News Update

[jackofallgeeks]

I heard about this or a similar study. It basically says that girls don't perform as well when they're told that boys are better. I wonder if there might be a corollary of boys performing worse when told girls are better, or if a fluke of our society makes one sex more or less resistant to such self-defeating thoughts.

Tongue piercing can have bad health consequences. Who would have guessed?

Says the study: Boy monkeys prefer trucks; girl monkeys prefer dolls.

Comments

hmph

[xenu.livejournal.com]

anything can have bad health consequences if it isn't done correctly, and would't YOU perform badly if YOU were told off the bat that you wouldn't do well?

Re: hmph

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

-smirk- This wasn't personal commentary; I'm not a fan of exotic piercings, generally (at least, that's what I say) but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with them. I was being mostly (pardon the pun) tongue-in-cheek, as it seems a bit amusing to have piercings cause pain, et cetera, et cetera.

As to your second point, no, actually; I like to think that I'd perform precisely as I ought to regardless of how other people expect me to perform. I think it's odd, actually, that simply being told "girls are bad at math," affects how they score. And, as noted, I ask your same question -- are boys affected the same way? If you said, "boys can't write prose," would they choke? I mean, yeah, if you think you're being scrutinized you can get nervous and mess up, but that's not really what they study's looking at. they aren't scrutinized, just presented with a sweeping generalization.

I don't know, are they?

[xenu.livejournal.com]

There WAS all that hubbub recently about a supposed 'boy's educational crisis'; remember? P.S.: I think segregating the classroom is rubbish.

I end up saying more than I meant to.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that it was established that the 'educational crisis' wasn't so much that boys were doing particularly poorly but that girls were doing particularly well -- a simple matter of the media taking good news and putting a negative spin on it. Regardless, I think that's different from the study's phenomenon.

I'm undecided on the risks or benefits of segregating classrooms; I'd be really interested to hear what you have to say. At the very least I think that two things are of note: in the general case, at least at a certain age if not across the board, boys and girls will try to impress each other and/or behave in a way they perceive they're expected to behave as far as the opposite sex is concerned; that is, boys will 'act like boys' and girls will 'act like girls' regardless of the impact this might have on their educational performance. in the general case. Removing that distraction is arguably a good thing. Secondly, I think it's at least worth considering the very real potential that boys and girls are wired in such a way as to learn differently, and that teaching one sex at a time would possibly minimize the complications of teaching.

And of course, teaching boys and girls separately and segregating boys and girls, I think, are two different things -- there's no reason why they shouldn't socialize or have recess or lunch together, but there's also no reason why that has to mean they sit in the same classroom when it's time to study.

In closing, I'll just note that I have cousins (http://starlight1184.livejournal.com/) who have been through single-sex school (at least for highschool); and though I may disagree with her on a number of issues (actually, you might agree with her more than I do), Rachel's an intelligent, well-adjusted girl. In fact, I might go so far as to say she's better-adjusted and has more self-confidence than most, but that could simply be hereditary.