Lately, we've been working with Jonah to work on his homework more efficiently and keep track of assignments. He's a smart kid, but without some pressure from us, he's perfectly content with a B in his classes.
Talking with other parents of teenage boys, Slacker Boys seems to be a common issue. They really just don't care about being perfect. On the other hand, I am hearing the other problem from the parents of girls. Girls are feeling extreme anxiety about school work and social pressures. Several new books
describe this problem.
So, what's going on? Are parents to blame?
Apt. 11d 
Sunday night, we had a conversation with Eldest Raggirl, entitled, “If you don’t understand the concepts, both of your parents are good at math and can help you. If you do understand the concepts, there is no reason you should not be getting 100% on every math test.” This was in the context of our not being suitably impressed with the 93% she got on the last math test.
So, yes, I am to blame. I don’t know if it is gender specific (my mother claims to have a “Math Phobia” and just “can’t do math,” and I want my daughters to understand that she is just damned lucky that my father was an acceptable money manager.) (Also, I don’t have any sons.) But Eldest Raggirl is really smart, and generally self-motivated, and the job of a parent is to poke the weak spots, and if the weak spot happens to be settling for an A-minus in math, then that is where I will poke.
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If you do understand the concepts, there is no reason you should not be getting 100% on every math test.
I thought only Koreans did that.
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Hasn’t it always been like that? Girls in their teens are extreme conformists, and therefore mostly well-behaved (with conflicts arising only when their peer group and their parents have different expectations, which makes pleasing everyone impossible). Boys are much more likely to be “free spirits” or “rugged individualists,” some of whom, after dropping out, go on to become Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, and others of whom go on to prison. I mean, isn’t that the world of “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best”?
The only new problem I could see is if our society has less place for free spirits and rugged individualists than it used to, but I’m not convinced that’s true.
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I thought only Koreans did that.
Jews have been Koreans longer than Koreans have.
The point wasn’t that she had to get 100% on every math test, but that the attitude should be toward improvement, not resting on good enough.
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y81,
I think you’re basically right. As I recall, Gilbert Highet in his very good book “The Art of Teaching” (1950) describes teen girls as being like horses–high-strung, prone to shying, and capable of amazing amounts of work.
(I recommend the book to everybody, with the warning that the newest edition has a stupid hippie cover that most people will find embarrassing.)
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y81, You may be entirely correct that this isn’t a new problem. I am not sure. People are arguing that expectations for girls are higher than ever, because there are more opportunities than ever before. People no longer expect their girls to get married after school and become housewives or nurses. They expect their girls to become doctors and lawyers, so if you combine natural perfectionist tendencies with higher expectations that you get neurotic girls with are cutting themselves. I’m not sure that I agree with that assessment, but I thought I would throw it out there for debate.
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I’m not sure how I feel about the attitude of always seeking to improve things. On the one hand, trying to be better seems like a good idea in general. On the other hand, when confronted with supervision by someone with that attitude, the obvious solution is to start every new thing by screwing up as much as possible and to never fix more than one problem at a time.
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Ragtime, a 93% is a fine grade.
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It just seems wrong to pile stress on people who can’t legally smoke or drink.
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As a teacher in an all-girls school, I have to say I know plenty of students who would hear that speech and think, “Nothing I do will ever be good enough, and I can never make mistakes.” Ragtime, you know your girls better than a random internet stranger, of course, but I do think that is the kind of thing girls are especially sensitive to internalizing (of course, not all girls, and not to say that certain boys wouldn’t too).
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“Ragtime, a 93% is a fine grade.”
Depends on the kid. My 5th grade daughter was getting 106% and 113% in her Latin (they have extra credit), but then she missed six straight days of school due to illness, and then she brought home a 91% on her Latin. That was a big deal because languages (like math) are cumulative, C normally gets by with an excellent memory, and I was afraid that she was starting to enter an academic death spiral. I was very concerned, and I don’t think unreasonably.
