Female Teachers give Boys Lower Marks
An article from the Huffington Post UK, discussed a study that found that female teachers give boys lower marks (via Newsalert):
Female teachers mark male pupils more harshly than they do their female students, research has claimed.
Additionally, girls tend to believe male teachers will look upon them more favourably than female teaching staff, but men treat all students the same, regardless of gender.
The study, released on Thursday, told 1,200 students in 29 schools to place financial bets on who would give them higher grades: external examiners or their teacher.
Conducted by professors Amine Ouazad and Lionel Page, for the London School of Economic’s Centre for Economic Performance, the report said:
“Male students tend to bet less [money] when assessed by a female teacher than by an external examiner or by a male teacher. This is consistent with female teachers’ grading practices; female teachers give lower grades to male students.
Books like the The End of Men: And the Rise of Women or Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys like to smugly point out that men just aren’t the go-getters that women are, especially when it comes to school. What they leave out of the equation is that boys and men are discriminated against–giving them little incentive to try. With little incentive to try, college and the American Dream
How will this affect the economy in the coming years? Probably not in a good way, but then, if women are paying the bulk of taxes for men who need the cash in the coming years, it may not work out to be too bad of a deal after all!
Also read: Should You Worry if Your Man Looks at the Bikini-Clad Women at the Beach?
Perhaps that’s why math (and science to some degree) is where boys are the most comfortable (relative to girls anyway). To a much greater degree than with humanities, the answers are either right or wrong, and it’s harder to discriminate.
(I may just be projecting, but it was definitely a HUGE factor in why I leaned towards math and engineering).
About twenty years ago, a group of New York State public school teachers started a movement to soften the teaching of mathematics in primary and secondary schools. The core of their idea was to eliminate the correct / incorrect dichotomy in favor of “good answer” / “less good answer.”
They didn’t get terribly far, but not for lack of trying. Oh, by the way: every public face of that movement was female. If there were any men involved in it, I never heard of them.
There’s some of that anyway. For example, “show your work” sort of problems where at least partial credit is lost because the work “wasn’t neat enough” or in “the right order” (yet for some other kid the same order got full credit).
But it would be tough to make math as objective as the humanities without rendering the subject completely useless.
I understand “show your work,” but adults today have to know that what we did in school and what is today’s “show your work” are remarkably different. How?
Well, I spent time with my fourth grader, working through math. The methods (yes, plural) taught to solve simply multiplication were counter-intellectual and couter-productive. They taught several different methods and wanted the child to show the work for each method. I understand it’s to find the “right” language for a child to learn math, but you have to crack a elementary grade math book to witness some of the “solutions.” One had him multiply by the hundreds, then write that in a line, then the tens, put that in a separate line, then the single digits. Lest you think it would be represented the same way a normal adult does multiplication, trust me – it’s not.
My boy is flat-out struggling, precisely because of “show your work.” In the same evening, he literally calculates the same multiplation problems in his head and writes down the answer. It was only when I had him “show his work” that he got confused with the various methods asked within the same lesson plan.
So, here I am. An engaged parent, working with my son. He gets multiplication. In fact, he’s doing calculations, such as 324 X 16, in his head and gets the answer correct. When he has to write out:
10 times 300 is 3,000.
10 times 20 is 200
10 times 4 is 40
6 times 300 is 1,800
6 times 20 is 120
6 times 4 is 24
Then add them to get the answer. That’s just one goofy way. This, of course, doesn’t factor in that they make the child estimate the answer first, then work to get the correct answer. Why not just let him work on the answer and skip the fan dance?
Neatness and “show your work” are both ways boys get graded down, even if they get the correct answer. Girls are more inclined to excel at neatness, especially at that stage.
Imagine being a kid who can do multiplication like that and being forced into various byzantine methods to solve the problem. How frustrating. And they wonder why he has zero interest in school. They’re talking about getting him into the Intermediate Unit. The kid is emotionally healthy, socially outgoing, and a shade brighter than many in the class. He’s just stinking bored with lousy and confusing instruction.
My son is struggling with exactly that same problem. He’s been squaring and cubing numbers in his head since 1st grade and can do 2-digit multiplication in his head… and his third grade class is boring him to death. This at a “magnet school”. Meh. We’re strongly discussing homeschooling.
Deoxy – I would strongly urge homeschooling – my wife and I did not, much to our lasting shame – and our girls – 29 and 28 – one with useless BA, one with ADRN(Associates degree RN from local CC) after equally worthless BA – have paid the price.
With the remarkable tools now available online – see Khan Academy – a homebuilt STEM curriculum with excellent Humanities supplementation is readily available, in many versions, with added religious instruction as well in various forms.
I had an elementary school classmate in the 60s who could not show his work because he never did any. When presented with a problem; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, whatever, he just knew the answer. He drove teachers crazy. I guess today, they would drive him crazy.
Don’t let your kids watch Kahn Academy. He has no quality control. And woe to the student who doesn’t realize there’s a “correction” crammed into another video referencing the mistake in a previous video.
What a dangerously loved guy that Kahn.
This is bullllshiiiiit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OdQGbVNa4
Yeah, that video is pretty much made by an intellectual wimp. All I said was “No one is forcing you to serve in the military. Illogical counterpoint.” And then literally 3 minutes later I tried to reply in *agreement* with something and was already blocked by the video uploader. The coward is sitting on YouTube banning people in real time for a year old video.
This isn’t new. I graduated from high school almost 45 years ago, and greatly preferred math and science for just this reason. The English teachers, in particular, tended to be women, and gave the girls much better grades than the guys. History wasn’t far behind. So, I gravitated towards math in particular, and sciences in general, where the grading was much more objective, as contrasted to what I believed at the time to be the subjectivity of English and History, where the girls were rewarded for sucking up to the female teachers. Still, I ended up scoring better than 100 points higher on the verbal SAT that most of the girls getting As in those subjective classes where I was struggling to get Bs, because, of course, the SATs are standardized tests, where being delightful to the teachers didn’t matter.
