Comparison Essay: compare and contrast boys and girls test taking skill and their thought process

Since the beginning of time man has been plagued by life 's essential questions "Why are we here ? What is the meaning of life " and of course the ever present question in the battle between the sexes "when all is said and done , who is essentially smarter : men or women " Through past and recent study , scientists and theorists have come to agree that though women may excel early in life , and though the different genders have innate aptitudes for different kinds of thinking , men and women are basically intellectually equal to one another

p Once upon a time everybody knew that males were smarter than females This was a given fact of life . Girls were not sent to school because it was assumed that they were incapable of grasping abstract concepts . In some eras , girls and women who demonstrated unusual capabilities were feared as witches and put to death . In 584AD it was even debated whether women were human : 63 clergymen debated the question at great length before it was put to a vote . The results were as follows : 32 voted yes and 31 voted no . Women were declared human by one vote (Bardwick , 60

Women were believed to never achieve any level of eminence as evident in the fact that there were few noted women in the sciences or the arts Prominent women , like Leta Hollingworth , protested that women 's lack of eminence was directly linked to their only being able to work at home where eminence was difficult to achieve , and being undereducated (Ellis 17 . Some Male Anatomists used to say women were less intelligent becuase their brains weighed less , body weight on brain weight

It had been long noted by intelligence studies that men had a wider distribution along the bell curve of intelligence . This means that even though there are more men in the category of genius , there are also more "stupid " men . Darwin recognized that men were more differentiated and believed that this "variation from the average " was the primary means of evolution . Men were therefore , according to his reasoning , more advanced (Ellis 17-18

Over time , attitudes changed . After women were accepted as equals public opinion shifted to almost the exact opposite as girls were allowed the same educational opportunities . In one small town the headline was published "Girls Brainier Than Boys " because more elementary girls had passed the examination to enter high school than boys . Because of this , boys were allowed to score slightly lower than their female counterparts on the exam and still be accepted . Meanwhile the girls were put on a quota system much like the Jews accepted to Harvard University (Moir and Jessel 45

The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY ) assumed that the difference might be linked to "differential course taking " so it examined the mathematical aptitude of 10 , 000 men and women at a young age before any different course taking could take place . The study supposedly found large sex differences in mathematical aptitude between the sexes even when their...