“..the study found that stereotypes seemed to be holding boys back.”
Several readers have sent me this article from the Mail Online regarding “naughty” boy sterotypes:
The belief that girls are brainier and better behaved is holding boys back at school, research suggests.
A study of British pupils found that, from a young age, children think girls are academically superior.
And, what’s more, they believe that adults think so too….
And by the age of seven, boys shared the belief that they were naughtier and did less well at school. Follow-up questions showed the children thought that adults had similar expectations.
The second part of the study found that stereotypes seemed to be holding boys back…
Study co-author Dr Robbie Sutton said: ‘Our study suggests that by counteracting the stereotypes in the classroom – wherever they might have come from originally – we can help boys do better.’
This reminds me of the study I found on girls taking over at college. In it the researchers state:
One source of the persistent female advantage in K–12 school performance
and the new female lead in college attainment is the higher incidence of behavioral
problems (or lower level of noncognitive skills) among boys. Boys have a much
higher incidence than do girls of school disciplinary and behavior problems, and spend far fewer hours doing homework (Jacob, 2002).Controlling for these
noncognitive behavioral factors can explain virtually the entire female advantage in
college attendance for the high school graduating class of 1992, after adjusting for
family background, test scores, and high school achievement. Similarly, our own
analysis of the 1979 and 1997 NLSY samples shows that teenage boys, both in the
early 1980s and late 1990s, had a higher (self-reported) incidence of arrests and
school suspension than teenage girls and that controls for such measures of
behavioral problems significantly attenuate the female college advantage. Boys
have two to three times the rate of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD) than girls and much higher rates of criminal activity (Cuffe, Moore, and
McKeown, 2003; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004). Boys are also much more
likely than girls to be placed in special education programs.12 The source of boys’
higher incidence of behavioral problems is an area of active research and could be
due to their later maturation as well as their higher rates of impatience (Silverman,
2003).Women are now the majority of undergraduates and those receiving a bachelor degree.
So boys are basically being graded on their behavior, not their merit. They have different styles of doing homework and don’t sit still in class. Teachers often hate this and reward girls for their conformity to their rules and penalize boys for their non-conformity and behavior. Teachers can no longer discipline in school, and the only punishment is often suspension. I wonder how the lack of discipline has played a role in teacher’s using grading, perhaps subconsciously to punish boys.
More importantly, I wonder how many bureaucrats and teachers, and even parents are using 7-year old boys as targets of revenge for something they perceive was done to girls so many years ago. In my opinion, to use innocent children as a means of revenge for past grievances is child abuse. Too bad there is no government agency that gives a damn that a concerted effort to abuse boys is taking place in Western culture. Boys are being cheated out of higher education. Some will do well despite no college degree and others will flounder. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for our culture or say much about our supposedly “egalitarian” society. As George Orwell said, “…some animals are more equal than others.” In our education system, this seems to be the case.
The “womens movement” is now a supremacist movement populated by female chauvanist sows who are targetting boys to get revenge on men. They also prefer to dope boys with drugs, rather than deal with male energy.
Child abusers and drug pushers are what have become of Public Education employees.
Feminism was always a supremacist movement.
Very true.
All identity based movements, or at least the ones devoted to grievance mongering, are at heart supremacist movements. It’s easier to tear somebody else down than to raise yourself up, especially if you’re dragging a long trail of real and perceived slights and insults and snubs behind you.
And you really can’t jettison the trail of slights, insults and snubs and look toward the future because that drives your claim to special dispensations and extra privilege.
“Gender” feminists, Brian. The “equity” feminists have been much more narrowly focused on equity in the workplace rather than some kind of cultural advantage. Either way it has surely been good for women in careers not traditionally favored by females. Read some Christina Sommers.
There are no “equity feminist” causes – that goal has been MORE than accomplished – see the stats on childless women compared to childless men.
In fact, there was only a little for them to do to begin with, actually, if you control for number of hours worked and amount of vacation time used.
In addition to that, mid-20th-century feminism started out as a front for communism.
Old, white, female chauvanist sows …
FIFY
That happened to my cousin’s boy. A happy go lucky 6 yr old was destroyed before Christmas by a first grade teacher that hated boys. It had been a problem the previous year with this teacher. My cousin’s son did get a bit of a reprieve when this sorry excuse for a teacher left to have her first child. Some wished a boy upon her. Myself, I could not bring myself to hope such a horror on a helpless infant. Perhaps she’d come to resolve her dislike of boys when it was her own son but perhaps not. In any case, the damage was done with only a little clawback by the succeeding teacher. The kid got the message and hated school. And this was at a private christian school. So it isn’t only public education, they infest the whole system.
If your children are not guilty, don’t send them to prison.
Home school.
Homeschooling also eliminates another very real danger to your kids.
As I’ve said before and will say again, the problem is with doing away with recess. Boys have to have some avenue to burn off their energy.
They took away recess. They took away dodge ball. And now they make up diseases like ADHD, and drug boys.
I can tell you for a fact that when I was a teacher, most of my problem students were girls. Yeah, they felt that they were immune from criticism, and that they were empowered.
It’s the same in the dating world. The modern American girl is worthless, but she won’t admit it.
By the way, I know an A/C repairman who makes more money and owns more property than any lawyer I know. And I know a lot of lawyers. Most of them don’t actually practice law, that is litigate cases in court. They work at title companies and county clerk offices. That’s the future for the modern American girl who goes to law school.
I know a janitor who lives in a 2-story home on a golf course with pool priveleges and a gym. Yeah, I sold him that house. I sold him his first house. Then in 06, while we were on a bus going to a Cowboys game, he told me he wanted to buy another. I told him, now is not the time to buy a house. Wait, save your money. You want to put down 20% on a 15-year note.
I sent him to this repo we had for a bid on repairs. He came back and said he wanted to buy it. How much do you want to put down? 20%. Dude, that’s like $30,000. Yeah, I have that. You saved $30,000 in two years? He bought the house and fixed it up himself. Now he’s living pretty.
Compare that to the girl, a lawyer naturally, who wanted to buy a repo in the neighborhood she grew up in. She came in about $40,000 low. Your offer has been rejected. “I want it in writing!” Um, the seller only corresponds with a prospective buyer through the listing broker, didn’t they teach you that at law school?
She went to another Realtor and came back with the same low-ball offer. It was rejected. She threw a fit. I didn’t care, because the house sold a few weeks later, for $40,000 over what she offered.