Also, it makes a difference if the 93% was due to carelessness and bad test-taking habits. Kids need to understand that once they finish the last question, they need to go back, check for any skipped questions and re-check their work with any available time, rather than picking up their copy of the latest Warriors kitty adventure book.
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Jackie said:
“I do think that is the kind of thing girls are especially sensitive to internalizing (of course, not all girls, and not to say that certain boys wouldn’t too).”
My fifth grade girl is of the bright, sloppy and distractable variety.
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Of course 93% is a fine grade.
Not to defend my own parenting, but . . . Eldest Raggirl is a joiner, and this was her first trimester in Middle School, and she was in the fall play, and also a peer counselor, and a bunch of other things, (including the anti-smoking club, that we tease her about, because nobody in our family smokes, and none of her friends’ parents smoke, and she couldn’t think of anyone she knows who actually smokes, so what’s the point except to think badly about strangers?)
Anyway, up until this year she was always getting A’s in everything, and she finishes her first trimester with a B is math, and an A is Science which we are told is due only to rounding. Meanwhile, she’s trying out for the Spring Musical, and we are paying for private voice lessons so maybe she’ll get a bigger role, and she’s got other outside responsibilities, and so we told her that we would only pay for private voice lessons if she could keep up her grades, which meant a A is Math and Science, because extra-curriculars are for your free time after school and study, not instead of. And she was fine with that.
Then, she showed us her first test since the talk, and it was a 93% is math, which in our district is barely an A. (92% is a B+) and was acting like, “Boom! Problem solved!” and we said, “No, that’s a good start, but one 93% on a test doesn’t mean we’re going to commit to definitely paying for another month of private voice lessons. The problem is not solved until we see your average up above the borderline, which means you aim for 100% on every test, not the absolute minimum for an A.”
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Girls in their teens are extreme conformists, and therefore mostly well-behaved
My mother would disagree with you, strenuously.
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“No, that’s a good start, but one 93% on a test doesn’t mean we’re going to commit to definitely paying for another month of private voice lessons. The problem is not solved until we see your average up above the borderline, which means you aim for 100% on every test, not the absolute minimum for an A.”
I was very much unlike your daughter as a teenager but if I received this kind of feedback from my parents my reaction absolutely would have been, “think this A- is bad, wait to you see next semester’s D.”
This type of push towards perfection seems like the perfect recipe for cultivating later misery and self-doubt. I know it can work in turning out successful people but, god, it still gives me the shakes.
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and it was a 93% is math, which in our district is barely an A. (92% is a B+)
With examples like that, no wonder people would have trouble with math. Maybe they should make the tests a bit harder and have a normal grade distribution.
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Girls in their teens are extreme conformists, and therefore mostly well-behaved
Someone should explain this to my thirteen-year-old lump of eyeliner, untidiness, and hostility.
But she has picked up an expectation for herself that her grades are going to be approximately perfect, which is nice. I’ve been encouraging that with report-card related bribery: ($X for each grade over 90, +$Y for a report card with no grades under 93. I have comparatively low standards, but she’s been way over my limits for the last couple of report cards.)
She doesn’t seem terribly stressed about it, although terribly annoyed by a recent group project with slack friends, and concerned for friends who aren’t doing well academically.
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was very much unlike your daughter as a teenager but if I received this kind of feedback from my parents my reaction absolutely would have been, “think this A- is bad, wait to you see next semester’s D.”
I did get feedback like that from my parents, and my grades were wildly erratic (despite the fact that there weren’t any classes I couldn’t have gotten perfect grades in with a very reasonable amount of application). Because they were mishandling me or because of my poor character, I couldn’t say.
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I do think the expectations of girls have changed within the context of girl conformity, because conformity requires a greater breadth of skills. These days, the girl is expected to have great academics (excelling in many subjects), play sports, have a strong social group, have a great boyfriend, . . . . I think the well rounded girl had more limited opportunities in the “olden” days with stronger requirements for conformity. That created hell for the true outliers, but for those who wanted and were willing to conform, the goals were easier to reach, I think.
