Sunday, September 03, 2006
Editorial: Sex does make a difference
A new study finds boys learn better from men, and girls from women. But the gender gap has left classrooms with too few men teachers.
Boys do better at math. Girls are better readers. Everyone knows this; there are plenty of test scores to back up the generalization. What no one has figured out is why. Or how to level the classroom.
New research by Swarthmore College economics professor Thomas Dee sheds some insight: Children can improve performance in their lagging subject if taught by instructors whose gender mirrors their own. This might bolster both sides of the nature versus nurture debate.
But even if boys would become more literate if taught reading and writing from male teachers and girls would become more enthused about math and science from female teachers, our nation's classrooms are ill-equipped to become the laboratories to test Dee's hypothesis.
Too few men are heading to the front of the class. Consider that just 20 percent of the nation's public school teachers are men, the lowest percentage in 40 years.
Dee might do well to study why the gender gap in teaching continues to widen. Is it that teachers' salaries aren't attractive to men since the paychecks are much lighter than ones earned in other professions requiring at least a bachelor's degree?
Is it that women who wish to combine careers with motherhood are willing to forgo higher salaries for the summer off?
Is it that the pinker the profession becomes the fewer boys consider teaching a "man's" job?
Nature? Nurture? Or dollars and cents?
If society wishes to encourage more men to become teachers then it needs to look at the gender gap as more than differences in boys' and girls' test scores in early years, but as the foundation for career paths.
Should we desire more male teachers? Dee seems to think so.
Boys and girls arrive for their first day of kindergarten with roughly the same knowledge and skills concerning letters and numbers. But by the spring of third grade, boys begin to score slightly higher on math tests, and girls begin to stand out as better readers. The disparity only increases as pupils are promoted.
Dee focused on eighth-graders "because early adolescence corresponds more closely with the age at which gender gaps in education achievement become particularly pronounced."
Dee reviewed test scores and evaluated the perceptions of both students and teachers, and determined that if half the middle school reading teachers were male, the reading gap would fall by a third. The more that girls are exposed to female science teachers the more likely they would find that science is useful for their future.
Boys and girls needn't be segregated all the time. In fact, Dee found that even one year with a gender-same teacher could boost skills and perceptions.
His findings should be the fodder of debate not only within academic circles but also in any community that desires to bring more rounded educations to all its children.