That’s the modern American girl right there. She thinks she’s empowered; she thinks she’s entitled. But she’s worthless.
I feel for boys in this society. I really do. As a teacher, I’ve seen it, the discrimination. But the boys were better students than the girls. At least they would follow instructions.
I see my kids’ friends getting into trouble, not doing well in school, doing drugs….it’s heartbreaking. They’re simply the victims of low expectations all around, but primarily it’s the parents who have bought into that ‘boys will be boys’ crap and have given up on the boys and are focusing on their daughters. It’s maddening.
It’s the parents’ responsibility to make sure boys get enough sleep and get enough exercise so they can sit still during class, and also eat enough protein for breakfast so they’re not hungry before lunch. Nothing behaves more poorly than a tired, hungry boy! Many of my kids’ friends have Pop Tarts for breakfast! No wonder they’re a mess…
My two are doing great work and are looking forward to college in STEM fields. In fact, they’re taking AP courses already and doing well in them.
While I agree that many teachers have given up on boys, they’re only giving up on the boys that are unprepared courtesy of their parents.
I see my kids’ friends getting into trouble, not doing well in school, doing drugs….it’s heartbreaking. They’re simply the victims of low expectations all around, but primarily it’s the parents who have bought into that ‘boys will be boys’ crap and have given up on the boys and are focusing on their daughters. It’s maddening.
It’s the parents’ responsibility to make sure boys get enough sleep and get enough exercise so they can sit still during class, and also eat enough protein for breakfast so they’re not hungry before lunch. Nothing behaves more poorly than a tired, hungry boy! Many of my kids’ friends have Pop Tarts for breakfast! No wonder they’re a mess…
Amen.
It’s also a parent’s responsibility to teach children to behave, to work hard, and to be reliable and dependable; to control their emotions (and boys ARE emotional) and think before they act. These are the qualities we want adults to have, regardless of their plumbing.
I’m so sick of people talking about boys as though they were severely retarded girls. I raised two boys and have two grandsons. Boys can learn to do homework. They can learn self discipline and self control. They are smart as whips, but respond poorly to pity and low expectations. That’s why the fathers of old got in trouble with their wives for being “too hard” on Junior. They understood what boys need to thrive.
Most of our interactions in life and work are “graded on behavior”. The smartest employee, if he or she can’t get along with others, meet deadlines, be dependable, or do work that doesn’t thrill them, is worthless to a business. The military won’t tolerate such fecklessness.
Boys need to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around how they feel. So do girls. Some things are harder for boys to learn, others are harder for girls. Where on earth did we ever get the idea that it’s the world’s job to accommodate our precious children?
Healthy parenting teaches children that they need to get along with the rest of the world, and I can’t think of a more pernicious attitude to teach a child than that don’t have to exert themselves unless they *feel* like it, or that anything they personally find difficult is “unfair” or sexist. Unless of course it’s the notion that adults allow the expectations of others to define them.
One thing I learned raising boys is that they require different techniques. They push back harder and you can’t back down or they’ll run right over you. That’s a positive quality when coupled with maturity and the sense to know when to listen and when to buck the system, but in its raw form it can be very destructive. One of my sons nearly drove me insane, but I kept insisting that he learn to work hard and be persistent. Today he’s successful and happily married, and most importantly he has the discipline to do what needs to be done to reach his goals, even if it’s “haaaaaaaaard” or boring. That’s what real men (and women) are supposed to do, and if we don’t teach it to our kids, we’re failing them.
I have the utmost respect for men. We need to stop expecting so little of them when clearly they are capable of so much more.
*sigh*
I hire people who prefer to be graded on results than behavior. They can be a pain to manage, but if you can frame their job so that they understand how things fit together, they’ll beat the pants off a dutiful follower. There’s a fine line between knowing when to shout “sir yes sir!” and being a hopeless doormat.
Just look around you. Bad news, the idea came from females.
To be sure, not every individual female is guilty of the deed. But enough are/were that when one speaks in collective terms (“where… did we“) then females are the collective where the blame must be laid and where the corrective action must begin.
“Most of our interactions in life and work are “graded on behavior”. The smartest employee, if he or she can’t get along with others, meet deadlines, be dependable, or do work that doesn’t thrill them, is worthless to a business. ”
However, I think what was meant by “graded on behavior” is that deportment becomes not a complement to achievement in grading, but a substitute. This is actually been going on for a pretty long time; it was true to an extent when I was in elementary school, back in the 1960s. But back then, things would start to turn in high school because they boys had done the work in the lower grades while the girls slid by on good deportment, and by high school the difference in achievement was too much to ignore. At the college level, it was glaring; a lot of girls who were considered top students in the lower elementary grades didn’t survive their first semester, or just didn’t go at all. (Of course, back then, college wasn’t considered essential for everyone, so even among the boys only the ones who aspired to professional or academic careers went. That left the girls competeing with the top achievers among their male peers, which further emphasized the differences.)
The girls were actually very poorly served by this system, so calls for reform were appropriate at the time. However, the post-modern feminists, in their usual fashion, took the proper solution and inverted it: instead of applying tougher grading standards to the girls in the lower grades, they got the deportment-grading standard extended into high school and college. Today, girls slide by on deportment at all levels, up to and including college where they take content-free courses in subjects like journalism and “feminist literature”; agreeing with the (probably female) professor and not questioning what one is taught earns an A. Meanwhile, the standards on boys have gone from tough to impossible; the boys can’t earn an A no matter what they do, so they quit trying. The STEM areas are the last bastion of achievement grading, and the feminists are working on that.
There is no such thing as “enough exercise” for most boys to sit still for 7+ hours, short of extreme physical exhaustion (which obviously doesn’t help with learning, eh?).
For most boys I knew (and especially myself) of a certain age (read: 10-20ish), they could eat until their stomachs hurt from being so full, yet be ravenously hungry again less than 2 hours later. (And yes, I’m including protein, there, not junk.)
So sure, let’s demand those things… and winged unicorns, too. Winged unicorns will make it all better!
Hint: ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away.
“There is no such thing as “enough exercise” for most boys to sit still for 7+ hours, short of extreme physical exhaustion (which obviously doesn’t help with learning, eh?).
