Many observers of the contemporary scene, especially feminists, have wondered why boys do better in math than girls, and they become very agitated about it, imploring politicians to “do something.” But the answer is now in. Boys actually don’t do better than girls in math, as a recent report shows.
Erin Leahey and Guang Guo, researchers at the University of North Carolina -- Chapel Hill, note that previous studies have focused on narrow groups, such as super-smart seventh-graders or college-bound SAT takers. Instead of making broad generalizations from a narrow focus, the pair examined, for the first time, test results of 14,000 students in elementary through high school in North Carolina.
From this broad sample they found that girls scored higher, on average, in math than boys until about age 11, and girls achieved higher reasoning scores at ages 11 to 13. It turns out, however, that things are pretty even overall. By the end of high school, boys held an edge of 1.5 percent over girls, a figure of scant significance that surprised Leahey and Guo, who were expecting big differences.
Not surprisingly, the results drew criticism from Julian Stanley, the Johns Hopkins University psychologist who practically invented the “gender gap” back in 1971. According to Stanley, who alluded to a “genetic hypothesis,” girls have trouble with “the reasoning component.” But that’s not what Joan Troy has found in her honors geometry class at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“In my experience, I haven’t seen a difference,” Troy explained to a reporter. “I don’t think at any time from when I began teaching in 1978 to today, there’s been a time where I would absolutely say my best male students were better than my best female students.”
Many of her female students do better than their male counterparts, Troy said, because they tend to pay more attention to details. True to form, North Carolina girls in grades three through eight scored slightly higher than boys in math. Among third graders, 72.5 percent of the girls scored at or above grade level, a 1.3 percent advantage over the boys. But none of the students had heard of the notion that girls trail boys in math or somehow have trouble reasoning.
Those notions tend to be the province of academics looking for a subject and a grant. Instead of teaching, they spend too much of their time inventing differences that don’t exist. The purpose of this exercise is to advance a politically-correct agenda that demonizes men and looks to government gender- and race-based preferences as solutions.
The study by Leahey and Guo does not mean that males and females are the same on all counts, another politically-correct notion. The study means only that the supposed male advantage in math is a myth, which many of us have known all along. The real “gap” in today’s society is between those who allow facts to inform their view, versus those who make politics paramount.
Men and women alike, particularly policymakers, would all do better paying more attention to detail rather than tilting at the windmills of gender politics.
Sally Pipes is the President and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank. She can be reached via email at spipes@pacificresearch.org.
