Girls Vs Boys

Freakonomics spotted this today, a SciAm article about a paper published in Neuropsychologia (Douglas D. Burmana, Tali Bitanc, James R. Booth, Sex differences in neural processing of language among children, Neuropsychologia, doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.12.021) (PR, Huehueotl, Scientific Blogging, Science Daily)  that throws fuel on the fire for the gender in eduction debate, suggesting that girls learn language at a more abstract level and boys are more concrete. This suggests that as language skills are often taught in an abstract manner, girls will do better than boys. But if I remember right from the book, Stephen debunked this (I might be wrong, but it was in the book) pointing to other factors that occur that then go on to limit how well girls do. More confusion, more fuel.

Edit – and another study that girls come out ahead in English class.