TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/022492/0224120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.3 KB | 111 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 62

Is School Unfair to Girls?


The latest research finds that the gender gap goes well beyond
boys' persistent edge in math and science

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- Reported by Sidney Urquhart/New York


    Athletic budgets. Reading lists. Pronouns in textbooks.
All sorts of things have changed since 1972, when Congress
outlawed sex discrimination in federally aided schools. But so
far, charges the American Association of University Women
(A.A.U.W.), reforms have only tinkered with the gender gap. The
organization issued a cry of alarm last week, citing "compelling
evidence that girls are not receiving the same quality, or even
quantity, of education as their brothers." That conclusion was
contained in a report compiled by specialists at the Wellesley
College Center for Research on Women that synthesized hundreds
of studies of girl students from preschool age through Grade 12.

    The findings showed that in some ways the American public
school classroom is a feminine domain. Nearly three-quarters of
teachers are women. Though the sexes do equally well in math and
science grades, girls outperform boys overall. In verbal skills,
girls move into the lead around Grade 5 or 6 and thereafter do
better than boys in writing and, by most measures, reading.
Females constitute less than a third of students identified as
emotionally disturbed or learning disabled. Despite teen
pregnancies, girls are less likely to drop out of high school
and more likely to attend college.

    So, what's the problem? For one thing, there is a gap in
scores on standardized tests, especially in math and science,
which the report blames partly on lingering bias in both testing
and curriculum. On Advanced Placement tests, which enable
students to earn college credit during high school, boys
outperform girls in math, physics and biology. On the SAT test,
that ubiquitous measure of alleged merit, in 1991 boys beat
girls by 8 points in the verbal score and 44 points in math.

    Susan Bailey, the report's chief author, says differences
persist in math because "girls are still not participating in
equal proportion to boys in advanced-level courses."
Specifically, 7.6% of boys choose calculus, compared with 4.7%
of girls. As for science performance, Bailey says, "the gap may
be getting wider." A fourth of high school boys take physics,
but only 15% of girls do.

    Even girls who take the same math and science courses and
do just as well on standardized tests are far less likely to
consider technological careers. A study of Rhode Island high
school seniors, for instance, found that 64% of boys but only
19% of girls taking physics and calculus planned to pursue
science or engineering in college. Last week's report contends
that girls' aversion to these fields limits their career options
and future income.

    Seeking to explain these patterns, the report states that
school gradually undermines girls' self-esteem. In a 1990
survey, 3,000 youngsters were asked such questions as whether
they were "happy the way I am." Predictably, everyone's
self-confidence declined during adolescence, but the self-esteem
of girls suffered deeper wounds. The pivotal factor in low
self-esteem and performance, and the most intriguing aspect of
the research, is what actually occurs in the classroom.

    Bluntly stated, boys do well by being bad. They are the
troublemakers who intimidate girls into silence, monopolize
discussions and steal an inordinate amount of teachers'
attention. One sixth-grader observed by researchers in
Montgomery County, Md., said, "I'm afraid, when I get something
wrong, the boys in the classroom might make fun of me because
they usually laugh at some people if they get something wrong."

    Obviously then, enhancing girls' self-confidence is not
simply a matter of including more stories about heroic women in
history textbooks. Judy Logan, a teacher at San Francisco's
Everett Middle School, is convinced that girls "learn better in
noncompetitive, nonhierarchical ways," so she divides her
students into small groups. At Pattonville Holman Middle School
in suburban St. Louis, computer teacher Jayne Kasten runs a
no-boys F.E.M. (Female Electronic Marvels) Club, in which girls
work with new software and demonstrate their know-how in
classrooms.

    The 40 A.A.U.W. proposals offered last week lean toward
such predictable remedies as improved teacher training or
further studies and avoid bold proposals suggested by the
research, such as sex-segregated math and science classes. Diane
Ravitch, an Assistant Secretary of Education, complains that
much of the report "is just special pleading and, frankly,
whining." Opportunities are opening up, she says, and girls
should be urged to take advanced courses, not told that they are
victims. Chester Finn, director of Vanderbilt University's
Educational Excellence Network, thinks disparities simply show
that students have different interests and abilities. He
considers gender complaints a diversion from the overall
weakness of U.S. education: "It stinks. It's dreadful." Ravitch
adds that America is indeed biased, not against girls but
"against academic achievement." If so, that is still one lesson
that girls understand better than boys.