If You Rule Out Discrimination, You'll Never Find Discrimination
Reader Bob informed me of this editorial in the Rocky Mountain News on the gender gap in graduation rates between boys and girls in Denver public schools. The difference? 9% fewer boys are graduating from high school. Believe it or not, the school system is finally turning its attention to this problem:
Okay, what safe grounds would that be--that white boys are not discriminated against? Was a study done, did you ask the white boys what they thought? How will "experts" ever figure out the problem if they have already closed their minds to the possibility that their preconceived ideas about boys just might be wrong? Could it be that the schools are run mainly for the benefit of girls? Could girls have been told for the past thirty years to get ahead and get an education while boys are told education is for girls? I don't know--just a guess. But I guess it is easier to say the whole situation is puzzling then to open up a real dialogue with boys and their feelings about school.
Nearly everyone involved with education is troubled by the large and persistent gaps in academic performance among racial and ethnic groups. Now the similarly large gap between boys and girls is beginning to get the serious attention it deserves as well.
But it's when you look at both factors simultaneously that the real puzzlement begins. A News report last week of the graduating class of 2005 in Denver Public Schools found that girls in any ethnic group are more likely to graduate from high school than boys in the same group. And the gaps are so large that black, white and Asian girls all graduate at higher rates than white boys.
We are probably on safe grounds ruling out any intention on the district's part to discriminate against white boys, so what else is going on? And not only in Denver, but in other big-city districts that have similar patterns?
Okay, what safe grounds would that be--that white boys are not discriminated against? Was a study done, did you ask the white boys what they thought? How will "experts" ever figure out the problem if they have already closed their minds to the possibility that their preconceived ideas about boys just might be wrong? Could it be that the schools are run mainly for the benefit of girls? Could girls have been told for the past thirty years to get ahead and get an education while boys are told education is for girls? I don't know--just a guess. But I guess it is easier to say the whole situation is puzzling then to open up a real dialogue with boys and their feelings about school.
posted by Helen at 2:52 PM
24 Comments:
There is no mild-mannered way to say this. Discrimination is a bad word in our society. It conjures up images of white rednecks and the KKK, and by definition people who discriminate are evil and have bad intentions. Thus, authorities in Denver have to rule out discrimination as a possibility because otherwise the perpetrator of discrimination would be Denver's own public education system.
We need to get back to the concept of discrimination the way it was defined in my youth, before the era of integration and segregation: De facto discrimination as opposed to intentional discrimination. In other words, everyone involved may mean well but there can still be bad results.
This is not a sample set from which we should be making too many conclusions. It counts Denver eighth graders who graduate from Denver high schools. So, anyone who garduates from a non-Denver HS is not counted as a grad.
A simple question: How many of the non-grads moved out of the Denver district, and what was the racial and gender breakdown of these kids?
The article says the state counts differently, including move-ins and move-outs, but the article fails to give a fuller breakdown of this counting method.
Until we have more info, this article tell us nothing.
drj makes a good point regarding de facto discrimination.
I've pointed out these tables at census.gov before. If you look at the numbers for age 20-34 who have a high school education or higher, you'll find black males, black females, and white females are have higher percentages than white males. I had to pull the tables into a spreadsheet to more easily see the totals. But these table fully support Denver's numbers. Anonymous, rightly, points out that this may only be a Denver problem. But in looking at the U.S. Census figures it is a national problem.
dadvocate,
The percentage differences between total males and females in your tables are 2-3% in each age catagory. So what?
I wonder what a similar breakdown of earnings would show?
The Denver sample counted as graduates kids who remained in Denver from eighth grade through senior year of HS. If a kid moved one mile from Denver to Aurora as a 15 year old, and graduated at the top of his class,he is not counted as a graduate in the newspaper count.
A critical unknown is the gender breakdown of kids who moved out of Denver in this period.
And you have some reason to believe that there is an statistically relevant difference in the gender composition of the move-out population that would account for the results of the study?
Based on what?
triwer,
Yes.
Here's a speculation. I note the idea that there is no difference in the movement of boys and girls is also a speculation.
Divorced women have a higher probability of being awarded child custody. They are less inclined to move their families then the noncustodial father is to move himself.
When boys reach teenaged years, they may have an opportunity to live with their fathers. If they take this option, they may move out of the school district. I suggest boys moving to the father is more common than girls moving to the father.
