Gender difference and education

There is no denying it: boys think differently from girls. I know this sounds interesting to certain people and it sounds odd to others. But social equality for boys and girls really depends on recognizing these differences in brain behaviour. This could be identified from the kindergarten and it runs till the end of their life long process of education

Ajith PERERA

Any one who has spent time with children in a playground or school setting is aware of differences in the way boys and girls respond to similar situations. For example it is not usually the girls who pull their hair, punch or fight but the boys. They are mischievous and playful. Typically, such differences are explained on a cultural basis. Boys are expected to be more aggressive and play rough games, while girls are presumably encouraged to be gentle and non-assertive.

After years of exposure to such expectations, the theory goes that men and women wind up with widely varying behaviourial and intellectual repertoire. As a corollary, many people believe that if child-rearing practices could be equalized and sexual stereotypes eliminated, most of these differences would eventually disappear. The true state of affairs is not that simple.

Undoubtedly, many differences, traditionally believed to exist between the genders are based on stereotypes. But evidence from recent brain research indicates that some behaviourial differences between men and women are based on differences in brain functioning that are biologically inherent and unlikely to be changed by cultural factors alone. One clue to brain differences between the genders came from observations of infants. One study found that from shortly after birth, females are more sensitive to certain types of sounds, particularly to a mother’s voice. In a laboratory, if the sound of the mother’s sound is displaced to another part of the room, female babies react while males usually seem oblivious to the displacement. Female babies are more easily startled by loud noise.

Tests have shown that girls have increased skin sensitivity, particularly in the fingertips and are more proficient at fine motor performance. Females are also generally more attentive to social contexts-faces, speech patterns, subtle vocal cues. By five months, a female can distinguish photographs of familiar people, a task rarely performed well by boys of that age.

Motor performance

At five and eight months, girls will babble to the mother’s face, seemingly recognizing her as a person, while boys fail to distinguish between face and a dangling toy, babbling equally to both.

Female infants speak sooner, have larger vocabularies and rarely demonstrate speech defects. (Stuttering, for instance, occurs almost exclusively among boys.) Girls exceed boys in language abilities and this early linguistics bias often prevails throughout life. Girls read sooner, learn foreign languages more easily and, as a result, are more likely to enter occupations involving language mastery. Boys in contrast, show an early visual superiority. Their intentional mechanisms are also different. A boy will react to an inanimate object as quickly as he will to a person. A male baby will often ignore the mother and babble to something else.

A study of pre-school children by psychologist Diane McGuinness of Stanford University found boys are more curious, especially with regard to exploring their environment. Her studies also confirmed that males are better at manipulating three-dimensional space. When boys and girls are asked to mentally rotate or fold an object, boys overwhelmingly outperform girls. “I folded it in my mind” is a typical male response. Girls are likely to produce elaborate verbal descriptions which, because they are less appropriate to the task, result in frequent errors.

Brain organization

There is evidence that some of these differences in performance are differences in brain organization between girls and boys. Overall, verbal and spatial abilities in boys tend to be packaged into different hemispheres: the right hemisphere for non-verbal tasks, the left for verbal tasks. But in girls non-verbal and verbal skills are likely to be found on both sides of the brain. The hemispheres of the women’s brain may be less specialized for these functions. These differences in brain organization and specialization are believed by some scientists to provide a partial explanation of why members of one sex or the other are under-represented in certain professions. Architects, for example, require a highly developed spatial sense, a skill found more frequently among men. Thus, the preponderance of male architects may be partially caused by the more highly developed spatial sense that characterizes the male brain.

Psychological measurements of brain functioning between sexes also show unmistakable differences. Most thought-provoking of all are findings by Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Nagy Jacklin of Stanford University on personality traits and intellectual achievement.

They found that intellectual development in girls is fostered among individuals who are assertive and active, and have a sense that they can control, by their own action, the events that affect their lives. These factors appear to be less important in the intellectual development of boys.

Recent studies even suggest that high level of intellect achievement is associated with cross-sex typing: the ability to express traits and interest associated with the opposite sex. Educational Psychologist E. P. Torrance of the University of Georgia suggest that sexual stereo types are a block to creativity, since creativity requires sensitivity- a female trait- as well as autonomy and independence- traits usually associated with males. M P Honzik and J W Mcfarlane of the University of California at Berkley support Torance’s speculation with a 20 year follow-up on subjects who demonstrated significant IQ gains. Those with the greatest gains displayed less than those whose IQs remained substantially the same.

It's important to remember that we are not talking about one gender being generally superior or inferior to another. In addition, the studies are statistical and do not tell us a lot about individuals. The findings are controversial, but they can help us establish true equity. One way of doing this might be to change such practices as nationwide competitive examinations.

If boys for instance, truly excel in right-hemisphere tasks, scholastic aptitude tests should be substantially redesigned to assure that both genders have an equal chance.

Some of the tests now are weighted with items that virtually guarantee superior male performance.

Attitude changes are also needed in our approach to "hyperactive" or "learning disabled" children. The evidence for gender difference here is staggering: more than 90 percent of hyperactive are males.

This is not surprising since the male brain is primarily visual, while classroom instructions demand attentive listening. The male brain learns by manipulating its environment, yet the typical student is forced to sit still for long hours in the classroom. There is little opportunity, other than during recess, for gross motor movements or rapid muscular responses. In essence, the classrooms in developed countries' primary grades are geared to skill that come naturally to girls but develop very slowly in boys. The result should not be surprising, a 'learning disabled' child who is also frequently 'hyperactive.'

We now have the opportunity, based on emerging evidence of gender differences in brain functioning, to restructure elementary grades so that boys find their initial educational contacts less stressful.

At more advanced levels of instruction, teaching methods could incorporate verbal and linguistic approaches to physical engineering and architecture (to mention only three fields where women are conspicuously under represented). The alternative is to do nothing about brain differences.

There is something to be said for this approach, too. In recent past, enhanced social benefit has usually resulted from stressing the similarities between people rather than their differences. We ignore brain-sex differences, however, at the risk of confusing biology with sociology and wishful thinking with scientific fact.

Parents need to be prudent. They ought to respect and accept the individual difference as well as the gender difference that matters in their children's performances. Moreover, there could be late bloomers in their families.

If a girl in a family is studious and a boy who is clever at motor mechanism parents should not force the boy to follow in the footsteps of his sister because the boy's ability is different from the girl's. While the girl excels in education, the boy could excel in his chosen field. Helping and guiding them to cope with their desired or selected field is the main responsibility of the parents, teachers and elders.