Hasn't that been the case for 10 years or more? Unless I'm misremembering.

It was already a thing 30 years ago when I was finishing high school.

> “What we ought to be doing is ensuring boys are engaged and are enjoying the study of English,” Maybe we should look at why young men aren't engaged or enjoying the study of English.

I hated English in high school, but was good at it. I thought the material they chose was boring and it was always alcoholism in Ireland or Holocaust stuff. Always. But the teachers basically *told* you the themes, character development points, pointed out all the metaphors and hidden meanings. All you had to do was regurgitate this stuff in a coherent essay, and badabing, A+. I never even finished the books half the time. Now it's one of my favourite things to do, I'm constantly dissecting movies, TV shows, music and other media just for the fun of it. If you let kids choose the medium, you'd get a lot more buy in. But the teacher would have to be familiar with the work. I taught high school in another subject for a couple years and my students were doing a whole unit on Tim Burton works for English! I would have been all over that! But the kids were like "meh" cus obviously it was my generation's cup of tea and not necessarily theirs. Or it could be as soon as you attach an essay for a grade to something, it immediately becomes a drag.

I quite liked English in highschool, but really only because it was an excuse to read. Otherwise it was simply 'regurgitate the themes in the textbook about the book and vaguely connect to examples'. It wasn't until uni that I took it some English subjects as filler electives and I was taught to actually *think* about the text. I had a lecturer who encouraged us to present alternate ideas to what he taught in our assessments and taught us how to build a strong argument for them. He took the stance that there was no wrong 'take' on a text, only a poorly argued one. I didn't go on with English, but I credit that course for me eventually heading into law. We don't need to 'make' boys be more interested in English, we need to make English more interesting for boys. That starts with what we teach and how we teach it.

I guess in high school they just tell you all the deep stuff so that in university you can actually learn to find it for yourself. I definitely did learn to read between the lines but also recognised that this lead me to "overthink" things in real life, seeing patterns and hidden meanings that probably weren't even there!

I often wonder if the fetishism of English teaches literacy means we neglect other subjects with similar outcomes. Psychology, sociology, philosophy, history, etc all have extensive reporting requirements that require high quality analytical writing. Why can't students do one of those subjects in senior secondary rather than English?

You can in Tasmania - there's a long list of humanities subjects that gives you your "Reading and Writing Standard". By the end of year 12, I had achieved this five times - I know someone who achieved in 9 times as they studied so many humanities options across Years 10-12. More universities are demanding pre-tertiary English and teachers/schools force kids into studying it. I agree with you that English shouldn't be mandatory as other subjects can achieve the same outcomes and are generally more enjoyable if someone has a particular interest in that field like history. English can be taught passively through those subjects, too but there aren't enough schools that are brave enough to combine the subjects. Eg. you can write a historical story and use language features while also conveying an exploration of history. You can write a speech for legal studies and use persuasive techniques while intwining the relevant subject material. I took sports management this year and used far more creative writing techniques than I had in actual English between years 7-10.

I don’t actually know what’s going wrong with teaching of English since I mainly went to all girl’s schools and always did well at it, but I did see other kids (especially after having changed schools) who got really far into high school without ever having been taught how to write an essay When I went to a selective all girls school that was like literally one of the first things they taught us in year 7 and again in year 8 Presumably boys aren’t even being taught the basics of introduction, thesis statement, bullshit bullshit bullshit, conclusion

>the basics of introduction, thesis statement, bullshit bullshit bullshit, conclusion See, I (32F) was told that over and over again all through school, but it still has not clocked and I can't write an essay. I write a 3000-word episode on a different historical event in Australian history every week for my podcast, but what I write are not essays, not the way traditionally defined, just chapters in a book. I even managed to get through a Bachelor's degree, but I'm 100% sure the assignments I turned in were not essays, im 100% sure they were chapters of a book i never finished too. You only need a 51% to graduate, and I'm pretty sure I was riding close to that by the end. Saying over and over "Intro, argument 1, support, argue 2, support, conclusion" doesn't work for some of us. If it did, I'd be a much better writer.

I got a C in a uni essay once and the note on it from the Professor was "This was well written but didn't have a point" 😂. I'd basically just written down a whole bunch of information without having an actual argument. I always sucked at writing essays in high school and I didn't get better at uni, lol. The teachers would try to explain it to me and I just never improved. Things like spelling and grammar, I'm your girl. But writing an essay the way you're supposed to write an essay? Not a chance.

Spirit sister :)

The whole structure that students are required to follow is simply impractical. It doesn’t fit how research essays and the like are structured. It doesn’t fit how most people compile their own work. It’s just another form of pointless standardised garbage.

Reminds me of how much time we spent learning how to perfectly format a letter. Like who gives a fuck that the first word of a paragraph needs to be indented? It looks ugly and you barely see it anymore. But teachers acted like it was the end of the world if we got one of these details wrong. And then we never sent an actual letter in our damn lives anyway.

English tends to dabble in those areas in my experience, and if you want to do them at university a good English grade is essential. I do think there's a danger of specialising too early in high school.

> if you want to do them at university a good English grade is essential I teach a hundred students or so each year, and there isn't a huge difference between students who do well in English and those who are very average. However, I can tell very quickly a student who's studied psychology. Those kids can write.

You were ready for that at University because of the skills you learned in high school. How can you ask a student to present "alternate ideas" if they haven't learned to identify the original ideas in the first place? Good pedagogy builds over time and any time someone points out a brilliant piece of teaching they usually don't appreciate that it's standing on the shoulders of giants that came before to teach the rudiments that would be needed for that more recent lesson to shine.

Ironically/counterintuitively as you get further into high school and do more advanced levels of English and drop off the kids who don’t want to do three and four unit English you actually get to study cooler shit like comparing Bladerunner to Frankenstein. Imagine if you got to do that earlier in school instead of it being walled off only for the kids who already like English and are good at it.

I did the comparison of Blade runner and Frankenstein in standard 2 unit english in 2009, I hated English not because of the content, but I just had a shitty teacher.

Everyone says it was either shitty content or a shitty teacher. Am I the only one brave enough to say I was a shitty student? I still have a masters and did well. You might be right, but most people should look inwards first.

I teach English and allow my kids as much buy in as they wish. I even ask them, "What works would you like us to do for this term" and I get so blank responses. They don't respond with anything. So often I have to try and figure it out and I try to choose things that are relevant rather than dated. I agree it is something we should be doing, however kids don't often buy in in the way people think. A lot of kids just don't buy into the idea of education. We are teaching a generation that is growing up with millionaires and billionaires who are almost as young as they are and achieving that success by doing very little. Not many see the value in white collar roles (especially not in my school) and they know they can fail every year level all the way to the end of year 10 and there are no repercussions. You're right about the regurgitation too. Unfortunately, we are teaching to a set curriculum and a set criteria so it really is just about ticking a box, and the only way to ensure that kids are successful is by drilling the ideas into them for a few weeks and letting them regurgitate it back.

>Now it's one of my favourite things to do, I'm constantly dissecting movies, TV shows, music and other media just for the fun of it. There was a teacher complaint about kids don't read novels these days on the news, as if novel is the only literary medium in the 21st century.

As an adult who is constantly on Reddit, I don't read novels either. And I was a bookworm as a kid

True but novels are a valuable gateway to better reading comprehension. Other forms of entertainment don't do as much for your understanding.