Found out in college though that it wasn’t necessarily that the teachers were women in high school (and below), but rather, the subjectivity of the humanities that bothered me. Took a philosophy class with a male prof, got a low grade, and asked him why my interpretation of Plato was wrong and his was right. His response was that the weight of scholarship was on his side. That professional philosophers agreed with him, and not me. Never took a philosophy, English, history, etc. class after that, since the criterion for good grades appeared to be divining what the prof wanted and parroting it back to them, and that there was no objective way to determine whether you are right or wrong. Instead, took math, science, engineering, business, and ultimately law, classes (ok, the latter can be pretty subjective too – despite the employment of Dr. Helen’s husband).
Years past I side-stepped collage completed by enrolling in the military for a specific technical skill (computers) that I would normally have gone to collage for. In this way I avoided the collage expense, the “diversity” experience (white males are responsible for all that is bad in the world) and most of the PC clap-trap. I also earned while I learned and moved on post military to a 20+ year career in that field. The lack of a “formal” degree does not seem to have hurt me in the least.
I now have the time and money to take the online collage courses that I want to instead of having to sit through (who knows how many) credit hours of humanities and studies courses.
This is still a good option for many men that want to “get to it” and avoid the expense and fluff that can go along with traditional collage learning.
Well, justsaying, maybe one of the boring on-line classes you take will be in spelling. I’ve no doubt your story is true and you never needed collage (sic)but I am rather wondering about high school. Maybe some collage (sic) will fill in a few tiny gaps in your education. Then maybe you’ll want to go to a Univercity.
Not everyone can type, much less spell well…so lighten up. In my experience the spelling and grammer nazi’s tend to be those of a leftward bent. Don’t be an ass.
Yes, and some spelling errors completely negate the valid arguments laid out in his post. Though I notice you avoided rebutting those, most likely because you can’t.
Didn’t refute his point because it is valid. Also valid is the point that the words we choose and the way we use them (including spelling) speaks volumes about our ability to effectively communicate our ideas and experiences.
As to the “leftist” claim posted above, I believe that words have real meanings, including those in our constitution, that real meanings have real consequences, and that we fail to learn and understand them at our peril. If believing that, for example, the Constitution is a limiting document and that understanding what the founders wrote is both our responsibility and our obligation makes me a leftist, then say on. I’ll be lonely over there, though, as most leftists I know express the attitude of Humpty Dumpty in “Through the Looking Glass,” to wit, “it (a word or words) means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
Words can and should be powerful means of expression. Anything, including spelling, which detracts from that power renders the point of emphasis more trivial.
I had an English teach in the 11th grade who made no effort to hide her contempt for the males and her favor of the females. I tended to get very high marks in every subject outside of her class, but my first semester with here I received a C. I took an informal survey … my C was the highest among the males; every female got an A.
The next semester I worked as hard as I could and achieved a B+. I missed the A- by one point. Coincidence? I think not. Again, my grade was the highest among males; every girl got an A.
The third semester I gave up and resorted to cheating just to see if that would get me into the A category. Nope. Her tests were all subjective essays and even with cheating (going into her file drawer and stealing a copy of the test before the exam) I was unable to overcome her bias.
*sigh* … oh well, that is way in my past. But to this day I do not trust female instructors where subjectivity enters the equation.
I had similar experiences. A fifth grade teacher clearly hated boys and was quite harsh to us but no one would believe us because the girls were doing so well and would not back us up. In college I had an English professor who was incredibly harsh on men’s papers, including demanding corrections then checking those corrections wrong in the revised papers, while being easier on girls. She was still rather tough on the girls just not nearly so bad as she was to the men.
So I have no doubt that this still goes on and is probably much worse than when I was in school.
If you think female teachers are no fun, try female bosses.
Strangely, I know more men that are ok with female bosses than women. The vast majority (3 out of 4) woman I know have stated they would prefer a man as a boss than a woman.
My son has suffered under the female teacher syndrome and yes he wears his ROTC uniform to their classes.
Yikes, I was one of those female bosses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry to say, fortunately I woke up. They are feminazis like Rush says. One female teacher told my daughter she could not use FOX News as a reference because it wasn’t a real news channel. Problem is the prinicipal agreed with her, he is hispanic.
I’ve actually had ok luck with female bosses over male bosses. A couple of the female bosses have been overbearing, but one in particular was a very good mentor and worked to promote her employees with upper management. Most of my male bosses have been more concerned with promoting their favorites and have had little ability to delegate tasking to their employees. My current male boss is ok, but he does have a female boss over him. I am mainly left to my own devices, and I get an assignment on a periodic basis. At least he doesn’t go into rage mode like some other bosses I’ve had.
I found this dichotomy much worse in the military. I had phenomenal male officers and NCO’s from all races and backgrounds, but damn near every female was awful–either shriekingly hardass, totally meek, or both.
Seconded. The 3 places I worked with female bosses were so incredibly dysfunctional as to make the Manson family appear to be a perfect family unit.
Temper tantrums, massive amounts of passive-aggressive behavior that would be known to trigger anothers emotional response, hanging up of half or mostly nude men in the office (Yeah, try doing the equivalent if you’re a guy.) shaming language, objects flung at other workers, contempt for any male, physically barring a male from using the bathroom by placing their hand in his path (If he were to have moved her or tried to get around her, he’d be brought up on assault charges, or she’d reposition herself to remain in his way.
Deliberately telling the newer males wrong information on how to perform their job properly, and then ensuring that the other supervisor notices so they can visit to chastise them. Removal of training materials essential to performing the job they were tasked with, etc. etc.
Breaking into others private email accounts (not work related accounts) to blackmail them, going into their subordinates medical files to coerce people into coming onto a shift (After the doctor told them a few days rest was necessary – in an ER no less!) and threatening them with a written warning if they didn’t comply. Then covering their *** by alleging made up behavior to discredit the employee they just tried to screw over.
And the constant moaning and bitching about men and how much they suck and they were lousy fathers and horrible people. Listening to the sheer amount of bitterness and bile directed at men was just soul-crushing. Even better would be when one would come to me for advice on how you know “if you really love someone” (As one of the few happily married men there.)
I laughed. I wasn’t going to touch that with someone else’s ten foot pole.
