Mens Rights Thread

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Deleted User wrote: »

It looks like they are going to cancel the leaving cert and award predictive grades. This will likely widen the gap between girls and boys. Boys are much more likely to be late crammers.

iptba wrote:

That reminded me of another issue:

Quote:
Teachers 'give higher marks to girls'
By Sean Coughlan
Education correspondent

Quote:
An OECD report on gender in education, across more than 60 countries, found that girls receive higher marks compared with boys of the same ability.

Researchers suggest girls are better behaved in class and this influences how teachers perceive their work.

Differences in school results can sometimes "have little to do with ability", says the study.

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672

Leaving Cert calculated grades open to danger of gender bias
Non-anonymous marking may expose department to legal action for prejudice

It is not an academic exercise as to whether the author's hypothesis is interesting. It is messing with real people's lives. By the time results are out and college places allocated, the question of gender bias will be moot. But for what it is worth, gender bias in predictive grading will most likely run against boys, not girls:

"We are aware of some evidence that boys, for instance, do better in exams than in course-work and this may affect predicted grades."

Ref: https://rss.org.uk/RSS/media/File-library/News/2020/RSS_Ofqual_30042020_SFW_final.pdf

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"Girls" and "boys" do not apply for IRC postdoctoral research funding awards - this is not remotely comparable to the Leaving Certificate!

As made clear by other commentators, females outperform males in most Leaving Cert subjects, and if present, gender bias is more likely to disadvantage boys.

Also, as someone who marks exam scripts, it's very often possible to determine gender from handwriting style, so the conventional Leaving Cert is not really gender-blind.

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I taught and marked a STEM subject at third level. My impression was that the female students were more diligent and conscientious in continuous assessment assignments and class participation. They tended to perform as I would have broadly expected in end-of-year examinations. There was a distinct tendency from (some) male students to coast along and do the minimum necessary throughout the year. They would then turn in a surprisingly good exam performance that I could not have predicted from their classroom performance.

On the basis of my very limited and specific data point, I would guess that teacher assessment (rather than exams) will be more favourable to girls than boys!

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Girls have been outperforming boys in exams for years, with the gap getting wider. Women account for over 70pc of secondary school teachers and over 90pc of primary teachers. Apparently none of these are gender or diversity issues because they benefit girls. But the vague, hypothetical possibility outlined in this article is a gender issue. And you still think feminism is about equality and a shared society? Fool you.

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Reply to @Freedom_Of_Speech: This. If boys had outperformed girls for years and the vast majority of teachers were male, it would be a given than the two were linked. We would have had gender quotas for teachers long ago, along with incentives for more women to get into teaching and newspaper articles year in, year out saying that the education system was failing for girls.

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As another poster said, if girls were failing in exams after being overwhelmingly taught by men, we would be bombarded day after day with feminist drivel about how the girls were victims of a patriarchal society. But it's boys failing and feminists revel in boys' failure.

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This is a joke everyone knows girls do better than boys in the leaving cert.
So its more likely a well behaved girl who gets the same marks as an unruly boy will be ranked above him. This article completely ignores the reality of leaving cert performance. If any thing the reverse bias is much more of problem. As it stands its considered a problem in education at second level that boys are not doing well.

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My experience of gender bias in Irish secondary schools works the other way. Girls are given higher grades and more leniency because they (in general, as much as one can generalize by gender) tend to comply better with school rules, have better handwriting etc. than boys. And the data shows girls pulling further and further ahead of boys academically in secondary schools over the past 20-30 years. Boys are seen as more unruly, more undisciplined and are more likely to be marked down by their own teachers.