For most boys I knew (and especially myself) of a certain age (read: 10-20ish), they could eat until their stomachs hurt from being so full, yet be ravenously hungry again less than 2 hours later. (And yes, I’m including protein, there, not junk.)
So sure, let’s demand those things… and winged unicorns, too. Winged unicorns will make it all better!
Hint: ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away.”
Applies to some of the girls too. (Personal experience – and a long time ago, they should have learned better by now.) Maybe that’ll make them listen…sigh…yeah, right.
Let me note, they don’t care more about girls than boys – they just care more about those who sit and nod than those who stand and react. Gender’s only the issue in that far too many females sit and nod.
Kathy, I agree this is not directed specifically toward boys but toward anyone perceived as a behavior problem.
Deoxy it is possible for boys to thrive by getting enough exercise, food and sleep. I know this because I have well fed teens who are excelling in school and in life. They get enough sleep (8-9 hours per night) enough protein and they run every day for exercise and stress relief.
No winged unicorns here, and no demanding either. Just good parenting and common sense.
Women are now the majority of undergraduates and those receiving a bachelor degree.
In what subjects? How many are in STEM subjects?
Most college degrees are no longer employable. Smart men either go STEM or skip college altogehter and go into high-paying skilled trades. A plumber, a mechanic, an HVAC technician, is far more employable than someone who wrote a masters thesis on the deconstruction of bronze age lesbian poetry.
“In what subjects? How many are in STEM subjects?”
That’s the key. More women are going to university but are in predominantly liberal arts programs. Worthless. Especially considering the number of graduates each year with a ‘journalism’ degree or ‘english’, etc. 40% of girls go to university (vs. 25% of boys)…way too many people coming out of degrees…with useless ‘knowledge’ (actually just leftist ideology mascarading as knowledge.
Anyone looking to hire a women’s studies major? Nope. The weak economy means that gov’t can’t keep hiring these grads (where do you think a large chunk of women end up? If not directly in gov’t then indirectly: teaching, etc. Those that go into the ‘real world’ end up in HR (a made up dept. filled with women enforcing ‘policies and procedures’ largely designed to ensure women can be employed), or marketing or some admin job where they can hide (no productivity measures required).
Basically, women are not ‘replacing’ men. Women are not going into productive jobs (that ultimately enrich society). They end up in jobs that consume revenue. Does not bode well for the future.
What jobs do you think employers will cut down the road? Engineering and I.T.? how about HR and marketing. When gov’t layoffs eventually happen, just watch to see the imaginary ‘war on women’…they won’t be able to live off the fat of the land since there won’t be any.
Ultimately, feminism bites the hand that feeds it.
Ah, “studies” degree holders taking up diversity jobs… by golly, giving everybody a “degree” (with no rigor) will make really make everyone middle class! (Supply and demand, folks– flooding the market with zillions of colleges degrees that represent no added capability over high school does not a college degree [even a serious one] more valued).
Wizard of Oz: Why, anybody can have a brain. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma.
“But they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma.”
They also have a few more things along with that diploma like 4-7 years of lost opportunity costs (i.e. wages, career advancement, etc.) and 4-7 years worth of non-dischargeable tuition debt).
In reality, it is all very simple math. Compare the value and cost of any trade with the value and cost of a liberal arts degree. Take, for instance, an electrician. After high-school (age 18-20) there is a 2 year apprenticeship for which the apprentice makes about $12-18/hour (~$24k -$38k/year w/o overtime). As a qualified electrician, you make anywhere from $25-$40/hour. For the purpose of this illustration, take the low end ($25/hour or $50k/year) for the next 2 years. In the first four years after high school, the electrician has made approximately $160,000 with no debt and has 4 years job experience.
Compare that with a liberal arts major at a state school with an average tuition and room and board cost of $20,000/year. Per the averages, about $8,000 of that yearly cost is taken on by student loans. After 4 years, the liberal arts major has made -$32,000…a difference of roughly $200k from the electrician apprentice. Furthermore, with a liberal arts degree and a non-dischargeable interest accruing debt of $32,000, how many years will it be before the liberal arts grad catches up to the ‘real’ year over year income of the electrician much less makes up the front end difference of nearly $200k?
Compare that with a liberal arts major at a state school with an average tuition and room and board cost of $20,000/year. Per the averages, about $8,000 of that yearly cost is taken on by student loans. After 4 years, the liberal arts major has made -$32,000…a difference of roughly $200k from the electrician apprentice.
And to add to your analysis, how many liberal arts graduates are going to earn $50K a year right out of college? The fact is, they’re likely to earn less than the experienced electrician for much of their working lives. Gee, start about $200K in the hole to qualify for a lower paying job. Sure sounds like a plan to me.
We used to say that a high school diploma qualified someone to say, “Do you want fries with that?” for those lacking the ambition and ability to go into the trades. A liberal arts degree qualifies someone to ask, “Do you want a muffin with your latte?” Progress!
Frankly, lots of women are going to make it into the middle class … and the upper class if they can play it right.
I realize that an extremely small percentage of women are going to become rich and famous through their English and Social Work and Psychology and Spanish minors.
But women have two routes to riches: Working and letting a stupe work for you. From my perspective of almost 60 years old, there are tons of women with tons of money. They got it from men.
Lots of homeless men, lots of men in jail, lots of rich women with condos in Florida. That’s how the world works for chivalrous men and golddigging women, in other words: the world.
More women are going to university but are in predominantly liberal arts programs. Worthless.
Not in Washington DC or any other “government town” (Sacramento, Madison, Albany). It is possible to parlay a liberal arts degree into a successful career as a bureaucrat.
More gov’t job expanding to fill the debt available then…
“What jobs do you think employers will cut down the road? Engineering and I.T.?” If history is a guide Engineering and I.T. will be cut. Both Chrysler and GM did exactly that before being bailed out by Uncle Stupid. With the majority of CEO’s NOT being engineers, how could it be otherwise?
You got some kind of problem with Bronze Age lesbian pottery, pal?
Could you recite some for us?
