<p>frazzled, how far can this aptitude for clear observation and common sense take you?</p>
<p>Oooh, thanks for asking! 
I have no idea - but as Jack Nicholson said in “Terms of Endearment” - “Not that many shopping days left before Christmas.”</p>
<p>I just dug out my 1969 HS yearbook. There were 14 NHS members and 4 of us were girls. It was a real embarrassment to be a smart girl in those days. It took courage (or maybe cluelessness) not to hide it.</p>
<p>Fast forward to 2006: My son’s NHS-mates are at least three-quarters girls. It’s taken years of encouragement from teachers for him to get back the voice he started hiding in grade 2 when he started being teased for being smart.</p>
<p>Something is wrong with both of these pictures, IMO.</p>
<p>While our school is evenly divided with respect to NHS membership, I have seen perception bias. Examples:</p>
<p>Huge football player had a tattoo on his bicep, was told to cover it at all times (tattoos are against school dress code). Prom queen went out and got an adorable rose tattoo on her leg. Wore shorts for entire year with no repercussions.</p>
<p>Boy skipped class to meet girl during her open period because they were having a big fight (she was crying). Received a detention. Another girl skipped class and was found in bathroom sobbing (due to boy problems). Guidance counselor took her into office and consoled her for remainder of period.</p>
<p>School dress code is strictly enforced with boys, who tend to let shirttails escape and wear shorts too low. Dress code also permits only stud earrings. Girls wear long dangly hoops and chandeliers all the time but nothing is said (is it because the earrings are so pretty?).</p>
<p>If rules are rules, why the inconsistencies?</p>
<p>I think bethievt is onto something. Its made more interesting by the fact that the boys outperform the girls on standardized measures that are tested, although the university politicians who influence the college board are working mightily to purge the parts of the test that show any gender difference in favor of males. (The math stuff has been a bit problematic in that respect, but they’re making progress on the reading and english fronts.)</p>
<p>
At the risk of being labeled something, although I’m not sure what, I’m going to go on record as having observed exactly what you’ve obeserved, doubleplay. Rules about dresscode and personal appearance are enforced far more often with boys than girls around here. Consistency (and rational rules) would be nice.</p>
<p>Just wanted to clarify something about NHS selection (I am the advisor for the high school NHS chapter where I teach). NHS selection is not made by the advisor, but by a 5-member Faculty Council. This is a rule set forth by the National Honor Society guidelines from the main office in Reston, VA. As advisor, I do not have any vote on who becomes members. In my school, students who are eligible for membership due to their academic GPA are “invited” to fill out a membership selection packet which includes a “resume” of their activities, write a 200 word essay on why they want to be considered for NHS membership, and get two teacher/coach/employer recommendations. From this, the Faculty Council meets to review each information packet and then select those students who meet the criteria of service, leadership and character (they all have met the scholarship criteria by virtue of their GPA). This year, I have 26 members - 12 boys and 14 girls. At my daughter’s school, if I remember correctly from their Induction Ceremony last spring - the girls outnumbered the boys a bit. If a chapter is officially chartered and sanctioned by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the advisor does not have a vote when selecting new members.</p>
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<p>This is a little misleading. There is no particular secret that the standard deviation for males tested in standardized testing is larger than for females. The result of this is that, while median scores are pretty much the same, males have more outliers on both the upper and lower end of the distribution. Since the bottom of the curve is missing for tests like the SAT and ACT, it ends up looking like males outperform females. It would be more correct to say that, since the SD is larger, there are more males at the ends of the distribution, and that in tests where the lower end is missing due to self-selection among test subjects the median scores appear higher for males. If every single 17-year-old took the SAT, and not just those who are college-bound, the median scores should be pretty much the same. </p>
<p>Having said that, there are measurable and repeatable differences among men and women in tests of different kinds of reasoning – it’s just not as big as it looks on the surface, and it is certainly not the case that the median differences outweigh the much-larger individual variations. It’s also not the case that men outperform women in all such tests.</p>
