> “This paper suggests that the gender inequalities in children’s maths performance aren’t innate or inevitable,” says psychologist Jillian Lauer
The article repeatedly tries to make this point (plus there's a corresponding editorial that's extremely un-subtle about it), but I don't see it doing anything to evidence it.
Nor do the paper's authors seem to make that suggestion. The abstract simply claims: "These findings point to the first year of school as the time and place where a maths gender gap emerges in favour of boys, thus helping focus the search for solutions and interventions." It does not give any reasoning as to why effective solutions or interventions should exist. While the paper apparently finds a stronger correlation with time in schooling than with age, that doesn't deny an innate reason for a gender-disparate response to schooling.
> “Ethically speaking, we cannot do nothing when we see these results,” says study author and neuroscientist Pauline Martinot at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission in Paris.
I don't see how this follows, either. Especially since they haven't demonstrated that anything in the existing education process is actually discriminatory or otherwise to blame for the observed pattern.
> It confirms the finding across the whole country: the gap emerged in all cohorts, socioeconomic groups, regions of France and types of school.
If anything, I would expect that if it were the fault of the schooling rather than some innate predictable result, that there would be a strong effect from socioeconomic status. Like, if there's something bad about the schooling, why would it be bad in the same way, to the same extent, in both low-income and high-income schooling?
> The lack of average differences between the performance of boys and girls at the beginning of the first year suggests that the causes lie in the environment children experience once they start school
...The environment in which they're actually expected to acquire and develop the skills in question?
> “We all have this common core knowledge of mathematics,” says Martinot.
Do we really? I strongly doubt that. If that were true, then we shouldn't have gone through millennia of history with various civilizations re-discovering concepts like "zero" or having varying ability to work with them.
I have similar criticism about the possible causation of the recent study. This research doesn't disprove innate reasons, it only shows that correlation is not dependent on age but exposure time.
metalman · 1d ago
"The gender gap is present for boys and girls born in December entering their second year of school, the researchers report, but is absent among their peers born days later, in January, who have just started school."
so it's school, or a gendered experience or response to school that is present in all children
in all schools in France and anecdotaly, everywhere for everyone,but not in mice.
So the determination has to be on the question of is it learned behavior, innate skill, or a cultural push(indoctrination), or some mix.
my personal feeling is that it will be exceptionaly difficult to tease out the truth in an ethical and unbiased way....we are right up against some truths about our species here and should approach this with reverance.
How would you tell, in principle?
> Boys and girls receive similar maths scores at the start of school, but boys pull ahead of girls after just four months
So, a divergence starts immediately as they start to learn actual concepts that could be tested?
(Also interesting to see in the detailed graph, evidence for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis in the pre-educated state.)
> “This paper suggests that the gender inequalities in children’s maths performance aren’t innate or inevitable,” says psychologist Jillian Lauer
The article repeatedly tries to make this point (plus there's a corresponding editorial that's extremely un-subtle about it), but I don't see it doing anything to evidence it.
Nor do the paper's authors seem to make that suggestion. The abstract simply claims: "These findings point to the first year of school as the time and place where a maths gender gap emerges in favour of boys, thus helping focus the search for solutions and interventions." It does not give any reasoning as to why effective solutions or interventions should exist. While the paper apparently finds a stronger correlation with time in schooling than with age, that doesn't deny an innate reason for a gender-disparate response to schooling.
> “Ethically speaking, we cannot do nothing when we see these results,” says study author and neuroscientist Pauline Martinot at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission in Paris.
I don't see how this follows, either. Especially since they haven't demonstrated that anything in the existing education process is actually discriminatory or otherwise to blame for the observed pattern.
> It confirms the finding across the whole country: the gap emerged in all cohorts, socioeconomic groups, regions of France and types of school.
If anything, I would expect that if it were the fault of the schooling rather than some innate predictable result, that there would be a strong effect from socioeconomic status. Like, if there's something bad about the schooling, why would it be bad in the same way, to the same extent, in both low-income and high-income schooling?
> The lack of average differences between the performance of boys and girls at the beginning of the first year suggests that the causes lie in the environment children experience once they start school
...The environment in which they're actually expected to acquire and develop the skills in question?
> “We all have this common core knowledge of mathematics,” says Martinot.
Do we really? I strongly doubt that. If that were true, then we shouldn't have gone through millennia of history with various civilizations re-discovering concepts like "zero" or having varying ability to work with them.
Interestingly earlier study found non existent cap in more equal societies https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/may/30/schools.uk...
I have similar criticism about the possible causation of the recent study. This research doesn't disprove innate reasons, it only shows that correlation is not dependent on age but exposure time.