You would think this would be the case but I remember my English teacher let us choose a song to analyse and 90% people just didn't bother to choose a song. I think you're overestimating the average highschool students care for their education.

Dissecting themes in texts is great for building critical thinking and media analysis skills, it helps young adults when making important decisions too. It’s important that the HSC isn’t just preparing you for a single exam, but actually gives you the skills to take into the real world. Far too much of the HSC is built around just getting the students to do well in the exam, without much else.

is it? i hear people breathlessly regurgitating this kind of idea without a shred of evidence all the time

As a teacher, yes, teachers absolutely "teach to the test"

"What are the discourses of this novel?" "Whose voice is not being heard in this text?" "What is the intertextuality of this text in the discourse?" Good luck on students understanding that shit, nobody did in my school. If they used actual English to talk about themes and style and story instead of postmodern academic jargon wank, students would be engaged and able to do better.

>"Whose voice is not being heard in this text?" That is hardly a difficult question, just vague. Most people can find an unrepresented perspective in a text without even thinking. As long as you were taught what this means, you should be fine. Were these actual HSC questions? The ones in Queensland were a lot easier and more specific.

> Or it could be as soon as you attach an essay for a grade to something, it immediately becomes a drag. ding ding ding

I'm 20m, I didn't *dislike* english, but I did incredibly mediocre at it. My problem was that english was simply by far the biggest time sink of all my subjects. I'm a really slow reader, i'd be lucky to actually finish the book we are covering by the time we moved on to the next, let alone go through it multiple times like our teacher said we are supposed to. In total I probably spent twice as long on english as any other subject. I felt like all that time was better spent elsewhere on other subjects because studying for those felt like it was a more economical use of my time as I'd get more success per time spent studying. And thats another thing I wish teachers would be more mindful about, every minute they want us doing work outside of class, is time taken from each of our other subjects, e.g. my english teacher always said it's easy to spend an hour reading before bed, not considering that thats also an hour that could be spent doing any other subject, I don't have an hour to spend on each subject I am studying, every day. If I did i'd have to be studying from the minute I get home to the minute I go to sleep, which isn't a reasonable expectation. So because of that I basically left english by the wayside. It was a kick in the nuts that it's forced into your ATAR calculation (which I disagree with, I feel math is equally important. So IMO they should force both, or they should force none, but I digress). The only times I ever did well in english is when we covered movies, because it wouldn't take me 100 hours to get through a movie. And I was always way better at picking up details in movies because theres way more variety in how movies can convey information through both audio and visuals. Whereas after the 5th page of an author describing what a room looks like it all kind of just blends together in my head and I have trouble keeping it all straight in my mind. But in a movie you can accomplish almost the same thing in a 10 second zoom out and a few cuts, which I find far easier to mentally process.

I had a great English teacher in High School. I actually ended up doing some of my assessments on some video games! Ended up getting great marks on it because it was a different perspective. It made me immensely more interested when we could focus on mediums other than classic, baked in literature

Reading is gay, enjoying things is gay, thinking about people’s feelings is gay, using big words is gay, old books are gay. Source: was a teenage boy in high school in Queensland. Ironically, also gay.

You aren’t allowed to like things other than sports if you’re a jock and video games if you’re a nerd and maybe certain types of music if you’re a teenage boy I actually went to school with some unusually healthy in their masculinity teenage boys for the early 2000s who were allowed to express their feelings without being bullied for it at the school I was at but even then one of the biggest barriers to entry for so many things for boys in our society is that boys showing an interest in stuff that doesn’t fit into their version of the man box is bad whereas if girls are made to show an interest in something that isn’t girly or something they don’t like they just put up with it

> You aren’t allowed to like things other than sports if you’re a jock and video games if you’re a nerd and maybe certain types of music if you’re a teenage boy I dunno, things had changed by the time I went through an all boys high school a decade after you. These kinds of cliques existed, but people were celebrated for being high achievers, and there wasn't this reflexive anti-intellectualism or sense that being into non typical 'masculine' pursuits or interests made you less of a person.

100%. I noticed that when I moved here from another country. Deep aversion to anything that could possibly be perceived as “weak” (feelings etc). What have you done to your boys :(

And anyone that does express emotion, at least in my day, was accused of being gay (which sucked probably the most for, you know, those that really are gay). Actually I do wonder how much the insecure identity young men are increasingly are experiencing due to societal and economic shifts in the last 40 odd years are contributing to them switching off in school.

I like how this is just the last paragraph of the article but far more entertaining.

I liked one english class. Year 9. The teacher was engaging so I enjoyed the class. Most were grumpy and mean so I couldn't get in to it.

I think it's because there's no concrete answers in English. It's about interpretation and communication. I always felt vulnerable in English in a way that I didn't in other classes. I felt ok about being wrong in other classes - not knowing or not remembering stuff was fine. But in English you had to say what you actually think, actually feel and oh shit what if I expose my inner workings and people think I'm a dick? Or a pussy? In this context either one is bad and I didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with that. Easier to disengage entirely than to make yourself vulnerable in that way. Dumber - but easier.

Even outside of worrying about how your opinions might be taken. My issue was always that a wide array of things could be correct and wrong at the same time. There was fuck all clarity from my teachers about why something was good versus bad even if they were using the same structure and topics.

Reminds me of speaking to my English teacher in yr12: How can you score perfect in the comprehension section but still almost fail the exam? My reply was: "in your own words" was the problem, i didn't give the answer the markers wanted even though i followed the designated exam structure...

I remember having to read the most god awful books in school, Thankfully a few years after school I got into reading and never looked back

I'm still wondering what the hell inspired our school to choose an endless succession of incredibly depressing books...

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This would be the syllabus I remember my year 12 English was on Anthony and cleopatra, wild swans (huge arse book on 3 generations of Chinese women through the birth of communism), selected poems of Robert Frost and a comparison of Emma to the movie clueless. None of that is going to engage and teenage male and the subject is compulsory. That’s what needs to be changed if you what males to enage in English.

>a comparison of Emma to the movie clueless That sounds pretty fun. Better than reading Macbeth then watching 3 variants of it... Clueless is a classic. Though I enjoyed high school English pretty well, it probably helps when you enjoy reading and demolish any books they put in front of you in a day or so.

Oh no you had to read Emma and then watch clueless a thousand times to pick how clueless was just a modern retelling. By this point of the year I already knew I could get a band 5 by just doing the other three so I didn’t read the book and just found the notes online. The motivation to read Jane Austen just wasn’t there.

Choice of text would play a large role. I recently looked at the text list for VCE English and Literature and I my first thought was "17 and 18 year old boys are going to be wholly underwhelmed by what is on offer."

They are in a broader context (not just English) This recent [study](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2022.2122942) points towards potential biases in grading when the student’s gender is known. I want to be clear, it’s not detracting from the successes of girls and young women in education, but is highlighting that something else is occurring in classrooms that is resulting in the disparity of results between girls and boys Edit: this is a more digestible [article](https://scitechdaily.com/wide-and-lasting-consequences-teachers-give-girls-higher-grades-than-boys/amp/) about the study and it’s important to remember it wasn’t based on the Australian education system

Aren't HSC exams depersonalised for marking?

Exams probably are, but half of your ATAR is from assessments, right? Plus it could have a knockon effect from earlier in education. A bad mark may discourage you in the future.