<p>The really uncomfortable results for psychometricians and, well, almost everyone are the repeatable and consistent differences in test results among people who self-identify as black, white, and Asian. It’s amusing to see the mental gymnastics among those who find these things uncomfortable, without realizing that assigning values to groups is a useless exercise, and that it is only individual results that actually mean anything. (You give me a definition of “race” that means anything and I might change my mind.)</p>
<p>(I haven’t read anything credible on this subject for years – here’s hoping the Conventional Wisdom in the psychometrics world hasn’t changed since then.)</p>
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<p>It’s not objective? <boggle> When I was a lad I never heard of the NHS. We did have the CSF, though, and membership was purely objective – if you had the grades, you were in the organization. I’m curious about the NHS. Why the subjective evaluation?</boggle></p>
<p>OK. Thanks for the clarification re NHS selection.</p>
<p>However, in my D’s school I think the invitation is based primarily on GPA. There is no application/essay involved. There may be some screening of the invitees to insure they have fulfilled some of the non-academic criterion for selection to NHS, but I believe this is very broadly defined - e.g participating in virtually any school-affiliated EC.</p>
<p>Thus the 3:1 female:male ratio reflects academic accomplishment. Whether that accomplishment is a function of the girls’ "pleasing’ behaviors, their kick-ass attitudes (8/9 seniors on the varsity soccer team were NHS; most of these are 3-sport athletes), or the fact they spend less time playing Grand Theft Auto, I cannot say.</p>
<p><a href=“You%20give%20me%20a%20definition%20of%20%22race%22%20that%20means%20anything%20and%20I%20might%20change%20my%20mind.”>quote</a>
[/quote]
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<p>Here’s my definition of race. It’s mostly about what you look like and who you grew up with. How you get treated by others has a huge impact on how you absorb your education. I think self-identificaton is a pretty good measure of who you are. Go to the “Sorting People” link here <a href=“http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm[/url]”>http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm</a> and see just how impossible it is to guess what race people are/think they are.</p>
<p>mathmom, those pictures were so small, I couldn’t do the sorting exercise. Although plenty of the people looked like they were mixed-race.</p>
<p>for the op:</p>
<p>Girls go to college to get more knowledge
Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.</p>
<p>“mathmom, those pictures were so small, I couldn’t do the sorting exercise. Although plenty of the people looked like they were mixed-race.”</p>
<p>If you click on the pictures they get bigger. Part of the point of the exercise is that lots of people are mixed race. I’d venture that 90% of African-Americans are mixed race and probably a large percentage of Native Americans as well. When you finish doing the exercise you can also find out how each person self-identifies and what their particular ethnicity/racial mixture is.</p>
<p>In the past, the boys that I have known who have not been invited to join NHS have all been excluded due to a past disciplinary record- receiving a poor conduct grade on a report card, or having detention/s. This excludes them under the “character” guidelines. It might be the case, if a school tends to have more disciplinary issues with boys than girls, that this is the reason for fewer boys in NHS.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nhs.us/s_nhs/sec.asp?CID=125&DID=5269[/url]”>http://www.nhs.us/s_nhs/sec.asp?CID=125&DID=5269</a></p>
<p>If you go to this link, it lists the 4 criteria for membership in NHS and has a great set of FAQ’s. The national organization sets the criteria, and each individual chapter may set their own, sometimes stricter, guidelines as far as selection. In my school, my kids have to do 25 hours of individual community service per year - down the street at my daughter’s school - they have to do 30 hours per year. In my school, the minimum GPA to be selected is 3.3 - in her school it is 3.5. Our chapter requires the essay and the recommendations - hers does not.</p>
<p>Every school is different, but we all have to follow the minimum guidelines for membership that they set as a standard. Yes, it is going on the opinions of 5 teachers, but like a pageant - a different set of judges on a different day, you will get a different winner (sorry, couldn’t resist - I also volunteer in the Miss America Organization - LOL!)</p>
<p>S had some guy friends who were rejected for NHS due to “not enough leadership activities”. I don’t think boys are as inclined as girls to join clubs and be organizers, club leaders, etc. I know my 2 boys are not into the school club thing at all. S1 quit NHS before end of senior year because he didn’t like it.</p>