I am not the author of this idea, and this plot turned out unexpectedly for me. Let me tell you right now: I am not a feminist.
Men and women differ from each other not only in what everyone knows, but also in the fact that they have differently organized brains. This is strange, because we are all relatives to each other, a common genome, in general, everything. That is, how could it turn out so that it is all so different? There have been statistics recently.
I’ll just tell you what’s going on. It became clear that a very large number of male people, while they are still small, well, while they are still in school, including high school, that there are big problems with them:
- 70% of boys get very low scores.
- 80% of boys have disciplinary problems.
- 70% of the boys stay for the second year, relatively speaking, take breaks or repeat classes.
- 90% of crimes are committed by boys.
For every 100 girls who are diagnosed with learning disabilities, there are 276 boys. Those. almost 3 times more. For every 100 girls who have emotional disorders, there are more than 3 times more boys.
There are 2 times more boys who have developmental problems. 16% of boys write tests poorly at school, in contrast to 31% of girls. Here you have to be careful. 29% of boys are rated as those who read and understand well, and girls more — 41%. Between 10 and 14 years old, there are twice as many boys who attempt, or at least have such terrible ideas as suicide.
What does it mean? Has it always been like this, or is it like this? Like with plane crashes: did they just start reporting them to us, or did they actually increase in number? This is exactly the case when I don’t know if it’s true or not, it is growing, or they just began to investigate.
Approximately 7000 young people drop out of school every day, that’s about 1 per 26 seconds. Terrifying numbers. If I hadn’t read them in a safe place, I wouldn’t even have believed them. The question arises: is this something biologically wrong, or evolutionary changes? Or is it a social impact? I cannot answer this question, but the situation is very alarming.
And of course: different eras require different types of people. There are muscular eras that require heroes, fighters, etc., but there are societies that are neutral about this, let’s say, like we have now.
Since we are talking about the brain, I will talk like this: what is the biological difference in the brain and in development, and then I will move on to how boys and girls should be treated. For example, I will tell you how to teach them.
The difference in what the brain will look like in men and women begins very early. There are hormones that greatly affect the development of the brain: female — estrogen, male — testosterone. And the girl’s brain is literally bathed in estrogen while she is in the womb, while the boy’s brain is also bathed like a waterfall, testosterone. A lot follows from this. For example, girls, when they are born, begin to carefully monitor the facial expressions of others, this has been specially studied. They seek eye-to-eye contact, catch the eye, and seek to evaluate the expression on the mother’s face. The micromovements of the eyes of infants are monitored using a special technique. Data obtained in various ways suggests that the girl wants contact, she looks at her mother’s face, wants to catch her eye. Boys don’t do it. By the way, if you look at autistic children, most autistic children are boys. You probably know that one of the first worrying moments when evaluating a child is the lack of desire, the avoidance of eye contact.
In the first three months of life in girls, the successful attempt to make eye contact with the mother, or with whom the child communicates, increases 400 times. She does this unconsciously, which means that this action is biologically programmed. Which is understandable: after all, the business of a woman (biologically) is not only to give birth to a child, but also to make sure that he survives. She must behave carefully, carefully, if possible not to take risks. She must be socially successful, i.e., must be able to communicate with other people, because this helps the general environment, to be more relaxed and more confident in success. In one study, one-year-old girls looked at their mothers 10 to 20 times more than boys. And what’s more, they caught a facial expression that could be read as approval, a desire to communicate, they caught smiles, etc. That is, it is some kind of serious, apparently basic thing.
There are different regions in the brain, and one of them is called the amygdala. This is such a small thing in the center of the brain, and it is in charge of emotions and motivations. The amygdala in the brain of men is larger than that of women.
I will make a small digression.
I was in California a few years ago, at that time a book was published in Los Angeles called «Amigdola and language», amygdola and language. But you can say anything about the amygdola, just not that it controls the tongue. The connection between the amygdala and learning: the worst thing that can happen when doing anything, and in particular foreign languages, is boredom. If it’s boring, then that’s a problem. Moreover, this is not a misfortune in the everyday sense, but biochemically. Because other biochemical processes begin to occur, those that do NOT help memorization.