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I recently emailed the minister for education about the risk of gender bias in Leaving Cert predicted grades. However my concern about bias risk was in the opposite direction to that expressed by Ms.O'Connor. Her point is accurate in a third level context. However her error is in failing to look at the actual research on gender bias in second level (the topic she is addressing) which is disappointing if not disturbing. The overwhelming balance of the relevant research internationally at second level suggests teachers evaluations are gender biased against boys! A more pertinent piece of research is that by Dr Jim Dueck, a former assistant deputy minister of education in Canada. In 2016 he examined results from the Canadian equivalent of the leaving cert with truly disturbing results. The Canadian system is very interesting as results combine 50% for the formal gender blind exam (like our normal leaving cert), with 50% allocated as predicted grade by the class teacher. In the exam portion he found that boys equalled or exceeded the results of girls in 5 out of the 6 subjects examined. However he found that teachers inflated girls scores to such an extent in their portion of the mark that the girls overall marks significantly exceeded that of boys. This he suggests is why girls now claim 60-66% of places in Canadian universities as well as the lions share of undergrad scholarships. He speculates that teachers conflate academic achievement with girls relative compliance in class.

We now have a great opportunity to research the direction of gender bias in Ireland. We can directly compare the gender breakdown of results with that available from previous years and hopefully then correct for any obvious bias in the statistics.

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This woman has spent her career complaining about gender discrimination. She was on a HEA taskforce to investigate gender discrimination in third level education and advocated the preferential hiring of women to achieve equality of outcome. She cheered when Mary Mitchell O’Connor introduced professorships for women only in 2018. Yet A report from the gender equality task force itself admits that, in the past 10 years, 30% of applicants for professorships were women, and 28% of those promoted were women. Women made up 32% of applicants for associate professor and got 31% of those jobs. Discrimination has little or nothing to do with it.

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Reply to @DavidWalsh: Recently teachers at our local mixed gender were asked to nominate the best student of the year in all 15 subject areas. In one of the years teachers nominated girls for the prize in all 15 subject areas. Yes you read correctly 100% of the prizes went to girls and across all subject areas including maths science woodwork etc. In the other years girls were awarded 80% plus of the academic prizes! So much for Irish teachers being biased against girls. What are events like this doing to the self esteem of our boys. Is it any wonder they are switching off and underperforming.

The Telegraph @Telegraph

Jul 1
We launched a campaign, #EqualityCheck, calling on the Government to consider the disproportionate effect its Covid-19 policies are having on women.

Read more about it here
https://t.co/NoMlpqIVky

Leaving calculated grades and gender bias
Sat, Jul 4, 2020, 00:10


Sir, – Prof Pat O’Connor rightly points out that the process this year of awarding estimated Leaving Certificate grades may contain some built-in biases (“Leaving Cert calculated grades open to danger of gender bias”, Opinion & Analysis, July 1st).

She points out that female students may be at a disadvantage. This may well be the case (although I hope not).

However, the available evidence – such as it is – suggests that the bias may run the other way, and that male students may be at a disadvantage.

In a recent summary document outlining the possible biases associated with estimating A-level grades, the Royal Statistical Society in the UK has highlighted some evidence that boys do better in exams than in coursework and that this may affect predicted grades.

The society expressed similar concerns regarding students from ethnic-minority groups.

For this reason, it is important for the Department of Education to put in place robust, evidence-based statistical models to screen for such biases. – Yours, etc,

Dr LENNON

Ó NÁRAIGH,

School of Mathematics

and Statistics,

University College Dublin,

Belfield,

Dublin 4.

2u2me wrote: »

There seems to be an assumption that 'the truth will set you free' which certainly isn't the case.

If they dislike you enough they'll resort to any tactic available. Look at how Roger Scruton was treated, Trevor Phillips, Brett Weinstein, more recently Steven Pinker.

The culture is clear: they want people to self-censor for fear of backlash.

3 Years Ago, Bret Weinstein Endured The Precursor To Today’s Riots

The protests at Evergreen State College were a Cassandra-esque prophecy we naively ignored, believing these things wouldn't happen outside the insulated and hyper-leftist bubble of academia.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/01/3-years-ago-bret-weinstein-endured-the-precursor-to-todays-riots/