Men falling behind women (in school)

...you have to work differently with boys. You can't endlessly threaten boys. "If you do this, you're bad. If you do this you'll never be a success." Many schools are based on threat. "If you don't do what we say, your life will turn out badly". The problem is that girls believe that, and feel criticized and feel terrible about themselves ...(but) they'll work. Boys did in and say 'screw you'. They'll fight you. They don't want to be dominated in that way.

In my life I have found that my father's politically incorrect perspective does not only apply to intimate relationships.

I remember an incident with a teacher when I was 11 years old. My female math(s) teacher had graded a test the whole class had taken and had distributed our test papers with our scores. It was a 20 question test. My grade was 95%. It appeared that I had got one of the answers wrong.

I was a child prodigy in math(s) and it was unusual for me to get a wrong answer when doing tests with students my own age. I rechecked the answer that had been marked wrong. I found that my answer was correct.

I brought this to the attention of the teacher. I asked her to re-grade my paper and credit me with a score of 100%.

She checked her scoring sheet and it showed an answer different than mine. I said that the answer sheet had to be wrong and that I would do the problem on the black board to show why my answer was correct.

She flew into a rage. She started yelling at me in front of the class and attacked me for even suggesting that the answer sheet could possibly be wrong. She said that every teacher who used the same text book we used would be using the same answer sheets we were using and that "they" would never allow an error on an answer sheet which is so widely used in schools.

I calmly offered again to do the problem on the black board so that I could show the correct answer.

Then, to my amazement, she began to argue that there could be more than one correct answer to a math problem and that the answer given on the answer sheet was probably more correct than the answer I had got.

We were working with numerical calculations, not with the math of quantum physics, and I told her there was only one correct answer in this case and that it was different than what was shown on the answer sheet. I offered again to work it out on the board.

Her response was to send me to the principals office for discipline.

As fate would have it, this particular principal was a gifted math teacher. He allowed me to do the problem on paper and acknowledged that my answer was correct and that the answer given on the answer sheet was incorrect.

He and I agreed that many students would have been given a grade 5% lower than they had earned.

He then explained to me that he was not going to require, or even ask, the teacher to regrade the test papers. He said that the rightness or wrongness of the answer had now become a side issue and that the central issue was that I had challenged the authority of the teacher in the classroom.

The resolution was to be that I would be required to apologise to the teacher for disrupting her class and no mention was to be made of the correct answer to the disputed question. If I did not want to apologise I would be suspended from school and would only be allowed to return when I was ready to apologise unconditionally.