Do Girls “Dumb Themselves Down”???
November 21, 2008
by Amy Siskind
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I spent this morning at a Native American Celebration for my son’s third grade class. As part of the celebration, each student writes a story about that he or she reads to the class. Each year, the students have a celebration around various themes in which they are called on to write and read to an audience.
And each year, the comments from parents are the same. We notice that most of the girls read with ease and confidence. We notice that most of the boys mumble through their presentation (or are too shy to read at all).
In third grade, many of the girls have multiple paragraph, carefully printed stories. The boys mostly have one paragragh (not so neat).
The trend continues through the end of elementary school as the curriculum becomes more intense and the presentation start to include computer graphics.
I have oftened wondered why it is that many girls travel through elementary school with ease – while the boys have to gut it out; and yet, once in high school, many girls fall behind.
My friend Arleen says the following: “Once girls decide they like boys for dating, then they figure it’s time to dumb themselves down.”
What do you think?
I don’t believe it. I have another theory: When the boys and girls become aware of each other, the girls are subject to so much scrutiny over the way they look that they spend more time focused on that than they do on what’s going on around them. Once they begin to feel the male Gaze, they are more aware of the world looking at them, than they are of the world.
Then it’s just a matter of getting the submissive head-tilt and the wide or downcast eyes just right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs
Who needs algebra for that?
I’m going to have a 15 year old stepdaughter soon. How do you teach girls to not submit to that conditioning?
You model it Dawn. Especially at that age, if you ask, demand, or indicate that’s what she has to do, it won’t work. Just model it. She will be “embarrassed” by your behaviour just as she would if you wre her mother. So don’t let it get to you. Share times with her that show her you think of her as an adult, so model adult women’s responsibilities, like fund raising for battered women’s shelters etc.
Talk about the past election.
Take her to women in science events.
Rent Antonia’s Line and watch it together.
Just some suggestions. It’s hard with girls that age, so don’t think whatever you experience from her is only because you’re a step-mother. I was sooooo embarrassing and dumb when my daughter was 15?
Yes, many girls definitely dumb themselves down. I remember my daughter moaning, “do you want me to get good grades or have a social life?” Apparently being a high achiever makes you uncool and socially unpopular with everybody. A nerd, a reject. Forget dating, but also forget being “one of the girls”.
But I have son too and he also tries to dumb himself down. He scored really high on his SAT so one of his friends said, “what are you smart or something?” And my son replied all disgusted, “No!” as if it were the biggest insult to be called smart.
Sigh. Actually I’d have to say we’re dumbing down America.
I remember Hillary being called “wonkish” in a disparaging way by some people. The implication being that she was all policy and no humanity. She wasn’t warm enough, cold unfeeling, too smart. And then Palin came along and people accused her of wearing fake classes to tone down her looks and appear smarter. It’s a no win situation for women. You’re either too dumb, to smart, too cold, too hot……
There’s no question that dumbing down happens with many girls, but I don’t think there’s a single age range or explanation for it.
I’ve known obviously brilliant pre-K and first grade girls who are already pretending to be less than bright. Trying to appeal to boys is a big part of it, especially for girls where that’s a pattern in their family or larger social group. It’s also possible that many girls dumb down out of a sense of generosity and sharing, wanting everyone — including the boys — to have some of the the glory, or at least not feel badly at the end of the day.
And perhaps some girls realize early on that they can do extremely well without really trying, or coming anywhere close to doing their best, and as result don’t develop or maintain the habit of ALWAYS really trying to do their best.
Well, more young women than young men go to college. Aren’t girls achieving beyond boys academically? It doesn’t mean they don’t dumb themselves down, though. They may get the good report cards, do well on their tests but still be reticent to show what they know in a classroom situation in front of their male peers.
Also, don’t girls advance in terms of language skills much quicker than the boys? I wonder if the boys naturally start to catch up around middle school.
My observations as an ESL teacher come from a different place, though. I noticed that many of my male students from other countries were far more advance academically than many of my female students. I gathered that families sent their male students off to school before their female students since in many countries education is not free.
