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218

High school boys are trending conservative (thehill.com)

submitted 1 year ago by trashhalo@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

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While many believe young people are becoming more liberal, data shows that 12th grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative compared to liberal. Around 25% of high school seniors identify as conservative while only 13% identify as liberal. In contrast, the share of 12th grade girls identifying as liberal has risen to 30%. Many factors may contribute to this trend, including the rhetoric of Donald Trump which appealed to disaffected young men, and the focus of progressive movements on issues of gender and racial equality which some young men perceive as a "matriarchy." However, most high school seniors claim no political identity, and many boys in high school do not actively discuss

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[–] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I find it interesting that boys suddenly are described as "struggling" but only when girls started to slightly outperform them in certain classes. School was designed with boys in mind and somehow they never struggled before. For me the reason is obvious, school is perhaps the one field in life where the sexist upbringing of girls gives them a slight advantage because they are raised to be pleasing and responsible.

[–] circularfish@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For me the reason is obvious, school is perhaps the one field in life where the sexist upbringing of girls gives them a slight advantage because they are raised to be pleasing and responsible.

I can definitely see where that reasoning is coming from. It would be interesting to cross reference school performance against a survey of gendered parental attitudes regarding classroom behavior and to see if there have been shifts over time.

[–] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

The attitude of your parents isn't the major influence, though. In a society that pushes for gender roles, while you can still try as a parent to not enforce them, this won't help much.

When you look at studies (and there are many which analyse the disparities in school) they often conclude it is because basically teachers like the girls more since they are more often quiet and tidy. Sadly, many studies who used anonymised tests still had handwritten tests or don't mention whether they were handwritten, which I think is a huge oversight.

Also, boys are globally less likely to spend time on their homework, which was directly linked to worse grades. Here is an interesting bigger study: OECD study Underperformance in Boys

Interestingly, even with better grades, people still overall believe girls are good in school because they are diligent and boys are good because they are intelligent. I wonder if that couldn't also influence the way some teachers give marks. The stereotype that girls lack talent