Jessica Breitbarth is mom to three pretty awesome and successful sons who attend North Kitsap schools. She and I have had several (well, many) interesting conversations around education in the last year or so. Recently a math and engineering fair targeting girls and hosted by Olympic College piqued her interest. She agreed to write about her concerns for Kitsap Education. What follows is her thoughtful essay.
I recently read about Olympic College’s annual Math and Science Fair for girls in fifth through eighth grades. While I congratulate OC for its initiatives, it should offer a similar program to boys. Unfortunately, none exists and my efforts to contact OC have gotten me no responses.
Why is this an issue? Because for years, junior college, college and most graduate degree graduation rates have had a tremendous and growing gender gap. And, despite what you may have heard, disparity favoring boys over girls in math, science and engineering is also nearly non-existent. Check out this site for more information.
What is this you say? WOMEN are outperforming men? Yes, and it may indicate a societal crisis in the making.
While the so-called “gender gap” has stabilized, the fact remains that 57 percent of all college enrollees are female and only 43 percent are male. The statistics for land grant universities is worse, and some predict that it will stabilize at 58 percent and 42 percent for women and men, respectively. See http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/college-gender-gap-remains-stable-57-women/story?id=9676229 A University of Missouri study showed gender gaps of graduating students at closer to 61 percent to 39 percent. Hispanic men comprise one of the smallest numbers of college enrollees at merely 9 percent of the potential pool of students.
Perhaps as a woman or parent of daughters you think this doesn’t matter to you. Think again.
Over a fifth of all households with married couples are households where the husband is the only worker. That number rises to 37 percent for households with children under age six, http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0587.pdf It is reasonable to assume that a substantial portion of families survive for at least some time on the salary of the husband alone. Moreover, the life time earning potential for those with a college degree is roughly twice that of a high school graduate who does not attend college, http://www.incontext.indiana.edu/2009/mar-apr/article1.asp
In addition, schools may not be addressing social maturity and behavioral standard differences between boys and girls at the beginning of schooling. The current teaching and evaluation methods may exacerbate the differences in cognitive development, and put boys at a disadvantage early on. This may give girls an advantage visa vie boys, but perhaps girls, too, would benefit from classrooms that catered to both boys’ and girls’ cognitive and social maturity. http://www.columbia.edu/~tad61/gender_social02232009.pdf
The impact on society may also be great. Over 70 percent of all individuals incarcerated have not completed a high school degree. One study showed that educational training, especially a GED, reduced the re-arrest rate to 24 percent from 46 percent of the control group. Another study showed that for those with two years of college, the re-arrest rate was a startlingly low 10 percent compared with 60 percent overall. Since men comprise the majority of those arrested and prison inmates, education clearly plays a role in preventing crime. See, for example, http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/research_brief__2.pdf and http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1763
So, what are we going to do about it?
One thing we, as a society, can do is to encourage girls and boys equally to pursue education. Programs like the OC program are excellent, but they do a disservice to boys who may be interested in learning more about higher education opportunities. I am not suggesting that OC do away with the program, but that they have a similar weekend targeting the male population.
Second, we can train early and elementary education teachers on the ways to address cognitive and social immaturity of boys. If we can give teachers the proper skills and curricula to handle the differences, the gender gap may not arise.
Third, we can emphasize to boys the importance of a high school program heavy in foreign languages, math and sciences. These courses are the leading indicators of success in college. While girls are getting the message, boys are actually reducing the amount of math and science they are taking in high school from previous years. High school counselors take note: I am talking to you.
Fourth, parents can help to reinforce behavioral standards that improve the cognitive and social maturity in boys. Parents can also reinforce the idea that school is cool.
Fifth, colleges, foundations and others can provide scholarships specifically for boys outside of athletic scholarships. When I recently searched a leading scholarship and financial aid website, the only male-specific scholarships were athletic scholarships. Not so for women. And even athletic scholarships are football heavy. Men participating in non-money making sports (sports other than basketball and football) have FEWER not more scholarship opportunities than their female counterparts BECAUSE of Title IX.
Google “Encouraging Girls” and you will still get websites on encouraging girls in math and science, but you also get encouraging girls to get their PhDs. Google “Encouraging Boys” and you will find “encouraging boys to read with comic books”, but nothing about higher education. The messages may seem subtle, but this is one thing our boys ARE reading loud and clear. School is for girls. We need to change the message to school is for everyone.
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