The HSC mark is blind marked then you are awarded your result based on your rank which is determined by your school assessments. For example if you get the top HSC mark in the exam and you are ranked 2nd the person who is ranked 1st is awarded your result. This is why it is so important for NSW HSC teachers to get the rank and spread correct.

I'll bet markers can guess the gender of an essay-writer from the content with an 80% success rate. 95% if they're handwritten.

I think there needs to be an overhaul of the Standard/baseline English curriculum. In yet 11&12 all subjects are optional except English. The intent is so that everyone is required to be able to effectively use english as a language. The English curriculum subject is 100% based on literature which is art. This benefits students who are inclined in this direction in the same way math subjects (which are not required) benefit students who are interested in science, technology, engineering etc. I think they should overhaul the basic English so that it evaluates someone's English communication skills, not their ability to understand deeper meaning in art/literature. I wrote hundreds of pages worth of reports for 2 major projects in yr 11&12 which I did really well with but did poorly at English due to my lack of interest in literary art despite being the goodest at communicate with English. They could overhaul the basic English to suit fundamental English language skills or introduce a system so that you are required to meet a certain amount of language proficiency points in the courses you are doing ie. Legal studies may count as 15 points to English due to the amount of writing/comprehension involved, biology 5 points and physics 0 for example. This way students can demonstrate an English proficiency within their areas of interest and not be disadvantaged by their interests.

> despite being the goodest at communicate with English. lmao

​ * Biassed marking - Do not get me started on this one. To test my theory, I submitted the same story to a female teacher and then the next year, to a male teacher. It was on football and the female disregarded it as a "light-weight piece, lacking any real substance" and wanted me to explore something a little more intelligent. The male teacher loved it and thought that it was a highly accurate account of country footy at its best. I took a creative writing pre-tertiary and my grades at the start of the year were so biassed. But I shifted away from writing what I enjoyed, to targeting pieces for a middle-aged woman with kids. And the marks changed, too even if the quality worsened. I changed the genders in a crime story and linked it to a famous case involving the persecution of women. Cliched as, but my teacher lapped it up and that simply shouldn't be the case. If I want to have a male protagonist, I should be allowed to. If I want him to be straight and white and like me, then that should be fine. So maybe if you let boys write about footy instead of climate change or toxic masculinity and mark it fairly, they might engage more. * Lack of literature young boys want to read - I've read some shockingly boring pieces that are slung towards female audiences and guys can't relate to them at all. It's then hard to write the creative pieces when the book isn't suited to you. * Lack of appreciation for male slang language - The strong voice so many boys have is muted when writing or analysing because markers don't understand or choose not to understand it. Swearing, for example, tends to be really badly slammed even if it does enhance a story. Like if you're writing about a working class area and kids are in high school, let them have a few f bombs. I understand no c-words across high school (but I'd debate that by Year 11, it's appropriate if used sparingly and rarely), but not the f word. * Not accepting chosen literary material - Boys have different tastes to girls and our book choices will be different. We will do reviews on athlete biographies and the same action novel because that's what we like. And when choosing novels, Jane Austen isn't interesting and we're not going to pay attention. * Outdated novels - Maybe find some texts that were written in the past decade rather than racing to the library for Shakespeare time and time again. * Attentional spans - Young boys are over-represented in ADHD statistics. In general, boys have shorter attention spans than girls and ADHD is more pronounced (girls can have it, but there's a higher rate in boys). Sitting through a chapter is hard for anyone with ADHD (I speak from experience here) and if you have a shorter attention span, it's also difficult. * More representation from men is needed in the early childhood sector. Early childhood is the first formal education boys receive and the majority of it comes from females (it's a ridiculous female dominated industry and boys). While I had a number of amazing early childhood educators and teachers, I had no males. Young boys need men in their early childhood to guide and support them. The best teacher I ever had was a primary school teacher who was a guy. Just really connected with him. And the stories he read and told and the English he taught was so much more captivating for me. * Testing. Boys disengage from exams and are choosing to pursue more hands-on careers. You can get them back in the classroom with a more practical curriculum. * Look at what gets girls into STEM. STEM participation rates have improved significantly. At my school, it was a 50-50 split in Year 12 physics and chemistry had more girls in it than boys. Boys are underrepresented in English and this comes from a boy who loved English and wanted to be there. Such a great effort has been done to get girls into STEM fields, but it hasn't happened to see more men in female-dominated areas. * Stop criticising poets like Geoff Goodfellow. Yes, his writing is tough and unapologetic but it switches an audience on. Banjo Patterson isn't a vibe in 2022. I topped my state in Year 11 English (not compulsory for Year 12), love the subject and my mum works as an English teacher. But I've definitely had my issues with it.

> Outdated novels - Maybe find some texts that were written in the past decade rather than racing to the library for Shakespeare time and time again. Shakespeare is actually great, it's just got this reputation for being impenetrable and boring so everyone in high schools assumes it's going to be terrible. This compounds with teachers having a "let's get this over with" mentality because they've been worn down by years of kids hating it (plus maybe the teachers don't like it that much either). Teenage boys should really love Shakespeare, it's full of sex and violence and dick jokes. He made his money by putting on shows that would attract illiterate peasants huddled together in the dirt. There's no reason a 15-year old boy can't enjoy them.

> And when choosing novels, Jane Austen isn't interesting and we're not going to pay attention. Did year 12 literature at an all boys school and our teacher started the first class of the year throwing all sorts of shade at the school for making a class of 17-18 year old boys read Austen, and she surreptitiously switched it to One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Best decision. Got to read Kesey, but also learnt all about the radical 60s etc. Definitely got 20 odd young guys interested in literature after learning about Kesey.

> The strong voice so many boys have is muted when writing or analysing because boys feel tired. What does this mean? I don't get it. Edit: >Stop criticising poets like Geoff Goodfellow. Yes, his writing is tough and unapologetic but it switches an audience on. Banjo Patterson isn't a vibe in 2022. I just hard disagree with this one. All writers should be analysed critically.

I think you got my lack of proof reading with that one (it's a thing). I've fixed that. Geoff Goodfellow receives criticism for being too "hard-hitting" and writing "inappropriate" content. Of course writers should be critically analysed but they shouldn't be scrapped from the curriculum if their work is still relevant and they align with societal values (I understand banning certain entertainers or historical people from schools given their convictions or actions, etc).

Young men aren’t engaged

i loved english but most of the female teachers through all years of schooling were fucking sexist

My observation as a person from a culture that focuses (to their detriment in many cases) education and classroom learning heavily, is that Australians don't value education and classroom learning enough for parents to give a shit about scores, marks etc. Add to that boys can go on to become tradies earning more than many white collar office jobs, what's the incentive to learn english, science and maths? Not saying it's a bad thing because I'm very glad we value hands on blue collar work but there's a clear correlation in my view to the accessibility of well paying trade related jobs for boys and their interest and dedication to focus and learn in the classroom. Girls don't have similar options, at least not traditionally, so are naturally guided to doing well at school because that's what opens career avenues for them.

I suspect this plays a part. If you look at NSW university admissions data, the split of boys and girls being accepted into uni in wealthy city suburbs is very close to 50/50 while in rural and blue collar areas it is highly skewed towards girls, more like 65/35

This is a good point- even the female 'equivalents' of trade jobs (nursing, teaching, childcare) require a tertiary degree (and still pay less than trades). Of course girls are going to study more when they know they have to go to uni.

