Female Triumphalism in American Education
I was thinking the other day of a conversation I had some months ago with my younger brother, who is just starting his senior year at the same public high school from which I graduated. He made an interesting observation regarding the junior class awards ceremony, which, as he describes it, seems as if it was basically the same tedious and dull self-esteem-a-thon it was when I had to go. What he noticed was the sheer number of awards given by various institutions recognizing Young Women Who Excel in X, Young Women Who Excel in Y, and so forth. He made the exact same observation that I made when I attended the same ceremony just over four years ago: there are no awards for Young Men Who Excel in X or Y.
What could possibly be the explanation for this? Do we no longer expect young men to accomplish anything, or is it just that we're no longer supposed to care when they do? Another way to look at it is to ask if there is anything specific about the achievements of women that merits specific recognition. I happen to think that the intent is to encourage young women aspire to great things in specific fields, which I don't think in itself is a bad thing. I am highly skeptical, however, that creating specific commendations to recognize women would accomplish this. After all, if the objective is to demonstrate that young men and young women are capable of the same accomplishments, it would make sense to have them compete for the same commendation, but god forbid that any of the boys do better than the any of the girls, because then we couldn't give the award to a girl. I wouldn't care as much if there were equivalent awards given for boys, but I think the fact that girls have been singled out in this way is quite telling. I have no problem commending girls when they have done well, but I am tired of recognition being linked to gender.
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Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
I agree with you, Eric, that it would be far better to have young men and women compete for the same awards. Otherwise, it begins to seem like there's some bigotry of low expectations going on. What if schools introduced awards for black students who excel in X, or Hispanic students that excel in Y? It would seem as though they had a special award designation because otherwise they couldn't ever win.
On the other hand, if the Daughters of the American Revolution or some such group wants to set aside scholarship funds for female students, it seems to me that as a private organization, they should be able to do that. No?
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Sure, a private organization can do whatever it wants. My objection is really to the culture behind the sheer number of these awards, and the absence of recognition for boys. My sense is that there's a strong cultural current in favor of celebrating achievement, but only on the part of girls. Being a Woman in Science is a big thing nowadays, with being a scientist taking a back seat.
May '11
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
What many feminists will say is that the boys (they will not call them men even though they call girls young women) are all getting awards for things like basketball, football, baseball etc.
They are just trying to even the balance so "young women" get to go to the front and receive an equal number of awards.
Apr '11
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
So what happens if no young woman excells at XYZ? Is there a standard that must be met, or is the top performing female going to be given an award even if their performance is relatively low when compared to young men? Do we award both male and female valedictorians? Is the only condition in which merit can stand on its own "white-male"?
Aug '11
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Compete for the same award? Someone's self esteem would be ruined. Children must be prepared for a Marxist Utopia, not capitalist competition.
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
There was a young female captain, a lawyer, assigned to our base overseas. It was the practice at that base to hold a long distance run every time a holiday or special observance rolled around on the calendar, and on one such occasion she joined in. She came in fourth, behind three men. The first, second, and third place runners all received commemorative t-shirts. As the fourth place finisher she received nothing, but instead gave out copious amounts of temper tantrums railing against the blatant sexism on that base. We were in a hostile fire zone, the USS Cole had just been bombed, the heightened security situation was palpable, and yet here she was running from colonel to colonel raising more hell than the devil himself about a t-shirt. The commanders couldn't abide an unhappy lawyer running loose on base, so they gave her a t-shirt and she calmed down.
Oh yes. She was also convinced that Al Gore won the election.
Oct '10
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Can we take a baby step back from the abyss and recognise that any award such as “young women (blacks, hispanics, asians, etc.) who excel” is collectivist in its very conception and hence repugnant to those who believe that merit is a measure of individual effort and endowment and not constrained by group membership?
Do I thus argue that men and women should not compete in different categories in Olympic sports? Of course not: there are gender dimorphisms which affect performance, although it's not clear that this is relevant in say, the shooting sports or table tennis.
But in most human endeavours, the difference in group mean performance is negligible compared to individual variation within the group, and it is condescending to sort people into categories when ranking them.
See Jon Entine's Taboo for an extreme case of genetic predisposition (twelve standard deviations!) and how it is still irrelevant to predicting individual performance.
Edited on Sep 2, 2011 at 1:45pmDec '10
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
From Boswell's Life of Johnson:
I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
Mar '11
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
The truth is young men/boys are falling behind young women/girls in far to many academic areas and it seems no one really cares. It is likely that these young women would still out-perform the young men if they were to compete head-to-head. Most of the young men are choosing to not participate because they see the deck staked against them in favor of females and hence you see the bad behavior in young men today. Feminists didn't want equality, they wanted a world without men, or where men had no importance.
Edited on Sep 2, 2011 at 2:15pmRe: Female Triumphalism in American Education
I suspect you're right. I seem to remember that the most motivated and engaged students tended to be girls.
Dec '10
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
It's hard to find a major American university that is not at least 55% female among undergraduates, and they are very concerned with gender equity.