As with all parenting decisions, I think these interactions depend on the specific child — there are children who will respond with the suggestion to get their 93% up by rebelling, but others just need the reminder that they can do it, if they choose, and that there’s value to hitting the ceiling. My kid is pretty good about telling me when I’m doing the former or when I’m doing the latter (including, I think, in important cases, a realistic evaluation of her own ability to “take it to the next level.”).
I realized recently that we parents of practically perfect girls usually think that with a just a little bit more care and attention our girls could do anything at all and sometimes they know a little bit better than us (my daughter warned me, for example, that she didn’t think she was going to be a world class sailor anytime soon, even though she thought sailing was a lot of fun). On the other hand, when I told her that she should fix all her math problems, she agreed with me because she knows she can fix all her math problems.
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“On the other hand, when I told her that she should fix all her math problems, she agreed with me because she knows she can fix all her math problems.”
My dad (the remedial community college math instructor) says, “There are only so many good math problems.” He says it is quite possible to learn how to do every single one.
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I wouldn’t blame cutting on academic stress.
Our culture expects girls to be diligent. I remember our debates at home over our daughter’s middle school report card, which had As for achievement, and Bs for effort. We had no idea how she could raise the effort grade. Wash the teacher’s car? Go in for extra help she didn’t need? Changing schools helped immensely.
School sytems in our area like to blame academic stress for all sorts of woes. They take steps to “reduce stress,” which paradoxically increase stress. If all the good students have A averages, and the supply of honors courses are limited, all the students look exactly the same in school. Thus, they turn to extracurriculars to create distinctions. The ECs have no time limits, and girls sign up for many of them. Thus, the overall time commitment makes it nearly impossible to keep the grades up, and the sleep debt incurred in chasing perfection creates stress.
In other words, just wait for high school.
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Because they were mishandling me or because of my poor character, I couldn’t say.
You just have to know the right buttons to push. At this point, threatening to cancel her Instagram account would qualify as “going nuclear.”
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Yeah… Instagram and tween girls…. Really should do a post on that one, but I don’t have enough info. Tell me more, Ragtime.
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IMO girls — and women — recognize the reality that judgments of us are more subjective than judgments of boys/men. We’re being judged largely on appearance, and by the quality of our relationships, things that we only tangentially control. And so we try to exert maximal control over everything else. Like our weight, like our grades, like our billable hours at the office. It pisses me off, but I’m more pissed off at the implication that the pressure is purely self-induced.
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Well, suddenly all of the kids got Instagram accounts Boys and girls, both, but girls do more posting. Boys tend to lurk, but you can tell they are there by posting something about hockey and they will all Like it. (All the Flyers live in my town, so our collective disposable income just doubled this week.)
Anyway, we told her she could have an Instagram account, but we needed to be able to monitor it. So, now I have her account permanently logged on to her account, so I can see what she and her friends are posting. Every few days, we sit down together and go through her feed and primarily discuss whether she has posted something inappropriate, and why, and whether she should remove the post. (Generally, its been stuff like ‘Publicly identifying one of your friends as a “BFF” might make your other close friends feel bad.’ She took that one down, and then was smart enough not to re-post when the “rank all your friends from 1 to 100” meme started going around.)
Mostly, though, I just make fun of things her friends post, and hope she learns through osmosis. Tween girls take very ugly pictures of themselves in unflattering positions, and then post them with the caption, “I look ugly today.” Why would you do that?
Other girls take flattering pictures of themselves, and post them with the caption, “I look ugly today,” hoping that friends will tell them they are not. I know why they do that, but warn against it.
There are a lot of jokes. A lot of memes. A lot of self-shots. A lot of pictures of new Christmas gifts. They range from the very inappropriate to the ridiculous. And I can make subtle points, while making a joke about it. (For example, a self shot of a girl wrapped in a towel complaining that her hair won’t dry has too much implied nudity for a 12 year old, even though she is actually completely covered.) I point out why the racist jokes are racist and the sexist jokes are sexist, so she can identify and not re-blog when a similar one comes up. And discuss various cases that are near the line. (“If women ruled the world, there would be no wars! Just a bunch of countries quietly not talking to each other.”)
