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From: whitehur@tymix.UUCP (Pamela K. Whitehurst)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Boys and girls in grade school - who is pressured to be smarter
Message-ID: <500@tymix.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Sep-85 12:32:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: tymix.500
Posted: Tue Sep  3 12:32:05 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 02:53:22 EDT
References: <6733@ucla-cs.ARPA> <339@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: whitehur@tymix.UUCP (Pamela K. Whitehurst)
Organization: Tymnet Inc., Cupertino CA
Lines: 31
Summary: 

In article <339@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>
>Now this isn't related to the source article, but I want to discuss
>this topic.  My memory of grade school is exactly the opposite.
>In my schools, girls were always getting the top marks in the class.
>They were encouraged to be studious, and academic excellence was rewarded
>by their peer group.
 
I don't remember the lower grade situation very well, but in the upper
grades (5-8) girls had less school sponsored activities to receive
recognition in, that made academic excellence a critical way to receive
recognition.  Unfortunatly, girls were also expected to do better than the boys
because we were "more mature". That meant just being better than the
"average boy" was not sufficient for recognition.

>[My high school was still a bit different.  The "top" always had fairly
>similar proportions of men and women.  It wasn't until university that
>I began to ask, "where did all the smart women go?"]

In my high school ( almost 20 years ago) the top 6 was fairly
proportional. But when you looked further down the differences were 
terrible. Two girls in the trig class, one in solid geometry. No girls on
the debate team. (one girl on the track team).  I think the problem was
lack of internal and external expectations.

PKW

-- 

           PKW 
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