Therefore, going back to the amygdala, the person who is learning must have some motive. Either this should be terribly interesting to him, or this is a tough necessity, or he is vain and wants to be the best, or he is afraid of punishment — anything but neutral. And then the brain begins to produce substances that contribute to memorization. If there is none of this, then you can even start flogging it, but this is an empty business.
The amygdala is an ancient part of the brain, it is influenced by hormones, and moreover, hormones that deal with fear in particular, and affect whether a person is aggressive or not aggressive, whether he is active or not active, and it is also the part of the brain that contributes to the spirit rivalry. That is, people who have this zone active love to compete.
Men’s brains are larger than women’s. They often speculate on this, they say that they say, take these chickens when they don’t have enough brains there. But this, of course, is not the case, because it’s not about kilograms. Of course, up to certain limits, the volume needs to be gained, but then the question is not how much weight someone has, but how complex, rational and correctly organized the neural network is. The female brain works much more efficiently, despite the absence of the above kilograms.
The amygdala in the brain of men is larger than that of women, and it gives rise to aggressive and peculiar behavior. Moreover, the amygdala of the male brain has special receptors that catch testosterone and increase, enhance the brain’s response to various challenges that life throws at it. In particular, this explains why men are much more aggressive than women. It follows that men and women react differently to situations of fear and stress. And these are the situations that are directly related to the amygdola. When the amygdala sends a signal of fear, different types of behavior are possible: 1. run or resist (if possible, resist, and if not possible, then run away); 2. try to overcome this situation in another way — by negotiations: «let’s make friends or cooperate.» These are different types of behavior. Women can reduce their stress and achieve a state of calm and the ability to negotiate with the world. This is true for both girls and adult women. I think that this is biologically predetermined: if there is an opportunity to agree, then it is necessary to negotiate. Interestingly, by the way, professional negotiators, basically, what gender? Maybe that’s why our negotiations are going so well?
So, since the task of a woman is to save her family, to save her offspring, she must take various steps in order not to take risks.
The important thing is that the individual differences are so great that they cover up any gender differences.
We have all met mindless, lethargic, weak and hysterical men. Everything is bad with them, it is not clear what kind of tragedy should happen (the overthrow of the system, a change in the movement of the planet), after which they, perhaps, will fry a steak for themselves. If the planets align correctly. And how many strong, smart, perfectly logical women you want, who win in any dispute, and so on. I am not a feminist, but simply stating the fact that individual differences overlap differences between the sexes in this sense. They used to say: men are those who have logic, and women are those who are all about pillows and ruffles. Where did this opinion come from? In reality, this simply does not exist. Now everything is starting to mix up, and I don’t know what awaits us.
The prefrontal cortex is our evolutionary achievement. This is the new cortex of our brain, which contains everything that makes us so smart, this is how we think, how we move science, industry, etc. And yet, if we look at the major breakthroughs of our human civilization, we see a different picture. These will not be highly professional arithmometers that have counted everything, and — a discovery has occurred. This is not how discoveries are made. Discovery — a person falls off a shelf and suddenly says «oh, that’s it!» To do this, of course, you need to be able to reason, to be able to do «if A plus BC, then C plus D.» That is, as the classics correctly write, such ideas are wonderful, they come to prepared minds.
So, the prefrontal cortex is where we make decisions. This is where emotions (emotional information) don’t override everything else, because emotions are a very powerful player. For example, everyone knows perfectly well that it is better not to do this, not to go here, and not to say this. And what happens in a second?
The cortex is that part of the brain that, as it were, oversees that the rest do not make noise. And when the amygdala sends unthinkable signals, the prefrontal cortex says: «calmly, let’s look at this, let’s think, maybe this is not how it should be done.»
The prefrontal cortex matures late in children of either sex. Some sections of the most highly developed parts of the brain mature up to twenty-odd years, so talking to a small child in the style of “and you couldn’t think before …” is pointless, because. he has not yet matured those areas of the brain that really regulate behavior, which allow him to look at himself — «I must be doing something wrong.» And this is regardless of gender. However, the prefrontal cortex is larger in women and matures faster than in men.
