It’s a question that respected publications, brainy academics and caring teachers have all tried to answer: Why do girls do better in school than boys?
The Winnipeg Free Press confirms the existence of a “school gender gap” in which girls academically outperform boys in Manitoba and across the globe.
“Girls performing better than boys has been a growing trend happening internationally,” Daniel Ansari, a Canada Research Chair in developmental cognitive neuroscience at Western University in Ontario, tells the newspaper.
Here in Flin Flon, the data is mixed, with boys doing better than girls in some areas, but the overall edge goes to girls based on the information available.
Good people will differ as to why this discrepancy exists.
Some cite differences in how boys and girls are raised, how their brains function or how girls may feel a need to try harder because they know that even in 2017, men on average earn more than women.
Others question whether the contemporary school system inherently favours girls. They ponder what to do to ensure all children have an equal chance at success in our society.
Then there’s the… well, let’s call it the goofball theory.
Some posit that while most boys and young men are fine, upstanding folks, a not-insignificant number of them are goofballs.
Which seems true enough. Of all of the goofballs you have known in your life, how many have been female?
Can you even picture a girl throwing a paper airplane across the class? Or placing a whoopee cushion on the teacher’s chair? How about setting off a stink bomb in the gym?
Matthew McKean, head of education research for the Conference Board of Canada, did not use the word “goofball” in discussing the school gender gap with the Free Press.
But he did cite data showing that in Canada, 15-year-old boys are more likely to show up late for class, or skip it altogether, than girls. And this surprises whom?
McKean added there is “a rubric of issues that needs to be addressed” regarding the school gender gap, as if there is some sort of academic solution to the innate desire of teenage boys to cut math class.
Surely goofballs have much to do with dragging down male academic scores. If you removed them from the equation, perhaps boys would match girls A+ for A+ come report card time.
Whatever the reason for the school gender gap, there is bound to be overreaction in some circles.
The education system feels an innate need to “fix” every perceived “problem” in society, especially if it can seem as though one group – in this case, boys – is struggling or getting the short end of the stick.
Is the school gender gap really a problem? Are boys underprivileged because, on the whole, they score a few points lower than girls on a grade 7 science exam? Does this data have actual implications?
In a two-way race, there is going to be a first-place finisher and a second-place finisher. Second place does not mean abysmal.
Moreover, the bulk of most people’s academic experience ends prior to adulthood. How much stock should we place in exams people write when they are 8, 12 or even 17, particularly when we know boys tend to mature slower than girls?
Schools should ensure their teaching methods are not gender-biased, but it’s unrealistic to think they can or should control all the variables at play when girls outperform boys, or vice-versa, in a given era.