Do you have reason to think there is no difference in the movement patterns of boys and girls? What's your speculation? Lacking evodence, is it reasonable to make any assumption?
Does anyone here know anything about movement patterns of teenagers by gender?
You are the one making the assertion that there is a difference in the gender composition of the move-out population. The burden of proof is on you not me. I didn't affirm anything. I just asked what your justification was.
Now you say: sic"Lacking evodence, is it reasonable to make any assumption? ", Well where is yours? What evidence do you have to support your suggestion that "boys moving to the father is more common than girls moving to the father"?
Evidence, please, as you demand. And let me remind you that proposing an hipotetical causal mechanism is not the same as providing evidence.
I freely admit that I do not know anything about "movement patterns of teenagers by gender", Now, do you know anything about them? If you do please enlighten us. If you don't then answer your own question about assumptions lacking evidence.
triwer,
Sorry. I asserted there was a critical unknown. I didn't assert "there is a difference in the gender composition of the move-out population." Those are two very different propositions.
Is there a difference? In the article it was not mentioned. Nobody has provided information about it in this thread. Perhaps someone knows if there is a difference in the gender composition of the move-out population.
I'd say that is a critical factor in understanding the article.
Anon. 4:52 - The point is that the figures support the findings in Denver. Given the size of the population sample, it may well be a significant difference. I find it interesting that the traditional "victim" groups have a higher high school graduation rate than the "oppressors."
Of course, "so what" is commonly the reaction when the group in need being discussed is white males. How bad does it have to get before you say something besides "so what?"
Dadvocate,
I'd say a 10% difference due to a decrease in white male graduation would be cause for concern.
I don't see education in itelf as a goal for people. They gain an education in order to further other aspects of their lives. So, I'd look to earnings as one factor in overall success.
ologon,
If all the boys in the sample moved out of the Denver district in their junior year of high school, the count in the article would say no boys graduated.
If 10% moved to Aurora and graduated there, then Denver might show a 10% difference between genders, but it would be misleading. Aurora might show more boys than girls graduating.
You are correct that I don't like the survey. I don't like it because it doesn't consider move-ins and move-outs.
Controlling the sample is always important to the value of the results.
Your hypotheticals are always welcome. Where would we be without hypotheticals?
Great title!
Wanderingmind,
It's important to critique studies so we have real information about problems and potential problems. If studies are poorly designed, they can indicate problems where they don't exist, and they can miss problems where they do exist. Poorly designed studies used to highlight problems can also be easily discredited, and may cause people to question the existence of the problem they sought to highlight.
We are also capable of both recognizing existing problems and critiquing studies at the same time.
JW,
If there is a real problem, then the last thing we need is poorly designed studies that can be easily shot down. This leads people to question the existence of the problem.
drj wrote" There is no mild-mannered way to say this. Discrimination is a bad word in our society. It conjures up images of white rednecks and the KKK, and by definition people who discriminate are evil and have bad intentions."
I think you are on to something. Discrimination has become a racist word. It started when some African-American studies types began stating that black people could not be racist because they lacked the political power to do so. Rubbish, but when we fail to pack up and move the rubbish we end up drowning in our own filth.
So now, the word has been polluted to mean something that is done against minorities by the majority. So racism and bigotry against whites cannot be conceptualized.
My daughter attends a fine academic but woefully liberal school. She was excluded from a special lecture because of her race and I complained. Through several emails, it was clear that the faculty could not comprehend that they were engaging in racial separatism and bigotry. These were bright people, but they were not able to grasp a simple fact.
God help us.
Trey
Trey -
I agree. People cannot seem to understand that being excluded for something due to race is bigoted, even if the intention is to not be bigoted or create a "safe space". Many have lost a sense of irony and perspective.
On a side note, if anyone here has ever watched "Strong Medicine", there was an epsiode in its last season where Lana, the African American secretary, takes up the cause of a breastfeeding mother who was asked not to breastfeed at the library (the perfect place because of all the comfy chairs.) Of course Lana leads a protest, and the right to breastfeed at the library is assured. Lana then demands a separate room for breastfeeding mothers, and a seperate water supply. I kid you not, the show did not acknowledge at all the irony of an African American woman demanding a separate water supply and special room for a protected class. If that is quickly becoming the case, god help common sense.
"I kid you not, the show did not acknowledge at all the irony of an African American woman demanding a separate water supply and special room for a protected class."
That in a nutshell is how revolutions are betrayed - they revolutionaries become the ruling class.
