DOES GENDER DETERMINE LEARNING ABILITY?

The process of social development continuously has formed two stereotypes about men and women with different standards. Prejudices such as boys must be strong and decisive and girls must be gentle and skilful have gradually become a measure and silently crept into the subconscious of many people. These stereotypes are also "contributing" to the problem of inequality in education when many people still have the opinion that boys study better than girls or natural science subjects are only suitable for boys. How will this bring negative effects to the daily school environment? Is everyone ready to join Intelligo on this issue? Let's start now!

In reality, it is undeniable that unfair treatment in women has been changing for the better, as modern society people set light on “woke” mindsets. However, there still exists prejudice in the minds of most people, which is sometimes unchangeable as they consider those to be evident. Most people in their school days have surely heard of : “He is better at natural science because he is a man!” , “ Why would a boy choose social science studies?” or “ Why are your literature skills worse compared to that of a boy?” Many hold the mindset that males excel in natural sciences as they are more intelligent than females, and that females should follow the social science path because of their conscientiousness. It is not hard to see a case of parents preventing their child from pursuing their favorite subjects because of gender prejudice. To make matters worse, some families constitute wrongly or even distorted beliefs, claiming that investing on a man’s studies benefits more than doing that on a woman, as men are highly regarded in society compared to women, which means a bigger opportunity to succeed in life. However, according to research published in NPJ Science of Learning magazine, boys and girls have similar brain formation as well as the ability to take in various fields. In all aspects of study, the brain activity of both genders work alike.

These different thoughts and ways of treating, unfortunately, appear in the school environment itself as a very normal and obvious story. Schoolgirls are sometimes subjected to scrutiny and oppression under the framework which the society considers "feminine standards". Even more pitiful is the fact that schoolgirls’ efforts were denied and their abilities were despised at school, which is considered their second home.

Under Intelligo’s perspective, we completely disagree with those unequal thoughts and hope that we would help people to have a more open and accurate view to eliminate those outdated prejudices together. As humans, no matter male or female, each of us has our own unique characteristics and the right to be respected in terms of our individual preferences and personalities. In learning, everyone has the right to choose which subject is their strong point. Whichever subject you feel confident with, you can invest your time and effort into that subject, there is no “standard” or rule that we have to follow and give up our passions. It might be difficult for us to develop if there still exists a group of people who evaluate learning ability through gender. An even worse behaviour is, there are a lot of young people who regard this issue as a joke, and post it on social networks to attract likes and shares in an indiscriminate way, with disrespect accompanied by rude and offensive comments. Those actions contribute to making that way of thinking become more widespread and “admitted” by a lot more people, as if it was obvious, was an unchangeable fact. We hope that you can choose the positive topics to impart on social networks, and stop considering this discrimination as a negligible joke as soon as possible. Intelligo desires to bring a more open and different view to parents in particular and the whole society in general about the studying of boys and girls in modern education. Do not assign students the responsibility to walk on the path of old prejudices, because everyone deserves to live exactly the way they want, and only when being ourselves can we develop our own latent abilities.

Gender is not and will never be one of the factors determining an individual's academic performance. Changing thinking about cultural norms and gender stereotypes in education is a shared responsibility that everyone must participate in. In modern society, men and women are equal and have equal opportunities for development. Therefore, no matter who you are, what gender you have, the most important thing to determine your learning ability as well as your success always depends on your own hard work and efforts on your own path. When you understand yourself and become self-confident, Intelligo believes that you will surely succeed in the road to conquering your dreams.

Education is a system that requires fairness, regardless of any gender or background. The key element of a successful education is that students learn and receive lots of love from the teachers at the school they are learning.