Sex & Education

The prestigious Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) has supported its global educational analysis and testing Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Through tests of young people in many countries around the world, PISA has produced results that are beyond intriguing, numbers that tell us where attitudes and policies have gone wrong, assumptions we have made that need to be reexamined and how training and education can be redesigned to better serve both students and society.

Today, I’d like to focus on the test score differentials between boys and girls, then drill down on why and what the relevant consequences might be. The bottom line is that while boys score better in math, pretty much in every other category, girls seriously outperform boys and have many fewer issues during their educational process. Are females less able than males to embrace math and math-related subjects or is there a gender-consciousness/attitude that forces these results? And if male educational failures are so pervasive, does that generate insecurities and instabilities that infect global tensions and solutions?

The just-released PISA report, The ABC of Gender Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour, Confidence, provides a detailed analysis of the test and other statistic information, focusing particularly on 15-year-olds. The March 5^th OECD Digest summarizes some of the most salient results. “[In] 2012, 14% of boys and 9% of girls did not attain the PISA baseline level of proficiency in any of the three core subjects measured in PISA – reading, mathematics and science. Why are boys more likely to be among the lowest achievers in school? The report finds that gender differences in school performance are linked to gender differences in student behaviour, both in and outside of school. For example, boys spend one hour less per week on homework than girls – and each hour of homework per week translates into a 4-point higher score in the PISA reading, mathematics and science tests. Outside of school, boys spend more time playing video games than girls and less time reading for enjoyment, particularly complex texts, like fiction. Reading proficiency is the foundation upon which all other learning is built; when boys don’t read well, their performance in other school subjects suffers too…

“Some 43% of girls and 37% of boys reported that they had not mastered the skills needed to perform well at a job interview; and almost one in three boys and girls reported that they had not acquired the skills needed to write a CV or a summary of their qualifications.” And remember, these kids are those who are in the relevant educational systems of their nations, not illiterate segments outside of the educational systems.

What about those math skills? “[The] report, released [March 5^th], finds that less than 5% of 15-year-old girls in OECD countries contemplate pursuing a career in engineering or computing, while 20% of boys do. What accounts for this gender difference in career expectations? PISA finds that girls – even high-achieving girls – have less confidence in their abilities in mathematics and science, and are more anxious towards mathematics, than boys. On average across OECD countries, the difference in mathematics performance between high-achieving girls and boys is 19 PISA score points, the equivalent of around half a year of school. But when comparing boys and girls who reported similar levels of self-confidence in mathematics and of anxiety towards mathematics, the gender gap in performance disappears. If girls don’t believe in their aptitude for certain subjects, why would they continue to study those subjects when they are no longer required to?

“The study also finds that, when required to ‘think like scientists’ at school, girls underperform considerably compared to boys. For example, girls tend to underachieve compared to boys when they are asked to formulate situations mathematically. On average across OECD countries, boys outperform girls in this skill by around 16 PISA score points – the equivalent of nearly five months of school. Boys also outperform girls – by 15 score points – in the ability to apply their knowledge of science to a given situation. This gender difference in the ability to think like a scientist may be related to students’ self-confidence. When students are more self-confident, they give themselves the freedom to fail, to engage in the trial-and-error processes that are fundamental to acquiring knowledge in mathematics and science.”

The issue, it seems, is purely attitudinal; societies with positive expectations of girls in math produce clear evidence that there is no difference in male vs. female math test scores. This was the test result in several hot Asian economies: Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

But boys have their own sets of problems that help explain the performance gap. At 15, they are more likely than girls to feel alienated from the educational system, feeling that school is a “waste of time,” and they are more likely to face school disciplinary measures than girls. Where there are career aspirations, strangely, boys tend to expect less than girls at that age. They are less likely to read for fun.

In the end, a society is no better than the abilities, hopes and aspirations of its people. In the United States, most of those measures are currently going in the wrong direction. If nothing else, an nation’s attitudes about education and its willingness to prioritize learning above all else will determine its future in a highly competitive global universe. Looking at the numbers, the United States isn’t looking so good… and the ability to implement the necessary and very possible fix is being decimated in the slashing public school budgets while arguing why lower taxes on the rich is the only true solution to job growth. I guess that’s the kind of thinking from folks who went through that inferior public school system.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our economic and political position in the world is simply ours to lose.