The so called and ballyhooed science/math-gender-bias appears to be genetic – passed on from parents to their children … and if not “nature” then it’s the “nuture”!

I attended a typical run-of-the-mill 4-year co-ed public high school, and both the science and math classes were equally populated by girls and boys. This was true for not only the required classes for graduation in these emphases, but also the higher elective math and science classes as well as the Advance Placement classes from which we could earn college credit while still in high school. In this arena I took AP classes in biology, chemistry, calculus, physics and the gender split was 50/50 across all of them.

I also took AP classes in the more “liberal arts” area including composition, western civilization, psychology, sociology (basically I did my freshman year of college through my high school AP classes, as did many of my classmates who planned from early on to attend college) and again there was a pretty even balance of girls and boys in all these classes. In purely elective study areas such as art and music the balance was still there. However, the two areas of study where there was a noticeable difference in gender balance was the industrial arts – not many girls took drafting, welding, or wood shop (I took all three), and home economics which had few boys signing up to learn how to cook and sew (no, I did not take any of the home ec type classes … I learned to sew at home from my mother and earned a merit badge for the skill in scouts, and by the time I hit high school I was apprenticing with a chef and already could cook!)

Overall, when I was in public school, just as many girls took the same classes as boys and both genders had those that excelled in science and math, and in writing and social sciences, and sometimes in both areas. Parents and teachers expected all the children to assert themselves and learn as much as they could. Teachers were expected to teach. Parents were expected to parent their off-spring and be responsible for their upbringing. There wasn’t a lot of name-calling or blame-shifting going on when it came to educating the children. And the children – we were allowed to be kids!

I don’t know, maybe I went to a weird school … we did have to go to P.E. every day from 1st through 8th grade and then we had to amass a total of 4 semesters of physical education during our high school years – that was both girls and boys! Oh, and maybe that a few weeks each year the P.E. classes were truly co-ed and we had to learn to dance. (-;

Probably the weirdest thing of all – my high school days were 30 years ago! … guess we were just way ahead of the curve!!!