Your piece on fight clubs is related to this one. What used to be accepted as normal boy behavior is stifled in school for many reasons. Rough housing and competition are what boys like to do. Schools are female dominated places that see boys as deviant. They aren't much fun for boys.
At 4:52 PM Anonymous demanded of the DADvoccate, "I wonder what a similar breakdown of earnings would show?"
Heh. Cute trick there, to distract attention by attempting to shift the focus on which sex has the role of laboring to produce "earnings" and continue to ignore which sex gets the much more fun opportunities for spending. Often left unsaid is that spending controlled by women's wants adds up to 85% of every dollar spent by consumers and this goes for all levels of spending from necessities to luxury goods. (Source: Oprah Winfrey's Zero XY Generation network, abbreviated "Oxygen".)
Spending is lots more fun than that nasty "earning" stuff.
Now that the 4:52 PM distraction has been disposed of, the problems created by a feminized schooling industry can be squarely addressed. A whole generation of teachers (dominated by women) has been indoctrinated in the nonsense of the now long-discredited Sadker studies and Mary Pipher's "Ophelia" propaganda. These teachers are all too commonly trained to see girls as a mission and boys as a problem. "If only boys would behave like girls," they sigh as they plot to gang up with a school psychologist to pressure some boy's parents into doping the child into a Ritalin stupor. In my abcedarian opinion, attention deficit is less a disorder among schoolboys than is attention-keeping deficit disorder is among schoolmarms. (I'd like to see a study in which the amphetamine derived drugs are administered to teachers and the in-class boredom of schoolboys subsequently measured!)
Boys going on to college find an even stronger institutional headwind aimed against them. Spurred on by womanfirsters, especially of the feminist faction, too many state-run colleges require professors to puff up the "contributions of women" in their general education classes. Along with that, the past actions of men are routinely denigrated even though without the deeds of men there would be no universities. Worse, are the requirements that everyone take what on my campus is widely known as "white men are evil" courses as part of their general education program. Wow. There's a demotivator for boys. Add in the Title IX hypocrisies of closing men's sports and opening a campus women's center (conquered by the womens studies department's feminists, of course) and the result is a man-hostile campus. "Duh-uh!" as a high-school age boy might say.
I'm advising my high school age nephews to seriously consider an apprenticeship in the trades instead of subjecting themselves to the increasingly nasty finishing-school-for-girls that today's colleges are morphing into.
Michael,
You are using Oprah as a source? Oprah? Go for it!
For all you guys who think the society is being feminized, I offer up your poster boy.
Michael i wrote: "In my abcedarian opinion, attention deficit is less a disorder among schoolboys than is attention-keeping deficit disorder is among schoolmarms."
Good one! I am coming to believe that ADD is actually a DIFFERENT way of attending that is not adaptive to classroom learning. I worked with several returning vets from Iraq, three of the fellows had ADD, all three had walked point routinely on patrol. They were the best at it because of their ability to shift attention to novel stimuli and stay on task in intense situations. We ADD folks are good at that.
We are also good at thinking outside the box, hyperfocusing on issues which interest us, and forgiving other people. It is hard to carry a grudge when you get distracted! I am overgeneralizing, but what we do NOT do well is sit on our butts and listen to boring material.
Trey
"Good one! I am coming to believe that ADD is actually a DIFFERENT way of attending that is not adaptive to classroom learning. I worked with several returning vets from Iraq, three of the fellows had ADD, all three had walked point routinely on patrol. They were the best at it because of their ability to shift attention to novel stimuli and stay on task in intense situations. We ADD folks are good at that."
Fits my observations as well. ADD is the norm; it is adapted to hunting and gathering activities unless you are harveting some really big resource, like a meadow full of bulbs or whatever, or doing basketry.
The more bovine (="normal")attention pattern necessay for doing worksheets and other classroom fodder is better suite dto peasant work, and even then, people often get and stay drunk for plowing and such (at least from what I observed in Germany).
Finally, I studied teaching under a female teacher who was great with boys and withh ADD students - she was just totally results-oriented.
Jim wrote: "The more bovine (="normal")attention pattern necessay for doing worksheets and other classroom fodder is better suite dto peasant work, and even then, people often get and stay drunk for plowing and such (at least from what I observed in Germany)."
Wow, I love this blog. That comment STILL has me chuckeling. Bovine. I love that!
Trey
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