible way this can end?

i don't think the article claims that girls do better because they're just 'naturally superior'. yes, boys neurologically develop differently than girls, but that doesn't mean they're 'worse'.

Has it been considered that this is because of sports? Plenty of dads I knew didn't want their boy to be the smallest one on the team.

Including the origin of the “redshirt” title. Going to a Division 1 school, this came up more than once.

Sports usually include an age cutoff. There is a bit of room for finagling there, but usually less than a year, which isn't going to swamp the intra-year variance in size. That said, I literally made this decision for my son, keeping him in preschool an extra year to make him one of the oldest in his grade instead of the youngest, against the outraged squawking of the teacher's on his mother's side, and I am very happy with that decision.

I was born right at the cutoff and thankfully my parents held me back. I was more than a full year older than three or four of my classmates, which in retrospect, I think definitely gave me a leg up.

The true takeaway from that chapter in Freakonomics was to get pregnant February-May if your school cutoff is in September, and pray you don't have a very premature baby. Getting pregnant in August-October is the worst.

Which in turn has tons of knock-on effects, socially; which in turn has knock-on effects academically.

I think boys who are slow early on in school are destined to be that way throughout life and and end up in the lower rungs of society. Relative positions do not change, and giving slow boys a boost early on is not going to change this once the effect wears off, like with with universal pre-k in which any early gains were quickly erased. Boys who grow up to be engineers, STEM jobs, etc. probably don't have this problem as much as boys who grow up to work in service sector. Even in elementary school you can identify who has potential compared to who doesn't. Boys may underperform relative to girls but struggling on the classroom to some extent suggests an IQ problem, not a sex differences problem. Hoping that intervention will remedy innate differences reminds me of people hoping that their crypto portfolios will recover. let's assume there is a 2 year difference in brain maturity between boys vs. girls..this would suggest that slow boys can make up the difference after their brains mature and perform better at school, but how often does this happen?

Boys may underperform relative to girls but struggling on the classroom to some extent suggests an IQ problem, not a sex differences problem

Or there's a bias in grading...:

Teachers are more lenient in their marking of girls' schoolwork, according to an international study.

An OECD report on gender in education, across more than 60 countries, found that girls receive higher marks compared with boys of the same ability.

...

When it comes to teachers' marking, the study says there is a consistent pattern of girls' work being "marked up".

It suggests that "teachers hold stereotypical ideas about boys' and girls' academic strengths and weaknesses".

Teachers are said to reward "organisational skills, good behaviour and compliance" rather than objectively marking pupils' work.

Is classwork actually primarily measuring IQ?

My memories are that schoolwork primarily measured ‘making academics a priority’ and ‘willingness to comply with arbitrary instructions’, with actual learning a rather distant third. As any parent of small children will tell you, girls want to please their authority figures and are generally more compliant, so it doesn’t surprise me that girls do better in school than boys.

Add in that schoolteachers are pretty female and thus presumably better at working with girls, and you have multiple explanations for why girls get better grades that aren’t IQ.

Is classwork actually primarily measuring IQ?

I think there is some correlation . Meaning that kids who struggle probably are on net not that smart , but some smart kids may get low grades if they are bored with the work. I don't think this sub is representative of the average kid who dislikes school and then does really well later in life.

Here we see a strongly positive correlation between IQ and the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement that holds on all IQ ranges though:

https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-42eebfbeebd2b3735b54421ff2225f9c-lq

Is classwork actually primarily measuring IQ?

Given that IQ is chiefly a measure of academic potential I'd say probably yes. Where things get sketchy is in trying to map IQ to things like reasoning ability, social awareness, memory, erudition, etc...

Hoping that intervention will remedy innate differences reminds me of people hoping that their crypto portfolios will recover.

What, in the sense that it's happened several times before (across the market and with individual portfolios)? That this reality can be easily shown by a 20 second google search?

Why not just use a simple and accurate metaphor like pigs flying?

Furthermore, it's not established that women have higher IQ than men, some evidence seems to suggest that men have a higher average, though higher male variance would complicate this somewhat.

nature.com/articles/nature04966

Furthermore, it's not established that women have higher IQ than men,

I never said they did

What, in the sense that it's happened several times before (across the market and with individual portfolios)? That this reality can be easily shown by a 20 second google search?

I chose this one because it involves hope. no one hopes pigs fly, but many parents hope their slow kids excel at life later

When I have kids I would strongly consider holding any boys back so they are old for their class year. The impact of school mostly seems to be social conditioning and maturity helps. There are already a number of studies showing kids young for their grade are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. The only down side is the lost opportunity cost of having them start their careers a year later.

I personally was behind in school until 3rd grade when I suddenly started reading a number of grade levels higher. I would have expected effects to by reduced to zero by then but I also scored much higher on the GRE that I took for PhD applications (170/170 Math, 169/170 verbal) than I did on the SAT. Sample size of 1, but if I have kids they will be similar to me due to genetics, so thats all I need for my own choices.

I personally was behind in school until 3rd grade when I suddenly started reading a number of grade levels higher.

you are probably a major outlier though, like most people on this sub. How many slow boys in elementary school later ace standardized tests. very few unless their IQs test high. It comes down to IQ in the end. ADHD + low /average IQ will not make a superstar later in life, just a hyperactive adult

There are differences between boys and girls relevant to schools. But the article glosses over a few things.

But this fact is entirely ignored in broader education policy, even as boys fall further behind girls in the classroom.

Further behind? It seems unlikely the differences between boys and girls are actually getting more extreme. So if the differences in achievement are getting larger, this points to an extrinsic cause.

On almost every measure of educational success from pre-K to postgrad, boys and young men now lag well behind their female classmates.

Almost. But then there's those pesky standardized tests. It seems the more objective the measure, the better boys do. Perhaps these various other measures of education success are measuring something else, like how close their behavior hews to the good-girl standard.

Grades are mostly measuring interest in complying with authority figures no matter how arbitrary their preferences, which any parent will tell you girls have a natural edge at.

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