Checking her feed at the moment, apparently Taylor Swift just broke up. Who knew?
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Wow Ragtime. I think our kiddos are about the same age. Mine is definitely not part of an instagram ring (though one might be around at her school). Potentially though mine is a year younger than yours? Lots of changes happening in these years.
Mine is not interested, ’cause she’s very private about what information she wants out there about her (maybe the constant refrain from her dad, but potentially also just a personal standard). Seems like instagram might be a parallel, I think, to Laura’s concerns about Call of Duty for her son (not sure she likes it, but part of the culture in which her son exists). We’re still existing in a girl culture that doesn’t require participation in Instagram, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the demands become stronger soon.
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“Someone should explain this to my thirteen-year-old lump of eyeliner, untidiness, and hostility.”
Sounds like my 13yo, minus the eyeliner, which she won’t wear because makeup is “stupid,” and she can get hostile about that, too.
My daughter got an 89 on her midterm progress report in math, and I emailed her teacher. My daughter freaked out. “Way to put pressure on me, Mom!” Heh. My thing is, though, that it’s her Honors Math (algebra) class, and if she was having trouble with concepts, I wanted to know because you guys keep telling me that it can all go downhill math-wise in algebra. (Me, I loved algebra and still do, and it ends up my daughter likes it too and just had a bad homework grade because she didn’t do it, but that was an anomaly from early in the first term.)
I am constantly in my son’s face, too. If he gets a “2” (out of 4) on any assignment, I’m asking him why. He should be getting all 3s and 4s (4=exceeds standards on our standards based grading). He and I have a deal that he’s trying to get at least 50% 4s on his report card next term. This means he has to push himself a little, but that’s ok. School has been just too easy for him.
I don’t give money for grades, but I do say things like “Let’s go out for ice cream to celebrate an awesome report card!” Ice cream is a surefire winner in my house.
My big issue right now is that my kids excel at school without too much trouble, but they’re not joiners or doers. S has dance and flute, but she’s not trying hard with flute (which is ok–she has a better/more motivating teacher coming up next fall in HS). And my son has hockey on weekends and sax, but he’s not doing anything with the sax except 5th grade band, which is way below his skill level. And I can’t get either to do *anything* more. For the summer, I will threaten to take away computer privileges, which will get them to camp of some kind, but it’s basically pulling teeth.
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“If women ruled the world, there would be no wars! Just a bunch of countries quietly not talking to each other.”
I like that a lot.
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Eldest Raggirl is in 6th grade and will be 12 next month. The biggest issue at this point is “Followers.” Some girls are bragging about how many they have, or posting, “Promote me! I am trying to get to 500 Followers!” Others (including us) are carefully gated, and letting in only friends or friendly acquaintances.
Once a girl blocked her, and she was wondering why, and I got to say, “I don’t know, but her mom unfriended me on Facebook last year, so you’re in good company.”
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I like that a lot.
Sexist and funny are not always mutually exclusive. We can acknowledge the joke, laugh, not re-blog, and then discuss Margaret Thatcher and the Falkland Islands.
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Or Cristina Kirchner and the Falkland Islands.
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Wow. I’ve got to ask my 6th grader, who will also be 12, this month about whether there’s something I don’t know about. I’m fairly confident that my kid isn’t instagramming (fairly tight control of her phone), but I wonder if there are other kids who are trying to attract 500 “followers.” I’m shocked, actually, that a 6th grader would be permitted to do that by their parents (if permission is granted). I guess I’m not shocked that a parent wouldn’t know and that a kid would do it without permission.
Would you be willing to give us a rundown of your instagram rules?