If you keep quiet and just observe, women are extraordinarily bitter and whiney as a whole. There are always a few gems who stand out, and I cherish those unique beauties. But on the whole, this generation of females needs to be forced into irrelevancy as soon as possible.
And I’ve told the story before, but in college the teacher went from giving me “A”‘s to “D-” because I called her “White men are the only ones who can be racist.” statement a load of crap. Then she asked me not to return to class. My grades were consistently “D”‘s after that.
High school was even more fun. I’m one of the first wave of “Call it ADD” and medicate the crap out of him because he hits the bullies back. Can’t have that.
Meanwhile, California has passed a huge state tax increase (Prop 30) to fund the Teacher’s Union pensions. Despite the fact that teachers in CA are paid $90K a year for 8 months of work.
The education bubbles, both higher and lower, cannot pop fast enough.
What makes you think the state will allow the bubble to pop? The schools are the primary indoctrination vehicle for the Left. If everyone else has to go into bankruptcy to keep them well paid, that’s what WILL be done. And you will get NO say in it.
“1. Bret”
You have a point here. I can say I definitely stayed away from the more subjective classes where I could in high school. However it is possible to teach syntax, style, and literature analysis in an objective way. My AP English teacher in high school was harsh on grades–for both males and females–but she was a great teacher. It was the first time I had an English teacher that taught language and literature in an analytical way. I found out just how well prepared I was when I went into college and could whip out analysis of literature the day before (sometimes the day of
) the paper being due. I could even do this in intermediate college literature classes and perform well compared to supposed literature majors.
But reading “3. Don” brings me to the other side of the coin. I had to wait until my senior year to have a literature teacher who could teach in a style I could learn from and find freedom from bias. The curricula for language arts before that was all about artsy creative crap where ‘expressing yourself’ was a big part of the grade. And let’s face it, there is a gender gap in comfort with emotional expression. They might as well have graded on level of expressive emasculation. I had one teacher who had a printout prominently displayed by her desk which read “Grow your own dope. Plant a man”. She certainly relished lavishing praise on females and criticism on males in her classes. I can’t say how this attitude carried over to her evaluations of the students, but as a student in her class, I wondered. That message would never be tolerated by a male teacher directed at women. The results of this research are not surprising to me. Females are allowed to be discriminatory while men are held to a higher standard. I’m not complaining about men being asked to treat everyone fairly. My complaint is that women are not held up to that standard.
Bryan,I understand the teacher,student power imbalance you were in,but why did you tolerate it?
A few days ago,a woman at work said “men are dumb” I asked her why she would say something sexist about my gender with me standing right there.( or at all,for that matter)
We can’t expect others to hold people responsible for their prejudice when we won’t ourselves.
“I had an English teach in the 11th grade who made no effort to hide her contempt for the males and her favor of the females. I tended to get very high marks in every subject outside of her class, but my first semester with here I received a C. I took an informal survey … my C was the highest among the males; every female got an A”
Similar experience- my 11th grade English teacher would mark a few red notes on my papers and give a B or C very arbitrarily.
No obvious gender bias- I just figured out that she had a particular opinion of whatever “great literature” we were learning- if you wrote an essay parroting her view- you got an A.
I have a theory that teen girls are better at evaluating that sort of stuff than teen boys- who are a bit more rebellious- and get penalized for it.
Boy, that brings back memories, circa ’73, of taking a senior seminar in a methods class (sociology) from a female professor who had won a prestigious award for her ethnography–the actual dangerous skid row field work was done by her male students. (This was only three years after doing two tours in Vietnam. I think I was the only vet attending incognito) There were about thirty of us, equally divided between genders, down to even the two graduate students, one male and one female, taking the course. The male graduate student flunked! The female graduate student got an A. Only the females got As and Bs and none of them flunked. I got the highest grade among the males, a C plus, which brought down my average. The female I sat beside would brag about dry labing (faking) her model data on the assignments and got a B. Looking at the historical data for college enrollments, if you want to get the males back in school just have another Vietnam Era draft with the same exemptions and deferments, but with an additional exemption for misogyny and homophobia. That way progressive males and gays can claim a draft exemption during the next “unjust war.”
I normally really appreciate the articles of this cite, but I don’t think this is really informative at all. The ‘study’ conducted, upon a careful reading, does not assess grading practices by female teachers. Rather, it assess the perception of male students on those very grading practices, and then uses those perceptions to claim that the thesis, that female teachers are sexist, is obvious. The very same data can be used to assert that male students are sexist against their female teachers, a claim I am not making here necessarily. This is a politically loaded topic and the writers here are grasping at straws.
Actually, when I looked up the actual study, the researches did look at female grading practices and indeed, the male student’s perceptions were correct: the female teacher did give a lower grade to the males in reality (at least in the study). It also states this in the article:
“This is consistent with female teachers’ grading practices; female teachers give lower grades to male students.”
I got a middle school teacher “reassigned” for this very thing. Not one boy in here english class got an A despite getting equal or better graded papers and test scores.
We got parents involved. It was proven. And she was shuffled off to another assignment.
In other words “dumped on a new group of unsuspecting students and parents”. The last thing the union would support is correcting the problem (i.e. remove a bad/biased teacher). Tis better to just move them on…
I’m probably a bit older than most here (I’m 53) and I had an unusual educational experience, in that I spent 5 years in a military school, where the student body was almost exclusively male. The school went out of business after my 7th grade, and towards the end we had several girls attend. There were no instances (as far as I remember) of academic discrimination in their favor, but I distinctly remember one of them–her name was Ellie if I remember right–kicking the boys in the shin all the time, very enthusiastically. It hurt like hell. We were all supposed to be manly, and so we weren’t to complain about this. After months of it going on (it hurt and she left bruises on a number of us) a bunch of us finally went to one of the senior school adminstrators, to get her to stop Ellie from doing this, and she told us that she didn’t believe us…and even if she had believed us, she told us it wouldn’t matter anyway. She even quoted the “sugar and spice and everything nice” doggerel to explain her attitude.
A few weeks later I had an opportunity to talk informally with one of the younger female teachers, and told her what Ellie was doing, showed her the bruises. After that, Ellie stopped, though I don’t know what was said between them.
