Boys are good at Math, and Girls Aren't... or are they? Myths and Facts about Gender Differences in our Children.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
Many people have argued that it's because of these 'differences' that boys and girls should be taught in separate classrooms, and that marriages are doomed to fail! A new article published in the American Journalism Review turns these ideas on their head and puts them where they belong - in the bin. Here's what the authors say (summarised and quoted below):
The idea that the brains of girls and boys are so
different that they should be parented and educated in different ways and
steered towards very different careers is one of the most successfully promoted
media narratives of the decade.
A small group of advocates have pushed this notion so
hard that it's become the conventional wisdom. They write best-selling books, speak to large groups of
teachers, parents and school administrators, and are quoted - endlessly and
usually uncritically--by the news media.
They claim that due to vast differences between boys and
girls, the single sex classroom will improve children's academic achievement.
But it's not true.
In September, the journal Science ran an article by eight
prominent scientists titled "The Pseudoscience of Single-SexSchooling."
They argue that "There is no well-designed research
showing that single-sex education improves students' academic performance,
but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and
legitimizes institutional sexism."
In the past few years, these authors have promoted a
series of myths that, as it turns out, have little evidence behind them.As more misinformation is reported, the false narrative
of great differences grows stronger.
Here are a few of the myths that power this narrative:
Myth
Research shows great differences in the brains of
boys and girls; children should be taught in single sex classrooms.
Fact
Lise Eliot, associate professor in the
Department of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School, did an exhaustive
review of the scientific literature on human brains from childhood to adolescence
and concluded there is "surprisingly little evidence of sex differences in
children's brains."
Cordelia Fine, a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and
research fellow at the University of Melbourne, finds dressed up as science in
the news media propagating a dangerous new conventional wisdom.
Boys are biologically programmed to focus on objects, predisposing them to math and understanding systems, while girls are programmed to focus on people and feelings.
This idea was based on a study of day-old babies, which
found that the boys looked at mobiles longer and the girls looked at faces
longer.
Male brains, Baron-Cohen says, are ideally suited for
leadership and power. They are hardwired for mastery of hunting and tracking,
trading, achieving and maintaining power, gaining expertise, tolerating
solitude, using aggression and taking on leadership roles.
And what of the female brain? It is specialized for
making friends, mothering, gossip, and "reading" a partner.
Girls and women are so focused on others that they have
little interest in figuring out how the world works.
Fact
Baron-Cohen's study had major problems. It was an "outlier" study. No one else has replicated these findings, including
Baron-Cohen himself. It is so flawed as to be almost meaningless.
Why?
The experiment lacked crucial controls against
experimenter bias and was badly designed. Female and male infants were propped up in a parent's lap
and shown, side by side, an active person or an inanimate object. Since newborns can't hold their heads up independently,
their visual preferences could well have been determined by the way their
parents held them.
There is a much literature flat-out contradicting
Baron-Cohen's study, providing evidence that male and female infants tend to
respond equally to people and objects, notes Elizabeth Spelke, codirector of
Harvard's Mind/Brain/Behavior Inter-faculty Initiative. But media stories
continue to promote the idea of very different brains.
Myth
Boys have inherently weaker verbal skills than
girls. They should be given "informational texts" to
read instead of the classics or any material containing emotion, which they
aren't good at either.
Overall, there are virtually no differences in
verbal abilities between girls and boys. In 2005, University of Wisconsin psychologist Janet Hyde
synthesized data from 165 studies on verbal ability and gender. They revealed a female superiority so slight as to be
meaningless.
Boys have a just-about-equal aptitude for reading and
writing, but their actual performance can suffer if they are not encouraged to
read or are given unchallenging material.
Females are the talkative sex while males are
naturally strong and silent. This idea plays into the whole theory that men and boys
are not naturally good or comfortable with words, at which girls and women
excel. In her bestseller "The Female Brain," author
Louann Brizendene claimed that a woman uses 20,000 words per day, while a man
uses only 7,000.
Brizendine's book got incredible media play. But hardly any news stories mentioned the fact that the
authoritative British journal Nature savaged the book, saying it "fails to
meet even the most basic standards of scientific accuracy and balance," is
"riddled with scientific errors" and "is misleading about the
processes of brain development, the neuroendocrine system, and the nature of
sex differences in general."
Fact
James Pennebaker, chairman of the psychology
department at the University of Texas at Austin, coauthored a seven-year study
of men's and women's speech. Of the male-female gap, he says, "It's been a common
belief, but it just didn't fit."
In fact, both men and women use approximately 16,000
words a day.
Myth
Women use both sides of their brain more
symmetrically than men. The larger corpus callosum in women explains female
intuition and the ability to "multitask" and tune in to emotions.
A meta-analysis of 49 studies found no significant sex differences in the size or shape of the corpus callosum.
In 1980, stories about a male "math gene" were
rampant in the news media.A study of highly gifted math students in a special
program had found that boys outperformed girls. Since both sexes shared the same classrooms, it was
suggested that girls' poorer scores must be due to their genetic makeup, not to
cultural factors.
But critics pointed out that boys and girls did not share
the same experiences. Parents of talented boys bought their sons special toys
and books to heighten their math skills and encouraged them to pursue the
field. Parents of
talented girls, on the other hand, did not take such actions.
The "math gene" faded from scientific view. But
a longitudinal study published by University of Michigan researchers five years
later found that the math gene notion had legs.
Mothers who knew about the articles lowered their
expectations of their daughters' math capabilities.
(End of excerpts from the article)
So, what does all of this mean? Two key things:
First - it is nearly impossible for parents to determine whether what is being printed in the news is accurate or not when it comes to scientific discoveries about parenting. There are always going to be people out there with an agenda, or a quirky story to tell.
Second - when it comes to girls and boys, the differences are really more about how you parent them (their socialisation processes) than any inherent biological differences. Yes, boys and girls and different, particularly in relation to obvious physical differences. And yes, girls tend to be less 'rough' and 'rowdy' than boys - marginally. But in terms of communication, academic ability, and the capacity to accomplish various tasks, there are few and minor differences.
Thanks to Ken Pope for forwarding me the article.
1 comments:
Thanks so much for this! I have been holding onto many of these misconceptions for many years now. I'm particularly interested in the difference in communication skills. On at least one of our standardised language assessments (currently in use)we have different tables of norms for boys and girls - hmmm... will need to do some more research myself. Thanks again :)
Post a Comment