Opinion | Learning to break rules isn't all bad

"Oh why do they have to be such boys?" my mother complained when my sons jumped up and down on the bed instead of settling down to do their Chinese homework.

I don't have daughters to compare them with, at least not yet, and I'm not a big fan of stereotypes. So I said in my sons' defence: "It's not that they're boys, it's that they're kids." My mother shot me an unconvinced "give me a break" look.

It's not just my mother who thinks boys and girls have fundamentally different attitudes towards learning. A just-published study done by the University of Georgia and Columbia University shows that American elementary school teachers routinely give higher marks to girls than boys, even though the boys score higher on standardised tests, for the simple reason that girls behave better in school.

I'm not surprised by the findings, and I don't think the teachers in the study are sexist. Girls, for the most part, are better organised, have more self-control, can follow directions better, and are more flexible and patient, according to the study's authors.

"They're just easier," is the explanation I commonly hear from parents of girls. This past semester, I taught an all-boy SAT class while my colleague taught an all-girl creative writing class. My class had five boys while his had 10 girls, all of them six or seven years old compared to my 15-year-olds. Guess which class was louder?

All this peace and quiet, according to the study, translates into extra brownie points from teachers.