Just A Boy Thing

In the past females have achieved less well than boys at higher levels in the education system, then during the 1990', the girls over took boys at all levels in the education system. The percentage of females in the UK achieving two or more A-levels or equivalent has increased from 20% in 1990 to 42% in 2006. Over the same time period, the percentage of males achieving the same level increased from 18% to 33%. On the other hand, there still continues to be a large difference in the choice of subjects by males and females. Even with the national curriculum being restrictive in the lower levels, meaning both male and females do the same subjects, when they get to a-levels and degree level, both male and females still tend to choose different

Michelle Conlin is a writer for Business Week meanwhile Elaine McArdle is a correspondent for the Boston Globe. In the articles “The New Gender Gap” by Conlin and “The Lost Boys” by McArdle they write about the declining male success rate in the educational institutions and the implications for society. According to McArdle and Conlin, an effort has to be made to help the male population adjust with the female gender population in terms of educational success. Historically males have been the primary beneficiaries of education.

Lately this “boy code” increases a problem of the gender gap between boys and girls in terms of academic, social, and work performance.

Females nowadays are said to be earning more degrees than males. The idea of men being careless and irresponsible towards knowledge would immediately pop into your head. People assume boys are the problem regarding education but they in fact are not, schools are the issue that we should be discussing. Amanda Ripley (2018), in “Boys Are Not Defective”, suggests that there are people who say that girls always outperform boys in education and there are people who say boys are willing to study if they have a positive impact from their teachers and school.

Society’s understanding of gender roles debate about gender equity and have always been connected to the social roles that men and women we assigned to shape Americans views of education for girls and boys. What has also been affected is race and social class between females and males who attend schools. Ideas of what women and men are suppose to be and do have cut across different classifications. Ending unfairness in schools has rested on change to gender roles mainly women.

Gender differences in achievement can be explained best by changes that have occurred in factors outside of school, known as external factors. A DfES (2007) bar chart showed that throughout the years (1985 – 2007), there has been a higher percentage of females that achieved five or more A*-C grades at GCSE. The percentage has been constantly increasing at a faster rate than the male percentage. This proves that changes in wider society have affected both genders differently, but girl’s achievement has benefited from this more.

Schlosser. She carried out the study while on a post-doctoral fellowship at Princeton University, and will study the effects of gender in higher education lecture halls next. This is one of few studies of its kind to use scientific data to address the question of gender effects in school. Boys with more female peers in their classes show higher enrollment rates in both advanced math and science classes, but overall benefits were found in all grades for both sexes. Prof. Schlosser found that primary-school classrooms with a female majority showed increased academic success for both boys and girls, along with a notable improvement in subjects like science and math. In the middle schools, girls were found to have better academic achievement in English, languages and math. And in high school, the classrooms which had the best academic achievements overall were consistently those that had a higher proportion of girls enrolled. A higher percentage of girls lowers the amount of classroom disruption and fosters a better relationship between pupils and their teacher, a study of the data suggests. Teachers are less tired in classrooms with more girls, and pupils overall seem to be more satisfied when a high female-to-male ratio persists. Prof. Schlosser was inspired to the study by a “renewed interest on the effects of classroom gender composition on students’ learning, since a new amendment to America’s Title IX

Whilst there are factors outside school, internal factors also impact gender differences in educational achievements hugely. According to Tony Sewell, boys fall behind in education because schools have become more 'feminised', as indicated in Item A. This means that feminine traits such as methodical working and attentiveness have

As discussed in a recent essay by Saul Kaplan “The Plight of Young Males”, there is a serious academic gender achievement gap in the United States and as I will discuss, around the world. Young women are doing significantly better than young men, and the results are shocking. In the latest census, males make up 51 percent of the total U.S. population between the ages of 18-24. Yet only 40 percent of today’s college students are men. Since 1982, more American women than men have received bachelor’s degrees. In the last ten years, two million more women graduated from college than men. As Kaplan reveals, the average eleventh-grade boy writes at the level of the average eighth-grade girl. He also states that women dominate high school honor rolls and now make up more than 70 percent of class valedictorians. Kaplan says, “I am happy to see women succeeding. But can we really afford for our country’s young men to fall so far behind,” (733)?

However social class is not the only factor influencing educational achievement; Girls achieve higher grades than boys in Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) and GCSE’s (Mitsos and Browne, 1998), in 2010 to 2011 54.3 per cent of black pupils achieved five or more A* to C grades at GCSE compared to 58 per cent of white pupils and 61.8 per cent of Asian pupils (Attew, 2012). Therefore educational achievement is also affected by gender and ethnicity.

Gender differences occur in many aspects of a person’s life whether it is culture, politics, occupation, family and relationships, or the economy (just to name a few). One major difference in gender occurs in learning and education in the elementary and secondary levels. Research has found that males and females learn differently in many aspects of education. First of all, female and male brains are constructed differently affecting the way they learn; this leads to basic differences in learning and also gives an introduction into why the way one learns differs according to gender and how males and females learn subjects and tasks differently. Second, males and females are treated differently, sometimes unconsciously, in educational

In the past, there have been many debates about the gender gap happening throughout school systems. Even still to this day, there are many arguments about this topic. Back then, all there was was problems about education. Guys were more privileged than the girls were. For the past decades, this issue has stuck around. Many argue that boys are still more privileged than girls are. But many facts these days say otherwise.

Gender equity in terms of education is about the socialization of men and women and the results of this process on the life outcomes of the two genders (Husen & Postlethwaite, 1994). In the United States, the education system is required to treat males and females equally. There has been much research done to compare the genders in all areas. In the past, research has found that women fall far behind men in many areas such as math, and science, but men lag behind women in certain areas as well. Over the years, many provisions have been made with the goal of equalizing the treatment of girls and boys in public education. These improvements are proven successful as women, as well as men, are advancing in areas where they tend to lag

Over 58% of boys thought they suffered from discrimination. This included the belief that teachers were more likely to criticise boys than girls Licht & Dweck argued that as a result of this criticism, boys are more likely to blame their teachers when they fail. As girls tend to have better relationships with teachers, they are more likely to accept the blame for academic failure and are therefore willing to seek help with their academic problems. Some sociologists argue that boys relationships with teachers is being affected by the increase in the number of women teachers in schools.

Worldwide, women are achieving higher representation and success. At the post-secondary level women are earning most of the degrees awarded. Where did our males disappear to? Gender inequality is an extensive, complex and often vague concept. Simply it is defined as the ranking of a particular gender, whether male or female, over the other and how they are treated based on their gender. Gender inequality and the result of male underperformance in schools have become major issues in the Caribbean, and affect the individuals involved and the society on a whole. Boys’ underachievement therefore should not be ignored and an analysis of