This difference in time and quality of maturation enables women to look for solutions to situations rather than act impulsively. I tell the theory of how it can be in life — another story. In any case, this is the part of the brain that can do it. Since a woman has a good size and quality, it is assumed that instead of throwing herself with an ax and killing her husband right away, she will first think about what follows from this.
Another front part of the brain (it is also larger in women) enables a woman to be more careful, more attentive and try not to take risks, to see if something threatens her and her offspring. If she sees a threat, then she should be alert, start to get nervous, come up with moves on how to overcome it. That is why women are more prone to anxiety — 4 times more than men.
In these pictures we see what happens in the human brain when he does nothing, just sits. His brain activity is filmed with various devices. What do we see? In men, mainly the back parts of the brain are involved, the rest practically do not work. A woman’s whole brain works. What does it mean? Why is that?
I see a biological basis here: if we remember genetics, then men are a vector that shows where evolution will go, they are at the forefront of the new. A woman is conservative by design, she must preserve the hearth, she must preserve traditions, because this ensures the vital stability of the species. And it is not her business and task to climb the barricades. She can, of course, suddenly turn into Joan of Arc, but in general — this is not her work.
It is also worth considering that for unknown reasons, the number of left-handed men is being born more and more. Maybe this is such a vector of evolution? If there are more left-handers, then more right-brained ones, because. we have a diagonal: the left hemisphere controls the right eye, arm, leg, etc. And if a person is left-handed, then the structures of the right brain play a much larger role in him than in right-handed people and cognitive processes flow differently. And if the number of lefties is growing, and they are mostly men, then this is a reason to think that something is changing in humanity.
Let’s see how many brilliant women we know. There are very few of them: Kovalevskaya, Marie Curie. This is just a very high level. But if you need to go beyond a certain level, men overplay.
Here, the male and female brain, the picture. Such projects are called a connectome — a description of the connections in the brain. These are works that describe not the anatomy of the brain, but physiology, i.e. what is connected with what in the brain when cognitive activity occurs.
This is a conditional typical male brain. The main connections here are inside the hemispheres and there are almost no connections that the hemispheres of the brain would connect with each other. In men, the hemispheres of the brain are ready to live separately, with themselves. There are reasons for this. There is a part of the brain called the lintel called the corpus callosum. This is the part of the brain that connects the hemispheres with each other and ensures their communication with each other. Those. a healthy brain is the one that conducts this conversation. I’m not saying that the male brain is unhealthy, but that women have this part of a larger size.
The corpus callosum in the brain of women is larger, so they work both hemispheres at the same time. It follows from this that the female brain is more symmetrical than the male. This is rather a minus, because when people became modern people anatomically (about 200 thousand years ago), the functions of the hemispheres were divided, which is good for the computational capabilities of the brain. When not “everyone does everything”, but distributed roles. So separating the specifics is a very progressive thing. It, in particular, provided us with the possibility of language. In the left brain, zones have formed that are occupied with very complex things, such as syntax, phonetics.
If all this is presented in the form of a spectrogram, then everything goes there in its entirety. How does the brain even manage to calculate anything, because it is very energy-consuming. Therefore, the division of the functions of the hemispheres is an evolutionarily positive thing. But if a closure begins, don’t expect anything good either. Of course both parts of the brain are needed. Women use both parts of the brain, including for visual perception, i.e. to assess the visual scene, not just the language.
In the eighties, the American Roger Speri received the Nobel Prize for showing the difference in the functions of the hemispheres, and this is really a powerful discovery. Then they said: the left is verbal and mathematics, the right is emotions, visual perception, music, pictures. Now everything is not so: the pictures are different, and the mathematics are different, and the emotions are different. For example, if a person’s right hemisphere functions are disturbed, then his mood improves. “Improving” is not quite the right word: he begins to act maniacally, for example, runs around the planet with a red banner and says that “we must immediately light a world fire.” And if the left hemisphere is disturbed, then on the contrary, his mood drops, then this is depression. But in the eighties it was such a touching romantic time when everything was divided into two. Unfortunately, it is no longer divisible by two, but nevertheless, I say and write that the visual is by no means only the right brain. Women, let’s say, look with both brains, because it is vital for them.
