Kevin Baldeosingh
"The gentlemen in the school system have to step it up," said Education Minister Anthony Garcia when he announced the 443 scholarship winners for this year's Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE).
The under-performance of boys is an annual talking point, with headlines usually being along the lines of "Girls outperform boys" and "Boys lagging." On the lists of top students in the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination and CAPE, boys typically constitute just one-third of the group.
This gender gap exists in all developed and most developing nations. But American scholar JP Tate objects to this. "To say that boys are being failed by the education system lays the blame where it truly belongs, with the education system," he writes in his book Feminism is Sexism. "To say that 'boys are failing' blames the victims."
Tate argues that the feminisation of the education system in the United States is the root cause of boys not doing as well as girls academically.
But education journalist Richard Whitmire has a different explanation: "The world has become more verbal," he writes in Why Boys Fail. "Boys haven't."
But what are the causes for the gender shift here? Up to the 1980s in T&T, boys on average were performing as well as or better than girls. The same percentage of boys and girls passed English Language, and although twice as many girls passed English literature, this ratio was actually reversed when the 20- to 24-year-olds were included.
In mathematics, the ratios for secondary school students were on par, but again twice as many males than females passed when older students were included. For French and Spanish languages, equal percentages passed at O'Levels but more boys passed at A'Levels. (See Table 1)
By the late 1980s, however, this pattern had begun to change somewhat. In English Language, the percentage gap between boys and girls widened from one per cent to 11 per cent.
However, the gender gap in maths also increased, from four per cent in 1980 to 11 per cent in 1987. The gap in English literature remained, with twice as many boys as girls passing. Boys also retained their advantage in the sciences, with 20 per cent more passing than girls. (See Table 2)
By 1997, the British-based Cambridge and London exams had been replaced by CXC. Although only five per cent more girls than boys got a Grade Two in English Language, 33 per cent of girls got a Grade One as compared to just 17 per cent of boys.
In physics and chemistry this pattern was reversed, with slightly more girls than boys passing at Grade Two but more boys getting Grade Ones. (See Table 3)
It is possible that the new CXC curriculum disadvantaged boys. The CXC council was formed in 1973 and began introducing its English Language exam in 1979.
By the 1990s, the council had replaced most of the Cambridge O'Level subjects and pass rates increased dramatically, with the biggest rises in soft subjects like English and literature. (See Table 4)
University of the West Indies historian Carl Campbell in his book Endless Education says that a government-appointed committee in 1981 "declared in effect that the real problem was that GCE standard was too high and ought to be replaced by an examination, presumably local, which could be passed by students of lower ability than the 20 per cent of upper secondary school forms for whom the GCE examination was originally designed."
However, Jamaican historian Patrick E Bryan in a commissioned book about the Caribbean Examinations Council notes that "Results are closer when comparisons are made with the grades I and II.
They are much further apart when the comparison includes grade III...the differences are not significant except for a catastrophic fall in Mathematics and improved performance in Spanish." (See Table 5)
In respect to maths, researchers have noted that mathematical problems have become more wordy and that this may be a factor in boys doing less well in this subject as compared to the past.
Bryan writes, "In cases where the universality of a subject (such as Mathematics) precluded a specific Caribbean viewpoint, cultural factors such as language were taken into consideration."
But the core of the problem may have been the change in the types of textbooks being used to teach English Language and Literature in the primary schools and lower secondary school forms. In The Trouble with Boys, journalist Peg Tyre writes, "Reading experts believe that in these tender years of early schooling, teachers who champion the kind of books that girls like and ignore or marginalise the kind that boys like may be hurting boys far more than they could ever realise...At what may be the most crucial turning point in their educational lives, they decide they don't like to read. And they won't do it."
In the Cambridge literature syllabus, the choice of books included many boy-friendly novels, with the main protagonist being males and with danger, adventure and humour being key elements. But, in the 1980s a whole category of fiction suddenly vanished from bookstores. These were novels aimed at male readers: American Old West novels by Louis L'Amour and Zane Gray; crime novels like the Mack Bolan vigilante series; and the more fantastical Destroyer series which centred on martial arts. These books included plenty violence and gratuitous sex and, in the 1980s, such elements had become politically incorrect.
"The gender gap in books developed in the 1980s and continues through today...The feminist movement of the 1970s produced a gusher of books portraying 'strong girls' as protagonists who take charge of whatever challenges they face," says Ralph Fletcher, who coaches English teachers, in Tyre's book.
But similar books for boys weren't available. Whitmire notes, "Although plenty of men are found on the business side of children's publishing, the top editors who choose which books get published are mostly women." He adds, "The dearth of boy books is part of a larger trend of publishers aiming at women rather than men."
Tate goes further, arguing that "Gender inequality is the direct result of feminised education. To deny this you would have to claim that the hugely advantaged position of girls over boys had occurred at the same time as the introduction of feminist pedagogy in education (from the 1980s to the present) but that this was nothing more than sheer coincidence."
Whatever the core causes, the effects are now obvious. The 2001-2004 SEA report reveals the gender gap in basic academic competence: in mathematics, girls are four points above mean, while boys are four points below. In language arts, there is a 12-point gap and in creative writing the gap is 13 points. At the tertiary level, the gap in the faculties with the brightest students is especially glaring: just 28 per cent students in the Law Faculty are male, while males make up just 31 per cent of the School of Medicine.
Some of the developed countries have begun taking action to fix this gender gap, although in the United States the feminist lobby has tried to undermine such policy measures on the basis that helping boys means undermining girls' achievements. But American philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers in her book The War Against Boys argues as follows: "The current plight of boys and young men is, in fact, a women's issue. Those boys are our sons; they are the people with whom our daughters will build a future. If our boys are in trouble, so are we all."
Government-commissioned reports in Australia and the United Kingdom have made several key recommendations to help close the gender gap. These include (1) More structured activity; (2) Greater emphasis on teacher-directed work; (3) Clearly defined objectives and instructions; (4) Phonic-based reading; (5) Male role models.
And some schools in the US have begun taking their own measures. In one primary school, fully uniformed police officers visit at least once a week, not to lecture the students on how they will go to prison if they break the law, but to read stories to the class. So boys get to see a man with a gun on his waist and a book in his hands.
TABLE 1
Selected Cambridge passes (1980)
Subject % Boys % Girls
English Language 17 18
Mathematics 39 35
English Literature 8 16
Sciences 31 20
Source: Central Statistical Office
TABLE 2
Selected Cambridge passes (1987)
Subject % Boys % Girls
English Language 57 68
Mathematics 29 17
English Literature 40 20
Sciences 64 43
Source: Central Statistical Office
TABLE 3
Selected CXC resultss (1997)
Subject % Boys % Girls
English Language 30 35
Mathematics 19 17
English Literature 39 38
Physics 29 31
Source: Ministry of Education
TABLE 4
Comparative average pass rates (%) between GCE O'Level and CXC
Subject
English Language 13 65
Mathematics 31 50
Biology 32 65
Chemistry 27 55
Physics 26 51
Accounts 24 65
Literature 21 65
Sources: CSO, MoE
TABLE 5
Comparative pass rates for O'Levels
Subject
English Language 41 56
Maths 35 16
Biology 43 40
History 45 37
Source: Bryan, 2015