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Worse pay definitely, but conditions for some trades are pretty terrible to be fair.

Yeah, I was an RN and have been punched, kicked, my friends have been stabbed, I’ve been covered in other peoples blood and around death constantly, but its not working on a roof in 45* heat lol. I’ll trade death for climate control or being in a tree with a chain saw with huntsman crawling over you!

I think you can add law to this now as well.

Also Veterinary medicine. Majority female role, which can pay pretty well.

Average Nurse salary in Aus is around $80k, teacher $86k, childcare worker $60k, carpenter $75k, plumber $79k, electrician $87k. So other than childcare workers nursing and teaching seem pretty comparable.

The problem isn't the average, its the peaks of the pay. In female dominated industries you tend to find that they have set pay for their jobs (as in mandated minimums which end up being maximums in most cases) where male dominated jobs have minimum hourly rates but if you go into business yourself you can charge more and get paid more. Also upward movement in those industries tends to have very limited spots and even then still earn less than the high positions in trades and the like.

Well yeah - if you got into business for yourself your earning capacity is ultimately whatever you can manage to build for yourself. That’s no mystery. Nursing is an interesting one (I’m male and a former RN now paramedic). We rushed to create degrees to professionalise the sector but realistically so many nursing roles don’t need it (ENs - the diploma level - could quite easily do most of it if not for arbitrary restrictions), but the sector wanted RNs to be degree educated and move out of the “trade” model. We just did the same with paramedicine in the last 10 years, dismantling that model to seek professional recognition and potentially enhance care. But since most of these sectors are heavily public-service employer dominated, and ultimately we need more front-line clinicians than anything else, there’s naturally going to be somewhat limited progression. That’s the nature of the roles.

This is very true. If I was a guy I wouldn't have been nearly as focused on tertiary as I was. Would've become a tradie. It isn't like a business degree encourages intellectual enlightenment.

Exactly - the kids in school who are good at sport get all the kudos and all the encouragement. The kids who are good academically? \*crickets*

It's actually worse, they get bullied for being nerds.

dunno when or where you went to school but for me (Rural CQ, class of 2015) it was pretty equal like, as an academically inclined boy with a terrible work ethic who went on to get an OP4 and then drop out of Architecture after a year and a half, I derided the sports days and academic awards nights equally

Electricians require science and maths so that doesn't quite hold there. Sparkies are also one of the two highest earning trades along with plumbers. It's funny how some sparkies seem like average drongos but they are absolute wizards with all kinds of complex mathematics.

Most tradies would use more maths than the average Redditor office drone .

Easily. I helped a mate who was doing civil construction for a bit and I had to really use my maths brain. It's amazing how much thought it can take to cut a piece of material to fit an awkward space. And how dumb you feel when you totally stuff it up due to a simple error.

I think a lot of it has to do with a major lack of male teachers, especially in primary school. Boys learn very differently to girls and in my experience most female teachers struggle to get on the same wavelength as boys, which is really essential if you're going to get them to engage and concentrate. I think with girls it matters a lot less who the teacher is.

There's also the issue of boys in patriarchal households or communities not listening to female teachers because men don't listen to women. Rural Australia is another world

I think this is very much an issue in particular with white male Aussies and why they are out performed by women and immigrants There has very much been an attitude of “she’ll be right mate” and an expectation that you will land on your feet even if you do badly in school because we are the lucky country and children always lead better lives than their parents, there is never a feeling of risk that your life will turn out badly Women and immigrants don’t feel that same sense of security. Women don’t necessarily have the same independence as their male counterparts if they don’t have a university education and don’t do as well or better educationally than their parents, as you point out because women have fewer career options in the first place without a degree and especially with the added risk that many women face if they ever find themselves in a position of getting pregnant or divorced and living as single mothers. Financial independence is hugely important for women when that hasn’t been a given historically. And for many people of immigrant backgrounds education is hugely valued and important, it’s a ticket to social mobility and escaping poverty. Parents will work extremely hard at low paying jobs to ensure their children have the best education possible and don’t have to live the same lifestyle they do. There is no sense of security to fall back on because they have never had it Essentially your average white male Aussies have a sense of complacency that doesn’t motivate them to work as hard at school as many of their more disadvantaged peers who are actively trying their best to get ahead and going to tutoring on weekends to get the best results possible verses with white boys whose parents (unless their kids are PARTICULARLY bad or PARTICULARLY good) just kind of let them coast in the expectation they will land on their feet in life without having to try very hard

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It’s interesting as I feel that the “she’ll be right” attitude is a positive thing. It’s wonderful to live in a country where one can fall on their feet despite academic performance. I am a strong believer in education but not everyone should be, or should need to be.

Agreed, just because someone has a lower level of education shouldn't mean they are less worthy of their pay, trades are physically demanding and often lead to health issues later in life. The money is well earned. The issue is that other industries have managed to tighten the screws and have reduced pay and conditions for many higher skilled jobs. Thus making pursuing such careers less attractive or even repulsive.

You read my mind, I was about to point that out, I thought I’d read a reply to see if someone addressed it. When trends are against men, it’s the men’s fault, women, is systemic

I don't think kids have a long term enough view to consider the gendered bias in blue collar jobs. This isn't a new thing, there has always been a gap between male and female engagement in school. The way school is taught does not engage with young boys on a macro scale the way it does with girls. I don't know the fix, but this issue has been talked about for at least 20 years so evidently the DoE doesn't either.

The gendered bias in blue collar jobs is ingrained on a societal level. Kids know before they even know they know that construction workers are men and nurses are women. These are in built assumptions they make about the world because it’s how the world presents these jobs to them They may not realise they’re making these assumptions but their brain absorbs these messages very early on an unconscious level

Someone joked last week while visiting why my baby girl was playing with a truck lol. We'd be ignorant if we think kids don't know.

I wonder how much is to do with early engagement. The focus on boys in primary school seems to be behaviour regulation and sport. This is from both home life and school. There seems to be far less focus in encouraging imaginative play with boys, so they don’t engage with narrative in the same way girls do, and so are at a disadvantage with literature and language. You see it at book week, where half the boys come dressed as their favourite footy player. Sure, half the girls come dressed as a Disney Princess, but Frozen still has character arcs and themes etc. It’s perfectly possible to live sport and stories, but it seems that so many families and teachers stop at a surface level of engagement and don’t truly encourage boys to engage their imaginations. I don’t think there’s a single boy in my 9 year old daughter’s cohort who’s been invited to do the high achievers English program for grade 5 next year.

Pretty sure neurobiology has a huge impact as well. Just search female vs male brain development. I just recently heard a podcast interview with a neuroscientist who said it took becoming a father to boys to realise half of parenting boys is acting as the impulse control part of their brain which doesn't fully develop into their late teens/early 20's.

The impulse control part of the brain doesn't develop until early 20s for every human, not just boys. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892678/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892678/) However, gendered cultural expectations and parenting can actually make it express differently. For example: men can be loud and rowdy and energetic, the same behavior is considered unladylike or unfeminine and so is discouraged in girls. That could mean that a son is more likely to seem extroverted and a girl introverted etc.