This was true in the 1960′s as well. As an elementary/junior high student I sensed that the girls had it easier under most female teachers.
Less so in high school and college – possibly because of some post-puberty influences.
Bless your heart, I thought I was the only one. I first noticed this in 1961, and got a memorable visit to the principal’s office for my trouble. No, he didn’t spank me, and that annoyed the teacher no end.
Me too! This is not a recent phenomenon. I saw the same thing happen in the 60′s. It got worse as the decade wore on and schools became more “progressive”.
We sent our daughters to Catholic school. They still had to deal with New Math and cr@p like that, but when you are sending the school a tuition check every month you have at least some leverage to deal with the really bad teachers.
I would add that I also think female teachers often have unrealistic expectations for boys.
I think some typical boy behaviors are often viewed as negative which may make learning for the boys less interesting.
I think our educational system-mostly run and controlled by women-is now set up so that girls succeed but many boys fail.
My 7th grade English teacher at Detroit’s Hillel Day School, Mrs. Paris, was a misandrist who relished putting boys down. We had a small class, four girls and six boys. Just a few years later, our English skills were good enough to get admitted to schools like Columbia and Michigan but none of the boys in my 7th grade class got better than a C in English. As a matter of fact, four of the six boys had good enough English skills to become attorneys. A fifth is a professional writer.
Per the abstract of the study in question: “Teachers tend to give better grades to students of their own gender.”
Perceptions suggest that male teachers are less biased, but the same study’s conclusions didn’t seem to back that up. (Of course, given that the vast majority of teachers are currently female…)
As for me, I wrote papers for the female teachers in high school, where they criticized everything from my choice of works to the way I viewed my subject.
(I also once got grilled in class because a female teacher insisted I was using words I didn’t understand on a paper. When she shot the words at me and I gave her instant definitions she shut up, but never said “Good vocabulary.”)
Anyway, a few years later, I took those papers, slightly improved them, and turned them into male college professors. I got top marks and it was pretty much the same material. Also, at least one of these professors is an esteemed author and I ended up writing for two major news organizations and getting a book deal myself.
No thanks to the female high school teachers.
Graduated HS in 1973, and had a slightly different experience in 9th grade. Realized that one of the female teachers in social studies wasn’t really grading A students or D-F students on tests, male or female. How I realized it I’m not sure. Told a friend. He didn’t beleive me. Next multi-page test I answered the first and last page, and in the middle pages wrote recipes. Had an “A” on it when it was handed back. She glanced at the A and F students papers, just to see they looked good, then marked them accordingly. She took the time to grade the B’s and C’s and off constructive criticism. If you were an A student and did the first page perfect, the rest didn’t matter…
In 12th grade had a calculus tacher with a different method. We got take home tests. Graded them in class- by ourselves, and handed him the grade. He said he was required to give a mid-term and final graded by him, and did so, but averaged them in with the self graded papers. His reasoning, he gave to us, was simple. If we cheated, and passed, and went on to an engineering or science curriculum because of our “good grades”, we’d flunk out because the calculus we were taking was required for understanding the basics. IOW, we would be cheating only ourselves in the end. If we cheated, and entered any soft field, we’d never take another math course, and never need calculus, so he didn’t really care. Less then 10% of the class cheated.
One other story, just because it’s amusing. Had one HS teacher who should have been long retired, giving spelling and vocabulary tests to HS sophomores. BORING! Well, she said to use all ten words in a sentence, so- I used all ten words in a sentence. It was a run on sentence. She wasn’t really amused, but had to give me credit for it. Principal said so, since they were used correctly. Next test specified one vocabulary word per sentence.
True story: When I was a young lad, I had a kindergarten teacher who told my parents everything wrong with me, and then admitted, “I hate boys!” A year later, my mom was reading the newspaper and came across a birth announcement: this woman had twin boys! LOL!
shocking. not.
if you have the money, and a son, an all boy’s school is a no brainer.
Went to an all-boys high school, and a Catholic one at that. We had female teachers just like they do in public schools. Maybe a little better caliber as far as the teacher credentialing process goes, which is to say the Chemistry teacher had a degree in Chemistry and not education.
Didn’t make a lick of difference as far as I’m concerned. They might not discriminate against you because of your anatomy, but they’ll find other ways to mark you down if they don’t like you. And if you were someone who brought attention to the school, you got a lot less scrutiny over your material than others. It really annoyed me at the time, but it’s also not too much different than the refereeing in your average NBA game.
Right. But we who educate our children at home are the crazy ones.
I think I must have been schooled before women soured. In my unexceptional public high school my best teachers were women, with only one hysteric in the lot. The men were either closeted bitches or were hired to coach athletics. I graduated in 1960. I never again had a female instructor for college and then law school, except for an art history course I took for fun. What happened to sour all the women teachers?
ok so we learn:
1) male teachers (and by extension males generally) treat both sexes fairly
2) female teachers (and by extension females generally) treat males unfairly
3) males are aware they’re being intentionally cheated and held-down (the wagering bias)
so, reality is in exact opposition to the propaganda we’re deluged with daily, concerning the Oppressor Male and the Egalitarian/Superior Female
this has been going on for forty years, so the violent acting-out of males — especially in america, where discrimination and apartheid are worst — is understandable and, in fact, guaranteed (the only “voice” available)
the “end of men” gloat-a-thons are necessary rationalizations for a society that persecutes its males — the nation forces males out of education and employment, then mocks them publically for being lazy, unmotivated, unintelligent, and peter-pans
such characterizations then allow the culture to further disenfranchise its target (as everyone already “knows” that males are just lazy bums etc)
very sick indeed
I’m thinking that there might be an element of Sexual Market Place (SMP) involved. Female teachers evaluating their male student boys to be less than Alpha men and are graded accordingly.