Why, the universities will not rest as long as the sciences and engineering have so many men.
Aug '10
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
I think there should always be a (gender-neutral) "best-dressed" award.It might encourage the boys to pull up those trousers.And I'm sure the girls would take it in the best of spirits.
Jun '10
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Awards exclusively for blacks & hispanics are plentiful. These two groups are underrepresented in the National Merit Scholarship competition, so special Hispanic and black awards are given with much lower benchmarks. Full tuition scholarships are offered to kids who have done nothing to earn them except be born to at least one parent with some black or Hispanic heritge. Check the website of any college and you will find loads of minority scholarships. White kids are out of luck for the most part, although there are "women in science" type scholarships to be had.
We were just looking up all the scholarship suggestions given to my daughter by her college's stufy abroad office. It was a list of about 30, and she was not eligible for a single one because she is white and middle class income level. Not one was awarded on the basis of academic merit --- all were reserved for minority kids or low income kids.
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Mr. Ames, you and your brother are right to be put off by the false motivation engendered (pardon the pun) on behalf of girls' accomplishments. The irony is that your school is about two decades behind the times. Beating the tom-toms for girl power and wringing one's hands about the disadvantage of being a girl in a patriarchal culture were features of the late eighties and early nineties. Countless seminars were held and papers were written about how girls were lagging behind in math and would not have equal chances on the job front. Then around 2000 people started looking at the statistics. Girls and young women were graduating with higher G.P.A.'s, getting into college in much higher numbers, and even going over 50% in law and medical schools.
The question is, why? This is a complex problem. One thing you and your brother might want to consider is how "boy friendly" is your high school? My guess is that students who write down everything the teacher says and give it back almost verbatim are being rewarded. What about debate, competition, and risk-taking--even arguing with the teacher? Boys are bored in school.
Mar '11
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
How about for white female students?
Diane Ellis, Ed.:
On the other hand, if the Daughters of the American Revolution or some such group wants to set aside scholarship funds for female students, it seems to me that as a private organization, they should be able to do that. No? · Sep 2 at 11:58am
Jun '10
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Basil Fawlty: How about for white female students?
Diane Ellis, Ed.:
On the other hand, if the Daughters of the American Revolution or some such group wants to set aside scholarship funds for female students, it seems to me that as a private organization, they should be able to do that. No? · Sep 2 at 11:58am
Sep 3 at 2:59am
The organization would be shut down by Eric Holder. I don't know what his grounds would be, but he'd find a way -- Ha ha! The administrative functions of private scholarships are often farmed out to organizations with distinct agendas. Even scholarships who claim their mission is to reward merit and encourge entrepreneural spirit and academic excellence use race & income as a huge part of the selection formula. Often it is not mentioned in the application until the very end, where a copy of the family 1040 is requested.
I could not care less about a dopey prize certificate handed out at a high school awards ceremony. I care about the scholarship $$ and the insane way it is distributed nowadays. My eyes were opened wide when my 2009 h.s graduate started the college search.
Jun '10
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
But there was certainly justification for this. I graduated from high school in 1976. Girls were not allowed to take computer science or drafting classes. We had one varsity sport while the boys had about ten. We were slotted into the boys' physics course as seniors without the necessary calculus background, and had not even been taught logarithms. Top girl math/science strudents were guided into nursing careeers (at the time very, very low payihng) while the boys were guided into medicine and engineering. There were huge disparities in opportunity and resources given to boys and girls.
It's a shame that the nutty "girl power" movement gained such prominence. But the inequities certainly needed to be addressed.
Apr '11
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Women get half a letter grade though unofficial gender norming policies. I've seen math professors give a *whole* letter grade to female students, to create "balance."
Fewer young men go to college, and fewer young men excel in college, because the game is rigged. Has been since the early 80s.
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Thank you for commenting Dr. Moore. I remember my dad had my brothers and I read "Wimps and Barbarians" when it appeared in the Claremont Review of Books some years ago, and I found it quite persuasive.
As it occurs to me, other boys tended to be most engaged in classes in which they were asked to engage with the instructor and the material. These tended to be history and civics classes. There tended to be less of this sort of thing in math and science courses in which there is far less wiggle room on right or wrong answers. One of the best teachers I ever had outside of my history classes, though, was a chemistry teacher who liked to periodically demonstrate that this was a class where you get to set things on fire; that gets your attention.
Jun '10
Re: Female Triumphalism in American Education
Jeff Younger: Women get half a letter grade though unofficial gender norming policies. I've seen math professors give a *whole* letter grade to female students, to create "balance."
Fewer young men go to college, and fewer young men excel in college, because the game is rigged. Has been since the early 80s. · Sep 3 at 7:36am
Many colleges are now giving an admissions boost to boys. As the male /female ratio approaches 40/60 at a given school, the women will no longer apply & the school begins a downward spiral from which it may never recover. Ideally the ratio should be 50/50. The most selective schools don't have this problem because they turn away 90% of their applicants so it's quite easy to create a perfect gender balance. A few schools even started football teams as a way to attract more male applicants.