“More importantly, I wonder how many bureaucrats and teachers, and even parents are using 7-year old boys as targets of revenge for something they perceive was done to girls so many years ago.”
many millions
tho the most severely-tortured have been boys under age 3 — you know, before they are able even to speak in their own defense while theyre being Equalized
the “payback” has been ongoing for decades now, a tremendous amount of terrible things being done to little boys . . . but you’ll never hear this from the media, or colleges, or from our “leaders” and lawmakers
because that might take attention, empowerment, and money (did i mention money?) away from the True Victims, i.e., females
“In my opinion, to use innocent children as a means of revenge for past grievances is child abuse. Too bad there is no government agency that gives a damn that a concerted effort to abuse boys is taking place in Western culture”
but there IS an effort geared towards male needs, it’s called the Prison Industrial Complex, and it is profitable, vast, and by no means gender-neutral
the U.S. has greately facilitated the abuse of boys and men over the past century, and particularly over the past half-century, and ensured that abused boys and men were not allowed even a public voice to express their often horrible mistreatment
now the nation is beginning to pay the price for its selfishness, greed, and hatred, via an increasingly, ah, unstable society
sow, reap, and baby did this place sow all over its men, and its innocent little boys
“Social justice” (otherwise known as “payback”) comrade!
The corporatization of prisons is now a new way to collect slave labor. Locking up poor young men who can’t afford to properly defend themselves in court(known in the industry as low hanging fruit)is a way for the corporations who own the prisons to extract slave labor.
The feminists,the politicians,and the big corporatists are turning or have already turned this country into an orwellian disaster.
So boys are basically being graded on their behavior, not their merit.
Of course, that was also true in the all-boys high school that I attended.
It was true in public schooling for years – and it isn’t just the teachers. The teachers just part of the culture. Our educational system is still culturally stuck in the Industrial age – i.e. a factory for turning out workers where those that behave the correct way excel and “problems” have to be made to conform.
Another unfortunate outcome of the anti-boy approach to education is that most girls are neither teachers or feminists, yet they are the ones left without suitable prospects to marry, raise a family, and be the foundation of a community. The feminists win, everyone else loses.
“boys are basically being graded on their behavior, not their merit”
That’s the way it was when I went to school (HS Class of 1981). Didn’t notice it in college.
Well, there behavior would be “holding and expressing the correct liberal ideas” instead.
The Omaha Public Schools district was part of this trend decades ago. Their cut-off to start kindergarten was Oct. 15, but if your son’s birthday fell in the summer, there was a strong push to hold him back. Our son’s birthday is December and we thought he’d be one of the oldest in the class — turned out there were so many boys held back, he was actually one of the youngest!
PArents are guilty, too. Some held back their sons so they’d be bigger in high school than other boys — in order to play football. Now with all the flack against football due to head injuries, that may change!
Nothing new. I experienced it in the 1940s. My grandson was a classic example. In the 3rd & 4th grades, punished for talking in line, etc. A really delightful little fellow turned into a resentful and surly kid. They drove him out of school at 16. A fine mind, with a different mode of learning was on the street. Now he guides on white water rivers, where he is the boss. I hope he occasionally has some of the types of teachers that he suffered under in his boat, so he can make them tow the line.
I have both a boy and a girl that I’m doing my best to raise right.
I can say without a doubt that the girl is far easier to deal with regarding school work – but then she loves school and the (female) teachers always loved her.
The boy, not so much. BUT his problems with school started with a specific teacher and went downhill from there. It literally took years to reverse the damage academically – but by then he wasn’t a big fan of education which was the long term lasting result.
Sadly, up to that point he loved school just as much as his younger sister does now.
I actually had a teacher suggest he had a bit of ADHD because – no lie – she told the class to line up in the hallway and he put his hand out (while still being in line) and leaned against the wall on his hand.
Seriously, that was her indication he was ADHD!
Another interesting note….a LOT of teachers in elementary school are female and childless.
A Kindergarten teacher felt I was ADD because, as she was talking pitying about how I was only a “pre-reader” and probably should be held back until I was “ready” to the Principal, I (unknowingly, of course) walked right in front of them to the big classroom Oxford English Dictionary and looked up the difference between “principle” and “principal” (they said “Draw something you see every day” and I wanted to make sure “Prinipal” on the door of the principal’s office was spelled right)… so she had a conniption and needed a sedative, and I got examined by an MD who found “he’s bored, get him something better to do” (not ADD, much to that teacher’s ire). Appropriate gifted education followed thereafter.
Awright, “pityingly” and “Principal”… kant spel gud, apparently. My bad.
This says it all. Well done, Dr. Helen.
This is nothing new. I was in elementary school in the 1960s and the teachers clearly favored girls over boys even then. Had a male teacher in sixth grade, and guess what, so did he.
> As I’ve said before and will say again, the problem is with doing away with recess.
But at least we had recess.
A friend of mine, one of the most gifted, naturally brilliant people I know (he’s about my age), had a horrible time in fourth grade. He said his teacher would hand back his graded assignment, usually marked D or F, and told him in no uncertain terms he should be ashamed of himself. My friend told me he stayed up late every night studying and doing homework, trying tragically hard to perform, and always got the same abysmal reviews from the teacher.
After a year of this, he finally threw up his hands and said, never again. He coasted through the rest of school as a dedicated minimalist, doing absolutely in school as little as possible. Before graduating, he became a master mechanic and a master musician. Was also the state champion motocross racer at age 16. He got Ds and Fs in English, yet somehow today he is a gifted writer and can tell a story, verbally or in writing, better than anyone I know, or know of.
The odd thing is that I can’t imagine he was ever a behavior problem, except for the occasional pointed but hilarious observation. One of the most talented people I know, yet somehow all this went unnoticed by the dedicated professionals teaching in his schoola.
I suspect one of his problems, though, is the same one that plagued me — the “show your work” hurdle. I always thought keeping a notebook when I aced all of the exams was stupid and said so. So I earned many Bs that I think should have been As.
I even got an F once in a class project for high-school geometry. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’ — we had an assignment to turn in a “project” illustrating geometric designs in fashion and popular culture. E.g., a poster of models wearing cylindrical skirts or triangular hats. But since I got As on all the tests and an A on the exam, the teacher couldn’t flunk me, but did downgrade me to a B. I complained to the guidance counselor (in those days, parents did not get involved with such issues) and he just shrugged. I’m was in tenth grade and could already tell them that this was a lousy way to teach Euclidian geometry, but if that worthless counselor could see my side, he was keeping mum about it.
(Care to guess whether my teacher was a man or a woman…?)
