[Quizzical_2]

Or, are there any studies that prove that boys and girls learn different things better than each other? I know there's a lot of "boys and girls are cognitive equals and they perform just as well as each other in all school subjects" arguments that are peddled, and I wonder what you guys think on this matter.

[Paracelsus]

Depends what you mean by "prove". You can probably find any number of studies that support the proposition in both ways, but unless you're very good at statistics - and I'm not - it's difficult to tell where the bullshit lies, especially when the studies are of small samples, i.e. the law of small numbers applies and more extreme variations are found the smaller the sample you get for the most part. On top of that, there's a lot of opacity in assessing the causes of different learning capacities since the boy being raised by a single mother can be Albert Einstein and he would still struggle educationally compared with an IQ-100 girl coming out of a stable two-parent household.

So far as my own experience is concerned, I do think boys and girls develop different things at different points as they grow (and it is the case that there's greater standard deviation in IQ among boys than girls, i.e. we have more Forrest Gumps than girls do, but we also have more Albert Einsteins than girls do.)

Boys seem to develop spatial awareness and physical manipulation skills, if there is such a thing, at an earlier age than girls. They don't develop verbal and written skills at the same time as girls, but they're just as damn good if not better than girls at mathematics, especially early. It's just the different brains growing a bit differently thanks to the different soups of hormones their brains are sloshing in. Think of it as the different "packets" in the kid's brain coming online at slightly different points.

I'd also note that physical age has a massive role to play in this arena - in the sports area, you don't even have to look at the differences between a U/7 and U/8 team of kids, just look at the kids born in January versus December within the same age year and you'll get a sense for why smart coaches keep an eye out for the talented kid in his group but also the talented but late-born kid in the group - because odds are on the second one just has 12 months or so to get as good as if not better than the older one.

It's commonly minced around that more girls graduate from school or university than boys. I believe part of that is because, like it or not, schooling is female-dominated, with female teachers massively overrepresented. And women will not admit it, but they have a sex bias against boys, it is a cunt thing, you can't get around it any more than a male teacher can get over his own sex bias in favour of the guys who run hard and against the girl who moans that she's on her period this week. You'll think better, work better, and teach better those kids who are better able to engage with you verbally and seem a bit more mature ... i.e. the average girl student.

On top of that, it looks as though boys are better off waiting a year or so to start school just to get those verbal and emotional intelligence subroutines switched on, though I tend to think this is like the Bed of Procrustes ... it's an edict given more for the convenience of the teachers than it is the students.

[Paracelsus]

Important follow-up which I would've put as an edit if I was in time: in fact, on more thinking about this I'm actually more inclined to the idea that you don't redshirt a boy so they start school late, and I'm ashamed to actually have recommended it.

My thinking is this: why do parents actually do it?

And when you work it through I have a horrible feeling that the reason parents really do it is for one reason they're willing to admit after a couple of drinks, and for one reason they will never admit to you unless you're their priest.

Ask someone why they keep their boy out of school for one year, and it'll usually be along the lines of what I've said above - that it's a chance for them to keep up with the girls because the girls get their verbal and emotional intelligence switched on. But what, in turn, is the reason for that?
"So they'll get good grades at school."
What's the point of that?
"So they'll get into a good university."
Assuming you're not a Rothschild, has anyone asked you which university you went to since you graduated?
"Well, no."
Then would you accept that your need for them to get good grades is just so they can get into university, and nothing else?
"Of course not. That's crazy talk."
Do you know what job your 6 year old wants to do when they grow up?
"No."
Do you think your 6 year old's future job will necessitate a Harvard degree?
"I don't know."
Do you think your 6 year old's future job will necessitate any university degree?
"I don't know."
Do you think the kid is going to be okay without your parental input once he hits 18?
"I don't know."
Let's try something else. Why do you want to make the kid go to school one year later, when their decision about whether or which university they pick is a good 12 years ahead?
"Because if a kid doesn't understand something they won't like it, and they won't try to understand it, they'll think of themselves as dumb, it's a vicious cycle."
There's absolutely nothing a parent can do to possibly help a kid who doesn't understand their homework? Nothing they can do to alleviate the kid's self-concept as dumb?
"Fuck you, I'm at work."

The point being that most of the time parents have zero clue about their kid's inclinations or desires because they don't spend enough time with them as it is. And worse still, parents, being raised to brand themselves and their children with University Education ™, have zero clue about how to teach their kid to navigate the world beyond it. Holding boys back one year from school is submitting to the Procrustean Bed. It is bowing to the System when the alternative takes more time and more commitment but is parenting in a more real sense than anyone pushing their kid at Harvard could ever be. As TLP says: spend each night helping your kid with their homework and you'll never have to worry about them doing weed.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

There is a ton of evidence, but you need to watch out for certain data:

When looking at IQ and mental differences between sexes you need to take a look at some studies as the marxists love to cite those studies done at ages 2-3 or 12 to prove superiority for women. Women go through a faster growth period around age 12-14, but that is equalized at age 15-16 and then men go even further.

I do think that average mental capacities are identical in aggregate which makes sense, but the distribution is very different.

That means that there are more morons and geniuses among men. At the upper-level of geniuses the distribution is 5000 to 1! Even MENSA level has roughly 66% men vs 34% of women.

So all top-level professions are automatically more likely to be filled by men by sheer reality of IQ distribution.

But it gets worse - in addition to that unequal distribution you have the following mental/emotional differences:

+ men have far more interest in abstract thought, things vs people
+ men are far greater risk takers
+ men have a far more single-minded mental pattern being able to spend years and years over some inane subject like the leg-muscles of some Amazonian frog species or calculating inane formulas for decades
+ men are far more competitive and do love to compete with other men - evolution made us that way
+ men are more aggressive, single-minded, opportunistic, single-minded, hierarchical

Women can never ever compete with men, because evolution has not designed them that way. So even in the future most society will be shaped by men with a few female exceptions.

[Caduceus]

(04-19-2018 11:57 PM)Quizzical_2 Wrote:  

Or, are there any studies that prove that boys and girls learn different things better than each other? I know there's a lot of "boys and girls are cognitive equals and they perform just as well as each other in all school subjects" arguments that are peddled, and I wonder what you guys think on this matter.

Why do you need a study ?
It's plain as day if you watch kids anywhere.