We have iPhone rules, but they expressly forbid instagram, facebook, and any social sites. And, our rule is that she can only email/post on blogs with people she and we know. She’s not allowed to play games like Draw it at all, though I can imagine opening that up to a select few.
I just signed in to my instagram account (which I rarely use). My only “request” (for what I’m not sure) is from someone who identifies herself as being 11 years old, and who has 2531 followers. I presume this is not someone I actually know, but now I feel kind of like a grandmother who writes emails in all caps.
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“…someone who identifies herself as being 11 years old, and who has 2531 followers.”
I give it a 50% chance of actually being a 45-year-old vice cop trawling for perverts.
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“I give it a 50% chance of actually being a 45-year-old vice cop trawling for perverts. ”
I hope so. Though I realized it’s 2500 followed, and 1000 followers. Not sure why I’d make the trawl list, though :-).
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Would you be willing to give us a rundown of your instagram rules?
No specific “rules.” Just that I be allowed to see her account at all times, and that if I tell her to remove a post, she will (which has only happened a few times.) She decided she only wants to follow people she knows closely, and doesn’t want strangers following her, so that didn’t become a Rule, but probably would have if she wanted to rack up followers.
The fact that she knows I am checking her feed daily is enough to not need lots of specific mini-rules.
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Instagram is a huge issue at my school (all girls). There are constant battles about it. I regularly tal to each grade level in large and small groups, about proper Internet use. Last year, it was all about tumblr. This year it’s Instagram. And Facebook, always. Girls often pretend they’re creepers stalking other girls, just to weird people out.
And on the pressure issue, it’s huge. What I see for many of my students, is pressure from parents which gets internalized so that they come to believe they’re not good enough if they don’t meet expectations. And that leads to all kinds of icky things–self harm, anorexia, depression, anxiety. I’m not saying that’s true for every pressured kid, but it’s true of far too many.
For my own kids, I pretty much lay off. We put a ton of pressure on Geeky Boy early on, and it totally backfired. His personality just did not respond to pressure and I do blame our approach to dealing with his grades for part of his depression. Not all, but part. We didn’t do enough building up, I think. Geeky Girl is another story. I put zero pressure on her, because I don’t have to. Yes, she could make straight As and do a ton of extra curricular stuff, but I just don’t force it. I’ve always let her know that school is important and that I support her interests. As long as she’s bringing home the grades I think she’s capable of, I’m good. She has to work some but not a lot.
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Jonah has no interest in Instagram or Facebook, so I don’t have any direct parenting experience with it, but he tells me that it’s a big deal at his school among the girls. They are constantly taking pictures of themselves in the hallway with friends, while making that fishie face pout. My niece has been tortured by the Instagramming classmates. She thinks the whole business is stupid and just can’t relate to most of her peers, because of it.
That Instagram thing would have been horrible for me in Middle School. I didn’t start growing or hit puberty until high school, so I had a terrible body image. My hair suddenly became curly over night and I didn’t know how to keep it under control. It would have been terrifying to put a picture of myself out there, while absolutely sure that everyone was laughing at me.
Please don’t blame yourself for you son’s depression, Laura. I hope that people are telling you that it isn’t your fault.
That said, Steve and I did have to pull back on the pressure on Jonah. While he’s very smart, he is not mature enough to keep himself organized enough to get straight A’s. He forgets homework. He forgets deadlines. He has sloppy handwriting. So, instead of yelling at him, we made some changes this week. He has to do his homework at the dining room table, instead of his bedroom. He has to show me his agenda pad every day after school, and, together, we’re making a to-do list with long term and short term goals. He hates doing this, but he needs it.
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By the way, y81’s more pleasant experiences dealing with a daughter compared to mothers here may reflect the difference between being a mother and being a father to a teenage girl. In a healthy family, the father-daughter relationship can be a simpler, pleasanter, less drama-filled one than that between mother and daughter. It’s unfair, but mothers get to see the worst side of daughters.