“I have oftened wondered why it is that many girls travel through elementary school with ease – while the boys have to gut it out; and yet, once in high school, many girls fall behind.”
I think that your basic premise is no longer true. Since 1992 high school girls have caught up to boys and surpassed them in many areas. This is one source: http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-4/boys1.html There are several others. In fact currently people are wondering how to get boys to catch up to girls.
Speaking if equal representation, we need more male teachers in the classroom. Boys need good role models, too, articularly in inner city schools. Let’s make our classrooms 48% male teachers! I mean, ahem, in the less prestigious k – 12 classrooms…
Articularly in inner city schools? That doesn’t even seem close to what I meant… “especially”!
As a mother of girls, it is not the boys who cause girls to dumb down…It is other girls. The cute, coy popular girl gets the attention and girls do not want to be on the outside looking in Movies like Mean Girls or Legally Blonde are, sad to say, close to the truth. I know that we are not supposed to blame women for the attacks on women, but I read the article in NYMag concerning Hillary and Sarah. The Title went something like ‘The Bitch and The Ditz’. The article’s author is a woman. She said that While Hillary was just too bitchy, that Sarah was just too much of a ditz. Both of these women have worked very hard to be where they are. These comments, if made about a specific race of people would not have been tolerated. Yet, because it is about a woman, these comments are acceptable. Sad
Where I grew up the most interesting and outgoing girls also happened to be the smartest. Girls over all did much better academically than the boys but this was farm country and many boys had no desire for academic achievement. I think girls get very conditioned to think of themselves as objects, not human beings, the fashion and glamour bull sh** really gets to them.
I teach middle school. I really don’t see a difference in the number of poor performing girls than boys. However, the boys who are underperforming are often a little easier to pick out from a crowd than the underperforming girls because they (the boys) tend to be sloppier or to act out more while the girls tend to put effort into their appearance.
Kids this age are very socially conscious. Many only enjoy reading books if they are part of a fad (like the current Twilight series). Many find it socially acceptable to whine about math. We have a culture where science and math are not socially acceptable; the kids have to ask.. why put in the effort for something that might cause them grief?
Multifactorial…Off the top of my head:
Social conditioning.
Gender bias in how teachers relate to boys and girls.
Cultural messages about what’s cool and what’s not (with smart being uncool for anyone as far as I can tell).
Subtle messages kids pick up at home.
Developmental factors.
Plus, what we value: I’ve seen girls who were extraordinarily intuitive, wise beyond their years, sensitive to the human condition more than most adults I know, yet this sort of “social intelligence” is not acknowledged or valued in school. So, many gifts, which may turn out to be more gender specific (after all, girls and boys are NOT the same) go without support, unvalued.
Also, I heard an interesting piece on NPR several months ago talking about gender differences in middle school math. It noted how the boys tend to hog up the computers and the girls don’t tend to assert themselves to ask for computer time. You gotta wonder where the teacher is in all of this. Anyway, they found that due to these kinds of social issues, along with developmental issues at that age with regards to math, some schools were implementing seperate math classes for boys and girls, and there seemed to be early evidence that this helped girls feel more comfortable and achieve more.
Then there’s the whole added layer of high performing schools vs those that are pitifully understafffed, staffed with untrained teachers, lacking supplies, etc, such as in inner city communities.
Loaded issue!
I recommend reading Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girl’s Development, by Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan (author of In a Different Voice). The book recounts a longitudinal study of girl’s development and highlights how they change from confident, outspoken girls to cautious adolescents as they learn the sexist “rules” of our culture.
We all know what lessons our girls have learned from this year’s election season. It’s the reason we are here.
When I was in high school, 1968-1971, I found lots of openly intelligent female friends to hang with. We were all college-bound, and so that was our goal. We were not popular with the boys, but we just figured we would not be popular, because we were not pretty cheerleaders. Later, in college, I became a leader, and had lots of friends of both sexes. But still not lots of dates…
Now after many years of experience later, I am realizing my intelligence and lifegoals, coupled with my assertiveness and self-determination intimidates many males.
