<p>another point i want to make is that at my school, if a girl wants to take woodshop, her parents have to call the guidance counselor. isn’t that a little wacky? (im a guy btw)</p>
<p>Yeah, in my IB program, there are about 30 girls and 10 guys. It definitely makes things interesting.</p>
<p>Yes, at my old school if a girl wanted to take auto shop, the parents had to sign like a million forms and inform them like a semester ahead of time!</p>
<p>At my school, if a girl wants to take shop she’s practically not allowed to leave 
I had time to take design/tech frosh year and the teacher was really nice to me without being patronizing - he even gave me extra soap. (This last was probably not because I’m female, but because the guys were wimps and I ended up doing anything that required making a greasy mess of oneself.)</p>
<p>And our school math & science teams are definitely girl-dominated, but, as other people have noted, not because the girls are overall smarter.</p>
<p>At my school, girls overwhelmingly dominate. In G.P.A.'s girls > boys. In leadership girls > boys. In AP classes girls > boys. In science competitions and other awards girls > boys. In fact, there are only a handful of smart guys in my grade. I don’t know if my school is an anomaly or what, but the girls here are much, much smarter.</p>
<p>On another note, I really hate how some of you are like, “girls aren’t really smarter, they just work harder.” As if working hard is a bad thing. Let me tell you something, you need intellect and a good work ethic to be successful, and being a lazy genius will most likely get you nowhere. So stop trying to rationalize your own low ranks/G.P.A.'s by telling yourselves that you are “naturally” smarter. Heh.</p>
<p>I think a lot of what is going on is that girls are able to study diligently without the stigma that is attached when boys do the same. At lots of schools a guy studying every night, etc. is seen as uncool or whatever, whereas a girl studying every night is normal. As a result, the boys who make it into advanced classes are ones who are able to get good grades without studying. This doesn’t mean that the entire male population is smarter, or that the girls only got to where they were by studying. Come on, you guys are supposed to be smart kids. All it does is show a current educational trend.</p>
<p>
AMEN to that!</p>
<p>“it’s usually the females who are valedictorian and salutorian”</p>
<p>Izzy I’d say that’s because they’re harder workers. In high school, most boys, even the smart ones, just don’t give a crap.</p>
<p>Also valedictorian does not mean you’re smart. At all. It’s usually the valedictorians who are crying over their low as hell SAT scores.</p>
<p>I’m a girl and I’d have to agree that boys are, on average, smarter. Just like they’re more physically capable, like sports, being a cop, being in the army… The laws like “having the same amount of sports teams for girls as there are for guys” are stupid, girls are biologically supposed to raise children and be mothers and gather plants while the guys are out hunting. It’s just the way it is.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think I’m in love…You wouldn’t mind spending most of your time in either the kitchen or the bedroom, would you? [/sexist]</p>
<p>No problem. Can I bake you a pie, clean your house, and bear your children while I’m at it? ;)</p>
<p>Well, if it means anything, I’m valedictorian and a girl and I don’t study as much as a lot of kids…</p>
<p>no it doesnt mean anything…</p>
<p>I’d appreciate that maverach, get me a beer while you’re at it </p>
<p><em>gives a pat on the ass</em></p>
<p>IN my class there is an opposite effect-19girls and 30 boys
Also, there is only one AP class being offered to my grade(sophmore)and there are soo many guys in it. I am girl(one of four)and I get really disgusted by it for all of the boys are teacher’s pets and they are very sexist-I get very annoyed
Same thing happened last year for Biology Honors</p>
<p>well what AP is this and what gender is the teacher?</p>
<p>also – you have more boys in general so it seems a little more likely for your school to be slanted somewhat differently than a school with more boys that has more girls in AP</p>
<p>The AP is European History and the teacher is male
The other grades in my school have more females then boys and also my school is one of those diversity embracing schools-we have a diversity day-so I don’t get why this class is like this
One other fact -we had to be recommended for this course and then pass these writing exams to get in</p>
<p>a lot of girls at my school are the average-smart, well-rounded type.
the extraodinarily smart people who excel in one area (math, debate, science, international studies) are generally guys.</p>
<p>i’m a girl, btw.</p>
<p>"I’d appreciate that maverach, get me a beer while you’re at it</p>
<p><em>gives a pat on the ass</em>"</p>
<p><em>becomes appalled</em></p>
<p>But seriously, I don’t think either sex is necessarily smarter than the other, at least biologically. I guess this involves the whole nature/nurture controversy. </p>
<p>First, I tend to disagree with the idea that girls dominate ALL of the honors/AP classes or the valedictory. At my school, these are generally fairly evenly balanced, but that might not be true of other schools, and it’s not necessarily right to generalize from my own experience. It might be true (at least at other schools) that girls tend to be harder workers than boys. It’s not the case at my school; all of the kids, male or female, in the AP classes, are procrastinators and do their homework maybe 80 minutes before it’s due. Perhaps, at some schools, some girls are more likely to see education as a way to break social barriers against their advancement and might work harder.</p>
<p>I do think that girls/boys are disproportionately represented in certain areas, like boys in physics and girls in english, but I don’t think this is absolute; the best English students I know are male, and the best mathematician I know is female. Nor do I think it’s due to any inherent biological advantages. Rather, I believe that it is because of culture. I read somewhere that until middle school boys and girls are approximately equally represented in accelerated math and science programs. But during middle school, girls stop doing this because culture, the media, etc. tell them that math/science/engineering aren’t feminine. Indeed, what do we give our 4-year-olds? Girls get Barbie dolls and Easy-Bake ovens, and boys get Matchbox cars and Legos.</p>
<p>I hope that was reasonably coherent.</p>
<p>Apparently I wasn’t paying enough attention in middle school, because I’ve never in my life heard directly that girls “shouldn’t” go into math/science/engineering. I’ve heard countless times that we’re TOLD we shouldn’t, but I’ve yet to meet someone who believes that.</p>
<p>Then again, I have been told that the guys in my math/science classes are scared of me. So maybe the information I get is a bit biased.</p>
<p>It’s not necessarily “Girls shouldn’t become engineers,” but rather “Engineering isn’t feminine.” Also, some guy doesn’t go out and blurt it out; it’s somewhat more subtle than that.</p>