Does a student's sex matter in education?

PkMnTrainer Yellow said:
And if we can find a biological difference that is significantly consistent in one gender, isn't it fair to say that we should be teaching in the most likely to succeed fashion? After all, there's a very limited amount of flexibility on how unorthodox a teaching method can get when you think about the staff, money, and time limitations
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Sort of. If you happen to be teaching in an all girl's school then it would probably be worth trying, but I think you'd get the same benefit simply by finding what each student's strengths are by trying a few different approaches. You'd find who was good at learning through method A, method B, and so on. Then you'd teach them accordingly. You could try that by gender, but I'm sure you'd have some girls who would do better learning under Boys' Teaching Method and vice versa so you'd still need to do some trial and error to find out who should be taught in which way.

So I think either way would work, eventually, but at least one way you wouldn't have to segregate beforehand.
 
Scarf said:
Sort of. If you happen to be teaching in an all girl's school then it would probably be worth trying, but I think you'd get the same benefit simply by finding what each student's strengths are by trying a few different approaches. You'd find who was good at learning through method A, method B, and so on. Then you'd teach them accordingly. You could try that by gender, but I'm sure you'd have some girls who would do better learning under Boys' Teaching Method and vice versa so you'd still need to do some trial and error to find out who should be taught in which way.

So I think either way would work, eventually, but at least one way you wouldn't have to segregate beforehand.
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There's no segregation involved. ._. I think the word you're looking for is discrimination, and isn't it true that discrimination is only bad if there isn't a valid reason behind it? After all, you wouldn't ask a person with one leg to run a race. That's discrimination with a valid reason.

Finding everyone's individual strengths and weaknesses through random trial and error is just a lot less practical and would take a lot more time and work. If it was practical we'd already be doing it in schools, y'know? I don't see where this resistance to not starting completely neutral is coming from.

Let me try to explain the concept further.

Say you've got a group of people who are deaf, and a group of people who are blind. They're all mentally capable of learning the same things, but are significantly worse than each other at different areas. For the purposes of an accurate comparison, we now try to teach them both with a mixture of visual and verbal methods, and can only teach using those ways, and as a result both suffer in various ways. Now, if we discriminate between the two and cater to avoiding weaknesses and exploiting strengths they just happen to consistently have, we get a better overall education and more equally consistent averages!

Obviously girls and boys don't have as extreme weaknesses and strengths as deaf and blind people, but you should get the point.

While it's true that not everyone will follow the majority, like I said earlier, it's simply not practical to cater to them. They do and would continue to have to put up with needing teachers to figure out that they need to be treated somewhat differently.
 
Well, segregation is ~sort of~ what I meant because if you have students who learn differently how are you going to teach them differently except to put them with different teachers or something like that?

I get what you're saying and the idea behind it - save time and effort by playing to strengths and not to weaknesses - but to answer what you said about random trial and error, I don't think it would need to be that drastic. There are teaching methods which work well across differences and they can be used with a mixture of other methods. Even if you have a student who learns well one way they'll want to have a couple of other methods just so they don't become too bored with the one method and so they aren't over training a single skill while ignoring others.

And of course the idea of teaching boys and girls differently assumes there is a significant enough biological difference. I'm still not sure if that's been proven.
 
It's a kind of "done-to-death" topic in classes going through education and getting the teacher's license swt...

From the realm of education research and education today, the answer is simply "we don't have an unified response to that question." The problem comes from 2 fronts: the nature vs nurture debate remains, and the student body itself is a variable.

The easier part is the student body part... Let's *assume* that teachers teach in the same manner for any gender. However a typical public school is composed of a student body of mixed, various genders. Even if the adults have policy in place and welcome students to take courses that are generally unusual to the gender's stereotypical norm, a student probably want to stick with his/her/whatever's friends and just follow the crowd, and it's the crowd playing the gender input instead.

For example, Engineering is stereotypically not something that a lot of females enter. You may have a female student in high school who is interested to enter faculty of engineering for college. However, none of her friends are taking classes that lead to that in high school staying with 'typical female classes' (whatever they may be), and so she may also be influenced by peers and miss the requirements to enter engineering.

Outside of direct academic influence, a student may have trouble fitting in for whatever reasons that may relate to his/her/whatever gender/sex, creating social issues that are out of the norm or it may cause negative affects on his/her/whatever's mental health. Indirectly, the school social environment affects the academic as well then.

I'm just really briefly summing things up with 2 random examples but hopefully you can understand what I'm trying to say... and all of this is already assuming that the adults aren't also acting as a factor on this entire issue.


As for the nature vs nurture in education context... do genes dictate "natural talent" and especially "limits" on learning? Or, does it work in the other way of "all children can learn anything, equally well" and if a child is having problem in a particular subject, it's all because of improper nurture or the fatal downward spiral of failures?