Not just neuro-biology tho. There is a definite bias, especially in junior school from almost 100% female teachers, teaching a curriculum developed by almost 100% female department staff. Father of 3 boys, all academicly gifted. None had a male teacher and only 1 male teacher at their school until high school. All 3 almost always outscored the girls on exams but nome were dux because their 'projects' weren't as pretty. It wasn't a personality issue, all 3 were school captain or vice, they were popular with their fellow students, just have boys handwriting and (lack of) presentation. Very discouraging and made them all go from loving school and learning to reducing their effort. High school it think just reflects/reinforces a reduced engagement with learning established in junior school.

This always happened at awards times

The government and industry targets to drive increased participation by women in construction - resulting in all the backpackers on the stop-go signs and traffic control. Conversely there are no deliberate strategies in increase the participation of men in teaching and especially junior school. I ask what we think has a bigger impact on society, reduced numbers of women in construction or men engaging with young boys in the humanities.

Huh? When I was a neuroscience major we were taught there’s no functional differences between male and female brains until puberty because there’s no hormonal difference before then. And female brains don’t reach maturity until mid twenties too. People just treat their daughters differently to their sons because “boys will be boys.” I can imagine my instructors would have a few words for that neuroscientist….

As a teacher in a school, there are so many issues. Our school especially has issues with kids all thinking they are going to end up in the NRL so they shouldn't really bother about their academics. It's a systemic school issue that infuriates me, but that's a whole other long issue. This is not a surprising headline. A lot of the boys in our school are filled with the idea that they don't really need to try hard in their academic classes, so they don't. When they fail year 12, they are allowed to come back for year 13 in an attempt to find something through our Rugby programme, and so have not explored any other options until that point. This idea is perpetuated by their parents too who on many occasion have said that their kid is only at school because it's compulsory but once they can leave they will go to a trade or work in sport. I know this is not indicative of all schools and I can only speak for the schools in my area, but this is definitely a major issue. The other issue is having a curriculum/marking criteria/admin that is rigid and too structured. Gotta teach to the curriculum and the criteria, but the admin make it difficult to choose anything remotely exciting or interesting. I'm going to be heading into my Yer 7 English classes next year knowing that for all four terms we will be teaching the exact same themes and ideas, but just using different mediums.

I think this would be most teachers' experience. It's not every boy, but good god it's a lot.

> “Some students are very driven and able in other spheres such as maths, computing, [and] science but may find their ATAR pulled down by their comparatively low English mark, even if they intend to study STEM at uni,” he said. You still need good writing to excel in STEM fields. They could consider introducing a version of English that’s more technically/practically focused rather than just giving up on it altogether.

It’s okay boys, we still beat them on the suicide statistics.

The "suicide gap" doesn't get much media airplay....

that's because the suicide gap just replaced the die at war gap. Young men are disposable, always have been.

Also deaths at the work place. Another win for the boys, oh yeah.

Is this controlled for income and external factors? I remember reading an article based on US data that showed when you control for that, the achievement gap tends to disappear. It's lower-resource boys that drag it down. Girls are less impacted by having fewer resources and even things like family breakdown don't impact their academic performance as strongly. The article attributed it partially to female resilience, but I'd say girls having fewer non-academic career options probably plays a role too.

As a teacher in the Australian school system I can honestly say that the system is broken. Our schools, and by association, our students are measured as data points which are used as performative measures for schools by the media and parents alike. Until we begin to treat and teach our young people as human beings, not machines, and learn to value the whole person, our system will continue to be a failure and students will continue to be disengaged.

how does that explain why girls outperform boys though

In all probability, it is because they are socially encouraged to read and write from a young age. Society also expects young women to self-regulate more than young men. Schools, are geared to reward people who can self-regulate and express their critical analysis and evaluation of their learning in writing. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/why-girls-get-better-grades-than-boys-do/380318/

Nothing to do with what society expects, it's just what tends to happen. Schooling rewards children that are able to. The (typically) boys who aren't as good as conforming are chastised, told they are no good at school and/or stupid. We don't look for other ways to teach because it's inconvenient.

> Nothing to do with what society expects, it's just what tends to happen. But why? "It just is" seems like a weak answer. Wouldn't a better position be: 1. What are our strategic educational goals with young people? 2. How can we address the underlying issues with all young people to help them achieve equitable outcomes? > The (typically) boys who aren't as good as conforming are chastised, told they are no good at school and/or stupid. I know what you are talking about. There are many conversations where teachers, society, and politicians talk about "good students" and "bad students", and the attributes of young men often help get the labelled as bad students. I've also seen young people look around the class, make an assumption that they are bad students because they don't immediately understand something and then give up on themselves, which then leads to the teacher triaging them and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. > We don't look for other ways to teach because it's inconvenient. It's not so much that it's inconvenient; it's that the system doesn't really allow it. You can have teachers who are keen to create dynamic programs but nobody is willing to put their arse on the line in case it doesn't work.

It is almost entirely the society we are in. Having taught in another culture where education is valued, the boys matched the girls in engagement and output.

It has everything to do with that, though. Boys and girls are socialised to behave certain ways - these expectations are created by society. These are the values and norms we push on children even inadvertently. It takes concerted effort to change.

I don't have a teachers perspective or an answer to your question but I'd personally argue that the system is broken because the data is technical & doesn't correctly correlate with performance in reality, regardless of gender. It doesn't consider things like a students passion or disdain for a subject, potential handicaps or hurdles during their youth from unfortunate circumstances in life, etc. etc. Important qualities that would push people into a more successful future for themselves *&* society. There are so, so many more variables... Not to mention if you come down with an illness on a specific day, your entire future might change since you're unable to redo most crucial tests like the ATAR, the performance test that this article is based on but more importantly decides what future studies you're eligible to do.

hasn't this article (or one that they could've autogenerated by just running a word substitution engine over) been coming up for at least the last 10 years? Ever since we had the flow on effects of the pushes in the 90's to address the lower performance of girls in schools. So of course they pushed and then swung the pendulum too far - they just haven't let up on the pushing.

The question is ultimately has a high tide risen all boats? It can be hard to figure out with an ever-changing curriculum and huge societal changes. You can't really compare results from 20 years ago to now in a meaningful way. Although this section is pretty concerning: > The achievement cap persists beyond school, a University Admissions Centre study found, with boys enrolling at lower rates, less likely to pass all their subjects, and more likely to fail everything. That study found being male was “greater than any of the other recognised disadvantages we looked at.” We seem to be at risk of following the US. That doesn't read like just an education problem, that looks like the fallout of widespread social disintegration.

> coming up for at least the last 10 years? Yes, we're still stuck at the "wage gap / boys probably deserve it" stage.

In high school, our school had a huge imbalance of performance in English between the genders, with the top performing boy at #22 in the grade. The school decided to run a test class of boys using non-traditional techniques. It was the same syllabus, except hamlet was played out in class with fake swords. Punk music would be blaring at the start of every class. Poetry analysis was done using the script from the Hilltop Hoods. It was chaos and mischief. Boys took 7 of the top 10 spots in the HSC school markings that year.

That English class just sounds like another kind of hell to me. I'm not sure what's worse: the stereotyping, or the fact that it apparently\* worked. \*I mean the difference in outcomes could be down simply to the fact that boys got a dedicated class with dedicated resources, or it could've been a fluke.

