Women’s rights, gender equality, equal opportunity — things we’ve had the opportunity to take into consideration throughout the last few centuries. Due to the admirable intensification of protests and reform campaigns, the divide in gender equality has been greatly improved. But, have we gone too far?
A recent study in the Harvard University Press would have us think so. According to statistics presented in this study, although male students outnumber female students in enrollment from kindergarten to sixth grade (100 to 116), female students outnumber male students beginning in middle school (100 to 92). The gap only increases in the context of high school (100 to 89) and college (100 to 79). Many sources have been explored as predominant influences on this new and ever increasing divide.
One more controversial conjecture is that the American education environment has sought so greatly to take girls’ learning preferences into consideration that boys no longer connect to early education as they once did. That is, while girls tend to favor a more lecture-based approach, boys appear to progress best through a discussion-based and hands-on educational structure. It is clear that something must be done, as the overall numbers of men enrolled in college and higher occupational spheres are decreasing.
Rather than looking toward an approach which would facilitate one specific gender, we must look toward an approach to reform that takes both genders into consideration.
DYLAN GLENN
Pleasant Grove
