Girls’ maths, boys’ reading

Via Feministing this article came to my attention.

It is interesting reading and confirms, what I suspected all along. People’s skills at anything improve, if they’re told they have the potential to learn. And opposite: when told you’ll never learn, your skills will be significantly poorer. I could’ve told them that, but it’s nice that there’s finally proof of this.

The article finishes off with this paragraph:

The math gender gap thus joins a long list of differences in test scores that were once ascribed to biology, but now appear to be caused by social influences. The study, however, leaves us with yet another question of this sort: why do boys appear to read so poorly? We clearly can’t ascribe it to social inequality, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t due to some other social factor.

I think, I may have an answer to that question. If telling them they can make it, or that they cannot, will influence girls’ abilities to learn bookish skills. How about considering the attitudes of so many towards boys and bookish skills?

Sure, everyone knows that boys can get through college, they’ve been doing that for ages. The matter, as I see it, is getting them TO college in the first place.

Feminism has had an impact on our societies, and a great yay for that. These days women are allowed to attend universities, become doctors, vote, own property, all sorts of things that used to be the men’s prerogatives. All these rights and liberties have been granted to women by male law-makers in the name of fairness. (Oh, how benevolent they are). But that has not changed the patriarchy’s need to assert itself.

Since women can compete with the menfolks at the intellectual disciplines (which, I think, many men have known all along, it’s probably why they kept us out for so long), the men have turned to something else in order to still feel superior: Physical activities, namely sports. Here the men do have a physical advantage, so here their bastion of manly superiority won’t be taken down within the foreseeable future.

Since intelligence and clever thinking is no longer monopolized by men it has been devalued in our culture. Now the only prestigious thing left to do for all those boys is the manly (hence strength and endurance-based) sports. So what are boys encouraged to spend their time with? Sports of course. Climbing trees and play-fighting at first, fiercely competitive games of for instance football and baseball later on. They are certainly not encouraged to spend time with such quiet ‘girly’ activities as reading. Well, some are, but mostly those from academic backgrounds. All the rest are encouraged to behave roughly, even violently under the “boys will be boys”-mantra, and certainly not to use what’s inside their heads.

Surely I can’t be the only one who has figured this out? Taking my old school mates as an example, no one but the teachers ever told the boys off for being loud or obnoxious. Some of the parents even praised their little tykes for not letting that sour-arsed teacher ruin their mood with orders to sit down and shut up. That ever happen for the girls? Nope. Only few of the boys read books on their own initiative, only one of them was encouraged to do so, and those who did read, definitely did not talk about it – or even do it openly in school. The one boy who did read openly during recess was bullied horribly.

So tell me, does anyone think this is an environment, an attitude, a culture that fosters intellectual interests in boys? Does anyone think it fosters negative attitudes towards intellectuality in boys? I know I do. It’s so obvious, surely someone must have noted.

In all this flustered panic to maintain superiority over women, men have sabotaged their own sons’ abilities – or perhaps mostly their wish – to be good with books. If it’s something women are good at, if it’s something women can compete at on equal footing, then it’s unworthy for the males to engage in. And look where that’s taking us: The male drop-out rates in college are on the rise. Not because the guys who go to college don’t want that education, but because their reading careers started so late in life, that they are horribly behind. And then when they cannot keep up with classes consisting of 50-65% women or more, the beliefs of superiority instilled in them from childhood must surely trigger some seriously discouraging feelings of personal failure.

So for all the MRA’s out there. Indeed, patriarchy hurts men, too, but mostly because it hurts children of both genders. Men have only themselves to blame (or other men, as it were), it is only when men stop perpetuating the patriarchal need for gender-based superiority rather than personal superiority(to be acquired by persons of either gender through personal skill and effort), that we will truly see what the real potential of our children are.

If my guess is correct, humans have much greater capacity for learning than we’re currently using, because we spend so much time holding each other back. If there were no messages of “smart girls aren’t sexy (and that’s the thing to be)” nor “real boys climb trees (they don’t read books)” then I’m sure all children would find out much earlier what they are *actually* good at, rather than what society thinks they ought to be good at. And who knows? One of them might eventually find that famed cure for AIDS or cancer or figure out how to travel at the speed of light. But as long as we’re holding back boys and girls alike, though with different arguments, nothing of the sort will come to pass.

With all the talk of realising oneself in these times, where the ego is spoiled rotten and prioritized before everything else, I’m amazed that we’re still preventing our children from figuring out the most basic of things: Who they are and what they’re good at.

Oh, and is it any wonder children are diagnosed with stress more often than ever seen before?