I sometimes wonder whether one of the differences between boys and girls is a built-in different response to authority. Are girls more likely to play the game, or to suffer fewer internal conflicts when they do? I never felt one bit of remorse for challenging that teacher, and never believed for a minute that it reflected poorly on me or that I had actually earned less than an A in that class. (Of course, who is the college reviewing that transcript going to believe?)
I want to echo that this preference is nothing new; I too was in elementary school in the 60s.
So, what changed? Dr. Helen is on to one important point in the observation that “Teachers can no longer discipline in school”. This covers a whole bunch of ground and includes not only teachers and students, but also administrators and parents.
But there’s more. In fact, Big Education, in general, is involved with the assumption that everyone is heading to college and that physical labor is somehow less prestigious or even demeaning.
All little boys, at some age, come to the subconscious conclusion that they don’t want to take orders from female authority figures.
It is in their nature to push against the boundaries anyway, and when it’s a female setting the boundaries….well….
I explained this to my wife once, and she noted it accordingly in dealing with my son.
It also explains why, no matter how loving the mother is, a male child needs a positive male role model to look up to during his formative years.
This is not to say he does not also need a female to look up to as well (his mother), but men are who little boys pattern their approach to females after.
If the male in their world is abusive towards women, often the little boy will assume this same attitude. If he is instead respectful, then likewise the little boy will likely be too.
I’m an electrical engineer and have always known I’d be one.
In 7th grade our worthless “science teacher” was pretending to “teach” us Ohm’s Law. By that time I’d known how to APPLY Ohms law for 2 years.
On the test, she asked “state Ohms Law”. I wrote down “R = V/I” which is perfectly correct in that the ratio of voltage V to current I is a constant R known as resistance.
She marked my answer wrong. When I questioned her, she said she’d taught us Ohms Law is “V=I*R”. She refused to budge even though HER answer and MY answer are mathematically equivalent.
When my Dad, himself an engineer, wanted to know why I’d gotten a reduced score on the test, I showed him my paper and told him the story. He hit the roof and said “The nearest thing that woman and a science teacher have in common is that they both have two legs”.
Aside from validating my opinion that the teacher was an idiot and I was not, my Dad also taught me that some days you have to work for idiots.
p.s. As if you didn’t know already, the teacher was a woman.
Ah, the old “Achtung, you vill learn my way or the highway!” bit…
I prefer your teacher’s definition because it covers the case of I=0 whereas yours doesn’t.
However, your teacher probably didn’t realize that else she could have told you so rather than use some form of “Shut, she explained.”
I = 0 is an irrelevant pathological case. But whatever.
I’ll go ahead and elaborate now to save time later.
In the real world, a resistor connected into a current never experiences zero current. Such a thing doesn’t exist. In fact, “resistance” is a fiction of linearization that only applies over a limited range of application conditions. The real world is entirely nonlinear.
Good article, but surprised you started down the “too bad there is not a government agency” path! Parents have given up too much already to the education system already. Let them, particularly fathers, serve as boys’ primary ombudsmen.
I am a child of the 60s and early 70s. I also had nuns teaching me at the Catholic school. I could honestly say the nuns beat more boys than girls back then. In 8 years of elementary school, boy were paddled often, I never heard off or saw a girl get physical punishment. One nun had a reputation for hitting first and questioning never. BUT, back then, if you told your parents a nun hit you, they’d hit you too. I remember my mother telling me, after hitting me with her shoe, “She is the Handmaiden of the Lord.” I got one week in my room for telling my mom a nun had “punched” me for talking in the boys bathroom.
I didn’t send my 4 boys to catholic school. In my public schools there is definitively a lack of serious male roll models.
My son had to do a Senior Project in High School. His chosen topic was the Dewey Decimal system. Students were required give a presentation and to do something “extra” so he wrote a Droid app that enabled users to look up the Dewey Decimal number for any topic, and provided a link so students could download it. The teacher gave him a “B” because his “topic was dull” and gave the girl next to him an “A”. Her topic was celebrities and her something extra was a puff paint poster. Seriously.
That’s where we are in American education.
That’s pathetic. It shows how subjective grades can be; wasn’t the grading system also introduced with the Prussian system?
That’s pathetic. Show’s how subjective grades can be. Wasn’t the grading system introduced with the Prussian system. I think it is a rather recent “innovation.”
Hi Helen. I’ve been following your commentary (via Glenn
for a long time, and it’s a hugely welcome change to hear your voice on this issue. I think you’re really correct about it, but I do think it’s up to men to wake up and be more disciplined and to impose that discipline on young boys growing up. And I mean impose. That’s all that’s necessary really. Discipline allows the best to excel and others to follow creatively- kind of like Glenn in the blogosphere. It seems harder and harder to see ‘Glenns’ emerging, which I’m sure you deplore and rightly on more than one count.
So boys are getting hammered by single mothers, hammered by schools and hammered by police and you think the problem is that men don’t hammer boys enough.
Thanks for being part of the problem, not the solution.
I have a friend that is a public school teacher in a rural school district outside of Baton Rouge LA. A few years ago they had a plan at a Jr. High school to place boys and girls in separate classes. Most of the teachers wanted to teach the boys because girls have too much drama. Of course the whole plan was scuttled by an ACLU lawsuit claiming discrimination.
FWIW All normal 9 and 10 year old boys are ADD. I know I was and so were my boys. The difference between now and 40 years ago is that the boys were disciplined using corporal punishment, today they’re drugged. IMO corporal punishment is a good tool for some boys. It will get their attention. I know it made me sit up and pay attention in class.
I dislike this idea, though it’s more a response to bad diagnostic criteria than anything else. Not all 9 and 10 year old boys have ADD. A diagnosis of ADD should be reserved for kids who are physiologically unable to focus for an extended period of time on anything without medication. Most 9 and 10 year old boys are quite capable of focusing on a task for hours, if they actually care about it. What they’re not capable of is focusing on a task they don’t care about for an extended period of time.
If the ADD craze had been going on when I was 10, I probably would have been put on Ritalin. I got bored easily, frequently get distracted, and couldn’t focus on most school busy work. But I was a chess champion who could focus on a game for hours, and the top math student at my school. Any attention deficit at school wasn’t because I had a mental problem, it was because I was bored.
Now that I teach chess to kids that age, I see the same thing. They may be rambunctious and have trouble paying attention to a lecture, but they have no problem focusing on the game. Which means they do not have ADD. My co-coach, on the other hand, does have ADD, and without medication, cannot keep his mind from wandering when thinking about a move, no matter how interested he is in the game. That’s the actual ADD disorder. It’s a real thing, it’s just way overdiagnosed.