But, it is who I am anyway. And since I saw a need and encouraged a dear friend to teach me how to teach her to read, I am now able to use who I am to help lots of people.
It is not easy to be and act smart, but all of us should do so, and without arrogance as well. Which is why I voted for Hillary!
Carol Gilligan! Great reminder – Terrific thinker and writer! Anyone who has not read her work, I also highly recommend it!
I agree with the majority of the poster’s above. It’s kinda simple. Men are supposed to be smart, and Women are supposed to be dumb. Girls are supposed to be studious and Boys are supposed to be little hellions. Girls are rewarded for being studious in elementary, which means sitting down and behaving, but also doing better academically, but they are not rewarded for these academics in high school when they are trained to become women. Women used to be pushed out of high school and diverted from college. I’m glad that trend is reversing, but there is still a lot of pressure on young women to be smart but not academically competitive.
Plus in highschool is when you start having to wear the uncomfortable sex-bot uniforms and spending time shopping/doing your hair/doing your makeup, exponential amount of time more on looks than men. In addition to learning how to spend an exponential amount of effort on looks, while being uncomfortable, there is the whole getting looked at part…and just being generally treated like crap.
I don’t think it is the case that girls dumb themselves down. My sister is 17, and from observing her it seems like the problem is that getting good grades doesn’t seem nearly as important to teenage girls as being attractive and likable. That’s the area in which they’re feeling the most pressure, so that’s what they put their energy into.
I also think that especially in the case of girls who don’t have great relationships with their parents, the drive to gain approval and attention from a boy can be very strong, especially if they’re not getting that at home.
While I was in grad school for education, my interest area was in gender issues in the classroom. I was given the opportunity to observe science classes in a local middle school taught by a teacher who was well known for working hard to make sure that girls and boys had equal encouragement in math and science. One of the things that he was scrupulous about was making sure that all of his lab groups had both boys and girls in them. What I observed was that at the end of the day the boys all had learned how to manipulate the lab equipment while most of the girls were clueless, and the girls were experts at compiling data and creating the presentation of it while the boys did not take any part in the written assignment. All groups were able to complete the group tasks so he felt he had accomplished having a gender neutral classroom. When I asked him to set up a simple lab assignment where each individual student needed to be able to use the lab equipment and write a report, he was shocked to see how far the quality of the work went down and how the parts where the students failed were delineated so completely along gender lines. Then I asked him to make his lab groups single sex for a month and repeat doing the individual lab project again. He was amazed at how the results changed. Although I believe that some girls dumb themselves down, I also believe that students who sit in the same classroom may not have access to the same opportunities once students internalize what society’s expectations are along gender lines. This teacher was a super guy who thought that he was a true feminist and thought he was really reaching out to his female students.
samanthasmom – great post, as always. yeah, even those with the best of intentions underestimate how much we internalize when it comes to gender and equality issues. what you did with that teacher was great consciousness raising (another word from the past!).
Well I have to point out two things – one as several people above have noted, I think the premise that girls are falling behind in high school is flawed – women outnumber men for college attendance, graduation (bachelor’s and master’s degrees) and now medical school attendees as well.
However having said that, one of the things I have been intrigued about in male and female differences is that one of the areas that women still lag behind men is in the math and science arena – part of that may be culturally, but I have considered other explanations as well. We form many of the fundamental connections for communicating, reading and writing early on (when girls are still in elementary school and excelling). The connections for higher level math are formed later (in middle school and high school) when many girls are at best distracted and at worst engaging in extremely unhealthy behavior. I read an interesting article several years ago that tracked brain development in girls versus boys over time (using MRIs) and the effect things such as eating disorders have on brain development. It’s scary stuff! The brain isn’t fully developed until your early 20s. Watching girls starve themselves (including their brains) in early adolescence is the type of behavior that can never be fully recovered from. They say upwards of 30% of teenage girls are taking diet pills – now that’s a scary statistic!
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