You got so-called experts on both side of the issue, and so my honest answer from my academic background: we have no idea.


@Yellow: "Now, if we discriminate between the two and cater to avoiding weaknesses and exploiting strengths they just happen to consistently have, we get a better overall education and more equally consistent averages!"

Bold statement that isn't necessarily wrong nor is it proven statistically/psychologically to be correct or incorrect... but this is a traditional question over the past century in education research called "streaming/tracking vs detracking." It usually swings back and forth in terms of what the gov't/majority likes. Currently for North America, we're swinging full force towards detracking.

Britain is the pioneer and flagship of tracking, favoring statements that you said. California is the opposite end of that spectrum. If you're interested in more about it, even wikipedia does a decent introduction to the topic which I think that you may like to have a glance at.
 
Scarf said:
Well, segregation is ~sort of~ what I meant because if you have students who learn differently how are you going to teach them differently except to put them with different teachers or something like that?
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Or you could just... y'know, teach them differently and not put them with different teachers. ._.

I'm just saying, I don't see any reason to consider such a thing. Getting an entire second set of teachers (and or schools) for one gender is just... silly!

While it's true that both sexs would "probably" benefit the most if they were segregated, I do not believe that such a thing would be at all practical, or offer enough of an advantage to justify it either way. We'd most likely be spending billions of dollars for little to no advantage, so that's out the window imo. We would theoretically get most if not all of the advantages by simply teaching teachers to acknowledge and take advantage of the mental gender differences.

Scarf said:
And of course the idea of teaching boys and girls differently assumes there is a significant enough biological difference. I'm still not sure if that's been proven.
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I can help there. I especially recommend the first and last link.
https://crr.math.arizona.edu/GenderKeynote.pdf - Please note the sources for statistics are from 2005.

https://www.eduguide.org/library/viewarticle/33

https://www.singlesexschools.org/research-learning.htm

https://www.rd.com/family/how-boys-and-girls-learn-differently/

https://www.greatschools.org/parenting/social-skills/1121-gender-differences-learning.gs




Frostweaver said:
As for the nature vs nurture in education context... do genes dictate "natural talent" and especially "limits" on learning? Or, does it work in the other way of "all children can learn anything, equally well" and if a child is having problem in a particular subject, it's all because of improper nurture or the fatal downward spiral of failures?

You got so-called experts on both side of the issue, and so my honest answer from my academic background: we have no idea.
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I can't really see how one could make an argument saying this is nurture. Like, I just can't fathom. There are things that are mysterious in terms of nature vs nurture but this does not seem like one of them.

Frostweaver said:
@Yellow: "Now, if we discriminate between the two and cater to avoiding weaknesses and exploiting strengths they just happen to consistently have, we get a better overall education and more equally consistent averages!"

Bold statement that isn't necessarily wrong nor is it proven statistically/psychologically to be correct or incorrect... but this is a traditional question over the past century in education research called "streaming/tracking vs detracking." It usually swings back and forth in terms of what the gov't/majority likes. Currently for North America, we're swinging full force towards detracking.

Britain is the pioneer and flagship of tracking, favoring statements that you said. California is the opposite end of that spectrum. If you're interested in more about it, even wikipedia does a decent introduction to the topic which I think that you may like to have a glance at.
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Yes, but, why do we need to separate girls and boys to treat them differently? I also don't think this is a matter of academic ability. I think it's a matter of the best way to learn.
 
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This is an interesting debate...different people and different "races" and the two sexes learn differently (or so they say...) in someway though people should learn in what ever way is easiest for them as Pkmntrainer yellow said.
 
Magmaruby and Aquasapphire said:
This is an interesting debate...different people and different "races" and the two sexes learn differently (or so they say...)
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I don't believe that ethnicity has a significant much less consistent role on how one learns.
 
PkMnTrainer Yellow said:
Or you could just... y'know, teach them differently and not put them with different teachers. ._.

I'm just saying, I don't see any reason to consider such a thing. Getting an entire second set of teachers (and or schools) for one gender is just... silly!
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Yeah, I know it's a little silly, but that's the only way I can think that would work with your suggestion. I'd much prefer a teacher who uses a variety of teaching methods.
 
No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Gender does not matter in anything, except changing during gym class.
 
Musician of Literature said:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Gender does not matter in anything, except changing during gym class.
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I think that's going too far with the equality thing, there. Fact of the matter is, boys and girls are different. Therefore, you treat them differently to get the best out of them. Treating everybody the same in everything is counterproductive and, I'd venture, selfish.

