Boys and School

I’m worried about boys and school.

A few weeks ago, Gib West, ConVal’s assistant principal, told my journalism students that 70 percent of the students on our high honor roll are female. He also said that most of the students who wind up in his office for disciplinary action are male.

One of my young journalists -- a girl -- decided to follow up on Gib’s remarks by searching the Internet for more on the subject. She found a recent article in Business Week that confirmed Gib’s observations. High school boys, it reported, were more likely to be in trouble than on the honor rolls.

It used to be the other way around. Not long ago, researchers were concerned about an achievement gap that seemed to favor boys. For a long time, studies have suggested that boys have an advantage over girls in science and math; male brains seem better at manipulating objects and understanding symbols and diagrams. That showed up in noticeably better scores for boys on the SAT math exam.

Girls, on the other hand, tend to do better at listening and writing, which makes them outperform boys in English. I can see it in my own classrooms. Currently I’m teaching three courses: Freshman English, Journalism, and Modern Literature. In two out of three, girls are averaging better grades. The only exception is Modern Literature, where four girls are in danger of failing, due mostly to life problems.

The gender gap is more visible among the highest-achieving students. In my Honors Freshman English class, where eighth-graders who wish to apply must be recommended by their teachers, score well on an entrance exam, and write two essays, girls consistently outnumber boys. One year, out of 40 students admitted, only nine were boys. Last year, according to The Boston Globe, 24 out of 30 public high school valedictorians in that city were girls.

These are all generalizations, of course. There are girls who do extremely well in math and science, and boys who are outstanding in English. But the trend seems to be that girls are gaining and boys are dropping back.

I don’t know why. It may be that decades of attention to perceived inequality of treatment of girls in schools is finally paying off. The biggest single positive difference between my high school years and what I see in ConVal today is the popularity of girls’ sports. In my day, nobody came to girls’ basketball games. There was no girls’ soccer. Female athletes were considered to be freaks. Now, they’re admired and celebrated.

That’s a direct result of changes in federal law requiring equal support of athletic programs for women. It’s about more than sports and money, though. There’s been a social revolution. Girls have a much wider spectrum of role models than they had when I was a teenager. Then it was June Lockhart or Marilyn Monroe. Now it’s Mia Hamm, Hillary Clinton, Sally Ride, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ellen Degeneres, Condoleeza Rice.

But boys’ choices seem to have shrunk, and showing intelligence is suspect. The richest and possibly smartest man in the world, Bill Gates, is still considered a nerd. The governor of California masks his considerable intelligence behind action-movie taglines and his disdain for ‘girly-man economics.’ And the last presidential campaign showed how dangerous it is for a candidate to speak French or change his mind.

I have no idea what to do about it. But I’m worried.