class participation and whatnot counted, and I had not a problem with that, when a teacher asked a direct question and I was not sleeping deeply enough (if I was half-sleeping and heard the question I woke up) I would usually be the first to reply.
Only later I figured this was bad idea (here in Brazil at least, the norm is to noone ever try to reply to the teacher, as a kind of weird social convention, and since I always replied, even while half-asleep, I quickly attracted negative attention, I was frequently involved in fights I did not started with the less performing boys... also girls sometimes pulled some horrible stuff, like spreading rumors or attempt to frame me)
Regarding the "test" mentioned there and it being self-perpetuating.
Brazil during the cold war, caught the propaganda of sorts that anyone to have success needed to have a degree, the country needed to go from almost none degrees to everyone have degrees.
The result was a severe lack of universities, so the government started to build them like if there was no tomorrow (and they are STILL not enough for the demand), and made into law a thing called "vestibular" that is a entry test that you take to join university.
The test subject is whatever the government ministry of education decided that schools must have as curriculum, thus the test asks questions regarding everything you learn in school from 3 to 18 years old of your life, and since it tests for everything and is applied to ANY course, the government mandatory curriculum has anything a university student might need, thus we have a curriculum that is so ridiculously big, that is impossible to teach it entirely.
Because here getting the students of your school into a federal university (here they are almost on US ivy league level) or to certain state universities (those have several courses listed alongside ivy league and Oxford on best courses list) is highly prestigious, and the only way to get in is passing the stupid test, the high schools developed a system that they teach you how to pass the test, literally, your final tests on the schools many times are directly copied from previous years vestibular tests, and students on those schools know how to pass the test, and only that.
Since here in Brazil university-level education is mandatory to be a teacher, only those that passed the tests, and teach new people how to pass the tests, making things worse.
Also, here in Brazil homeschooling is a crime (yes, they ARREST you for attempting to homeschool your kids), and joining university without a normal schooling is not allowed, you can be sure 99% of university students passed by this system (the other 1% are dropouts that later did a high school conclusion test sponsored by the government).
I was about to say that's not my experience at all. But then, it seems that the majoritarian experience of the the people that studied with me until our equivalent of high school was just like that... The difference is that I studied from the books, and just needed the teachers to ask questions (not during the class, of course).
At my undergrad things got slightly better. I guess the most advanced teachers got something from the lesson.
Terrific. I first read that Feynman piece
long ago, but it was good to read it again.
That piece is a great illustration of just
how messed up education can be. Not all
of US K-12 public education is so messed up,
but a lot of it is significantly messed up
in similar ways -- formality over reality.
And in particular, for the OP, a lot of women
trying to teach boys when the women do understand
the girls, are happy teaching the girls, but
assume that somehow there is something wrong
with the boys. Indeed, in the OP, the author
does make progress on the problem but for
her teaching idea of having team members
come to the front of the class to look
at something for 30 seconds, she is back
to some absurd formality instead of
anything close to reality.
Here's one: Boys are good at figuring
things out. So, mechanical things --
boys are good at taking them apart
and then putting them back together.
Then one level more advanced, boys are
good at making things -- e.g., give
them some elementary parts and pieces
and ask them to make something, say,
something that will be the tallest
in the class or a bridge with the longest
free span or a bridge between two
points that will hold the greatest
weight. Have them make, say,
rubber band powered cars and then
have drag races. There are paper
airplane contests with well developed
rules -- get the rules and have a
paper airplane contest. Redo some
of what the Wright Brothers did
with the world's first, good wind tunnel.
So, measure lift and drag for various
airfoil shapes. Then discuss Reynolds
number. For selecting the materials
for the frame of an airplane, discuss
density and Young's modulus. Move
to have the students explain how
Hughes was able to build the 'Spruce
Goose', about the size of a 747,
out of wood.
There must be some books somewhere
with some good projects for boys.
If the girls want to do such things, too,
okay by me. If the rubber band car,
the bridge, the air foil, or the
airplane they build wins, terrific.
But, then, teachers might want to understand
some things about boys! If I was a boy
in that class and making a rubber band
powered drag race car, it'd all be fine
as long as I was racing against other
boys -- I'd like to win, but no biggie
if I came in second or third. But as soon
as one of the girls started to compete with me,
it'd be no food, no sleep, nothing else in school,
nothing else
for 48 hours as I wracked my brains
looking for whatever, anything, to
totally blow the doors off that girl's
car and send her back to decorating
her picture of her little pink pony
and doing gossip about lipstick!
And, uh, I had some pretty good talent
with mechanical things, spatial
relations, etc. In the US a lot
of boys are really good with
mechanical things.
In high school (in the early 2000s, in the US), class participation didn't mean just answering a question when called on, in my school most of the time it meant preemptively offering an answer without being called on. You got graded on having the initiative to answer without the teacher asking you directly.
If someone tried that here in Brazil everyone would get a zero.
Specially, because they link someone posted about Richard Feynman is still very true, most students here don't know jack shit beside what they memorized, the genius wannabes quickly get stomped when they say crap and others laugh at them.
Schools here are best teach you how to be conforming to social expectations... at best.
Also I like to point out that the reason I did not failed at tests, was not the school, it was that being curious as I am, most tests ended asking stuff I already had learned somewhere else (usually reading a book), I still have as hobby read random books, encyclopedias, science sites... And I had that hobby before wikipedia existed (in my bedroom there was 5 different enciclopedias, including one focused on history and ancient religion, and another on botany, zoology and chemistry, also I have all the books that my dad read during when he was getting his civil engineering degree)
Just to give an example of what speeder means by "students here don't know jack shit":
Over the years I have told friends and peers that, in a perfect vacuum and without taking into account the curvature of the earth, a bullet fired from a gun that's completely level and another bullet dropped from the same height, at the same time, will hit the ground at the same time. Everyone disagrees, says that of course the bullet from the gun will take much longer to fall etc, etc. Now, this is all people who went to private schools and had three (yes, three) years of physics (because if you go to high school here and your school is not a shitty public one, you will have physics for 3 years. You can't choose). I even argued with a friend of mine who is a geologist and works at Brazil's huge oil company Petrobras. You might say "oh, a couple of people, that's anecdote". Yes, it is, but it is just a couple of people because after the fifth I just said "screw it", no one learns physics here.
Only later I figured this was bad idea (here in Brazil at least, the norm is to noone ever try to reply to the teacher, as a kind of weird social convention, and since I always replied, even while half-asleep, I quickly attracted negative attention, I was frequently involved in fights I did not started with the less performing boys... also girls sometimes pulled some horrible stuff, like spreading rumors or attempt to frame me)