However, the question comes down to "what's different, and how do we respond to the differences?" And I'm not sure I can answer that. I will say that I don't think that gender differences are very apparent in education (not that all people are best educated in the same way, I just don't see it depending on male/female differences).
 
Scarf said:
Yeah, I know it's a little silly, but that's the only way I can think that would work with your suggestion. I'd much prefer a teacher who uses a variety of teaching methods.
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Well, yeah, these are theoretically two different teaching methods that would ideally be used in the same classroom. The only question is practicality. I'm not immediately noticing a big problem there, but would encourage the discussion. c:

On a random note
Åzurε said:
I think that's going too far with the equality thing, there. Fact of the matter is, boys and girls are different.
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...That sounds like something I would say, down to the wording. DB
 
Åzurε said:
I think that's going too far with the equality thing, there. Fact of the matter is, boys and girls are different. Therefore, you treat them differently to get the best out of them. Treating everybody the same in everything is counterproductive and, I'd venture, selfish.

However, the question comes down to "what's different, and how do we respond to the differences?" And I'm not sure I can answer that. I will say that I don't think that gender differences are very apparent in education (not that all people are best educated in the same way, I just don't see it depending on male/female differences).
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Boys and girls are different, yes. There are several fundamental, biological differences between a male brain and a female brain. Behavior, how they learn, how they themselves teach, etc. It think it foolish to assume there are no differences there.
 
I don't think it should matter. Sexist stereotypes tend to hinder educationally more than help; i.e. girls feeling that they should not be proficient in math, etc.

I think gender is very important.
How else would you know which toilet to use during school?
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That doesn't matter. I tend to use whichever I feel like using. :v
 
Gender doesn't have to do with anything mentally. It depends on the person and their personality. :/ Seriously why is this being discussed.
 
What I've noticed through out the years from my teachers(a few being being blatantly sexist) is that they tend to expect boys more to goof off than they do girls. & Well, that's fine, I guess, because it tends to work out in that way more often than not. But.. when the teachers realy get to know everyone, then it's perfectly fine. Everyone get's along, and they know what to expect from each indvidual regardless of their gender. Girls(at my school) tend to be held to less extreme standards.

But as for how they phyiscally learn, that is dependent on the indvidual, and race and gender have no affect on that. People are either auditory, visual or tactile/kinesthetic learners.

Audtiory learners learn by hearing, through the ear. They like lectures and use tone to understand the underlying meanings behind the speakers words. Written words and information may have little to no meaning until they are heard or spoken.

Visual learners learn by seeing, through the eye. They prefer to take detailed notes, and sit in the front of the class. They like to use the speaker's facial expressions and gestures to decipher the meaning behind their words. The enjoy looking at charts and diagrams.

Tactile/Kinesethetic learners learn by feeling, touching, doing, through experiments. They prefer a real hands on approach to everything. These learners like to experiment and test the world around them. They might have difficulty sitting still for long lectures, and prefer a hands on approach.

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These types of learning, are dependent on each indvidual. It has nothing to do with race or gender or anything of the sort. People can use all types of learning, it is just usually one type that they learn best through. It's good to train all the other types of learning, so that you can recieve information and learn better.
 
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I find it very droll that so many people say it doesn't yet are unwilling to provide the evidence of such. I mean, this /is/ a discussion topic, not a poll. ._. I'd love to see someone bring in something discussion worthy. I can't exactly do much with an opinion. I won't sit here and simply tell people they're wrong, contrary to what some might believe.

Perhaps this is the legendary "Fallacy of necessity" in which we desperately want to believe something is true to the point we are not willing to consider that it might not be? That's my guess as to what goes on to make people react to this discussion in such a way.

Katja said:
Seriously why is this being discussed.
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Implying. /eyeroll
 
PkMnTrainer Yellow said:
Perhaps this is the legendary "Fallacy of necessity" in which we desperately want to believe something is true to the point we are not willing to consider that it might not be? That's my guess as to what goes on to make people react to this discussion in such a way.
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Anyone can be accused of this and it doesn't really help the discussion.

I wish I still had access to all those reports and studies I did when I was in college. I'm sure I could find something on this topic. I can't really find anything online so far that specifically talks about possible genetic differences along gender lines in regards to learning styles and/or potential improvements in learning that also takes into consideration possible cultural or societal factors. I've seen things that say there are differences between female and male brains and I've seen things that say that boys and girls learn differently, but not much in the way that says that one is directly responsible for the other. At best, I've seen things that say that one's gender influences how someone learns rather than dictates how.

Add that to my own experience and you get my response of "individual factors are probably the most important thing to teach to," that is, teach the kids who are visual learners in a visual style, teach the kids who are auditory learners in that style, tactile in that style, and so on.
 
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