A lawmaker's
proposal to give male students gender-specific education and easier access to
college has sparked controversy.
Wang Ronghua, who is also director of the Shanghai Education
Development Foundation, said male students are increasingly under-represented
in the country's leading schools and colleges, and are outperformed by female
students in college entrance exams.
This under-representation, he claimed, will have a negative impact on
the country's science and technology innovation and international
competitiveness.
Wang gave a striking set of figures that show a growing learning gap
between male and female students.
Male students account for up to 80 per cent of the nation's 50 million
students who are rated as "poor students", according to Wang.
Last year, male students in Shanghai scored on average 25 points lower
than their female classmates in the annual senior high school entrance exam,
showing "huge" disadvantages in English and Chinese.
At the moment, the proportion of male students in Shanghai's key senior
high schools is more than 10 percentage points lower than that of female
students.
Wang singled out the example of Shanghai High School, one of the best
senior high schools in Shanghai, where the proportion of male students declined
to 35 per cent from 65 per cent 20 years ago.
"I am afraid it will become a 'female school' in just a few
years," Wang said.
The reason for that, Wang said, is that male students mature slower
than their female counterparts in self-control and language abilities, which
are emphasized in the current entrance exams.
Wang recommends that high school education should be more "differentiated"
to give male students opportunities to develop their natural advantages in
creative and practical skills.
But before those teaching methods become a reality, he said that the
bar should be lowered for male students.
Wang's proposal has some supporters.
"I agree that boys should be given some preference in entrance
exams. Girls mature mentally earlier than boys but boys catch up with, and
usually outperform girls when they are older," said Liu Lu, the mother of
a 2-year-old son in Shanghai.
But Sun Ling, the mother of a 7-year-old daughter, disagreed.
"It's our basic national policy that males and females are equal, it's not
fair for girls if they get harder exams just because they are good," she
said. "Using different standards for boys and girls would be a sort of
discrimination."
China is not alone in finding that boys underperform at school.
In the United States, college enrolment rates for women have also
increased over the past 20 years. In 2005, 57 per cent of the 17.5 million
undergraduate students enrolled in college were women, and the National Center
for Education Statistics projects that 60 percent of all college students will
be female by 2016.
Making admission decisions based on gender in the US is banned at
public schools, as well as in private graduate and professional programs. But
private liberal arts colleges do have a legal right to consider gender in
admissions.
Chinese law bans gender-based admission policies in all schools, though
some "special majors" have been given an exception.
Wang Xin, a math teacher at Shanghai Jiaohua High School, said teachers
should do more.
"Teachers in co-educational schools should let the boys shoulder
some extra responsibilities, like being the class monitor, to help them develop
themselves quickly and in an all-round way."
She opposed differentiated admission policies and separate education.
Sun Baohong, a researcher at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said
boys don't do so well at school because they are generally spoiled by their
families, as Chinese society traditionally has a preference for sons.
"Parents should encourage them to take part in all kinds of
activities, especially to face up to some adversities," he said.
Gao Changxin and Wang Hongyi
China Daily
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