Don’t be so quick with this emotional assumption that women/have-good men/have-bad inaccuracy. Just yesterday at the college I work at, I got to experience first hand the utter disrespect male students have for female faculty and staff. I explained a simple rule to a student. All he had to do was walk away. Instead he stood there at my desk hovering and arguing. I even pulled out, “You know what personal responsibility is?” and he said he did know, but then went right back to the rule he kept making excuses. And it was a big rule he violated but he got very little consequences so it was no big deal–take the outcome and walk away. But he stood there arguing. And I remember making a mental note that he would not be arguing like a brat like this with a man. Soon a male professor walked over to try helping and the student was still arguing but not at the professor but at me. The professor said I was right. The student kept arguing at me. I said it wasn’t a big deal, what is wrong with you? Then he held up his hands and told the professor, “See? This is what it’s like arguing with a woman! You can’t win!” And there he proved the inkling I had about why he was arguing with ME in the first place.
Had I said that about him being black–you refuse to understand because you’re black–he’d have had me fired the next day and had me shamed in the local press. And the thought never even occurred to me until he threw the gender-card at me. It’s OK for him, but probably never OK for someone to do the same to him.
Unlike most of the commenters on this thread, who speak of their experiences as a student, and not without reason, I’ve been a teacher. I worked in education for 20 years. Including student teaching, substitute teaching, full-time teaching, and part-time teaching as an adjunct professor, I’ve taught at every grade level from elementary through sophomore college.
Do you want to know what was the best class I ever taught? It was 9th grade freshman English, seven students. These were very low level kids. They had all been in special ed through junior high, and now they were mainstreamed for the first time. These kids could barely print. Most of them couldn’t spell their own names. But they were the best students I ever taught.
How many tardy slips did I have to write? None. How many disciplinary reports did I have to file? None. How many times did I have to send one of them to the office? Never.
Every day, when the tardy bell rang, they were sitted in their seats, ready to work. They were attentive, they followed instructions, and they completed their assignments. So I worked with them.
I set up lesson plans based on the writing cycle. Monday–prewriting. Generate thoughts, write an outline. Tuesday–writing. Produce a rough draft. Wednesday–editing. Revise the rough draft. Thursday–proofreading. Correct all mistakes. Friday–final draft.
It was a small class so I could work with these kids. Every day, they would come to my desk and show me their work. Outline, rough draft, edited draft, final draft, and I would look it over and mark their mistakes. They would all return to their desks and rewrite their papers and correct their mistakes. At the end of the week, their papers were focussed, organized, developed, and error free. So I gave them all hundreds. It was the first time in their lives they had earned a hundred. Now they were motivated.
Compare that to the AP class I taught. It was full of spoiled brats. There was this one girl who was always late to class. She would just walk in whenever she wanted, sit down and start talking. Tardy, disrupting class, ignoring instruction, not completing assignments. I was like, who are you, little Miss High School? And when she turned her paper in, it was full of mistakes. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling do matter, you know.
I gave her the lowest grade I was allowed to, a 50. You would not believe the grief I took because of that. Turned out that one of the boys in my low-level class lived next door to her. Her mother came to the school, really pissed. I was called into the office.
She was out of her mind. “My daughter has never made a grade below 90. She’s on the honor roll! This boy is barely out of special ed.” And on and on.
I sat there and told her, look, I’ve filed more tardy reports on your daughter than I have on any other student, and I have 150. I’ve filed more disciplinary reports on your daughter than I have on any other student. Here’s my phone log. I’ve called you at least 30 times to discuss your daughter’s behavior. And it hasn’t changed. Here’s this boy’s paper. It doesn’t have any mistakes. He may not print well, but he’s never late, he does not disrupt class, he follows instructions,and he completes his assignments. More importantly, he corrects his mistakes. This is your daughter’s paper. It’s full of mistakes. She is constantly tardy, she disrupts class, she ignores instructions, and she does not complete her assignments. She deserves the grade she earned, a 50.
Well, that did not go over well, even though it was all true. The next semester, they took away my AP classes and gave me all low level kids.
That’s the education system in this country. Pamper the AP kids, flunk the SE kids.
In my career as a teacher and professor, I always treated my students equally. The grading standard applies to everyone. Come to class on time, follow instructions, do not disrupt class, complete your assignments, and turn in a paper that is focussed, organized, developed, and error free. But don’t blame me if you’re not capable of doing that.
Dr Helen,
While I appreciate what you’re doing with articles like this, and the one about whether men should join the military, etc, I can’t help but read them and say “Yeah, and?”
Bear with me, please.
A vital part of manliness is in rising to the occasion, in dealing with adversity, and in understanding (in my late father’s immortal words) that life ain’t fair. Life wasn’t fair to the men caught in the Meat Grinder on Iwo Jima, or the first wave at Omaha beach, or the firemen in the World Trade Center. Complaining about getting a B when a woman who handed in similar work got an A is, well, not manly.
Before life was hard for men and easier for women, life was hard for black men and easier for white men. Or hard for Irish men and easier for non-Irish men. Or hard for immigrant men and easier for men who could trace their ancestry to the Mayflower. Or hard for poor men and easier for rich men. A man can respond by feeling sorry for himself, or he can respond by flipping the bird at the unfairness and doing what he needs to do. Or he can say “Screw it” and sit on the sofa watching TV and drinking beer until the world comes crashing down. Personally, I like the world standing, so I do my part to keep it standing, and I know I’ve done my part even if no one else acknowledges it.
I’m really not trying to belittle what you’re doing, it IS nice to know there’s someone (especially a woman) who gets it. I just think the reality is that there’s always someone ready to dump on you, so you might as well get out the shovel and start digging before you’re buried.
So, would you say the same about the political landscape? Obama etc. is dumping on certain groups, don’t worry about it and don’t fight back in some way? When the US fought the Revolutionary War against England in order to become an independent country, would you say, don’t worry about it,happens all the time? Life’s unfair– Just flip them a bird and don’t fight back? The culture changes with people who are willing to stand up to the unfairness in some way, not by going along with it with your finger out. Also, I am being a bit sarcastic when I talk about men sitting back while women pay taxes etc. in this post, but at the same time, for some men, this works.
“So, would you say the same about the political landscape? Obama etc. is dumping on certain groups, don’t worry about it and don’t fight back in some way?”
Not in the slightest. I’m afraid I didn’t express myself too well (that’s what happens when I try to be coherent before coffee).