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My daughter has asked for a Twitter account, and I’ve said no. Twitter seems to be the big thing in her school. All the girls have Twitter accounts and follow the members of One Direction and beg them for attention. It’s really kind of gross. Instagram… she hasn’t mentioned it, really, but I’m sure she’d hate it. She hate duck-face (what they call that cheeks-sucked-in look).
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Ragtime — how long does it take you to oversee your d’s instagram stream? It seems like your system works because in general, your d is following the guidelines you have without needing to have mini-rules (i.e. her judgment is similar to yours). But, what judgements are you applying? Does she posts pictures of herself, her friends? how about you, her siblings, her house? are you confident that information (for example addresses, locations) aren’t being accidentally leaked?
I still don’t think I’m going to have to deal with this this year (and maybe not ever, ’cause my d is really extraordinarily private,), but I’m prepping myself for an environment where my d would feel excluded from a major social interaction by choosing not to engage. So, I’m prepping myself.
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BJ — It’s not really a big deal. The last five posts she made are (1) a joke re-blog (“A friend told me that I was delusional. I almost fell off my unicorn.”); (2) a picture of her right hand (new blue nail polish!); (3) a picture of her face (no pouty lips); (4) a picture of an old fifth grade party in the school gym (a “throwback”); and a picture of cookies she baked over the weekend. That’s over the past 3 days.
So, after that, there’s her friend’s feeds. When we go through her feed together, sometimes I will comment that she “Liked” something that I didn’t think was a good idea, or wrote “Cool” on something that I didn’t think was cool. But I’m not going overboard if I miss these — it’s more like spot checking.
If I were saying that something was inappropriate every day (instead of every week or two), maybe I’d have harder core rules. As it is, most of it is just stupid. Also, it’s the only way I can find out Taylor Swift’s relationship status.
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“Also, it’s the only way I can find out Taylor Swift’s relationship status.”
And, also, apparently the way that I find out about TS’s relationship status (i.e. your d’s instagram stream). 🙂
I think it is easy to freak out about these things in the abstract rather than in the practice, the key in all the decisions being supervision and communication and the global teaching of values and judgement, rather than simple rules to follow (i.e. no instagram or no call of duty).
I noticed the stupid factor in emails last year (which did, also, require intervention at some point, because of chains that started innocently and then drifted into “you are so stupid” style insults), but, as usual, my d was not a participant, and mostly not an observer. The eventual concern there was how to find important info in the midst of the stupid.
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“the key in all the decisions being supervision and communication and the global teaching of values and judgement, rather than simple rules to follow (i.e. no instagram or no call of duty).”
This is really important, because the new “panic button” item is always changing. After Twitter, Instagram. After Instagram, Snapchat. Apres Snapchat, le deluge.
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It is ironic that girls’ hard work and organization (in the aggregate) works against them in college admissions. Because colleges want 50/50 student bodies, boys can get in with lower grade point averages.
Kenyon’s Dean of Admissions wrote about this issue 6 years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html?_r=0.
This, of course, ratchets up the pressure even more. The girls feel they must be perfect, while the boys can be sane. Now, I’m not arguing that boys’ organization can be improved. It seems to me that most boys can grow into organization, but they aren’t likely to comply excessively with teachers’ expectations. Turning in homework on time would improve many boys’ GPAs.
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My daughter in high school finds Taylor Swift…unappealing. I know she would have been enraptured in middle school. So, there is the positive side of things–middle school is not forever!
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It is ironic that girls’ hard work and organization (in the aggregate) works against them in college admissions.
“Ironic” isn’t exactly the word I would go for, here. I go for “really sexist.” Men need affirmative action? They think girls won’t ant to go to colleges that are 55% female? Like how MIT is having problems attracting qualified men because it is too male?
There are fair arguments in favor of affirmative action in general, but none of them apply here.
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“They think girls won’t ant to go to colleges that are 55% female? Like how MIT is having problems attracting qualified men because it is too male?”
