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I’m a board member of the alumni organization of my old school.
A few words about the school itself because the whole setting makes what I am about to tell you even better: it’s a very old (literally founded in the late middle ages), rather conservative (in the literal sense, not the right-wing sense), very elitist institution (but not a religious or private school) with a firm “if your grades are good it doesn’t matter who you are or who your parents were but if you can’t keep up you are in the wrong place here” approach, which obviously has its good and bad sides. There’s a focus on discipline, manners and respect, which obviously also has its good and bad sides. It was pretty great for nerdy, weird, ambitious me who had grown up poor in a way a “normal” school wouldn’t have been, which is why I joined the alumni organization. It was founded as a boys-only school and only became co-ed in the late 80s. When I went there in the 2000s the boy-girl ratio was around 70-30, and it’s around 60-40 by now. Let me assure you that the teaching style has not changed in the last 50+ years (or 150+ years…).
Now to the issue at hand: Every year the alumni organization gives out awards and prizes to graduates (best grade point average, best person in certain subjects, students who did something great in extracurricular activities etc.). The graduates are chosen based on grades and accomplishments only, the lists and report cards we receive are completely anonymous and no current member of the teaching staff or relative of a person who is graduating is involved in the choice, so there is no way to pick certain people on purpose.
Because there is an anniversary coming up and I want to write an article, I looked up the lists of the people who got awards for the last 50 years. Imagine my delight when I found out that girls received the absolute majority of awards since the school became co-ed, despite…
- Boys outnumbering girls almost two to one until the late 2000s (and still outnumbering them today)
- The majority of the teaching and other staff being men (which proves the whole “boys can’t thrive under female teachers and perform better under male teachers” thing wrong)
- The teaching style, conditions, discipline and expectations not changing since the school was boys-only (which vaporizes the “the teaching style and expectations at schools today favor girls”- argument)
- The alumni choosing the award winners without knowing who they are and based on grades and tangible achievements only (which works against the “girls or minorities are favored on purpose for political correctness reasons!” argument)
In fact, in the last 10 years the “best grade point average” award went to a girl 9 times. And the only boy who won it happens to be brown, nerdy and gay (I only know that because his older brother was in my class, I’m not spying on graduates XD).
It’s not the schools, the teachers, the “learning conditions” or anything else favoring girls.
It’s boys failing to keep up.
Maybe because they are raised differently today, maybe because they lack good role models, maybe because they are distracted by the overall sexualization of society, easy access to porn or video games, them being distraced by suddenly having girls in their class and failing to cope with the competition… whatever. But it’s time to stop blaming “the system” or the girls and start looking at what really made those generations of boys underperform to such a degree.
This was so affirming!
I don't know how old the rest of you are, but I was in high school less than a decade ago. And let me tell you, for almost all of the under-performing boys, it was their own fault. Poor academic performance is tied to discipline problems. In my experience, boys are more likely to break rules, disrespect teachers & classmates, and not take their schoolwork seriously. It should be no surprise when their grades reflect their behavior. A lot of boys will flat-out refuse to learn from female teachers, and a lot of male teachers let boys get away with counter-productive behavior that harms their ability to learn. While women are the primary victims of misogyny, it backfires onto men too.
Thanks for sharing this information. I noticed a similar trend when I was in high school 20 years ago. Boys forgot about homework and exams on the regular, and teachers let it slide. Girls never forgot about homework or exams.
However, I do not take joy or comfort in knowing boys are doing relatively poorly in school. Most boys are lazy as shit, and I think boys should try harder (in school and in life) to create a society of better men, which will benefit women. The fact that boys can fuck up in school and still manage to succeed in life is teaching them the wrong lesson.
Thank you so much for sharing, this is fascinating and sadly unsurprising. Besides our denied brilliance, I think your story also speaks to the fact that women and girls HAVE to overperform at everything we do so it's no surprise we leave men and boys in the dust, academically and professionally. 9 times out of 10, when I see a woman in a room, I find she's the most capable because she had to crawl over broken glass to be there (and this goes double for women of color).
Can I ask what being a board member entails and how you're liking it?
Boys do better in mixed schools. Girls do better in girls only schools.
So good to hear this! We're expected to feel sorry for these boys for underachieving. The teachers used to force my quiet, studious friends and me to sit with the worst behaved boys to try and make them calm down and focus. I still performed infinitely better in exams despite being pestered in class and having to waste time I should've been using to learn helping them
So interesting, would you mind sharing your references to any data that you’re using?