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today. Social scientists Myra Sadker, Ed.D., and David Sadker, Ed.D., authors of Failing at Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls, who have conducted twenty years of research, say that girls are systematically denied opportunities in areas where boys are encouraged to excel, often by well-meaning teachers who are unaware of what they're doing. Male students, the Sadkers report, control classroom conversation. They ask and answer more questions. They receive more praise for the intellectual quality of their ideas. Girls, on the other hand, are taught to speak quietly, to defer to boys, to avoid math and science, and to value neatness over innovation, appearance over intelligence. In one school contest the Sadkers observed, the “Brilliant Boys” competed against the “Good Girls.”

In the early grades, girls routinely outperform boys on achievement tests, but that's only one part of “schooling.” “There's the official curriculum, which calls for doing well on tests and homework and getting good grades,” says David Sadker, “but then there's also the hidden one. This curriculum involves speaking up in class, raising questions, offering insights. It helps a student develop a public voice. Girls aren't encouraged to develop this public voice. They are rewarded for being nice and being quiet. Their high grades lull them into a false sense of security that they are doing what they must to be a success. It's only later that they pay a price for having been encouraged to be a spectator, to not speak up.”

By the time girls graduate from high school, they lag, as a group, far behind their male counterparts.

Year after year of these messages, both in school and on the home front, can become internalized. The most widely known research on what happens to school-age girls is by Carol Gilligan, professor in the Human Development and Pyschology Program at the graduate school of Education, Harvard University. In studies Gilligan found that there is a “silencing” of girls that occurs as they move from the elementary grades into junior high. Up until that point, she says, they seem filled with self-confidence and courage, and they're candid about what they feel and think and know. But as they enter midadolescence and become aware of society's expectations of them, they start to get more tentative and conflicted. The conventions of femininity require them to be what Gilligan calls “the always nice and kind perfect girl.”

Thus, Gilligan says, girls experience a debilitating tension between caring for themselves and caring for others, between their understanding of the world and their awareness that it is not appropriate to speak or act on this understanding. They are uncomfortable about how people will feel if they get mad or aren't “nice.” The girl who is insistent on speaking and desires knowledge goes “underground,” says Gilligan, or is overwhelmed.

When girls look to grown women for inspiration, they may not get any help. Gilligan says that women, in the name of being good women, model for girls the “repudiation” of the playful, irreverent, outspoken girl.

Though some experts have criticized Gilligan's theories, I think many of us can't help but see ourselves when we read her words. You're automatically transported back into sixth or seventh grade, feeling the fatigue of always trying to please and the stress that results from constant vigilance over your own words and behavior. By the age of eleven or twelve you probably discovered the importance of being “liked,” and what that required. Popular boys are often boisterous and mischievous, but popular girls are generally careful about their words and their behavior. As soon as this sank in, you locked that smile into place and tried not to sound opinionated. You worried about what you were going to say before you said it, while you were saying it, and after you said it.

And come to think of it, you weren't really supposed to be saying much at all. You were told it was important to let boys do the talking and so you listened, smiled, listened. You learned quickly that no one likes