Just as they said then that music is the right hemisphere. Dear God, what music? Of course, if you fry cutlets, yes, and Alla Pugacheva sings above your ear, then this may be the right hemisphere. And if you listen to Schnittke and you, suppose, have a score in your hands, and you also compare who performs it how and which conductor, then this is a completely different brain, a completely different part of the brain, namely the one that deals with complex syntax and mathematics .
I just want to say that now the brain is not divided in the way we used to. Previously, they would have said: “men are all left-brained, and young ladies embroider with a Bulgarian cross.” This is not true. Here are magnetic resonance images of the male and female brains, and you can see that in men the corpus callosum is not involved too much. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist! I want to be understood correctly: these are statistics. And if we take some other statistical method and recalculate, it remains to be seen what we will get. But the fact is that the corpus callosum is much more involved in women, therefore, maybe this partly explains why women can simply have good abilities more often, for example, at school, etc., and rarely anyone for genius and breakthrough of them is capable.
Another interesting thing: gray and white matter. If you read about Poirot, then he says there — I’ll go feed my gray cells, eat fish, phosphorus, so that they think correctly. Gray matter is nervous tissue — these are the bodies of neurons themselves, and parts of neurons that are called axons. And this is the substance that is seriously and in very large doses involved in thinking and in general in serious cognitive tasks: when tasks need to be solved, and not act like a semiautomatic device. White matter is nerve fibers covered with myelin and it is white. Tests for intelligence and performance of complex tasks show the doses of gray and white matter that are involved in their performance. And they tell us that women have more gray matter and therefore the female brain is more efficient. A large proportion of gray matter makes it possible to process information more efficiently.
Let’s talk about how boys and girls react to stress. Under stress, the body uses different substances in them: acetylcholine in girls, adrenaline in boys. We are not talking about a situation that is absolutely creepy, but one that causes «medium stress».
Girls react to moderate stress by freezing, not trying to do something. They feel unable to somehow respond either physically or mentally to the situation. Sometimes there may be a situation when they are even physically ill, they begin to feel sick, they may faint.
And in boys (namely, in boys, in adults, education matters), on the contrary, average stress (not a threat to life), on the contrary, causes excitement, cheerfulness and a desire to participate in this. So in a sense, boys even enjoy stress, which, I repeat, is not life threatening.
We, and, consequently, our behavior, are highly dependent on chemicals in the body. As a researcher, I worked in a psychiatric clinic, and I know that, for example, in order to avoid depression, the patient must take lithium. Or eat food that will have the right substances. As you know, chocolate and bananas are extremely helpful in bad mood and unhappy love. From this follows a biological difference in the behavior of boys and girls.
Girls are much less likely to show impulsive behavior and make impulsive decisions because they have high levels of serotonin. Girls have 15% more blood flow and are therefore better learners in general than boys. Boys have less serotonin and oxytocin and this makes them more impulsive. And, if we are talking about school, then there is no way to make them sit still. Also, boys’ brains are so arranged that they work well with symbols, with abstract categories and with pictures that explain it all.
In general, boys do better in sciences such as mathematics, physics, etc. than girls. But I have already warned, this does not mean that girls cannot cope, that there are no brilliant girls who can do it. Since girls have more developed cortical regions, including those that provide verbal activity, girls are much more sensory sensitive, they have better sensory memory. They remember sounds, smells, roughness. Cortical regions begin to work effectively earlier than in boys, and they behave decently in the classroom: they are ready to sit at their desks, they have much less problems with reading and writing.
It is much more difficult for boys at school, because they do not want to listen, or sit, or look, but they want to run around — to show motor activity, and I strongly advise giving them this opportunity. They should not be clamped within the classroom or desk, because then it will explode elsewhere. You see, if everything is forbidden, then the lid will definitely explode. The question is what we are ready to do: let our psyche suffer, or let it run like crazy for 20 minutes around the school yard, and thereby throw out this energy from itself.
