We often take for granted the givenness of the world we live in, that is, the things in life that are not questionable. For example, I have never questioned that the sky is blue or that I am the son of my parents. These aspects of reality strike me as matter of fact and have served as two axioms among many upon which my mind has built its picture of reality. While these beliefs may not be foundational in the strictest philosophical sense, they are close enough to the foundation that I form subsequent beliefs about reality around them.
For millennia, gender was a given. More specifically, it was a given grounded in biological fact that there are two genders objectively tethered to one’s sex. Genetically speaking, a person born with two X chromosomes is a woman and a person born with an XY chromosome pair is a man. Sure, throughout history there have been anomalies to this binary, including rare cases of intersex people, but these instances were just that, anomalies. There was a givenness to the structure of reality related to one’s gender that could serve as an axiom for subsequent belief and identity formation.
Not so today. In the brave new world in which we live, gender is understood to be a social construct, a fiction that emerges within communities to govern behavioral norms and moral duties. According to professor of psychology Jean Twenge in her book Generations (Atria Books, 2023), in 2021, a survey revealed that a majority of the Gen Z population believes there are more than two genders.1 In the figure below, you can see that over the generations, confidence in a traditional binary view of gender has declined. With Gen Z in particular, this decline is only accelerating.
Perhaps even more serious, this trend for Gen Z extends beyond statements of belief and into questions of identity. Gen Z young adults are much more likely to identify as either transgender or nonbinary than other generations.2 See the figure below, which tracks the percent of U.S. adults identifying in these ways. Gen Z is the clear outlier compared to other generations. In fact, the number of young adults identifying as transgender quadrupled between 2014 and 2021, while the number of transgender people in the older cohorts changed little.3
In our post-Christian, American culture, one’s gender is simply no longer a given. In fact, neither is one’s orientation, with 23% of Gen Z women identifying as bisexual in 2022. This is twice as many as among Millennial women, 8 times as many as among Gen X’ers, and 32 times as many among Silents and Boomers.4 Gender identity and sexual orientation, rather than given axioms that a person can build one’s life around, have been added to the identity menu. Emerging teens must now navigate these aspects of identity in addition to the more conventional list about belonging, purpose, and religious belief.
Identify formation is a lifelong process, but it is a particularly sensitive phase of maturation during the adolescent and early adult years. It will be important for Gen Z, ranging from age 11-28, to have wise parents and teachers to come alongside them in the process. In the technological revolution in which we live, the road has already grown increasingly complex. This is, after all, the generation that has never known a world without the internet and of which their oldest members were 12 when the iPhone premiered. By 2012, half of Americans owned smartphones, thus making Gen Z’s entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. Noticeably, the decline in mental health for teens occurred between 2011-2013, right when Gen Z’s oldest members were this age and using social media. With identity about gender and sexuality now open, the identify formation process has become even more complex and will continue to be so for the subsequent Alpha generation (born 2013-2029).
Why Gender Matters in Education
As a Bible-believing Christian, I have moral concerns about these trends insofar as they reflect, in my view, confusion over God’s created order of reality. And as an educator, I also have concerns. I believe that there are demonstrable, hard-wired differences between men and women, boys and girls, and that these differences ought to be recognized in a healthy learning environment, not ignored, or left up to each child. Let me share just a few examples.
First, it has been proven biologically that girls’ brains develop faster than boys’ brains.
In Why Gender Matters (Harmony Books, 2017), psychologist and medical doctor Leonard Sax shares research demonstrating that the average girl reaches the halfway point in their brain development four years before the average boy.5 He writes,
Comparing a five-year-old boy to a five-year-old girl may in some respect be similar to comparing a three-and-a half-year-old girl to a five-year-old girl. The boy will appear less mature, less self-controlled, and less able to concentrate and focus for sustained periods of time compared to the girl.
The upshot is that gender matters for the development of a child, especially in the earliest years. We ought to consider this reality regarding decisions about when a child is ready to begin his or her formal education and what might be occurring if a child faces a learning difficulty or behavioral issue.
Second, there is growing evidence that men and women have different capacities with regards to smelling, seeing, and hearing.
Women, for example, have more olfactory neurons than men, providing them with a more robust olfactory system to be more sensitive to smell. In addition, studies have shown that girls and boys see and draw with different values in mind. Girls are more likely to draw flowers and trees and pets with lots of colors. The great majority of boys, in contrast, draw a scene of action with dynamic change. Human figures, if present at all, are often stick figure, lacking eyes, mouths, hair and clothes. Boys and girls have different visual systems, thus emphasizing different things in their drawings.6 Finally, with regards to hearing, the average boy benefits from a teacher’s instruction being eight decibels louder than the average girl. Boys, in general, are more comfortable with background noise, and thus may not even realize a noise they are making is distracting.
Finally, we ought to consider boy and girl friendly instructional strategies as opposed to gender blind education. Too often schools perpetuate gender stereotypes by ignoring gender differences with regards to instruction. With intentionality around curricular sequence and learning activities, for example, physics need not be a male-dominated subject anymore than theatre need be female-dominated. As a general rule, boys and girls have differing interests. By understanding these differences, we can increase engagement and decrease gender bias in particular disciplines.
There is much more to be said on the topic of why gender matters in education, especially in our present day and age. While surrounding culture has promoted the idea that one’s gender is not fixed and that biology is malleable to one’s inner identity, current science disagrees. As Christians who read both the holy book (the Bible) and the natural book (creation), we can pursue strategies for learning that will help both boys and girls thrive in our classrooms.
Endnotes
- Twenge, Jean M. Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents–and What They Mean for America’s Future. New York: Atria Books, 2023. Page 350.
- Twenge, 352.
- Twenge, 356.
- Twenge, 364.
- Sax, Leonard. Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences. New York: Harmony Books, 20170. Page 86.
- Sax, 21.
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