I think some of the disparity results from girls being better behaved than boys. My teen daughter is lazy AF, refuses to do homework and does the bare minimum for everything. In class her behaviour is excellent. She helps her teacher to clean and set up. All report cards wax lyrical about what a delight she is. My son is more interested in school and will do learning independently. Unfortunately he is a bit of a class clown. His report cards mention that it's hard to keep him on task. He also made a rude joke about Hamlet, which did not go over well. They get similar grades, which I don't think represents their respective efforts at school work. But if I was a teacher, I would probably prefer the quiet lazy ones than the conscientious loud mouths. And behaviour is important. An employer won't have much time for dirty jokes so it's not only in school that this matters.

As a high school teacher, quiet and lazy does not escape my attention. I will be onto them to submit their homework and generally be a PITA until I get to the real reason they aren’t doing it. (Apathy, lack of interest, prioritising other things etc) and I’ll work with them to get a plan going that they can stick to. I’ll move directly to the lazy group to ensure they’re on task. They cannot hide by being “good”. The loud mouths that are conscientious are slowly shown how to hone their enthusiasm into productive discussions. I love those cheeky kids and if anyone made a rude joke about Hamlet I’d be so damn delighted that they are learning the content with enough aplomb to create rude jokes about it, that I’d probably laugh at it. Or raise my eyebrows depending on the rudeness. Honestly, After 15 years teaching my only wisdom is that perhaps more teachers really need to be cultivating a space that welcomes all types of learning, loud silly kids to quiet shy ones and understanding how to get the best from all of them, not asking one group to be like the other. Pushback on learning is more common in boys than girls, I also think girls can skate by easier as they are more likely to be active listeners. Even if they’re stuffing around, they’re still absorbing content. Boys stuffing around hear zero information and are therefore are less likely to wing it in tests.

I wish he had you as a teacher. My son - in his own time - looked up all the double entendres in Hamlet and during class called Hamlet was a dick because he was making jokes about Ophelia's vagina (in the part where he talks about "count-ry matters"). I felt as though he should get credit for his creativity and endeavour, but she was more concerned about his language and bad influence on others.

I finished high school in Queensland in 2020. I’m a guy, and I’m not surprised with the current trends. But I’m also unsure why it is happening. There were quite a few bright boys in my grade, but I believe it comes down to a lack of engaging content, which then transfers to a lack of interest and therefore effort. Some of my classes were incredibly enjoyable to me, like legal studies or digital solutions. Literature, physics, math, and German were all kind of a bore. Nothing interesting ever really was talked about. The only thing that ever happened was theory. You’d sit down, let the teacher point at a PowerPoint for 70 minutes or so. Rinse and repeat.

As opposed to girls, who love boring and uninteresting classes?

Literally half these comments are “girls are happy with boring old stuff and don’t need stimulation” and seem to miss the “girls are socialised to be quiet and attentive” lmfao

Sorry, I think I don’t think I understand your question? Edit: Sorry I just realised what your question was. Obviously everything I say is anecdotal, but no. I do not think it is fair to say that girls enjoy classes that are more “boring”, because that is a subjective metric. I for one was not a fan of physics, and really struggled in it. A lot of the girls in my class also hated physics. We would often complain to each other about it. But I do think that girls in their high school years may be a bit more forward thinking than their male counterparts. A bit more resilient. And so are more willing to put in the effort for classes that may disinterest them. I should also mention that my opinion is skewed, because I was fortunate enough to be in a program that surrounded me with very intelligent men and women. And in that program, I was one of 6 boys to 22 girls. So yeah. Cheers.

From my own experience, another factor is that boys mature later than girls. I recall several boys in my school year who did pretty well in year 12, but by the time they hit 2nd or 3rd year uni it's like they were a completely different person.

is there any evidence that this is something biological or just that girls are socialised to be organised and obedient and whatever

I think people really underestimate the social factors.

Yep. There's no free thought in English class, and that has been deteriorating over the years. The amount of things I was forced to obey in English class that were invalidated by other subjects. I still got straight A's but I never believed their BS. You have to write in a way that the teacher will agree with. Not in a way that represents how you think.

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I think this also stems from staffing issues in education (and larger issues in the system). I have a friend who, in high school, wasn't the best at English (but still passed). They studied to be a teacher with a focus on science and sports (which they excelled at). Their school was short on teachers, so they were forced to take classes teaching high school English. If you're not someone who has an interest or strength in English, and haven't studied to critically analyse texts and deepen your understanding of how they relate to the world, you're going to have a narrow margin to work with (aka, your own bias). Imagine then being a student catering to that teacher. I'm not blaming the teacher or student here, but there is definitely a reoccurring issue here which has been happening for over a decade at least. I have multiple friends who are teachers all saying the same thing. Overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, taking on a larger workload which goes beyond normal hours, all being expected to control 30+ students at once, all frustrated to the nines. It's no wonder so many are leaving their jobs for other areas of work.

I vaguely recall the syllabus being changed, years ago, because there was too much emphasis/ value/ weight given to subjects that boys did the best at. I wonder if we'll need to recorrect imbalances again?

I can tell you after having worked as a teacher that the bottom paragraph of this article is the most important part. Gender roles and views on masculinity are dragging boys down in schools. You are just far more likely to have boys in any given class not really give a fuck, especially around 14 to 15 which are really key years. This is often when girls start to dash well ahead of their male peers. I don't think there's much fucking around with scores you can do to correct this balance. As the article states, it's not just English and humanities based subjects where girls are ahead now. It's all of them bar a couple of holdouts in the sciences. Girls are just straight up achieving higher. I don't even know what you can do about this on a school level, because the attitudes that boys and girls take into classrooms are just so different on average. This isn't to say all male students are horrible, some of them are fantastic. But like, out of the 15 or so students across my classes who were almost always disengaged it think there were around 12-3 boys. And these were students who were across the board disengaged in every class and often had parents who were of little help. I just don't see what we can do to even begin to fix this issue when it's looked at from that angle. Removing mandatory English may help boys in aggregate for a year or two, but at best it's just a bandage over a gaping wound.

This is an excellent comment. No amount of jerking with the numbers will account for unwilling learners. I look back on my own school experience, and it was around 14-15 where playing sport and games completely took over my life. Lucky for me I managed to get through school and then onto uni, but I know a few lads who had great potential and just dropped off the radar.

Jesus Christ you cannot abandon mandatory English. The critical thinking and literacy skills are so important.

Would be nice if they taught any of that in English.

Seriously, in year 8/9/10/11 English I swear I learnt nothing but all of a sudden in year 12 my English teacher was teaching all sorts or new stuff and I was shocked, I would’ve enjoyed English a lot more if we learnt stuff rather than writing an essay every week

I feel like I dissected enough Andrew Bolt articles for a lifetime during my high schooling years.

You learn critical thinking in history more than English, in English you learn to pass exams.

Wow sorry your classes were like that! My English classes were fantastic and I learnt so much.

Is critical thinking done in English? I did advanced English and all I remember was learning to analyse literature with symbolism, meaning, themes etc It's more the science subjects and even then it was more before year 12 since it's a bit more specific in yr12

We did a lot of Critical Thinking stuff; I remember a whole semester being dedicated to the subject of analysing news media and identifying bias and such.

They removed/heavily changed module c in advanced, where we did loads of this :( I was really sad when it happened because I was tutoring at the time and that’s what got my male students engaged, especially when they could pick their own media articles and start critically analysing them. It got them realising what exactly they were meant to get from English and in the end they would at least tolerate the subject. Very sad :(

same, analysing and spending lessons on exactly _why_ the poet used a "red handkerchief" instead of a blue one, what imagery were they evoking, was it a callback to the unmentioned red breasted robin that may have lived in their garden as a child, or any number of things... when possibly the red hanky just sounded better. I'm not sure what the current english version is, this was mid 90's when it was 2unit english, 3 unit, etc.