“Unfairness” is part of the human condition. Sometimes stuff happens to you, and sometimes it’s not your fault, and sometimes it’s even intentional on someone else’s part. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s a hill to take, or a person to rescue, or a program to write, or a class to pass.
I was told once, during harassment training, that harassment didn’t happen to straight-white-males, and that no action would be taken on such complaints by company policy. The final result of that policy was me telling someone (after trying to accomplish the same thing more peacefully) to keep his hands to himself or we’d have a problem that would result in me being fired and him going to the emergency room. Should that situation have been handled differently? Of course. Was it handled in the only way remaining to me? Yup.
Not complaining about things is either manly … or downright stupid.
I agree that complaints about very minor things (especially if it’s not going to change anything anyway) are childish – for men and women. I don’t like childish women any more than I like childish men.
But there’s a point where you just become a moron trying to fulfill society’s brainwashing as to being a “Real Man” (TM). And people who make comments like yours are trying to pass themselves off as something – if you are going to be manly, do it in manly silence.
I haven’t figured out the logistics yet about someone complaining … about men complaining. And complaining that it’s not manly to complain.
I guess sometimes irony is ironic.
I’d say … ignore the Internet tough guys.
I have no idea why an anonymous person would like to present himself as some tough guy, but it’s all just stupid.
If there are legitimate complaints on the part of men, they should be aired. Notwithstanding this dink (and I fully realize that everyone can play every role on the Internet, so this guy could really be an almost stereotypical macho-moron, or more likely a feminist, stuck-on-herself-and-her-gender woman who is trying to stir up trouble).
It helps if you have men to admire, and your being male isn’t medicated or beaten out of you at a young age.
Who do todays males have? Single mother homes, constant denigration of males in all aspects of society, and sports stars who beat the crap out of their spouses or shoot each other.
Yes, there are normal people out there, but they’re being marginalized and hard.
If you think “real men” don’t complain and bitch, I submit, you’ve not spent much time with men. I worked ships for years mostly with all male crews. Men complain and bitch, especially if they are trapped in a system they can’t control, it is just different. Now, you are correct that given the opportunity they will change their circumstances. Sometimes that manifests itself as fragging the LT. Sometimes, it is just finding a new solution.
I agree, gripping about female teachers hating boys isn’t going to get anywhere. First off, boys should be taught not to take what their teachers say seriously, to recognize their hostility and to find ways around it. In short, first grade boys need the maturity of a 2nd tour Marine. Otherwise, they show up at school, eager to learn, having been taught to respect the teacher only to have their sole experience of a doting female (mother) run smack dab into the enemy. So the kid instead of digging deep into his testosterone and fighting back, just decides he hates school and that learning thing. This happened to my cousin’s boy. Bright and eager in September, damaged for what appears to be good when the boy hating first-grade teacher went on maternity leave at Christmas. He faired better than some from the year before who had this useless human for the entire year. Some wished a son upon her, but I protested as she might just abuse her on boy-child 24/7.
The solution is not for us to complain about bad teachers. It is to find ways to cut them out of the process. Create ways for boys to ignore the bitches and find their way, while learning. Home schooling is good.
In regards to home schooling, not long ago, Tyler Cowen remarked on his online learning project that research showed in the classroom only about 1/3 of the class was paying attention at any time so the lectures generally had to incorporate redundancies to get a quorum up to comprehend. With online learning, the repeating could happen at the control of the student so the lecturer didn’t have to repeat thus saving time. Seems this same process works in home schooling. The same lessons would take about 2/3rds less time than classroom instructions since the lesson isn’t being provided to a group but to the individual. Any home schoolers have experience with this? Can you compress the material taught in the classroom when home schooling based solely on the individualized provision?
Oops, had it wrong it was Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution who made the efficiency observation. I was off on the proportions but the implied efficiencies are the same.
A kid gets a B when a girl gets an A, he doesn’t like that and you say “that ain’t manly?” You belong in a museum. Go push your John Wayne agenda at the VFW.
This is not the first study revealing an inhrent sexist bias in female teachers, only the latest one. This crap adds up on a kid’s educational track. Instead of going to a top flight college, he ends up in a State college, maybe a community college…maybe no college at all. This is a disgrace of major proportions, or else you don’t take education seriously. Maybe being educated isn’t manly enough for you. There’s always the Marine Corps. That’s manly. Hell, we don’t really need men being doctors or lawyers or judges. That whole “meat grinder” thing sounds just fine for our young men. Glad that you’re looking out for their interests, Captain Testosterone.
You must be new here. Do you have any idea how many experts on manliness live on this blog? You can’t fling a dead cat without hitting a new masculinity expert around here. Now get in line and wait your turn.
Reading this article and the (49) comments makes me appreciate how lucky I was. I never encountered this problem, nor can I remember any of my friends complaining about it. Granted, I was the bookish sort and English teachers tend to appreciate that.
And for answering the question whether or not women can make the grade when push comes to shove , there’s this:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/25/few-female-marines-step-forward-for-infantry/print/#ixzz2DK8Arpyx
Seems the answer is no.
This from the gender that is perpetually whining about fairness. Lies. Ladies, you didn’t earn your rights, they were handed over to you by men and you’ve abused those rights because you don;t understand them. Enjoy them while they last.
Wrong. No one earned their rights, neither women NOR men. No one was handed their rights either, neither women NOR men. Rights are simply rights. They are not for men to dole out and determine merit–that goes against the actual definition of a right.
It’s a good thing this attitude of yours is a dying sort. The rhetoric you’ve spoken is just a sign of a death throe.
John Leo wrote an op-ed about this several years ago. Here’s the whole op-ed, http://rense.com/general29/anti.htm, but the story of a Massachusetts teacher was the part I remembered most:
“Barbara Wilder-Smith, a teacher and researcher in the Boston area, was recently quoted in several newspapers on how deeply anti-male attitudes have affected the schools. When she made ‘Boys Are Good’ T-shirts for boys in her class, all 10 of the female student teachers under her supervision objected to the message. (One, she said, was wearing a button saying ‘So many men, so little intelligence.’)