Good doctors (and psychologists) who deal with psychosomatics say: «The worst thing that can happen is if a person does not tell anyone anything at all.» If he is in trouble, then there is a confession, girlfriends, psychotherapists — it depends on the culture and the country. But if it doesn’t go anywhere at all, then it’s a “closed tight lid” that will certainly explode. Moreover, how will she explode? Not necessarily verbally or psychosis, but a stomach ulcer can happen, for example.
I don’t mean that there was a mess in schools and no discipline at all, but if everything is clenched into a fist, then there will be no good in the end.
Girls are much more ready to live in a situation of multiple tasks. They can do several different things at the same time, moreover, they switch easily. And this, in particular, is the role of the colosum body. This jumper makes it possible for both halves of the brain to work at the same time, and they, after all, are tuned to slightly different things. This gives the girl the opportunity, without experiencing some incredible internal stress, to switch from task to task quickly.
Boys are more rigid in this sense. They use these evolutionarily very advanced zones to a much lesser extent than girls when doing any type of task. That is, they are more impulsive, they take more risks, they can achieve more success because of it. But we do not expect exemplary behavior from them, this is the wrong behavior for them.
There are also genetic differences in the brain between boys and girls. It turns out that girls hear better than boys because boys have a different anatomy: thirty-five percent less pathways in the cochlea themselves. Therefore, serious teachers advise the boys to sit closer to the teacher.
Girls are much faster and more successful at seeing the differences between the objects they observe or study at school. And boys find objects better. They say about girls that this is idiocy, geographical, topographic stupidity.
Girls pay more attention to faces and like warm colors more. Since girls use most of their brains, they can explain and describe their feelings. Boys practically cannot talk about their feelings, or do not consider it necessary — this is an open question. Girls know how to do this, and a good teacher should use it. Girls develop language skills and fine motor skills in their hands, which, in fact, is understandable — these are the same areas of the brain: where articulation is, there are also hands. Therefore, there are methods when children with a delay in speech development begin to give them manual tests on purpose — they have to crumple something, embroider something, cut something out of beads. By the way, this is a very interesting topic, because, given that children have stopped doing this at all, but only point their fingers at the computer, I think that this story has consequences. Boys practically cannot talk about their feelings, or do not consider it necessary — this is an open question.
And finally, multitasking, that is, several tasks at the same time and a quick transition. Jumping from one task to another does not cause neurosis. Boys enter new tasks very slowly, that is, they need to be allowed to catch their breath, as they say. However, boys are well oriented in space and begin to do this 4 years earlier than girls.
Friendship girls establish, mainly among girls or among the company. How would they agree to organize themselves into something. Boys are guided not by the company, but by the general activity. Girls can get together only for the sake of the fact of gathering, that is, “let’s sit down and talk,” as they say. And the boys should have some kind of goal, that is, “here we will do this together.” Girls think that talking is an important thing. «Let’s talk» is what the average girl accepts. The boys believe that this is an absolutely unnecessary waste of time, it does not help anyone, nothing good comes out of this.
Girls go for a close and frank relationship with the teacher, that is, they like this story — the teacher and I are friends, we tell her all the troubles, and so on. Boys are not. And what’s more, boys avoid this eye contact. Tip: if you are going to talk to a boy, do not sit opposite him, do not glare at him, but sit as if next to him. Or even start doing something together, for example, playing ball, so that he does not face the need to look «eye-to-eye» so that his face is not read.
To cope with a stressful situation, girls need to be surrounded by friends, as if sharing common troubles. Boys need to be alone with themselves.
Girls prefer to read novels, while boys prefer to read literature that contains useful information: how things work, how things happen.
How to teach boys?
I came across an English article, and there the author writes that when he arrived at an expensive British private school for boys (expensive in this case — important), he was struck by the low air temperature. Cold. But the British generally love it. But it was colder than expected. And he could not understand, because, of course, we are not talking about saving. The director told him that the boys do not tolerate warm temperatures well — they just fall asleep and do nothing at all (now this has already been proven), so they must be kept in the cold. And they even give numbers: the temperature in Fahrenheit in the room for boys should be 2 degrees lower than that in which girls live, who, for some reason, do not fall asleep, but love warmth.
