Michael Carley, an educational researcher in a three-college community college district in California, focuses on a problem with an often understated scope.
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This is part two of a two-part piece on men in education. To read part one, click here.
I left off in yesterday’s post with a discussion of reading and its part in education. Reading is critical to education at all levels and it has become very gendered. Women are reading far more than men. This has implications not only for education, but for society at large. Recent studies show that reading literature is associated with the development of empathy.
To this point, a conversation I had with a colleague who teaches literature has stuck with me. She tells me that the women in her class tend to be able to relate to the characters in novels and stories, regardless of whether they are male or female. But many of the men in her classes disengage when the lead character is female, sometimes even refusing to read the work.
Question #4: To what extent has reading become a feminized activity, and how does that affect educational outcomes at all levels? What steps can we take, at the variety of educational and societal levels, to encourage reading in boys and young men? How can we address the market forces that push in the other direction?
This leads directly to other demographic concerns. The same survey question we asked about how many books students read for pleasure we then broke out by both gender and ethnicity. The disparity was most prominent among Hispanic men. The college I am speaking of is more than 60% Hispanic, so this makes a big difference. We’ve just conducted the survey for a second time and we’ll be looking to see if these trends continue.
It’s not just the concern of one college or a few. The Center for Community College Engagement, which produces the CCSSE survey, issued a special report earlier this year on men of color in community colleges. They have some suggestions, but like me, they seem to have as many questions as answers.
Question #5: How do ethnicity and other demographic factors interact with gender to influence outcomes? How will changing demographics affect the issue?
There much more data I could go through, but I’ll touch on just one more issue. We’ve started looking at the issue of women outperforming men in the classroom in a more granular way, separating out both outcomes and demographics. In California, community colleges are expected to produce a student equity plan this fall, so we’re breaking out data by demographics and looking at ways to improve the outcomes of the lowest-achieving groups and reduce disparities.
One of the interesting findings is that women outperform men in every area except one: transferring to a four-year college. I looked at the data very specifically recently, focusing on both whether the students are ‘transfer prepared’, meaning they’d earned 56 degree-applicable units and whether they actually transferred. At all three of our colleges, women were more likely to be prepared for transfer, but men were more likely to actually transfer. The difference was highest at the college I mentioned before with the very high percentage of Hispanic students, leading some to hypothesize about cultural factors within the Hispanic community.
This leads to a whole series of questions which can affect the outcomes of both women and men.
Question #6: How does gender, ethnicity and culture interact to influence the ability of students to move away to college? Are the expectations of young women to care for families hindering their educational prospects, and if so, is it a larger problem when the college is a distance away? To what extent do differences in educational outcomes differ between community and four-year colleges and why? How can understanding these help us improve the outcomes for all and reduce the gender gap?
The problem we see is large and growing. We must find our way toward solutions or the gaps will only widen.
As I mentioned, the gap is underestimated now because of previous disparities in the opposite direction, but the data are clear. To get the public to fully understand it, we’ll need better data, better questions, and hopefully a few answers. One thing that might help is to show what this will lead to in the future, which leads me to my final question.
Question #7: What will this disparity look like in a generation or two if trends continue? How will the growing gender disparity in education affect the workforce? How will it affect leadership in education and in the corporate world?
There’s certainly nothing wrong with growing more female leaders; that’s another cultural imperative. But wanting women to succeed doesn’t mean that we should ignore the increasing problems men face. There may be no easy solutions, but we need to start somewhere.
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Image credit: fontplaydotcom/flickr
I remember a conversation I overheard between two male educators. It went something like this. We need to help men in education. How can we do this? If our stated goal is to help men in education, it will never happen, but if we phrase it in terms of increasing enrollment / retention, it’s got a chance to be looked at. I see it as similar to the anti-rape / anti-violence programs as opposed to helping the homeless. There is a lot more gendering and recognizing female victimization / need in the anti-violence / sexual assault programs even though some… Read more »
P.S. Cynic that I am, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a bit of a confirmation bias in noticing that boys don’t read books with female characters. Is that really much different than the generalized apathy students in general have towards doing the readings? I have a problem getting my students to do any reading about any subject whatsoever. You’re probably seeing a 5% drop in students’ willingness to read a book. I suspect what you’re seeing is that these boys don’t do much reading for any class, and they usually try to BS their way through class discussion… Read more »
It’s the age cohort, combined with culture and gender, that partly explains women’s failure to transfer. I think “pronatalism” is an enormous pressure on Hispanic women in terms of culture and gender. (Pronatalism: the idea that you have to have children in order to be a grown-up, or that having children is the greatest thing in life and you’re missing out if you don’t, etc.) It’s hard enough for anglo women to say they don’t want to have children (or not yet). It’s an even bigger taboo in many Hispanic families to say that you don’t want to have children.… Read more »
Michael, I agree that it’s important to make sure men and boys don’t fall behind in education. But sometimes it sounds like men don’t face a problem, they’re creating one. Sounds like when an activity has become, as you put it, “feminized,” men just disengage. They don’t want to empathize with women and they don’t want to do something perceived as feminine. When women move into any field, men move out. As a woman, it’s hard not to see these discussions from that angle, and it makes me pretty sad. Maybe if we stopped talking about some area being “feminized”… Read more »
Diana, I agree completely. While maybe part of the problem is that certain professions and activities are increasingly seen as feminine, it’s just as big a problem that boys are taught to view feminine in a negative light. It becomes self-perpetuating.