Enter girls, exit boys

“Girls outperform boys in exams. Pass percentage of girls higher than boys.” Come exam-results season, the newspapers are awash with similar headlines. According to a (great) article “The trouble with boys”:

In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes. The number of boys who said they didn't like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001.

Very true. Life outside a classroom is much more interesting. I personally don’t remember the last time when I was interested in sitting in a classroom to listen to a monotonous lecture (Discussions are alright though). And I can’t recollect a single time when I was happy to write a 2/3 hour exam. The only thing I was keen on doing was to ‘get through with it as soon as possible’.

As per “Gender gap in education” (comments section): (Reworded)

Schools reward traits such as ‘sitting quietly in classrooms, listening without disruptions, working in groups and doing homework properly’, which are all better suited for girls. Boys are much better off in a chaotic, competitive environment where a free-talking and aggressive atmosphere prevails.

While the trend in the west is that girls are found in larger numbers and are performing better in schools and colleges of all sizes, I see a slightly different trend in India. Taking the pass percentage and grades into consideration, what is clearly visible is that girls in India are doing much better than boys in schools and under-graduate colleges. But on the other hand, I find the share of boys to be significantly more in post graduation courses. The ratio is even more skewed towards boys in (so-called) prestigious institutions such as IITs and IIMs.

Digging more, there seems to be interesting reasons behind this phenomenon.

It is written all over the articles (linked above) that that boys have an advantage in anything mathematical and technical while girls are better off in language skills – reading and writing. So, with a curriculum that focuses more and more on reading and verbal skills, girls are said to have an advantage when it comes to schools. And the heavy mathematical oriented entrance exam papers (CAT and IIT-JEE) are said to be the stumbling block for many girls to get into IITs/IIMs, apart from the fact many girls don’t opt to do a post-graduation course.

In all, I think the reason for girls outshining boys when it comes to school and undergraduate exams is because they are more willing than boys to put up with the system. Things could be made much more interesting by allowing some amount of free talk in classes, having short objective papers instead of really long 3 hour exam papers for which you have to memorize page 1 to end of the book.

But the much bigger (and very overlooked) question is: Should one shine academically to be a successful person career-wise? I think the answer is a straight no. If this is the case, grades and marks really don't matter and all one's got to do is to get a decent pass mark to prove a moderate level of commitment.