The national average is something like 56/44, so there are lots of colleges where the administrators can only dream of achieving 55% female.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-ratio-in-college/
You better believe that MIT and Caltech and Carnegie Mellon are working round the clock to get enough warm female bodies onto campus to provide some sort of social life on campus. All of these very unequal gender splits are not even the “natural” state of affairs–they’re what happens after administrators have been putting their fingers on the scales to get more of the under-represented gender onto campus. The “natural” split would be even unequal.
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Men need affirmative action? They think girls won’t ant to go to colleges that are 55% female? Like how MIT is having problems attracting qualified men because it is too male?
In the case of MIT, I believe the university is committed to enrolling women because it’s the right thing to do. I recommend the College Navigator site. (nces.gov) Some 12,000 men apply, but only around 5,000 women. The University admits around 850 of each. Your chances of admission are higher if you’re female.
At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the student body’s 31% female. The university admits 67% of the ~1600 female applicants, but only 54% of the 5400 male applicants. Again, your chances of admission are higher if you’re female.
In general, however, yes the colleges have to pay attention to their male/female ratio. If you look at the College Prowler site, there are several categories which purport to rate colleges on their student body. There’s a category for “girls” and for “guys”–both of which rate whether the female/male proportion of the student body is “fair.”
It’s important to remember that men outscore women at the top reaches of the SAT. The most selective colleges are 50/50, and admit equal percentages of men and women. Thus, I wouldn’t assume that every male has been the beneficiary of affirmative action at every college. As the technical universities (and engineering majors in public universities) are very hot right now, and heavily male, it could be that liberal arts colleges just below the very top colleges admit male applicants with slightly weaker records. On the other hand, I do wonder how much of the record consists of things such as extracurriculars, which can be gamed. I think video games have been really deadly for teenaged males in terms of GPA and high school extracurriculars.
Wendy, I don’t understand Twitter. I also kept my older kids out of the social media loop during middle school. Unfortunately, for my daughter that also set her up as a target for the girl bullying. As she wasn’t in the conversation, she was the “odd girl out,” i.e. the girl everyone felt safe making fun of in IMs and such. (highly recommend the book, “odd girl out.”) If I could rewind time, I would have opted for allowing social media, but closely monitoring it. Hindsight is 20/20.
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In general, however, yes the colleges have to pay attention to their male/female ratio. If you look at the College Prowler site, there are several categories which purport to rate colleges on their student body. There’s a category for “girls” and for “guys”–both of which rate whether the female/male proportion of the student body is “fair.”
But isn’t this sort of self-regulating? If MIT is “too male”, then men don’t want to go there, so fewer men apply, so more women are admitted, until you reach an equilibrium. And the men you exclude this way are the men who are more interested in gender ratios than in getting an education at MIT, so it’s win/win.
Considering that in 1950 MIT’s gender ratio was 97/3, and they had no problem finding qualified men, I just don’t see the point.
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“If MIT is “too male”, then men don’t want to go there, so fewer men apply, so more women are admitted, until you reach an equilibrium.”
It’s not really a question of finding “qualified” men at a super selective college. At that level, they’re turning away several highly qualified people for each applicant they accept. It’s more like coming up with a guest list for a good party–it’s a question of creating a certain sort of environment.
And don’t forget that the self-regulation works the other way around, too. If MIT is “too male,” it may create an environment where female students just don’t feel comfortable, so they’ll leave even if they come. There’s the potential for creating a death spiral in female enrollment.
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MIT may be a special case. I don’t think they’d lose many male students if the percentage of male students rose. Don’t forget, Wellesley students cross-register for classes at MIT, and MIT is very close to Harvard.
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Further to what AmyP said, the admissions director at Vanderbilt said something similar, that his job was to build an interesting community. It isn’t a question of “affirmative action” for musicians or math rocks or whatever, it’s that he wants some of those to leaven the mass of generic high achievers that top colleges enroll. On the other hand, a liberal arts university would not want a community composed exclusively of musicians or math rocks (though Julliard or Caltech might be okay with that).
Similarly, most people consider an interesting community to include both sexes.
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