Very cool, if true

Dale Spender did the research years ago: check out Invisible Women: the Schooling Scandal (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0906495938/absolutsearch09/026-6774958-1375604).

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Hurrah! An out-of-print hardback I can buy for £51!

Um, would you mind summarising? Pretty Please?

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£51? Jesus Christ!

No, you're right, I just checked the price. My mum has two paperback copies, one of which I nicked off her years ago, which cost something like £5 each.

Okay. To summarize (though I'm prepared to bet you won't like it) Dale Spender demonstrated through tape-recording lessons and interviewing pupils and teachers that in mixed sex classes teachers spend more time paying attention to the boys than to the girls. (I should say "tend", but Spender's data was that this was invariably so.) Boys tended to have an exaggerated view of their own intelligence, especially with respect to the girls in the same class.

(One anecdote which escaped into popular culture: work which a teacher thought was by a girl was invariably given a lower mark than when a teacher thought it was by a boy. This was an actual experiment actually carried out with multiple data and with quite astonishing consistency of results.)

There was a bunch of other stuff, but moving on: Spender's conclusion was that the reason girls do better in same-sex schools but worse in mixed-sex schools, while for boys it's the other way round, is that boys operate by putting others down - by setting up a hierarchy where some are worse than others, and denigrating them. In a mixed sex school, those who are put down and denigrated are invariably girls, and the teachers effectively cooperate in this by awarding girls less attention and by giving their work lower marks. In a same sex girls school, this system ceases to operate: girls on average do better. In a same sex boys school, the system continues to operate, and therefore boys on average do worse, because some of them have been, as Spender put it, made into "honorary girls". This conclusion is, naturally, unacceptable to non-feminists - and was therefore ignored.

What also fits is that since Spender carried out her research, feminism has performed the usual evolution: what was radical feminism twenty-five years ago has turned into moderate feminism: what was moderate feminism twenty-five years ago has turned into taken-for-granted-that-everyone-thinks-that-way. (Feminist ideas cease being regarded as feminist ideas once they have become generally accepted: this is why feminism is the most successful revolution the world has ever seen.) And over the past twenty-five years, girls have been doing better and better in mixed-sex schools: the denigration process simply isn't working as well as it used to back when Spender did her research. (I have been noting with ironic amusement for years how upset the newspapers get when "Girls outperform boys"... since I remember back when there was not the least upset by the newspapers when boys were outperforming girls.)

If I can find my copy of Invisible Women, I'll lend it to you. ~~Before I auction it on e-Bay.~~ If you want. Spender is still uncomfortably radical as a feminist, and (annoyingly) though her books are packed with data, she has a rather clunky style: she doesn't write with Joanna Russ's grace.

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though I'm prepared to bet you won't like it

Actually, I did. That was fascinating. I'm generally a believer that girls and boys operate differently and the whole 'honorary girls' thing fits my experience. Harder to do when girls refuse to accept the role of second-class citizen, thank goodness.

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Actually, I did

Times have changed! Last time I explained Dale Spender's theory to a guy, he informed me firmly that I didn't know what I was talking about because I wasn't a boy. True...

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Because only boys can know what they're talking about?

_Anyone_ can analyse a situation. I get so fed up with people saying that only Black people can understand, or only women, or only men. All it takes is observational skill and the ability to feel a tiny amount of empathy.

Admittedly I'm not sure about the second part in either of our cases.

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Dunno. I didn't think continuing the conversation would be fruitful.

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Partially it's that boys tend to be more disruptive when ignored, so teachers give more attention to the boys just for the sake of keeping order.

Beyond a certain age as well there's a social pressure on girls to underperform or be considered unattractive to boys.
Sadly certain proportion of the male population don't think it's right that their partners should either earn more than them or do better in exams than them.

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Yeah, I remember being remarkably shocked when someone I worked with announced that he not only wasn't interested in finding a smart girl to go out with, he was actively against the idea.

I was somewhat naive, I'm sure, being 24 at the time.

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Well, I was always aware that it wasn't fair that boys put pressure on girls to act stupid, and I was far too stubborn to collaborate in my own oppression.
(I still am, of course - remember when you were trying to describe me and you said I never started a fight, but always seemed to be having them anyway?)
It made for pretty miserable school days, and I was absolutely stunned to find that when I went away to university guys actually spoke to me, asked me out and things like that, because at school "clever" seemed to mean "undesirable".

Still, even when I was young and scared and lonely I had the germ of the idea that if guys disliked my intelligence then that was a problem with them, not a problem with me.

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moniqueleigh

I was absolutely stunned to find that when I went away to university guys actually spoke to me, asked me out and things like that, because at school "clever" seemed to mean "undesirable".

Yep. 'Zactly what happened with me too. Glad we both seem to have found guys who don't mind that we've got a degree, or when we make more money. :)

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Yep.

And, of course, the only guys we're missing out on are ones who aren't really worth the bother anyway due to their odd hangups... :o)

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moniqueleigh

Damn right! *chuckle*

I consider myself pretty understanding of most odd hangups (got a few of my own, even), but I never could understand "I can only be with someone dumber/poorer than myself." Huh??? I mean, if they're smarter, make more money, & still want to be with you, what is the problem?? *shrug*

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green-amber.livejournal.com

Beyond a certain age as well there's a social pressure on girls to underperform or be considered unattractive to boys.

I think it's mostly this really. Smart women aren't on the whole regarded as sexy, or if they are as still too scarey to go out with : Xander Harris and the owner of this LJ being exceptions :-) I am glad i went to a (mostly - long story single sex girl's school even tho it did nothing for my social/sexual development , it did a hell of a lot for my secure notion that Being Bright was a Good Thing.

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I'm pretty sure, from some of the things he's said, that one of my Unloving Brother-in-Law's hangups is that I have a degree and he doesn't.

Luckily this doesn't seem to bother

original_aj at all. Nor does the fact that I used to earn more than him (that other classic male ego problem area for relationships).

There are quite a few men who don't fall for the stereotype and who think intelligent, competant women are sexy.

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You talk to people that don't have degrees?

Do you have to scrub extra-hard afterwards?

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Not only that, I sleep with someone who doesn't have a degree... :o)

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Good Lord Woman! Have you no shame?

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I don't think I approve of shame... :o)

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