When communicating with boys, you should keep your conversation short, keep it simple, and involve them actively in the classroom. The boy should not be a passive person, because everything inside him requires activity. They should be praised because they have a very high level of love for the competition, they should be first all the time. Therefore, if there is at least some reason to praise him, then it is necessary to praise him because it spurs him on to further positive steps.
Boys should be given the opportunity to play, run around, make noise, turn everything off, but keep an eye on them. At the same time, so that they do not roam so as to bring harm to themselves and others. But they need to be allowed to do so. They need real physical activity, otherwise they start to burn it out and turn into something else.
Lessons should, if possible, be not theoretical, but related to some kind of activity: either experiments, or they should touch something, unscrew it, see how it works. Since boys have lower hearing than girls, they need to be kept closer to the person who speaks, to the teacher in this case.
Girls work well in groups. Especially if they are looking at each other or looking at the teacher. «Eye-to-eye» for girls is an important thing. They are born with this idea.
There is no need to protect girls from getting involved in some kind of physical activity, running around, falling into puddles. You don’t need to tell them: “You’re a girl, but you got your socks dirty and fell into a puddle. These are bandit boys, let them run.” No. They must be able to do this, because otherwise, they grow up unprepared for the troubles that can happen in life. In this case, we educate them to be helpless in relation to a situation that can and, moreover, actually arise. They need to know how to deal with it. If you see that a girl can fall and tear off her knee, let her fall and tear off her knee. She will know what to do next, for example, to wash and/or bandage her knee. The girl must face something other than candy.
Girls don’t like loud noises, they don’t like being yelled at. Of course, no one likes this, but the boys, as it were, agree to this. It also plays a role that they hear worse. Therefore, the boy is not annoyed by a loud and even repetitive sound, such as that spinal music that simply beats the tempo. And on average, girls are annoyed. They don’t like it.
Girls like pronounced emotions. They themselves want to express them, and they want emotionality to come to them. The person who brings up the girl should know that she is waiting for emotions. While the boy is not necessarily waiting. This, as it were, is not his royal business, to play with emotions.
Girls love a lot of color. And therefore, if this is a school for girls, then the pictures on the screen, the demonstration of illustrations is what they like. I believe that our education is fundamentally wrongly organized: in elementary school there should be not dropouts from a technical school, but stars. Only stars. The very best should teach the smallest children — this will radically change the lives of children.
How to deal with children.
With boys. Speak loudly when speaking in front of the class. Must be structured text. Be concise, giving direct instructions: do it. Minimize both verbal and written instructions, build the situation in such a way that he draws a conclusion from it that he is being taught, therefore it is better to turn to the boys with questions all the time — there should be an interactive situation in the class. Not a lecturer who stands and broadcasts, but a live action in which the boys must participate — thereby moving their brains to work. Because they have difficulty switching from task to task, the instructor (or teacher) should be aware that boys should be given adequate time to switch from one topic to another. If you behave in this way, then this implies that you are growing a male model of behavior in boys. This, by the way, is very important, and I’m not a retrograde and not in favor of changing everything now, but there was some sense in when there were men’s and women’s schools.
If I myself decided to break my opinion, I would say: listen, because someday they will come out into the world. In this world, there are such, and such, and such. Let them boil in this colorful world in advance — in the classroom. If we recall the left and right hemispheres, then in Germany at one university the group was divided into right hemisphere and left hemisphere. We will teach right hemispheres in this way, and so for left hemispheres. This is the road to a madhouse, because then you need to say — what kind of teacher will we choose? What textbooks will we choose? Yes? Well, when he leaves school, will he live among this narrow population of his? Or maybe he needs to learn to communicate with the world and with such, with and with such, and with such.
That is, the issue with boys and girls is difficult. And where do we have teachers who generally know at least something like that.
What should be the environment? Let’s say it’s a boys’ school. This means that the temperature, after all, should be lower, they should have a lot of physical space so that they move, do something physical, all sorts of manipulations, jumping, running, and so on.
