Schoolgirls' math skills now measure up to boys'

So, how are boys' language skills doing?

More info: It seems that although the AVERAGES are the same, boys are more extreme (more better, more worse than average). Since excellence in math-related careers (the glitzy ones) depends on the extreme, it does not show discrimination if those careers have more males. Thus:
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/...
You UCSC types, read it and weep. Or, you can read it and protest. I don't care, either way.

When will we do something about the growing gender gap in college? College populations now look like this: 58% women to 42% men.

(My husband says: What a great ratio! Wish it was like that when I was in college!)

How about the rarity of male elementary school teachers?

Why are these not considered problems?

X: When I started college (1960s) it was indeed 2:1 in favor of girls. But that's because the locals college had historically been a teachers' college. Even though it had a "liberal arts" program when I enrolled, the curriculum hadn't changed much, and there was little by way of advanced courses and no professional-entry programs (other than teaching). I transferred out; but for two years, it was kinda fun being in the male minority. Maybe not nowadays, what with radical feminists, lesb!an studies, and so forth.

Maybe women are smarter than men, in 58-42 proportion. Or, maybe college holds less payoff for men. Among blue-collar types of my generation or older, it was quite common for the girls to get some higher education (not necessarily a 4-year degree, but something post-HS) but the boys, not. That's because for people from the labor class, the boys were expected to do labor class jobs, and a degree didn't necessarily get you anywhere that an electrician's union card didn't get you. But the girls would often work in careers that required a little more education.

That phenomenon still occurs nowadays, I believe. In the mid-1990s a Hispanic activist (urban type, not farm workers) told me that urban Hispanic girls tended to go to college much more often than did the boys, for the same reasons as I mentioned above for blue-collar white people.

There are numerous other factors. But all of them relate to expectation of payoff for investment of time, money, and life, rather than to smarts. Apparently girls expect more payoff. Hint: there are numerous programs to get more girls into science and math careers. But I haven't seen any "diversity, affirmative action" ads for male elementary school teachers (not counting coaches). Have you?

RobtA that all makes sense, but it doesn't explain the RAPIDLY GROWING gender gap in colleges, especially because those union cards are getting to be pretty darned scarce.

Xanthippe, this is indeed considered to be a big problem at colleges, with some under-the-table affirmative action going on at some schools in order to balance the scales somewhat.

I find this interesting as I have a daughter who is interested in science and has pursued it with a lot of dedication, but is not at all interested in physics or engineering. She recently found out she got top marks in the AP calculus exam, but she sees calculus and all math as valuable tools, but not interesting areas to pursue for their own sake. My impression is that she may be typical of girls of the "good in math and science" ilk. She's aiming towards biological sciences at this point.

If I had known what I know today I would have put more effort into the more advanced math and sciences while back in high school and university.

It wasn't so much that I was a slacker, but I found doing the math over and over again to be boring and I had no need for it at the time.

There are things that I want to pursue career wise now that need advanced math skills and I don't have them. So I have to teach myself.

I tried taking an algebra class at Cabrillo, but the book was $130, which I thought was robbery, so I didn't take the class out of principle. But, in retrospect,$130 is not much if it will add thousands to your income down the road.

I'm not a parent, but if I were, I'd at least hammer in their heads the importance of pursuing advanced math. Even if boys want to pursue blue collar trades, they need to know math.

Laura: The physics and engineering kinds of careers have been colonized by H1-B visa immigrants from India and China. Currently, biological science is still a refuge for Americans. Not sure if that will persist in the future.

I happened to be at the top in my school in math - and in language skills! But nobody suggested that I might consider something such as, for example, journalism or law, even though I was in debate. Two reasons: 1. Not Irish (in that community), 2. Males were steered into science and math things (meaning, trades) like it or not.

At my school, science and math was the LOWER academic track. It was not alone, in that era.