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Comment by marklubi | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps a fourth explanation... The vast majority of teachers are female, so maybe their teaching methods are favorable to girls

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I suppose this is possible - how exactly do you think teaching methods are more favorable to girls compared to boys?

A great deal of teaching is built around the idea of students sitting still in one place for a long period of time, listening intently and working quietly. Boys seem to have a lot more difficulty with this (on average) than girls do.

That's one example but there are plenty of others.

yes I would agree that boys have trouble with this, as that's what the featured article effectively states. however, saying that the methods themselves somehow are predisposed to benefit women is one that I'd like to see research on.

How can they not benefit women? The article is about the relative performance of men and women, and this factor reduces the performance of men.

You're stating that there exists teaching methods that somehow benefit women, and not men as a function of their gender. That's an extraordinary claim and requires evidence. You can't assert your claim is true and look at the article to justify the original claim that you're asserting to begin with.

Sorry, what? I gave an example of a teaching method which creates difficulties for boys relative to girls. You agreed boys have trouble with it. What is left to discuss?

Boys having trouble with a teaching method does not mean said teaching method is inherently discriminatory towards boys nor does it mean that its favorable towards girls. Do you not understand? I'm sorry if I'm not being clear. Nothing you have said has illustrated things being somehow favorable to girls.

One group of individual doing better at something does not mean the thing is favorable towards the group.

The article is about girls outperforming relative to boys. In that context anything which penalises boys benefits girls, by definition. This is basic logic. I'm not sure what else can be said here, so let's leave it at that.

Your logic is incorrect, but yes, let's just leave it at that.

This is just my gumption, but I don’t think kids are blind to gender growing up. I’m curious if the attentiveness of boys would change if they had more frequent male teachers in earlier grades.

Teachers grade boys more harshly than girls:

https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents...

You stated three possible reasons, I added a fourth possibility. My statement was a fact about correlation, not causation.

Perhaps you could provide us with some details about how education is not biased based on sex?

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