Could geography be a gender-biased subject? That question came up when the National Geographic Society launched an investigation into why the young participants and finalists in the National Geography Bee are overwhelmingly male.
Yet, the geography bee is one of the few academic areas in which boys do better than girls. Department of Education figures show boys on average are about a year and a half behind girls in reading and writing, kindergarten through 12th grade. Why do these gaps exist? Is it genes? Hormones? Social programming?
Researchers commissioned by the society to investigate the geography gap found that boys tend to have higher “mental rotation skills,” the ability to imagine how things will appear in reverse or upside down. This might explain why in situations where most women will prefer to ask directions, men will prefer to puzzle endlessly (though often fruitlessly) over a road map.
In the National Spelling Bee, participants and winners tend to be much more balanced by gender than in the geography bee. The decisive variable in that competition this year was not gender, race or ethnicity, but method of schooling.
This year, for the first time, home-schooled students (two boys, one girl) nabbed all three of the top awards in the spelling bee. The winner, George Abraham Thampy, 12, of Maryland Heights, Mo., said home schooling enabled him to follow his interests and spend more time on spelling and geography than traditional schooling would. His win followed up on the 1997 spelling bee victory by another home-schooled child, Rebecca Sealfon of New York City.
Those are great achievements for the home schooling movement . . . and simple testament that students, male or female, in school or at home, should be encouraged to follow their own curiosity.