I am not enthusiastic about the educational system in America, but in one thing, I think they have succeeded very much. They have a school education, it is not something that is below the plinth, it is generally below everything. They don’t know anything, just nothing at all, but they don’t hate school. Which is an important thing. That is, if a child has a runny nose and his parents say — “you will stay at home today”, which is the highest happiness for every Soviet child, then an American child sobs bitterly, because he was deprived of everything in general. At school, his friends, when he comes there, they feed him sweets, they all wallow in the grass, endlessly swim in the pool, jump somewhere. They don’t know anything, they don’t get homework and so on. That is, the Americans are great, because with this method they bring up children who do not have hatred for the very fact of going to school, and when they endlessly jump over something, swim and kindle fires, this also makes sense. In the end, they will learn the Newton binomial later: in college they will face tough competition and very high requirements, of course, in good educational institutions.
Next, about the boys: they need to have a lot of diagrams, drawings, diagrams, models, if possible. They must participate in activities that establish contact between them and the teacher. The teacher did not descend from heaven, he is, as it were, one of them. Of course, there is nothing good when the distance is completely broken, therefore, a balance must always be struck.
Now about girls.
Girls must see the face of the teacher, they must understand what is depicted on this face — a positive attitude or a negative one, they want to look into the eyes. This is a soothing agent for them and a guarantee of reliability: “I am in a positive place. From birth I know how to read a face, and I don’t expect anything bad from a person whom I look into the eyes.
Of course, we need to give girls the opportunity to develop a model of female behavior. She must understand who she will become in the end, and this needs to be specially dealt with. And girls should be especially attentive when it comes to teaching sciences: physics, chemistry, and so on, because both they and we know in advance that they are weaker in these subjects. And therefore, it is necessary to create a situation so that they feel that this is nothing particularly terrible, “I can defeat them all, by the way. And the teacher treats me in such a way that I seem to even understand. This position is very important.
For girls, it is very important how the teacher looks, they follow this. My already grown-up students say: “Oh, when you lectured to us in the first year, you had such earrings, we couldn’t think about anything else.” Oh God, what kind of earrings I had, I absolutely don’t remember, but they already have three children, and they remember these earrings. And it turns out they bought them. I took them with earrings. Therefore, the teacher does not have to be fashionably dressed, but she must understand it. That is, to show that this is what she knows.
Girls should live in a warmer environment and, if possible, classes should be organized informally: they should look like a house, there should be flowers, paintings. In general, it is desirable that the girls feel comfortable sitting, so that they do not come to the environment of the surgical operating room, but that — «I came home, I feel good here, I like to go here.»
Girls can and love to work in small groups, so they need to be organized that way. They must participate, of course, in all sorts of games, but if possible, there should not be a specific winner in these games. That is, the process of the game itself should be interesting, and not «I defeated everyone.» Because it’s a different type of behavior. There must be a lot of manual labor. Not because they have to embroider pillows, but simply because this kind of education suits them well (when they do something themselves). But not stools. When I was studying, for some reason, we had to make stools. I couldn’t figure out why the stools? However, there was one good thing — we were taught to cook, and since then I have been able to do a lot of things. By the way, in the seventh grade I was the champion of Leningrad in cleaning herring, and I still do it with ease.
We had a special job where we investigated when right-handed people are born, when left-handed people are born. It turned out that this coincides with the seasons, with the peaks of solar activity and with summer-winter, that is, it affects.
Next, we tested right-handers and left-handers on different cognitive tests and skills. By the way, there is a term for their naming — “cognitive loteral profile”. This refers to the dominant hand, the dominant leg, the dominant eye, the ear, and the dominant cognitive style.
I’ll just state something just for fun.
For example, a person is asked the following question: “When you buy a new appliance, some kind of coffee maker, what do you do with it? Are you reading the instructions or are you pointing your finger in the hope that it will turn itself on? For example, I am left-brained, cognation and I work in science. But so that I could someday read some kind of instruction … In general, even, there’s not even a question. That’s why I haven’t tried in a long time. I’m really pointing my finger. If suddenly there is someone who knows how, I will tell him: “So you can tell me, first press the red, then the green, or vice versa?”. How it works, I don’t want to know. But there are a lot of people who will read this instruction, then they will read it again, then they will retell it, only after that they will start turning it on. Therefore, these tests that we conducted with people include a lot of different things, and only after they are confirmed can we say: this person is of the left hemisphere type. Among the “left-handed” men are more than women. Men with a dominant left foot, or lack of asymmetry, are more common than women. Women with a dominant left eye are more common than men.
