That's Right, The Women Are Smarter, Part Two

A pair of recent articles in the Newark, N.J. Star-Ledger have found that girls are increasingly outperforming boys in high school, and that women, while 53 percent of the overall population, comprise up to 65 percent of students in many colleges and universities, including Drew University in Madison, New Jersey - my alma mater. There were more female than male students there when I attended, but not at such a lopsided ratio.

Several explanations have been offered. One is that school teachers, who are overwhelmingly female, tend to favor girls over boys, and another is that learning programs are designed in a fashion that favors the female ability to reason. There's more to it than that, though. In high school, boys tend to regard smart male students as sycophantic, emasculated nerds (it's always the smart boys who get beaten up by the bullies), their interests run more towards recreational activities (like athletics) than intellectual ones (seeing a movie with no car chases), and when they graduate, they usually skip college for a job that pays well and doesn't require a college degree.

Men, of course, still have all the power, and therefore those that do go to college can just earn a business degree (business is not an intellectual discipline!) and find a corporate home after graduation, knowing that the old-boy network will take care of them. One girl at Drew told the Star-Ledger said that she was afraid that if men fell behind any further in getting college degrees, there'd be a lot of minimally intelligent men in power someday.

Umm, has she noticed who's running the military? Our biggest companies? Talk radio? And, is she aware of who's President? ("To all you C students - you too can be President of the United States!" - George W. Bush, 2001)