Justus For All

Instapundit points us at this Weekly Standard Article: Where The Boys Aren’t

At colleges across the country, 58 women will enroll as freshmen for every 42 men. And as the class of 2010 proceeds toward graduation, the male numbers will dwindle. Because more men than women drop out, the ratio after four years will be 60–40, according to projections by the Department of Education.The problem isn’t new-women bachelor’s degree–earners first outstripped men in 1982. But the gap, which remained modest for some time, is widening. More and more girls are graduating from high school and following through on their college ambitions, while boys are failing to keep pace and, by some measures, losing ground.

This strikes me as a serious, if underreported problem, that will have dramatic culteral and economic effects in the coming years. While I am glad that women are doing well, lack of men in higher education will have dramatic negative effects.

Later in the article, a partial explanation for this problem is given:

What is going on? Schools are not paying enough attention to the education of males. There’s too little focus on the cognitive areas in which boys do well. Boys have more disciplinary problems, up to 10 percent are medicated for Attention Deficit Disorder, and they thrive less in a school environment that prizes what Brian A. Jacob of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government calls “noncognitive skills.” These include the ability to pay attention in class, to work with others, to organize and keep track of homework, and to seek help from others. Where boys and girls score comparably on cognitive skills, boys get worse grades in the touchy–feely stuff. Perhaps not coincidentally, boys reportedly enjoy school less than girls do, and are less likely to perceive that their teachers support them, according to studies of Hispanic dropouts.

I recall reading about a study of how boys and girls learned, although I cannot remember where, in which a group of girls and a group of boys were each assigned to complete a task (building a bridge I believe.) The differences in how each group approached this challenge was striking.

The girls got together and planned out everything from the beginning, working together and collaborating all the way through. The boys on the other hand, split off into individuals, each creating their own designs and plans and then arguing for the plan and deciding how to proceed. As I recall, the boys’ bridge was more robust than the design created by the girls.

More and more though I think current trends in education demand a collaborative approach similar to that naturally embraced by the girls above. Success is often measured by ability to work in a group, regardless of outcome. If this is naturally frustrating to boys, it is likely that they would become disillusioned with the entire educational environment.

Of course cultural factors probably play a role as well. In general, the stereotypical boy idol is either the ‘jock’ or the ’smart alec’ while the ‘nerd’ is a disdained. While some of this is true for girls as well (I think it fair to allege that a teen-aged girl would rather be pretty than smart) it seems more prevalent for boys. Certainly thinking of teen-aged sitcom characters, for example, one gets that impression.

With the causes of this problem being unclear, any solution seems difficult to realize as well. Some have proposed gender segregated learning environments, which might help but I worry about unintended consequences of such a shift. Others simply say it is all the fault of teachers or ‘liberal teachers unions’ which may be a component of the problem but is almost certainly an over simplification.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I am pretty sure we better pay attention to the problem.