Your friend Gretchen is an elementary school teacher. She told you that she has noticed that the boys in her class seem to have more language problems than the girls

Question

She's also noticed that the girls seem to have better computational skills than the boys but this doesn't seem consistent with the fact that few women are in jobs that require extensive mathematical skill. Gretchen wonders if gender differences in verbal and mathematical ability are substantiated by research or if she has unusual students. What can you tell Gretchen about gender differences in mathematical and verbal ability?
What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A good answer will be similar to the following:
Research does show that females tend to have better verbal ability than males. For example, females score higher on general measures of verbal ability, they are better readers, better writers, and better spellers than boys. Females also have fewer language-related problems than males. Elementary-school girls also have better math computational skills than boys but this advantage seems to reverse in high school and college. This reversal probably accounts for the small numbers of women in jobs that require a high level of mathematical skill. So, you can tell Gretchen that the students that she has seen conform to the patterns found for the average boy and girl.