‘My son can’t even wear the shirt out in his back yard,’ she said. ‘People see it and object strongly and shout things.’ On the other hand, she says, nobody objects when the girls wear shirts that say ‘Girls Rule’ or when they taunt the boys with a chant that goes, ‘Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider; girls go to college to get more knowledge.’ Worse, she says, many adolescent boys object to the ‘Boys Are Good’ shirts too, because they have come to accept the cultural message that something is seriously wrong with being a male.”
The lefties are trying to infiltrate in a more benign manner on PJ than they did on Blogger.
Male teachers give higher marks to female
pupils because they think of a woman as being a very fragile work. For the most part they are… Scientist, have
compared the female body to the male and women are not suited for combat or
other positions that require fragile job performances. Women should also stay out of the front lines
of combat as I have grown tired of seeing so many stories of rape with in U.S.
Military but also by the enemy or ally. Some male high school teachers have had
affairs with their female students and given them all A+ Grades … Female
students, and Male teachers are correct and this research shows this to be
correct as once critically acclaimed.
Additionally, girls do tend to believe male teachers will look upon them as
fragile and the female body is much more appealing to many than the male as
females are still seen as the greatest sex symbols other than female teaching
staff, but men don’t treat all students the same, and there are still wars
within gender. When a male teacher sees
a female in a cheer outfit for instance and as a teen sex symbol lust may turn
into favoritism.
Academically conducted female professors
like Amine Ouazad and Lionel Page, are modern day feminists and with so many
feminists comes lesbianism a dominate female sex tool and trend that is currently at the London School of Economics’
Centre for Economic Performance. We don’t
know here if Dr. Helen also researched these facts.
Male bashing is nothing new in the age of
minorities and women status quotes, go easy on men, kind Doctor young male
babes still feed off the female breast and also the female breasts and bottoms
get females when teaching to the head of the class a great deal of time. It’s a
two income world and in a world that still produces male dominance in
affirmative action and female dominance in women liberation we must both exits! Thank you for your article, kisses,
JWC
Published: December 01, 2012
Source: http://www.shvoong.com/society-and-news/gender/2338814-female-teachers-boys-lower-marks/#ixzz2DobYok62
http://www.shvoong.com/society-and-news/gender/2338814-female-teachers-boys-lower-marks/
Copyright 2012 Carters Fort Publishing
I went to an all-male prep school that had male teachers. 20% of my graduating class went to Harvard. This was almost 50 years ago. My three children went to same sex private schools. It just makes sense to me.
I have asked government school teachers the same question for 50 years. Could Albert Einstein teach physics at your goverment public school. The answer is always, “No, he didn’t have a teaching degree”. Government school teachers are stunningly ignorant and stupid louts.
Being good at something doesn’t make you a valuable teacher. I have had professors who could not teach their way out of a box–confuse the heck out of the entire class–but you’d find out they had all these degrees and life experience.
I had a chemistry teacher in the first two weeks just stand there flabbergasted asking, “Why don’t you get it?! I don’t understand why you don’t get it?!” after explaining significant figures the SAME confusing way 3 different times. I managed to get it and at one point, he was so frustrated that I actually got up and said, “I’ll explain it.” and he said, “Ok! Go ahead and try!” and I did.
He was a dentist who majored in chemistry and could not teach worth any of his degrees. Einstein may have been an Einstein in physics, but that doesn’t make him an expert in everything. I’m sure there are things you would have trounced him in had you both lived at the same time and went head to head on what you are expert at. Don’t fall for fallacious reasoning.
ps. My reasoning skills–DODD and public school taught–clearly are superior to that of someone who went to private school.
In 1965 I went to a St.Louis city school for 2nd grade and had an ogre of a teacher who used to routinely slap me hard in the face for any perceived infraction. As punishment she made me sit with the “slow” reading group which was utter torture for me, or would have me stand in the corner for hours. In one instance she started screaming at a little girl who sat next to me, who having observed the abuse I received, naturally started crying in terror. The teacher called us a bunch of babies, then took a stapler and ran a staple right into her own thumb “See! That didn’t hurt!”, as the blood squirted out. Hard to believe but as a kid I didn’t know it was “abuse”, just that adults could hit kids.
Unfortunately this is a long story, so bear with me.
My junior year of high school I was enrolled in Trigonometry. So, at the appropriate time I showed up to class and after the bell rung I noticed two things: 1) The class size was small, very small (11 students); 2) I was the only male. To make matters worse, the teacher was a known feminist in town and despised men/boys/non-females.
So, there I sat, the lone male in a tiny class with a known feminist. Her first words to me were, “I guess this proves it.” “Proves what?” I asked. “That women are smarter than men.” “How do you figure?” was my next question. “Well, look at the number of girls vs just you, the lone boy.”
“No, this proves that men are smarter than women.” “How do you figure that?” she asked, very puzzled. “They are smart enough to avoid your class.”
Yeah, she hated me. And I didn’t care.
So, a little more about me, real quick. I was on track to be the Valedictorian of my class, straight 4.0, usually annoyed the other kids because I would destroy any hope of a curve for any test. Yeah, I was “that” guy.
In December the semester tests (or “final”, if you will) was given. It was a 1.5 hour long test with 20 questions. It was hard. It was supposed to be hard. So, our teacher told us, “If you don’t finish right now, you can come back throughout the day and finish.”
What she wasn’t counting on was my memory. It is VERY GOOD. I finished 18 or so of the questions, but because she wouldn’t allow us to take anything out of the room (to lessen cheating) I did what I knew I could do: I memorized the other questions (only 2 or 3, I think 3, but the last question was just bonus).
Throughout the day I worked out each problem, spending the better part of 5 hours trying to answer each of them. Finally, with about 30 minutes left in the day, I went back to her classroom and asked if I could finish my test. She handed me the exam and I sat down to finish. Less than 5 minutes later I turned in the test (I memorized the answers so that I could be in and out quicker).
The next day she almost cried.
11 students. 10 girls. 1 A on the test.
Not only that, but I had done something no one had ever done.
I got every question right (thus destroying the curve).
Second semester that year was fun. She could never say anything about my intelligence or the intelligence of males for the rest of the year. Actually, she became one of my favorite teachers, because she pushed me to be better than I was.
