Beyond The Gender Myths

By Margot Hornblower

Girls today are in trouble. They lose confidence in early adolescence. Their grades plummet, and, following sexual stereotypes, their interest in math and science flags. They are plagued by eating disorders, suffer depression, get pregnant, attempt suicide. And it all makes headlines, spawns research projects and prompts calls for single-sex education.

Boys today are in trouble too. They are locked into rigid classroom routines before they are ready; their rambunctious behavior, once thought normal, is now labeled pathological, with such diagnoses as attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity. They lose self-esteem and lag behind girls in reading and writing--erupting in violent behavior, killing themselves more often than girls. It all makes headlines, spawns research projects and prompts calls for remedial measures.

What's a parent to think?

Mired in the sociology, education theory and hype surrounding "gender equity," we sometimes overlook the common humanity of children: what they share and how they differ, regardless of gender. "The focus on girls has translated into the notion that somehow if you help girls, you hurt boys," says Susan Bailey, executive director of the Wellesley Centers for Women. "People want a quick fix, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution for either girls or boys."

It was Bailey's 1992 report, How Schools Shortchange Girls, that sparked a national hand-wringing epidemic over the plight of adolescent girls--especially their loss of interest in math and science. Financed by the American Association of University Women, the report surveyed a decade of research and concluded that teachers paid less attention to girls than boys, that textbooks reinforced sexual stereotypes and that college-entrance tests favored boys. A year later, another study documented widespread sexual harassment in schools.

A spate of books such as Peggy Orenstein's Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap and Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia, which spent nearly three years on best-seller lists, triggered a surge of creative solutions. A corporate-sponsored program, Take Our Daughters to Work Day, spread across the U.S. in an effort to encourage girls to examine varied careers. In Lincoln, Neb., teacher Jane Edwards partners with a local architectural firm to challenge high school girls to use technology, math and science to solve design problems. In Aurora, Colo., middle school teacher Pam Schmidt has created Eocene Park, a paleontology field school that encourages girls to explore this traditionally male-dominated science.

More controversial has been a renewed interest in segregation. Enrollment in private and religious schools for girls rose more than 15% between 1991 and 1997. New girls' schools were founded, including the public Young Women's Leadership Academy in New York City's Harlem, which is currently under challenge as unconstitutional in a complaint lodged with the U.S. Department of Education. In California, Massachusetts, Virginia, Nebraska and Oklahoma, local school districts began experimenting with single-sex classrooms.

Predictably, the renewed attention to girls has sparked a backlash. Parents are demanding that their sons be included in Take Our Daughters to Work Day. A surge of new books, such as Michael Gurian's A Fine Young Man and William Pollack's Real Boys, focuses on boys' emotional crises and academic problems in reading and writing. Researchers are exploring not just sexual harassment of girls but bullying and teasing of boys. A rash of school shootings by boys has brought calls to cut back on violent video games and provide more in-school counseling. And parents are objecting to certain excesses: "Is it really fair," wrote Kathleen Parker, a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, "that one of [my son's] feminist teachers refuses even to use male pronouns, referring to all students as 'shes' and all work as 'hers'?"

Pollack, a clinical psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, says most schools are failing boys by forcing them into an "educational straitjacket." Elementary schools lack male teachers, "sending a message to boys that learning is primarily for girls." Young boys, he claims, learn at different tempos, and perhaps the cutoff birth month for starting school should be later for boys than for girls. Once there, boys should be allowed to move around more, taking short recesses when they are restless. They should be able to use computers rather than be forced to write by hand before their small-motor skills are developed. Noting that boys constitute 71% of school suspensions and are less likely to go to college than girls (58% vs. 67%), he says, "Boys' self-esteem as learners is more at risk than that of girls."

Are things as bad as some say? Or has the emotionally charged rhetoric used by gender-equity theorists overstated the problem? A report last March found no evidence that girls improve their academic performance or their emotional health in single-sex settings. What helps girls is what helps boys: smaller classes, a demanding curriculum and encouragement regardless of gender. In the past decade, the gender gap for math and science, such as it was, has narrowed to the point of statistical irrelevance. Overall, males have somewhat higher standardized math and science test scores, while females have slightly higher school grades. Girls and boys are taking about the same math and science courses in high school, but boys are more likely to take advanced-placement courses in chemistry and physics. Girls are slightly more likely to take AP biology. Patricia Campbell, an education researcher in Groton, Mass., scoffs at the notion of "opposite" sexes with different learning styles. "When you just know somebody's gender, you don't know anything about their academic skills or interests," she says. "The stereotypes of girls being collaborative and boys competitive, of girls being into relationships and boys into numbers--that's laughable."

Campbell researched the techniques of math and science teachers in three states and found that those who were successful with both boys and girls shared common traits:

--They allowed no disrespect: teachers did not put down students, and students did not make fun of one another.

--They used more than one instruction method--lectures, small-group work, diagrams, peer tutoring--so that kids who learn better with one strategy rather than another were not left behind.

--They divided their attention equally among students, refusing to let a small group monopolize discussion. "Research shows that unless specific action is taken, four to seven people tend to dominate any group," she says. "In a coed class, more of the attention getters may be boys, but a lot of boys, as well as girls, are left out. A single-sex class does not change the pattern--only deliberate inclusiveness works for everyone."

Gurian, a Spokane, Wash., therapist who has written two books on boys, notes that four adolescent males drop out of school for every one adolescent female. Among his prescriptions for helping our sons: provide them with mentors; provide twice as much emotional nurturing--spending time with them, developing family rituals, giving them new freedoms and responsibilities; restrict TV, video games and movies. Strikingly, these recommendations are precisely what our daughters need too.

Where boys' and girls' advocates generally agree is on the destructive nature of gender stereotyping. If girls are urged to catch up in math and join ice-hockey teams, boys should be encouraged to write poetry and take dance classes without being labeled sissies. Parents can enhance gender-neutral self-esteem by suggesting that a daughter help fix a leaky pipe--or a son whip up an omelet. "A little girl who says she wants to be a doctor gets a lot of support," says Bailey, whose Wellesley Centers are devoting their next gender-equity conference to boys. "But if a boy talks about wanting to be a nurse, the reaction is that it doesn't fit a masculine image. Parents and teachers need to foster an environment where sexual stereotypes don't shape education."

If that ever happens, headline writers and social scientists can stop arguing about which sex is least favored, and teachers can concentrate on paying more nuanced attention to our children as individuals, for that is what they are.