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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.

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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