Female teachers and boys growing into men

Unfortunately this article seems to accurately describe the sad truth that we are living in a 'women-centric' world, even in my own life I can definitely see the effect of the feminization of the educational institutions. I'm currently a student of the VWO (which is the highest level of high schools in the Netherlands and is the precedent to the Dutch Universities) and we boys are hopelessly outnumbered here. In the previous school year, around 68% of the students in my year were girls and they were usually getting higher grades than the boys because of their ability to function better within the educational system. Those boys who couldn't adapt to the subtle and indirect way of the post-modern; feminist educational institution have all failed scholastically (no matter how smart/dumb they actually were). I see them come and go every year: the high-spirited, enthusiastic, somewhat arrogant boys who just don't understand that they can't be that way if they want to succeed in this system. Their uncompromised masculinity is their downfall, they are usually not really dumb but they can't see the social context of the system and therefore they can't change in order to survive within the system. Or perhaps the teachers don't appreciate their direct and playful behaviours enough to see the potential of these boys; they usually ignore the (in their eyes) unsophisticated boys and focus all their attention on the girls. And even guys like me and my friends (who have found a way to survive in this system) are usually ignored or underestimated by the teachers, my economy teacher didn't even believe I was able to write a paper on Neoliberalism and the ongoing financial crisis. He actually thought I let somebody else write the paper for me or took it of the internet...

It's sad but true: masculinity has become the synonym for dumb, foolish and clownish behaviour... and it's effecting every single boy who's growing up right now...

EYENTJ said:

My experience in the US has been that girls work harder than boys and thus get better grades on average.

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This is exactly what I meant when I said that girls were better adapted to survive in the educational institutions. They 'work hard' and finish their homework on time, and that kind of behaviour is associated with being a good student. However, 'working hard' shouldn't be scholastically rewarded, it can only be monetarily or emotionally rewarded. 'Working hard' is something you do when you work in a supermarket or when you're cleaning your room but working hard isn't necessarily a way to improve yourself intellectually in school. And this is what schools should be doing: measuring our intellectual abilities and improving them if possible.

On this moment the well-adapted and conformist girls (and girls do tend to be more well-behaved) have far more chance of succeeding then most boys (who are more likely individualistic and cocky), simply because teachers are more comfortable with the always listening, seemingly hard working girls then with the more sceptic and arrogant boys. Especially in high schools these differences in behaviour between girls and boys becomes more evident: the typical teenage boy is brash, cocky, competitive and self-involved while the typical teenage girls are usually group-oriented, shy, easily manipulated by peer pressure and open-minded. Well, guess who are seen as the better students by high school teachers? The girls. The simple fact that girls (seem to) work harder then boys should absolutely not be a reason for teachers to reward them with more attention, higher grades (when possible) or other positive reactions, but unfortunately this is the case.

School is nothing more than a way of oppressing young people and flaying them into the shape needed to be obedient citizens, it hasn't got anything to do with our intellectual development as humans any more. And apparently girls are better at being obedient...

ENTrePenuer said:

It permeates every aspect of the society currently so much so that even pointing it out is seen as some sort of cardinal sin. The way I see it, you can fight a losing battle and be battered and bruised in the process or you can walk a fine line of social untruths and personal enlightenment.
I won't attempt to help those who don't want to be helped. They have made their decision.

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Well, that's a very healthy way of looking at it from a personal perspective and I too have chosen the path of personal enlightenment over the path of being in constant conflict with a system that's able to easily crush me if I'll try to actively undermine it. But that's not a reason for me to not think about a way to solve this situation. Speaking my thoughts about this subject here on the Personality Cafe will not harm me because I'm not actively provoking or undermining the system. It's not wrong to discuss this subject and openly share your thoughts about it (the worst thing that could happen here is that the whole discussion will turn out to be completely ineffective in finding a solution), we'll just have to be careful in realizing our solution. And perhaps we don't even find a solution or find out that we'd rather go for individual enlightenment after all.

Namaste said:

This is because as children women are punished more often and more harshly for breaking rules whereas if boys break rules, adults shrug it off and say 'boys will be boys'. Women are expected to behave perfectly by social standards and norms while is it acceptable for 'boys to be boys' and break rules and get away with it. Maybe there is something underlying the feminine-dominated education system rather than women having an inherent advantage over men?

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Oh, you could very wel be right. Perhaps it has nothing to do with gender itself but with gender roles. But that would even be more reason to change the teachers' and our own attitudes towards boys/girls. Because if you are correct, we can actually make a difference by behaving different towards (young) children.

wiarumas said:

In fact, the strict observance of the rules that girls are being taught may be putting them at a disadvantage in the real world. The boys, even though scoring lower, may be giving them the right mindset for the lack-of-structure real world. It might be one reason that men are being paid 25% more on average than women and hold majority of the powerful positions in the world (executives, politics, etc).

No amount of studying or strict adherence to the rules will get you there. It involves out of the box thinking that our boys might be learning indirectly by "getting by" in the schooling system.

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I'm not so sure about your whole "in the real world it's different" rhetoric. In theory you are correct: tests in themselves have nothing to do with competence or abilities to succeed, but passing tests will get you your diplomas and if you're really good even a university degree. And a university degree will help you A LOT in getting a good job. Those who have never finished high school are usually not doctors or lawyers, they will have to fight much harder to succeed in a modern society. Of course luck, intelligence and other variables also play a role in succeeding in 'the real world', but you can't disconnect education from 'the real world'. Being educated does give you some advantage over the rest of the population in becoming a successful individual, you can't deny this. That's not to say that we men are unsuccesful or anything... We are just held back when it comes to education and this should be fixed because we all deserve the same chances at becoming succesful, happy citizens (or at least that's what I believe).

wiarumas said:

Is it really a social problem that needs to be solved? Sure, I'm thinking about it in a fixed perspective, but I see no conclusive evidence from my experiences that men are at a significant advantage - or if the teaching style is even the issue. All I see is poor correlation to a problem, not causation.

Not saying that this is the case, but there are plenty of other things that could be affecting men over a female-centric curriculum. Anything from nerds not being cool, math/physics/chemistry not being interesting no matter how you teach it, football players/rappers making significantly more than the average engineer (which would cause the average teen male to value sports over academics), puberty affecting the sex-obsessed men more than women (relatively speaking have clarity of mind over a teenage boy), etc.

We are both walking evidence that the system is not broken for men. I would love to see educational reform to make it more effective (for both sexes), and societal reforms (for the sake of progress of civilization), but I find that blaming the system for favoring females over men is kind of... eh...

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Your point of view is not wrong, I can even agree with it for the largest part. There are many possible causes for the phenomenon we are discussing here and perhaps we're going about this all wrong by thinking in terms of a 'social problem' that needs to be solved. We could simply say that these differences between men and women are inevitable and might even be good from a cultural/evolutionary point of view. But if we do that, we can easily turn into these social conservatives/ social darwinists who don't want to change anything although there are people who don't get the chance they deserve in the current system. Of course this doesn't mean we can blame our own scholastic failures on 'the system'; we should always be personally responsible and proactive. But that's not a reason for us to not care about others who are also responsible and proactive but are being thrown overboard by the system anyway... I can respect your point of view and I can even agree with you when it comes to individual approaches to this subject, but I can't just forget about those who are less fotunate than I am. Which is why I will continue to see this as a social problem untill there's no reason for me to believe this problem exists anymore (which won't be anytime soon).