Exactly, Brian. Boys can be hyper and not pay attention, yet few of them should be diagnosed with ADD. If they can sit still and pay attention when they want to, it’s not ADD.
Of all the boys druged for ADD probably 10% at most actually have the disorder.
Back before schools were reorginized to cater to girls because they were being marginalized (supposidly) we had morning resess were we played and run, then we had lunch time were we mostly ran and played and we had PE were we ran and played. Hm, you know, no boys had ADD in my time in grade school. Now schools are reorganized to minimalize boys because, well no good reason that I can see except for a desire for a matriarchal society.
I remember seeing an elementary school in Los Angeles that horrified me. The entire school consisted of a bunch of closely-spaced trailers in a paved parking lot, surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire. As far as I could tell, there were no sports, exercise, or play facilities of any kind. Just butts in seats for seven hours a day, Monday through Friday.
Who hasn’t experienced a boring teacher? Ben Stein built his career playing to the type. What if instead of pointing to the students as The Problem, we thought about the teachers? Why then the answer would be clear; too many teachers suffer from AKDD – Attention Keeping Deficit Disorder. Shoot ‘em up with some amphetamine derivative or another and those teachers might liven up in the classroom a whole lot.
Yes, some children are more equal than others. But the teachers unions are more equal than all the students combined.
I wonder how much of it is the teaching style tought at Education schools?
I say that because I’ve taught students at a variety of ages, from college students and adults doing test prep for grad level exams to high schoolers doing SAT test prep, to elementary schoolers as a chess coach. I’ve also taught individual classes and lectured to elementary schoolers about lawyering and high school freshmen about physics. But I’ve never taken an education class; I learned my basic teaching style from The Princeton Review’s teacher training and from experience.
And when I teach, even as a lecture format, the boys thrive–all the kids follow my lectures pretty well, but I never have the “boys tuning out” problem so common to standard subject teachers. Part of that, I’m sure, is the subject matter; chess is an inherently competitive sport and I’m not teaching the kids how to get along and be tolerant, I’m teaching them how to win. The same goals as a sports coach, just with an intellectual activity. There’s a reason that boys vastly outnumber girls in competitive chess, and it’s not gender discrimination. Math and physics also are traditionally boys’ subjects.
But thinking back on my teachers from middle and high school, the best ones for me as a boy were the ones who believed in objective answers to fact questions, that subject mastery was more important than perfect behavior, the ones who treated kids’ opinions with respect and with an open mind (but would correct mistakes and explain why they were mistakes), and the ones who didn’t insist that their opinions were always right. And I try to model that when I teach; I never punish for talking out of turn unless it’s really disruptive, I try to teach by Socratic method as much as possible, I try to insert games in my classes whenever I can, and I never tell a student that he’s wrong without an explanation. And mentioning Reformed Trombonist up there–I never have the kids do stupid art projects that don’t teach the subject. I want my kids to find checkmates on the board, not to draw pictures of what checkmate means to them.
I also think girls are less likely to lash out when the material is beneath them. A boy who isn’t challenged gets bored, goofs off, avoids homework, and hates school. A girl who isn’t challenged usually just does all her busy work and moves on. Most teachers don’t have the ability or desire to push their gifted students, so at least the girls are pleasant and agreeable when they’re bored.
I read an article years ago (don’t have a reference) where a leading education professor stated that we know how to teach better, but colleges of education reject the new methods in favor of anecdotal evidence–what feels right vs. what is provably better.
In other words, our education system is less than optimal because the system teaching teachers is less than optimal. Something I observed when I was in the fifth grade (the book “Johnny Can’t Read” had made a big resurgence, I said to my mother one day “Johnny can’t read because teacher can’t teach.” For a bit of context, in my fifth and sixth grade, my elementary school had embraced the “open classroom” concept along with self-directed learning, both of which were disasters.)
As a former middle school and high school teacher (math & science), I see a big problem with the devotion to educational fads at the schools of education. Perhaps this is related to the publish or perish quest for tenure. It’s hard to publish yet another paper on what has proven successful. Instead, you have to come up with something new and innovative regardless of how unrealistic it may be in the real world. As an example, when I was in the 6th grade, there was a fad of open classrooms. My school built a pod where several classrooms were separated by nothing more than some portable bulletin boards. It was noisy and distracting, making it much harder to pay attention in class. Gee, who could’ve predicted that?
I went to a new school like that. It lasted one year, then they built walls between the class rooms. That would have been about 1974.
“Most teachers don’t have the ability or desire to push their gifted students, so at least the girls are pleasant and agreeable when they’re bored.”
Yup. Oh, we don’t have any “gifted” children just… just a lot of bad little boys who could be applying themselves so they’re now on Ritalin and some girls who do their work early and be quiet– we don’t believe in “elitist” labels here, all children are gifted in some way! (Happens more often than you’dhink.)
Q. Why don’t schools have special learning coaches and programs to push their gifted students the way they push their gifted athletes?
A. Because classrooms are about producing seat time, not learning.
I learned the term “seat time” from the president of a teacher’s union local. And another teacher’s union president once said that he’d start caring about kids when they start paying him union dues.
As a libertarian I know says, if we really thought our schools were important we’d find successful professionals to run them instead of turning the job over to politicians and their appointees.
Let me see if I can get this straight:
With all due respect to the Dr. Helens of the world and other accomplished women, it is men who have avanced civilization over the millenia. Even allowing for the suppression of women, male energy and intellect has been the driving force that gotten us this far.
And yet, despite that glaring reality, girls are thought to be brainier than boys?
“And yet, despite that glaring reality, girls are thought to be brainier than boys?”
Yes, girls do the teaching, so they do the evaluating. Boys are hard for girls to teach, ergo boys are stupid.
Shhhh. Don’t let them hear you say that. You’ll get us all in trouble!
Somewhat OT here, but related in that it is another example of how reality and social mores are distorted by “progressive elites.”
We’re now being softened up, or the zeitsgeist is, to accept decadent and degenrate behavior:
http://www.livescience.com/27129-polyamory-good-relationships.html
http://www.livescience.com/27128-polyamory-myths-debunked.html
We’ve already been “softened up” with proposals for post-birth “abortions,” doctor-assisted suicide, and euthanasia. I suppose that we’ll see articles in the not-too-distant future explaining how “not all pedophilia is harmful.”
