Visualizing the school that favors boys as much as school really does favor girls.

Responding to a recent David Brooks column (TimesSelect link) that looked at why boys are doing so much worse than girls at school, a professor of medicine named Nelson D. Horseman has a great letter in today's NYT:

Imagine a school where the vast majority of teachers and administrators are men and where competitive sports are compulsory.

Imagine that students get rewarded for being overtly aggressive in school and that there is a zero tolerance policy for being passive.

Imagine getting extra credit for resisting authority, and having points deducted for being compliant with arbitrary rules and meaningless deadlines.

Well, I would have loved a school like that when I was a kid, but the point is, on the average, that would favor boys and hurt girls.

"A zero tolerance policy for being passive" -- that's my favorite part of Horseman's visualization. It's what law school once was, before we backed off. Change one letter in "Horseman" and you get "Houseman."

I can't resist ending this post by saying one of my favorite teachers was a poetry professor -- a male! -- who especially loved to quote the line:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!