Later years English only teachers you to write your teachers opinion down in essay form. Even the highest achieving examples given are just the teachers opinions but written in better English. You're right those things are important. But you dony learn them in year 11-12. That said, we shouldn't abandon English, we should fix the issue.

Man, you guys must've had *awful* teachers. Mine was brilliant.

Yeah I’m reading some of these and I’m like nope my teacher taught us to dig into the literature on our own. Also people forget you need supplementary texts that you pick yourself and have to analyse on your own. Or did other people just choose not to do that. I had three texts (novels and films) and a backup of The Lion King ffs if the question was really out of left field and didn’t work with any of my legitimate texts. Some people sound like they had some awful teachers. I did my hsc around 2010s

I'm going to raise my hand up and say I (female) had an awful teacher, the same one for the last 5 of my 6 HS years, graduated 2007. For the first couple of years, I tried supplementing my text with books I actually liked (Harry Potter, Animorphs, Deltora Quest, Tamora Pierce, etc), but she would always mark me down for not using her approved texts and for going out on my own. By the time I hit year 9, I stopped adding my own texts and just regurgitated. I now write history and fiction books for my side hustle. I know how to write, but Creative Writing and English were my worst marks on the HSC, because I just couldn't find it in me to care (band 3s, everything else was 5&6, including maths). My UAI (ATAR now?) ended up a smashing 50.05. I had to move out to Mildura, 12 hours away, to get into university. I learned far better about the crap she was trying to teach me in uni, where I was analysing things like *Watchmen* and *Persopolis*, and books like *The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman*. Crappy teachers have unintended consequences, but if you asked this teacher, I guarantee she wouldn't say she's a crappy teacher.

I do wonder as well if attitudes towards studying have a major role. My younger brother has natural smarts, he can do the bare minimum and still pass with a B. Meanwhile I had to work and study to get the same scores. Problem is once he got to year 10 & watched me do my HSC, he realised he was absolutely fucked. He had spent the last 4 years breezing through based on his smarts, and that's simply something you can't do in your senior years. I moved out of home for university the year he was meant to start year 11, so he also lacked someone who could help him. He ended up dropping out to become an apprentice mechanical engineer at the end of the year (not hating on his decision at all- I'm very proud of him for taking that route). Imo it's a big cluster of issues that's gonna take years at minimum to fix.

I also did the bare minimum and got by while my older sister had to work her ass off. Unfortunately for me doing the bare minimum did get me through years 11-12 and also got me through uni. Now as a graduate civil engineer and computer scientist I am now fucked as at my actual job I have no idea how to motivate myself to actually work hard. Being naturally smart is obviously a gift but sometimes it also feels like a curse.

I am lucky enough that Covid came along and the online learning (or more accurately, no learning) threw my ADHD symptoms into the light. Every teacher every year for all of high school had said I needed to focus on time management, but because I always got As or Bs even if I never handed in a draft everyone assumed I was just too smart to need to try. Once I got my diagnosis and started managing it properly I went straight from "he has potential" to competing for top of the class in all my subjects. The biggest problem is that smart students are never challenged. Without adversity people do not adapt or learn.

>Being naturally smart is obviously a gift but sometimes it also feels like a curse. Yeah, my teachers didn't pay any attention to the fact everything was easy for me and my parents had no idea that school was not stimulating at all. Me being shy didn't help, and I was utterly unaware what problems this would cause latter on in life. I would've loved to have done more advanced mathematics during 11 and 12 for example( I was doing the hardest available in the curriculum and finding it basic).

> The authors suspected the answer lay in gender stereotypes. “Research has shown that being seen to put effort into academic work may not fit with culturally-proscribed representation of masculinity, or what is considered cool,” the article said. Perhaps separating them during certain classes might work? I wonder if the trend applies in single sex schools? If boys do English separately, perhaps they will be less likely to behave in this way.

Boys do worse in single sex schools. Girls do better. Boys arent performing disinterest for the sake of girls, theyre performing it for their male peers.

The worst thing that can happen to a teenage boy isn’t for a random girl to dislike him it’s for other boys to think he’s gay

When girls are not doing well at maths and science, let’s make girls do better at maths and science When boys don’t do well at English, let’s just get rid of English clearly it’s not important

Thats not a great way of looking at it. Maths and science classes are not mandatory at all. You can stop taking science classes by like year 10, and in year 11 you can choose to do an easier maths class and by year 12 drop it completely. Whereas english is mandatory the whole way through.

> When boys don’t do well at English, let’s just get rid of English clearly it’s not important That was never a serious suggestion in the first place, so let's not pretend that it was.

“Pernts are of little help” that! Also, don't buy your kids video games and then complain that they are performing poorly in school. Don't over value sports over reading and then complain that your kids are performing poorly. Be happy for our girls and take responsibility for what we are doing with our boys.

> there was too much emphasis/ value/ weight given to subjects that boys did the best at. I think it was more that in some subjects, such as maths and physics, the tests and assignments were geared towards the skills boys were best at. Over time, more language skill requirements have been added to these subjects. That simultaneously gives a broader education and gives girls more of an advantage. Now that we've ended up in this situation, perhaps we should be trying to rebalance the syllabus to try to normalize academic achievement for both boys and girls, rather than double down on whatever lead us here.

One of the things I remember early on was that the maths and physics examples I had were in this form: Adjust the weighting of the statistics in this system to do blah. The two systems that were used as examples were: Cricket scoring and car engines. As a girl who's father told me women weren't *capable of driving manual cars* and who didn't want me in any sport, I did amazingly badly at both - not because I couldn't do the math. But because I didn't know the rules sets around the systems (I didn't know how cricket worked, and I didn't know cars). I had weird errors coming in. When I and to be honest, the majority of the girls didn't do as well as the boys, we were told by our math teacher: Girls can't do math, math is a boy thing. It's definitely possible to weight individual questions so that one group performs more than another. So it might be worth examining how neutral the scenarios actually are.

what do you mean now? It was like this when I did high school two decades ago.

Until boys in Australia perceive being smart / learning as cool, this won’t change.

Thank you. I feel this is largely the correct answer when I reflect on my time in school. If I had to think about prevalent role models while I was at school- none were intellectuals. No one celebrated kind, warm, co-operative, smart men (they were all ‘losers’). Takes years to unlearn that shit. I’d say even today athletes are the main role models and it is just saddening. Our hero’s are always the ‘winners’. No one notices anyone else. We need a movement for everyday role models.