As everyone knows, males are the source of all the sexism, racism and homophobia in the world, along with everything else bad. Therefore, it is important that boys be taught to be ashamed at an early age.
All seriousness aside, I just saw a woman wearing a tee shirt that said “I am the doctor my parents wanted me to marry.” In other words, her achievement is even more impressive because of her sex. So, in furtherance of my first comment, we should never forget that men’s achievements are less impressive, and obtained through privilege rather than merit.
But the way I feel is that I’d like to put my own struggle into words. Unfortunately it won’t fit on a tee-shirt.
Here’s something for your t-shirt:
Well-behaved men rarely make history.
Truth be told, nowadays…
Micha: Outstanding insight.
Helen: Thank you for recognizing that the disappointment that is so palpable in these comments is the result of dismissal, rejection, belittlement and shaming.
” So,in furtherance of my first comment, we should never forget that men’s achievements are less impressive, and obtained through privilege rather than merit.”
Is that how men discovered the polio vaccine or built the Brooklyn bridge?
I’ll reduce this even more to simply conformity. I’ve observed that the better students tend to be conformists. I’ve also observed that girls tend to be more conformist than boys.
Of course, then there are my oldest two who are both non-conformist and too smart for their own good, like myself and a few of my siblings. I learned at an early age that I was smart enough to pass tests by simply figuring out the right answer, which works only up to a point (the failure cases are really bad teachers who write bad tests and really smart teachers who probably did the same thing my kids, siblings and I often did and aren’t going to let anyone get away with it under their watch.)
Still traditional school was a very bad fit for me and for my two oldest kids. To this day, even with subjects that fascinate me, I can’t tolerate sitting in a traditional classroom type setting without losing my mind.
I know what you mean. I once took a calc quiz that was multiple choice. I correctly deduced the answers from just the answer choices on 6/10 of the problems. Then I went back and did the quiz for a 100%.
I’m tempted to be a teacher as a form of semi-retirement when I get that old four decades or so from now, just so I can give MC quizes where the correct answer sequence is: a few random answers, a, b, c, d, a, b, c, d, c, c, c, c, c, c, c, more random answers.
Or even better, a test where a, b, c, and d are answer options, but e is “None of the above, fill in your answer” and make all of the answers e.
The problem with societies that denigrate and marginalize men like this is that sooner or later, they get crushed by cultures that don’t marginalize and denigrate men.
That is why the Islamists are taking over Europe, especially the most feminized nations – in Scandinavia.
Yes, I know — we want a world where masculine values do not equate with brutality against women. A world where women can succeed, even on men’s terms, yet men can still be men.
But except for Israel, which has to allow masculine values or it will get destroyed, no western nation seems capable of this.
Truth is, women want man who’re men… countries that don’t value men will shrink and eventually die because their women will want foreigners.
I posted a link to this on the Mensa Facebook page. I think this is a challenge that Mensa could take up.
Sure, but they’re too self-involved and contentious with each other to do it.
self-fulfilling expectations have always been a huge problem in educational systems, the teachers see what they expect to see, and soon the students internalize that, objective performance is ignored.
this was supposed to be part of the racial problem in schools as well, countered by the “everybody wins” kind of approaches … which most certainly have their own problems.
nobody said it was easy.
I just found out three months ago that elementary school kids don’t get recess. This is insanity on the hoof. You can’t make it through the school day as an eight-year-old boy without recess. It’s scientifically provable.
Heck, adults can’t make it through the day without recess… what times are coffee breaks, right?
This is especially reflected in physical education. Once women took over boys’ PE, they stopped the roughhousing and other boyish traits, they switched from contact sports to indoor badminton, emphasized cooperation over competition, etc.
In other words, they attempted to make boys into girls.
Such distortions are contrary to a normal boy’s nature.
Dodge ball is gone. Enough said.
While I agree with most of the assertions on how feminism has ruined many a boy’s eduction, this dogeball thing is almost certainly due more to the result of lawsuits than the result of feminism.
Feminism and the litigation explosion derive from the same underlying mindset; therefore blaming feminism for the softening of males in physical eduction still stands as a legitimate argument.
All I know is that boys play dodge ball in various incarnations every chance they get (after school and away from the lawyers and feminists).
Eww, competition and aggression… much better to have cooperation and dependence, more peaceful! (Bleah.)
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” –Samuel Adams
Did this study control for the presence (or not) of a father in a boy’s life? Or some other male role model, other than the gangbanger down the street?
I realize your concern, Frank, and agree with where you’re going.
However I dislike the term “male role model”. Same goes for “father figure”. I see too many of the Career Concerned glibly throwing around such terms as if any man can be interchangeably plugged into the Dad socket in a boy’s heart.
It has always appeared to me to be more than just stereotypes. From what I have always noticed is that females tend to be brighter and have a higher IQ on average. The problem with boys is that they tend to run the gamut and can easily range from genius to dumb as a brick within a relatively small sampling. This creates an overall lower average for all and affirms the stereotypes placed not only on them by the outside groups such as females and teachers but also within their own demographic. Not that there are not exceptions to this but it has always been my impression; a lot of studies and results from standardized tests seem to affirm it.
Incorrect. Average IQ is equal for the sexes. Fewer females are at the extremes of the spectrum:
http://www.drmillslmu.com/sexdiffs/Textbook/chap1_files/image003.jpg
Testosterone is the culprit… average IQ is the same for both sexes; but males have more outliers (exceptionally smart and unintelligent) than females, even the exceptionally smart and unintelligent females have a a higher natural level of testosterone than other females.
I started seeing this problem with my son’s education at an early age. He is a smart kid and works hard at it. He brings home almost all A’s with a rare B+ but still we get remarks from teachers. One of the most common is that he doesn’t pay enough attention and is not an “active listener”. My first thoughts are this, his grades show to me that he is paying enough attention, and the reason he is staring out the window and thinking of other things is because you are boring the crap out of him teaching to a lower level. It is YOUR job as a teacher to engage the kids and keep their interest, and yes there is no doubt that this is a much harder job with boys than it is with girls but it is still your job. I can tell within the first week of a new class how good a year it’s going to be. Either he’s going to come home excited about what he’s learning because his teacher has connected, or he’s apathetic and is just going to slog his way through it.
