Thursday, December 21, 2000 Older Editions

Where the boys aren't

By Adam Groff

Recently, 48 Andover High School Students were inducted into the National Honor Society. Thirty-seven of them were girls.

Of the 33 existing members at the time, 20 were girls.

Of the Andover High students who achieved honors or high honors for the first term this fall, 576 were girls and 482 were boys. In the high-honors category alone, the margin was wider. Girls attaining high honors outnumbered boys in all grades by an average ratio of about three to two.

What accounts for this discrepancy? It's certainly not because there are more girls than boys at the school. Currently, there are 800 girls at AHS and 825 boys.

The Townsman asked a number of administrators, teachers and students what they thought about these numbers. Many were not surprised.

Principal Peter Anderson, who is in his first year at AHS, said that he remembered a greater number of girls in the NHS at his previous post in Illinois, and he said with regard to the possibility of a trend showing higher female achievement, "I suspect if it's true in Andover it's true everywhere."

"It's always been that way," asserted Lois Roberts, head of the English department. Roberts says she has taught for over 40 years, and in many states. She has been at Andover for four years, and she was at Haverhill previously.

"It's the 'good little girl' syndrome," she says.

"They do their work, and as a result of that they come out looking stronger," says Roberts. "They're more obedient, and they're taught to be more obedient. It's your basic gender stereotyping -- which does not mean that all girls are obedient, but, as a girl, that's what you're taught. If a little boy is rebellious, people think it's cute, but if a girl is rebellious it's inappropriate."

School Committee member Dick Collins, who taught social studies in Andover from 1959 to 1996, also alluded to gender socialization.

"I think it's just part of the teenage culture growing up," he said. "For boys, it's not as macho to try hard in school. Years ago, I used to say in jest to my girls, 'How come you're so smart in my class but you're so dumb when you leave here?' -- meaning they didn't go to college, like they do now. I was actually making a feminist statement. As long as I can remember, girls have always done better as a group than boys. I don't see it as a terrible fault, I think it's simply a product of our culture."

In fact, a Dec. 7 article in Time magazine reported that since 1992, college attendance among men has been in decline, and today only 44 percent of college undergraduates are male.

"It's really hard to say," why girls perform better, said junior Megan Pinksten, co-founder of the student group Girls' Leadership Action Motivator, or GLAM.

Pinskten started GLAM earlier this year because she wanted to provide an all-girls environment where girls could build their self-confidence.

"In most of my math and science classes there are a lot of really intelligent guys, but in my English and history there are lots of girls with deeper insights. It could be attributed to the fact that girls mature earlier than guys," she says.

Anderson lent support to Pinksten's observation by citing a number of well-known studies, one by the American Association of University Women, showing that, in general, females tend to opt out of courses in the higher levels of math and science.

However, says Mary Ellen Duffy, head of the science department, that's not true at AHS.

"I think it's fairly balanced," she said of the gender ratio in the science program. She noted that Andover has always been "a big science school," and that a majority of students, male and female, opt for four years of science classes. She also said, however, that the ratio in upper-level science classes changes from year to year, but that in general more boys tend to enroll in "hard" science classes like physics, while more girls tend to choose "soft" sciences like biology. Currently, she said, there are 15 students enrolled in advanced-placement physics, and only one is female. Of the 17 enrolled in advanced-placement environmental science, however, 11 are girls.

"We've always been very cognizant of girls in science," said Duffy. "A few years ago I had a couple (of) teachers involved with the Wellesley program on gender equity. They held workshops for teachers to ensure that they're recruiting women and minorities into science. They took a look at Andover and found that as far as national and state averages, we had a fairly high number of girls in science and math."

Mathematics department head Donna Pappalardo said that although, on average, boys tend to perform slightly better in math, "one thing I've noticed is that boys are much more difficult to get to do homework, starting around the sophomore year."

Other student opinions on the matter appeared to be fairly uniform and in agreement with many teacher observations.

"I'd say a higher percentage of girls put in more effort than guys," said senior and NHS member Jonathan Ofria. "I guess maybe, if you're a guy, you might be afraid to get ragged on. Some guys joke around and say, 'Oh, you think you're so smart,' when someone gets good grades."

Junior and recent NHS inductee Daniel Lentz agreed. "It's not that girls are smarter, but their work ethic is probably better," he said. "Maybe they mature faster and carry more responsibility to their daily work. I know we had a huge history test recently, and I stayed after school to ask the teacher additional questions; when I showed up, there were eight students there, and I was the only boy. In class I don't notice too much difference, but outside class girls just seem to work harder."

"I think girls stick together in groups more," suggested junior and fellow NHS inductee Julie Marvin. "One person doing something would probably encourage a friend to do the same thing. I know the community service I do, I do with all my friends. Also, the girls I know that do well in school get a lot of parental pressure. In high school, I think parents keep a closer watch on their daughters than on their sons. I think it has nothing to do with intelligence, more with work ethic."

School Superintendent Claudia Bach, reflecting on the issue, said, "I think the old way of looking at this is that you'd expect to see girls excelling up to and including high school, but then the boys caught up in maturity and soared ahead. Looking at the situation 10 or 15 years ago, people would believe that."

Her remarks suggested that students perform up to expectations, and she expressed satisfaction with the apparent results of Andover's gender equity initiatives in math and science.

However, Bach also expressed concern about the disparities in student performance, particularly if students are getting a message that it's less desirable or less expected for boys to try hard in school.

"If those sort of stereotypes are alive and well, then we should look at that," she said. "All stereotypes need to be addressed. It should be as important for boys to perform academically, it should be as high a value, as for girls. The gender initiative now is very clear in saying it is a gender initiative, not a girls' initiative."