Such is life
You’re either severely embellishing this story, (“Well no… but I imagined that’s what happened!”) or you did something and got on the teacher’s bad side for very different reasons than “She hates men” and what she said was not exactly what you attributed to her, but maybe she did say something snarky but not fueled by “man hate”. It was probably just “YOU hate”.
And I sincerely think you’re not telling the truth that the next day you saw her in near tears. Give me a break. Life isn’t television where 20 hours pass and the person having had time to react to something all night long is suddenly having a first reaction the next day.
Yeah, because god forbid that a woman teacher who is a feminist is a man-hating bitch. Your IQ must be in the double digits.
Looking through all the comments above, including my own, I must add that it isn’t always, or maybe even often, that the problem is actual bias by the female teachers against boys, but rather, that boys and girls are different, and female teachers are female, as are the girls, and think and operate differently than males do. They do things more collaboratively, and credit is given for social interactions and hard work.
One of the things that struck me when I had a kid go through K-12 some 40 years after I did was how much it had changed. A lot more credit for collaboration and group projects, and a lot more credit for doing the homework. Even in the math and science classes, it was common for the guys skipping the homework but getting the best test grades to get Bs, while girls collaborating well and doing all the homework got As, despite getting Bs on their tests.
I never did like group projects in HS or even college, because you were, in essence, typically graded more on how well you could get into a good group, than how much effort you put into the project. Physics, my junior year, was maybe the worst. I got stuck with my lab partner on projects, and he would routinely cheat off of my tests, and get Ds, while I was getting a high A. I only got an A in the class because group projects were not given that much credit back then. I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t have gotten an A if I had taken the class when my kid did, 40 years later, since by then group projects were often counted at 30% or so of the grade. I should note though that the better teachers were aware of this problem, and tried to compensate for weak project members in their grading of those stuck with them.
You see this male/female dynamic a lot in K-12 these days, and maybe never more clearly with the “everyone is a winner” philosophy so prevalent these days. Guys are fine with winners and losers. It lets them know where they are in the hierarchy. Females are much less so, because feelings are hurt when there are winners and losers. You even see this dynamic when groups of males and groups of females try to decide what to do. A dominant male quickly emerges who steers the group in his desired direction, while the females seem to want everyone to have their say, before collaboratively deciding what to do (with the dominant females making the decisions, but more subtly).
I’m not a Ph.D. researcher, just a man who has been around for almost 59 years. And here is what I’ve observed…
I loved my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs.Robertson. She was a kindly, sweet, grandmotherly type. However… I was only ten years old, but I could still see clearly that she marked my grades down more steeply for making mistakes than she did for my compatriots in class, notably the girls. I confronted her about it on more than one occasion, as I recall. “Why did you give me a B for two wrong answers, but you gave Roberta an A?”
“Because I expect more from you,” was always her response.
Don’t know why. Roberta was no dummy herself.
Throughout junior high and high school, I noticed that girls got better grades than boys, but I also noticed that girls seemed more engaged with the whole school process. A lot of that is just that they are better socializers. Let’s face it, a teacher is more likely to give any benefit of the doubt between an A and a B to a smiling, cheerful, engaged girl than a distant, quiet, perhaps even sullen boy. It’s not possible, I think, for a teacher *not* to project himself into the boy’s shoes and conclude that he doesn’t know the subject matter as well as he does, if all the teacher sees is (relative) disengagement.
In high school, I noticed that a particular group of girls were always on the honor roll, always sitting in front of the class, always first in the grades, and always the ones nominated first for National Honor Society.
I also noticed that, whenever an objective test was given (whether standardized or not), the boys (at least in my circle) tended to be more competitive, if not actually dominant. My SATs, for example, were among the highest in my class, but you would not have known that to look at my grades. I had to fight my guidance counselor, for example, to be allowed into the college-prep biology course, where the fear was I would flounder and flail. First day of class, the teacher gave us a test to see where our general knowledge of biology was sitting — I had the highest score. (I earned a B for the year, but it would probably have been an A except I refused to drink the Darwinist Kool-Aid. But that’s another topic.)
I had friends from high school who pursued academic careers (not me, I’m just a computer programming hack). Two of them, interestingly, were in the same biology class. One of them today is a biochemist, a researcher for a major pharmaceutical company; the other is also a biochemist, a professor at a big-name university. The former, Jim, was truly one of the smartest people I ever met (and incidentally, a genuinely nice fellow); I always felt like I had really accomplished something on those rare occasions when I tied or even beat his score on any test. The latter, Randy, didn’t seem any smarter than me at the time, but (his words) he has a way of looking at organic chemistry that has earned him some level of prominence in the profession. (I think for want of a better term, that special perspective is often called genius. Even Einstein, after all, wasn’t an Einstein in very many fields aside from physics.)
But all that to say this: neither Jim nor Randy were ever really in the conversation about who was going to be valedictorian. Whatever their gifts, they were always going to be at a disadvantage to the girls.
I think the ultimate difference between girls and boys in school is that girls are better prototypical students (it is women, after all, who set the rules for success). Girls are more likely to accept authority; if the teacher tells them it’s important, it’s important. They communicate better, both verbally and non-verbally. They are more engaged in the process of learning as officially defined by the teacher and the course description.
However, the boys are learning too. What they learn, however, is completely different than what the girls learn. Boys learn what’s important *to* *themselves*. They filter the teacher’s remarks and make judgments about what they need to know and what they don’t. When they’re fascinated by a subject, it turns into an obsession and they wind up somehow knowing more that subject than anyone. But if they’re not interested in a subject, they’re not as likely to work as hard at it, because it is a distraction from what does hold their interest — hence the disengagement. They want to do as little as they can on the subjects to which they’re indifferent, because that gives them more time to do what they like.
So to paint with a broad brush, here goes: boys make better inventors, scientists, explorers, athletes, mechanics, engineers, musicians, and anything else where singlemindedness of purpose wins the day; girls make better librarians, administrators, bureaucrats, and anything else where organization, a good attitude, and acceptance of authority are highly valued. This is a generalization, and I won’t bother with defending it from specific exceptions to the rule.