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The gender gap in education

Being that my essay on Frank McCourt appeared in this week's Carnival of the Vanities, I figure that it's fair for me to comment on an interesting post from another blog that was also featured in the Carnival.

I choose a post from the blog King of Fools entitled Gender Gap.

Upon hearing about a gender gap, one immediately presumes it's a complaint about females getting shafted compared to males. But in the educational system, it's actually the boys who are getting the shaft. From the very beginning, girls do better in school than boys, and more girls go on to college than boys. This is actually not as new as one might think. I remember reading an article by educational psychologist Arthur Jensen that he wrote in the sixties where he mentioned that fact that teachers evaluated girls more favorably than boys. What's different is that back then, girls weren't especially encouraged to pursue additional education (or so my mother tells me). So girls did well in school but weren't as likely to seek higher education or careers.

I should also bring up a point that I'm sure I've brought up before; college education is probably overvalued in this country. A co-worker used to tell me at least once a week (maybe I exaggerate the frequency a little) how his son didn't go to college and he made $120,000 a year. The son had some sort of computer networking job. If women go to college to study economically worthless subjects, while men forgo the college education to pursue more lucrative opportunities in the computer field (where you rarely see a woman working), then which sex is benefitting more from this gender gap?

It is even been suggested by some (sorry, no links) that the feminization of college could devalue higher education. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, because we worship college education too much.

posted Wednesday, January 21, 2004