Girls, girls, girls

National Review, May 25, 1992

THE American education establishment takes the same approach to self-reform as many misguided fat people do to fad diets. Like the overweight gentleman who tries one blubber-reducing scheme after another and yet only finds himself getting fatter, American schools and their liberal advocates pin their hopes on a never-ending series of reports from the "experts." The most recent such report, How Schools Shortchange Girls, comes to us from the American Association of University Women. Evidence of the shortchanging consists of this: At the high-school level girls perform less well in math and science than boys. Hence, says the AAUW, girls are the objects of discrimination. "Bias against Girls Is Found Rife in Schools, with Lasting Damage," agreed the New York Times.

But there is this nagging logical problem: Do discrepancies in performance between groups indicate prejudicial treatment? Then how come, according to just about every academic measure except performance in math and science, high-school boys lag behind their female counterparts? As Chester E. Finn Jr. points out, our boys are more likely than our girls to be held back a year or two, to be placed in "special education" classes, and to drop out of school altogether. Girls test better in reading and writing; more girls go to college, and more graduate.

Are we to conclude that boys are the victims of discrimination in all areas but math and science? That would never do. For the past three decades American liberals have forced a certain mythological narrative on the understanding of life in America. According to this, our history has been one of white males victimizing everyone else. Facts that support this view are instantly publicized; those that contradict it, ignored or suppressed.

It is this narrative dynamic that produced so many earlier "expert" testimonies alleging educational discrimination against non-whites. Mr. Finn again supplies the data: Yes, whites outperform minority members in some areas. But when it comes to science, Asians, even Asian girls, tend to beat out white boys. In math, Hispanic whites beat blacks at the intermediate-school level, but by the time the kids reach senior year the ethnic rankings have reversed themselves. Assume that performance discrepancies are caused by institutional discrimination, and you get a web of byzantine convolution.

But then, if you accept the liberal narrative you're probably gullible enough to believe just about anything. The AAUW is composed of such believers, as is most of the education establishment, which it proves by its ongoing preoccupation with "expert" reports of this type. American schools, meanwhile, continue their downward spiral unchecked.