Job Discussion Forums

william wallace · Joined: 14 May 2003 Posts: 2869 Location: in between

This year my main class had 24 students:6 boys, 18 girls

"...Meanwhile, fewer boys than girls take the SAT. Fewer boys than girls apply to college. Fewer boys than girls, in annual surveys of college freshmen, express a passion for learning. And fewer boys than girls are earning college degrees. Even sperm counts are falling. "It's true at every level of society" that boys are stumbling behind, Sommers continued."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20070727/us_time/theboysareallright

7969 · Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 5782 Location: Coastal Guangdong

most of my classes have 40 students. approximately 36 women, 4 men in each class.

Anda · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 2199 Location: Jiangsu Province

Um,nice, most of my classes have 5 to 10 young men and 45 to 50 young ladies.

therock · Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 1266 Location: China

Depends on the class. Last term I had some classes full of girls. However most of my classes had around 80% girls and 20% boys. I would say that the majority of foreign teachers would have a higher ratio of girls to boys.

GoPies · Joined: 19 Sep 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Melbourne

I teach in three programs for Chinese kids who want to study in the west: all girls, all girls, and 2/3 girls.
I have to say, I'm not complaining. My experience of teaching Chinese boys both here and in Oz is that they are slack. A couple of honourable exceptions, but I've told many of them that they are an embarrassment to our gender.

Neilhrd · Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 233 Location: Nanning, China

I too have a majority of boys in preparation classes for foreign universities. Not only are the girls more numerous but on the whole they are more mature and more focused.

I would venture to suggest that the reason may be that in traditional Chinese culture boys got all the attention and all the advantages. Sure this is changing but it may be that some lads haven't noticed yet. Certainly some of my male students seem to beieve that daddy's money and guanxi will secure their future without them ghaving to work or take responsibility for their own learning or behaviour. Girls, however, seem determined to make it life on their own merits and seem to expect to have to work harder to gain equal opportunities.

What do other people feel about the reasons for the phenomenon of better girl students in China?

nickpellatt · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 1522

Average class size of 35, average number of boys per class 2.

Much better than my middle school where there was a greater mix...boys dont tend to be so attentive...and having a number of boys in class makes the girls less active.

jeffinflorida · Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 5:03 pm Post subject:

Towards the end of the semester in my first uni a boy stopped me in the street to ask me some questions. After I answered him I asked him if we knew each other - he said yes, he was a student in one of my classes.

I never realized that there were males in my class! And I knew all the girls names yes I did...

That night I looked at the roster and by God there were boys in my classes! maybe about 25 girls and 5 boys in each class.

kev7161 · Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 5880 Location: Suzhou, China

james s · Joined: 07 Feb 2007 Posts: 676 Location: Raincity

The year of the woman is repidly approaching China. I have always had way more girls than guys in class.

misutabiru · Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Posts: 112 Location: Daegu

I've been told that the simple reason for this phenomenon is that "English is for girls." Boys tend to be pushed towards more manly subjects like math, science, and computing. At my first job, the English major classes were 95% girls, the International Trade major classes were 50/50, and the computing majors were 90% boys. Go figure.

Sinko · Joined: 21 Apr 2005 Posts: 349

Last year, I taught 2 semesters of english to 7 classes averaging 30 per class. Apart from 1 class, which had 6 girls, they were all boys!!!

Just Chillin Too · Joined: 29 May 2007 Posts: 252

The United States is still a pretty segregated society, with men heading towards the hard sciences and women towards the humanities...

But in China, it feels different because they're so absolutely open about the "man's roles in life" and the "woman's roles in life". If I had 1rmb for every girl who's told me she can't speak above a whisper because she's "just a girl", I'd be filthy rich.

I had one student tell me that she wants to be an engineer to prove that women can be just as good as men at anything. It absolutely floored me to hear that coming from a Chinese woman and she's been a pleasure to teach.

Jamchuan · Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 4:33 am Post subject:

Wow, when I was teaching in China it was about 50/50 in my middle school classes. But, it was mostly girls that participated and did well in my classes.

In university, there might have been about 20 boys to about 16 girls but it was mostly girls that attended yet my best students were boys.

I did teach one class at a computer training school for a few months with about 16 students and there were only 4 girls and they never came to class.

I guess it all depends.......

Now I am told that I will be teaching/working with 'foreign' students who I have heard are mostly Japanese and Korean. Kinda weird, I am moving back to China and I won't be teaching Chinese kids.......

pancakes · Joined: 03 Nov 2005 Posts: 76

I taught classes of kids (4-14) - always about 55% girls, 45% boys...