Time to rethink some longstanding beliefs and attitudes

‘There has never been a more academically impressive generation of girls than the young women we are raising today.’

So wrote Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist, advisor and author of the new book ‘Under Pressure: confronting the epidemic of stress and anxiety in girls’ (Ballantine, 2019).

Girls, she continued, ‘get better grades’ than boys, they usually enroll in advanced classes more than boys do at high school, and they outnumber boys at many colleges and universities.

Nova Scotia student achievement data clearly supports Damour’s claim about grades.

Data from the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP), which is an evaluation administered to Grade 8 students every three years (and was last given in 2016), showed girls in Nova Scotia had a mean score in reading of 514 whilst boys scored 482. Girls outperformed boys in science by 10 points (505 – 495) but there was no significant gap in mathematics. Over time, girls have moved their mean score in reading from 491 in 2007 to 514 in 2016, whilst the score for boys has gone from 475 to 482 over that same period. In science, the mean score for girls went from 491 in 2013 to 505 in 2016, whereas the scores for boys moved from 492 to 495.

Moreover, we are only a few years removed from the pivotal meta-analysis study (‘Gender differences in scholastic achievement’, published in the Psychological Bulletin, 2014) done by Daniel and Susan Voyer, from the Department of Psychology at the University of New Brunswick, which found that gender differences favour females in all fields of study and the ‘generalized female advantage in school’ has remained stable over the years.

And yet, as the title of Damour’s book promised, an alarming number of girls suffer from stress and anxiety. She cited recent American research to show the number of teenage girls who said they ‘felt nervous, worried, or fearful’ increased by 55 per cent from 2009 to 2014, whilst the number for boys on that same question did not change. Another study found the number of teenagers ‘experiencing depression’ increased to 17 per cent for girls and only to six percent for boys.

In her book, Damour provided an overview on the reasons why those numbers may be increasing. Far more significant though was her suggested actions on what to do about it. Stress, she noted, can be useful when it pushes girls past their familiar limits. How to use stress to advantage however is a skill that is not always taught or practiced. Anxiety too can be healthy when girls are taught to think of it as a friend and ally.

More specifically, in terms of school, Damour advocated for girls to become ‘academic tacticians’. They should decide what grades they want to achieve in each class, realizing that they do not have to care equally about all of their classes, and so put their energy into the classes they really enjoy whilst doing just enough work to earn the grade they want for the others. Put another way, and here treading upon familiar tropes, girls could act a little like boys, who are inclined to do the minimum amount of work needed to get the mark they want. In addition, girls ought to downplay their disciplined approach and their need to exceed expectations and instead rely on learning as a pathway, where they can progress at their own pace, focus on their well-being and put long-term life satisfaction above short-term school success.

All told, Damour’s book forces all of us to rethink some longstanding beliefs and attitudes. And yes, despite the title, it really is a book for all. As stated in it, ‘When it comes to their schoolwork, we need to help our daughters be more like our sons, and vice versa.’

Adam Davies is a Pugwash resident and former member of the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board. He works with the Cumberland Public Libraries.