MICHAEL CUTHBERTSON
Opinions Writer

Lately I’ve noticed a tremendous number of girls on campus. Or maybe girls are just better grabbing the focus of my attention.

As it turns out, my observation is more than just an illusion resulting from raging hormones. Women make up the majority of university students in Canada. And the change is happening with great rapidity.

Looking back to 1971, 68 per cent of university graduates age 25 to 29 were male. By 2006, 60 per cent of university graduates were women. If someone had suggested to the previous generation that women might one day lead in academics they would have laughed at the notion.

And now, for the first time in the western world, someone like me — a 20-year-old white male — can actually label himself a minority.

But why has this radical change happened? Is womankind evolving beyond male intelligence? Likely not. What has actually triggered this change is the “feminization” of our education system.

In Canadian primary schools today, less than 20 per cent (and falling) of teachers are male. Why the downfall of male teachers? Perhaps the answer lies in the results of a recent study of Ontario primary schools which found that 13 per cent of male teachers had been accused of inappropriate conduct with pupils.

When a child has a teacher of their own gender, their academic performance is improved. A 2005 study from the United States found that just one year with a male English teacher eliminated nearly one third of the gender gap in reading performance among 13-year-olds. When you consider how few male teachers children encounter, is it really any surprise that boys are more disengaged with school, study less and hold less post-secondary aspirations?

Nevertheless, some argue that women have simply always been superior students, and that their success was hampered in the past due to their marginalization in society. It follows, then, that because women are now less frequently subjugated to the role of housewife they are free to dominate the academic realm.

I’m a skeptic of this view because it assumes that a woman’s biology has made her better equipped for learning than a man, and this is an exceedingly simplistic, reductionist postulate.

But undeniably, women are embarrassing men on the academic front. A 2006 StatsCan study revealed that by age 15 girls outperform boys in grades at school, standardized reading tests and study habits. Significantly, these variables all predicted which students would go on to university.

While they officially deny it, many professional colleges and universities have initiated affirmative action to keep male numbers up. Take, for example, the University of Saskatchewan medical school, where 14 out of every 100 male applicants make the cut, compared with only 10 of every 100 women. Policies of this sort are wrong firstly because they do not select based on merit, and furthermore because they only treat the symptoms of a feminized education system.

Certainly, girls have earned their grades fairly without the help of any sort of favouritism — but female success has also been bolsterered by an education system that tailors itself to women. To fix the problem of academic gender imbalance, I believe Canada needs an even split of male and female teachers in primary schools.

Of course, if the status quo prevails, at least college guys will stand a better chance at getting action. On second thought, let’s keep the system the way it is, at least until I get a girlfriend.

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image: Pete Yee