For a while now the education establishment in the US had worked very hard to bring female students up to speed in math and science. There was a time when male students dominated math and science in most of our schools. This was clearly a problem and teachers and society itself responded to try to correct it. Today, while we are not completely there – witness the still painfully small number of women in computer science, we have made great progress. We have changed the way we teach math and science and we have worked with teachers, guidance counselors and even doll makers (remember when Barbie used to say “Math is hard.”) to avoid the stereotypes that women can not handle math and science. As a result the numbers of women in math and science careers is increasing. Lately though people have started to be aware of something completely different. Specifically, that boys are losing ground in higher education. Women now represent about 60% of college students while the number of male students continues to go down. Boys are deciding as early as seventh grade that college is not for them and choosing high school options that are in effect self-fulfilling prophecies.
Problems include a lack of role models and a school culture that plays more to the strengths of female students than to male students.. Many boys are not living with their father and there are few male teachers in elementary schools to act as role models. Our schools run under the expectation that students will sit still for long periods of time and that is not something that little boys are good at. Sure some boys live with their father and sit still quite nicely. And some girls have a lot of trouble sitting still and lack female role models at home. There are exceptions to every generalization. But clearly something is going on here. Is anyone paying attention?