Well, there is a reason we use the phrase “academic argument” as opposed to what happens in reality.
Anyone who’s a photographer or artist or writer who believes sheer talent will rise to the top needs to have their head examined.
Once in the real world, academics mean very little compared to character. Men do not dominate the world in areas both good and bad through stupidity or intelligence, but through ardor, resolve and aggressiveness.
An advantage is worthless if you don’t have the gumption to use it. Just ask Montezuma. A ridiculously small army of poxy Spainiards walked into the heart of his empire and brought it done. The East India Company did the same to the Mughals and Hindus. Ancient Islam may have discovered some moon of Saturn before the English, but while star-gazing and obsessing on over refinement, they lost everything to the idea of focus and organization.
HOMESCHOOL HOMESCHOOL HOMESCHOOL HOMESCHOOL HOMESCHOOL. A very simple yet highly effect solution for educating boys. I did it while working full time. My son is now in college and working and I seeing the benefits of the years that I had no time for myself while working full time and homeschooling him. Praise God!.
The public education system is welfare for the employees. And here in Crazifornia 85% of the teachers in the public school system are women. So act like men now women and take responsibility for how you have screwed up the public school system.
“The public education system is welfare for the employees.”
Ouch. True and well said. That really gets to the point.
Trey
As a FEMALE who could never sit still, I understand the boys’ problems.I wasn’t a nice sweet thing. And my teachers were not amused.
Nowadays, I suspect I’d be diagnosed with ADHD and/or Aspergers (I was neither quiet nor sociable). F*** ‘em.
Note to those with my problems, both male and female. You can do what you can do. They can’t. Find your place. They’ll try to find it for you – but they’ll be wrong. Find it yourself.
I was a strong willed girl, gifted in some subjects, average in others. I was a doer, active, extremely verbal and questioned everything – I didn’t fit the mold, hated, HATED, school and school hated me. I also have three sons. The traditional classroom was an awful fit for them but at least they had a mother who understood and would fight for them. School is based on a German industrial model designed to produce obediant workers. No wonder so many liberals go into education.
I’m sensing a lot of hostility for the liberal arts on this page. Maybe it’s because of the word liberal.
A traditional liberal arts curriculum is this: grammar, logic, rhetoric, literature, mathematics, science, and the arts. You can’t get a better education than that.
Perhaps it’s the devolution and corruption of the culture and education system that has so many of you upset. And not without reason. We need to get back to what’s real.
As to Anna Maria above, there was this young girl some time back, who had difficulty sitting still in school. She was constantly moving around. Her parents took her to a doctor. He had a radio playing in his office, and as soon as the girl walked in she started swaying to the music. The doctor said to her parents, “There’s nothing wrong with your girl. She’s a dancer.”
So her parents enrolled her in dance classes. She later moved to New York and became the greatest choreographer on Broadway. Yeah, she did Cats. Her name was Gillian Lynne.
My question is this. Does anyone think that a boy or girl would be treated similarly today? Of course not, they’d be drugged and sent home. The doctors are in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, so they have an incentive to prescribe drugs. The teachers are in the pockets of their union and the government, the curriculum has been completely corrupted–and if it weren’t, they couldn’t teach it–so they have no incentive other than to send children to doctors who prescribe drugs.
Welcome to the 21st century. We have an education system that does not emphasize essential skills, and doctors who overprescribe medication. Do you think Gillian Lynne could have survived in this environment, much less become successful? How about any boy that you can name?
I’ve always said that most boys are better off with vocational education, like an electrician, a plumber, a mechanic, an A/C repairman–you can’t outsource those jobs.
But a traditional liberal arts education is the best education one can get. Too bad that’s not around anymore, for boys and girls.
I had this one girl in a high school course I taught. She said that she was going to UT law and become a lawyer. She couldn’t even spell. Do you think that you’re capable of writing a contract?
Most of the boys I taught I encouraged to go to vocational school. Two years, less than 1/4th the cost, and then you’re out there making money. Start your own business.
But the girls I taught were seriously determined. They all wanted to go to law school, because that’s what their female teachers told them to do. I told them, well, you better learn to spell.
A college degree is required for certain professional carreers. A CPA, or a business manager, a CEO or a CFA, but beyond that, forget about it.
Grades don’t matter. The school you went to doesn’t matter. Essential skils, that’s what matter.
You know, at our real estate office, we have this test. It’s a simple spelling and mathematics test. We give it to all the applicants to be our secretary. We can’t very well give a job to someone who cannot spell or cannot do simple math.
You’d be surprised at how many people fail this simple test, and most of them are college graduates.
What is a secretary’s job? To answer phones. But she can’t pass this rudimentary test? Give me a break.
Yes, the education system has completely failed. It no longer teaches grammar, logic, rhetoric, literature, mathematics, science, and the arts.
And yet you people complain about the liberal arts? Get real. If we had a real liberal arts education system, we wouldn’t have a problem, with boys or girls.
“But a traditional liberal arts education is the best education one can get. Too bad that’s not around anymore, for boys and girls.”
Sure, and that’s the whole problem. What passes for “liberal arts” these days is almost nothing of the sort. Of the subjects you listed, many the “liberal arts” schools of day don’t teach math or science at all; rhetoric has been re-cast as propaganda, and logic is presented as being inherently harmful — courses in “logic” actually teach how to defeat logic, in the court of public opinion, using the previously mentioned propaganda. Similarly, “literature” presents propaganda as art; a work’s artistic value is measured by the extent to which it advocates for The Cause, and not any of the traditional values by which art used to be measured.
I agree with you that it’s unfortunate that the phrase “liberal arts” has come to stand for this tripe. Perhaps we need another phrase to describe it — “leftist arts”?
The story of Lisa and Albert
When Lisa and Albert were small, Lisa was very talkative with others, printed very neatly and completed all of the make-work that the teacher gave her. The teacher liked that attitude and therefore always gave her high marks.
Albert, on the other hand, was more likely to sit in the back of the class and take a radio apart to see what it looked like. He was very inventive and quite good with things like mathematics and logic, but the teacher didn’t like him very much, so she just arbitrarily gave him bad grades.
But do you know who would up decades later with a lot more money?
Can you guess?
That’s right, it was Lisa. Although she never got a real job, and Albert became an engineer, Lisa married a rich guy.
Sorry, “wound up”, not “would up”.