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Comment by staticman2 | Hacker News Reader

>When boys are held back at twice the rate of girls,

So when a boy does well in school we should conclude actually they are female, because schools are designed so only girls do well, because this "battle of the sexes" framework is the best way to view failures in our educational system?

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Or when a girl does poorly do we assume schools are actually anti-femininity too? Or do we start with the assumption that all misbehavior is masculine and therefore correcting misbehavior is antimasculine?

OP has started from the outcome and tried to think their (his, almost certainly) way back to the facts of the situation.

You miss the point. Boys didn't USED to do poorly in school. If young girls needed to be medicated to be manageable in schools today and didn't used to have that problem, there is OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING different now than there used to be which is responsible. And basic psychology shows exactly what it is in the case of males. Young MALE children NEED physical activity (which we longer give adequate amounts of to young male students). Young girls are more sedate and can sit without physical activities for long periods that young males cannot. Our schools now deny the very nature of young males, forcing them to indure conditions anathema to their nature and when they become loud, noisy, physically active, exhibiting behavior any good child psychology text book says is NORMAL for boys deprived of their NEEDED activity, they are labeled a PROBLEM and are DRUGGED INTO DOCILITY! Boys are now labeled PROBLEMS for being NORMAL! THAT is the problem and your complete lack of ordinary human empathy for HALF the CHILDREN in the country being DRUGGED to stifle their healthy nature certainly shows how nurturing, empathetic, caring, and possessed with any simple human shred of decency you aren't. Your reply shows zero feeling for any human being who isn't in YOUR PERSONAL GROUP.

At least you've proven that a woman can be as cold hearted and prejudiced as any man. Clearly women really ARE men's equals, and in absolutely EVERYTHING...the BAD as well as the good. Thanks for illustrating the TRUE equality of the sexes for us. MUCH APRECIATED!

"Boys didn't USED to do poorly in school."

Yes, who can forget the good old days when teachers would say to boys, to paraphrase Futurama:

"I give your assignment the worst grade imaginable-- an A-minus-minus!"

I'm not who you asked, but I remember being one of the few quiet boys in my classes when I was a young kid in elementary school (in the US that's like ages 4-10, grades kindergarten through 5th grade). I was resentful of the ones who were always being loud and roughhousing in class and talking loud and not doing their work, and they were always boys.

But when I passed a test to get into a better school than my elementary school, that never happened. Everyone was respectful and followed the rules a whole lot better. There was loud talking sometimes, but everyone always got quiet and listened when the teachers spoke, always did their work, always cleaned up after themselves and were respectful. Meanwhile, I heard from my friends who had gone to another school that there were fistfights all the time and that that behavior I described never stopped.

Anyway, this is to say that I don't think this is a thing inherent to boys, maybe more like culture and social class.

On the other hand, this also isn't to say "Screw them, they just need to be better." If boys are doing worse in school now, then why? Maybe it's, like you said, a lack of physical activity. Recess has been getting cut at elementary schools.

I came across a comic that portrayed a study done on a town before it got television, and after it got television: https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/town-without-television...

With TV, people gave up more quickly on problems given to them, and children's acts of verbal and physical aggression per minute were doubled in boys and girls. Television also introduced more gender-stereotyped views than there were before. Children's reading performance suffered.

Anyway, I'm wondering if giving children unfettered access to YouTube and TikTok via their phones is like TV, but worse. At least TV only had a few channels in the 1970s and they weren't on it 24/7. This might impact lower-class families more, since they're more likely to just give their kids a tablet or a phone to pacify them, because they're busy. That might lead to an increase in aggression at school and worse performance on school assignments. Maybe it affects boys more, for some reason.

I'm a man, have ADHD, went to public school and was supported and not medicated. Your argument is directly counter to my experience as the person you claim to be protecting and since you used a supersonic jet to fly off the handle you never considered that I or the world could be any different than your grievance stereotypes suggest.

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