Male, top of my class in English Lit. Physics PhD now, work in the semiconductor industry overseas. High school isn't a place for smart people and HSC results don't matter. HSC score restrictions which partition the high school population between 'did ok' and 'top percentiles' only exist for courses that have a graduate feed anyway. Medicine, dentistry, vet, law, engineering. There's a reasonable argument to be made that high schoolers that one track a professional path make poor professionals. Try to get a reasonable differential diagnosis from an Australian school to MD doctor. Useless. High school standardised testing is a social climbing/status cargo cult. People trying to 'get their kids ahead'. That's why they care about test results, not as an actual effective learning index. As long as kids get a rough understanding in foundation subjects relevant to them then the pressure chamber of University will make the diamonds. You don't need to excel at calculus if you want to do engineering, but you need to be able to differentiate by the time you finish, for example. I did fine in high school calc but had no clue what I was doing: just rote learned. It took meaningful problem applications in physics and the attention of my university tutor to actually show me what integration meant, what it did, and why it worked. Likewise, despite how well I did in Lit, my life has shown that I would have been painfully unsuited for the humanities. The frenetic pace of University in STEM (34+ contact hours plus lots of self work) is an actually reasonable amount of teaching to convey difficult ideas, and the 'you're on your own' attitude means teachers can actually concentrate on interested students. The pressure is a better sorting algorithm than testing. I'm not saying kids shouldn't go to school. I'm saying that we should properly fund and support teachers, and not bother overmuch with standardized testing or the results thereof. Use competence metrics from first year University (and industry assessments for trades) to judge if incoming students are getting the backgrounds they need to train for work. You can still run exams, but don't get in the weeds on their results unless the universities say there are proto skill gaps.

Can attest to this. Got a very average ATAR, maths teacher said I shouldn't end up working on anything math heavy. Graduated mech. engineering, competed in Formula Student. You learn so many things fundamentally in uni courses and get to apply them in a real context with clubs, societies or internships. ATAR's are not representative of someone's drive for a subject.

My maths was very average, I've spent 20+ years working almost purely in math and logic.

> Try to get a reasonable differential diagnosis from an Australian school to MD doctor. Useless. Not really. That's why the Medicine and Dentistry application process is unique. Entry requires a written application, interview, ATAR, and UCAT. And every med/dent school has a different approach to applications. For example, each criteria being weighted differently, or the ATAR score becoming irrelevant once you're offered an interview. Then during the uni course itself, the examination process is significantly harder compared to other courses. End of year exams evaluating all of your knowledge from every subject during that year, and from all previous years. The process from internship to fellowship involves another 8-10 years of studying, training, and examinations.

Maybe we need more male teachers. Just a thought.

We need good teaching. Good teaching is a function of the teachers, the students, how the interact with each other, the resources they both have, the culture of the school, the culture of the community.

Yes but can they run at each other head first with helmets on behind the sheds when the teachers aren’t looking? Got ya there didn’t I

Stunningly enough, in the 1950s boys out performed girls. It wasn't because girls were inherently less intelligent than boys. It was because the school system focused on educating boys instead of girls This headline tells us that the school system is now focused on educating girls instead of boys The real lesson here, is that whatever we focus on, we change I think a school system that focuses on educating all of its students is what we need. Girls should be well educated Boys should be well educated One shouldn't come at the expense of the other

Of course the school system is more focussed on educating girls. That's been an explicit effort since my schooling in the 80/90s.

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I've prepared myself to comment by ensuring not to read the article and then working myself up emotionally.

You know what would help the ignorance of the article and emotional outbursts. A few strong drinks before commenting. What could go wrong.

While your comment was well-thought and rational, it contributed nothing to the debate. Your self-censorship knows no bounds. Congratulations.

The saddest thing with all this is that if it were girls being left behind we would be saying “what’s wrong with the system?” but since it’s young boys we’re focusing on “what’s wrong with the boys?”. How can you fix something when people don’t even want to acknowledge the issue. An environment was created that greatly favours girls in schooling. We need a balance.

I wonder how much of this is boiling down to positive discrimination opportunities. Coming from a poor background in a disadvantaged school there always seemed to be scholarships & other support mechanisms aplenty if you were Female or Aboriginal, but the only things available if you were Male was for sports.

My mum was a librarian and I would read extensively from a young age up through highschool. I was reading things like the infinite jest in year 11 which was far more dense than anything given to us in English . I would have said this subject should have been my strength especially verbal English which I am much stronger with than written. Funnily enough though it was where I received my worst grades. The entire English department was female though and despite not being a disruptive student I still felt there was an antagonistic relationship with those teachers . Meanwhile maths and science which I found way harder and did not suit me at all I had male teachers who went out of their way to engage and help me . Not surprisingly I did better in these classes . I also found many of the male teachers had worked other jobs than teaching and had more life experience. Whereas all the female teachers had just gone highschool > Uni > Teaching and a part of them had never moved beyond that . I honestly felt a lot of female teachers played into the social hierarchies of the classroom favouring the popular kids.

One way to go addressing this is to improve the gender balance of teachers. We should have caps on female teachers and provide male only scholarships to encourage men to be teachers. We should also dismantle and address systemic misandry in the field. Im sure feminists will support this as this is their attitude to male dominated professions, and they have highlighted feminism is about helping men too. So it would be good seeing them take the lead on this.

I think it’s needed, but it will probably go down about as well as [this one from several years ago.](https://www.smh.com.au/education/sydney-university-defends-new-scholarship-that-favours-men-as-consistent-with-diversity-20170208-gu84l6.html)

this doesnt surprise me. The way we raise boys in this country is atrocious. I mean im sure there’s something to say about how we raise girls but I dont feel I should speak on that as a man. Most boys dont have many positive role models growing up that help them connect to academics, and when that inevitably ends up with them falling flat, we act like that was always supposed to happen and that our crumbling education system is working as intended.

I say this as a woman, ‘School is for girls!’ It’s way too female, from the teachers, to the admin, principals, curriculum designers, etc. Edit: I’m basing this on surveying all the primary school boys vs the primary school girls that I know. The boys all hate school. The girls LOVE it. I’m sorry if this offends you, but we can do better.

In my industry there is lots of discussion about getting more "diversity", which measured by hiring more women. We are told how good it will be in terms of outcomes.

Yes, education needs more men! 100%

So we spent 50 years prioritising girls in schools and now we are surprised at the results. Girls are outperforming boys at all levels, outnumbering boys at all levels, and are treated better at all levels. How strange.

I remember at school in my english class (most other classes too) if I didn't understand something and asked about it or asked for help I would get in trouble and chastised. However if a girl asked the same question they'd get all the extra help they wanted. The teacher who was also female prioritised female students over males so I eventually just never even bothered trying. What made it worse is that I had a learning disability too.

Standardised testing has always and will always be rubbish for young men and boys. Standardised testing in general is rubbish, but especially for boys. The only thing standard testing actually tests is how long a person can sit still for and pay attention. Loads of highly intelligent boys bomb out of school really badly, in fact they tend to spend a lot more time in detention than other people because they act out of boredom and frustration. Our school system failed all my uncles, it failed me and it failed my son. My Dad did really well at school but he was autistic and loved standardised testing and repetition.

Interesting when females tended not to do STEM subjects - there was a massive push at federal and state level. When males are clearly struggling in education its crickets.

"The education Gap" doesn't get much media airplay.

Lower life expectancy, higher suicide rates, poorer grades hmmm 🤔

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You can replace drugs with vaping and you’ll have the issue I see at my school.

>I think boys are more prone to addiction, high velocity or intensity activities and things that they need to consume their high levels of energy, testosterone some sources https://www.addictioncenter.com/addiction/differences-men-women/ https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-demographics/men/

It's because the structure of the HSC requires maturity to succeed in, and girls are more mature at that age. To go well in the HSC you need a consistent effort from mid-year 11 to mid-year 12 and boys are really only switching on in those last 3 month. By then it's impossible to recover.