I will make you laugh now. I have done these tests myself. And some of the tests were American. I have a lot of friends in America, I don’t want to scold them, but still there was a wonderful question. I’ll say it in Russian, and there it all sounded in English: “When you peep through the keyhole, with which eye do you usually look?”. This is «usually» … I just collapsed when I read this. “When you eavesdrop, you stand at the door, eavesdrop, as usual …”. Then there was a question that, it seems to me, is very suitable for the Russian population, namely: “If you need to determine whether the liquid is left in a bottle made of opaque glass, which eye do you mean …” and “which eye are you aiming at into something optical.
In men, factors such as gullibility (men are gullible) and egocentrism are much higher than in women. Also, they have analytical and critical thinking, i.e., the ability to solve logistical problems, such as: «Peter is a man, is Peter mortal?» And I’m talking about syllogisms, there were exactly syllogisms in the test. We also carried out such tests. Let’s say you ask: “In all rivers they put nets where fish are found. Is there fish in the Neva River? People say: “What fish? There is machine oil. I say: «And smelt?» “Smelt is our main advantage in St. Petersburg, yes, I like to catch smelt, I like to marinate, fry. Now I will teach you how to fry. My task is to find out if it solves a seological problem, not a smelt recipe.
Let me end where I started: the number of left-handed men seems to have really increased. Recently, one researcher who specifically dealt with this, Geodakyan, died. He said that we will move in this direction — this shows the vector of the biological evolution of homo. There is quite a lot of speculation around this, and some of them are even plausible. For example, I think you will agree with me that the amount of visual material — pictures — has increased many times over in the world, if we speak within the right hemisphere culture, then the majority now says: «we will not read this, let them show it to us.» Then the number of left-handers, that is, “right-brained”, is really greater, and as a result, there should be more of all hieroglyphic, that is, not that “you need to work on this,” but simply came, and everything is already there.
What is associated with reading and writing disorders is related to the functional asymmetry in both boys and girls. There are many studies on this topic. For example, if a child makes eight hundred mistakes on a page, and at the same time wins Olympiads in physics and mathematics, then it is clear that this is not intelligence. Try to deliberately make forty errors per page, I’d like to see that. Then we start to think and create questionnaires with the help of which we find out whether this child is right-handed or left-handed. If it turns out that he is either left-handed or ambidexter (wields both hands at the same time), then this is a rather fat plus towards the fact that he cannot read at the right speed for a reason or writes with a large number of errors — this is how his brain works. This child processes information at a different speed.
Tests for loterality («right» and «left») depend on many factors. If we test one woman, we will get different results depending on whether her monthly cycle is at the beginning, middle or end. That is, one of the determining factors in women is its endocrine background.
There are many different factors at play in this situation, so it is a hundred thousand times more complicated than what I have just described. And, of course, we should not forget about biological sex and gender. Biological sex is how you were born. Gender is how you were raised. That is, you can impose a different gender education. Therefore, I said: “girls need to be brought up according to one model, boys — according to another”, otherwise the biological sex and upbringing may come into conflict. All girls can march just like boys. Why they have to embroider pillows, I don’t understand.
Thank you!
If you have any questions, I will try to answer them.
Question: – Tatyana Vladimirovna, thank you very much for a very interesting lecture. A study that was conducted at the Institute of Psychoanalysis this year shows that women who go into psychotherapy often choose humanistic methods associated with sympathy, with emotional experience, with identification with another person. A man who goes to a psychotherapist chooses completely different methods. How is this related? Is it due to biological differences?
T.V. Chernihiv: – I think so. Pure experiments are impossible. The neural network with which a person was born is one, and the neural network of an adult is another. And there is not a single one that would coincide with at least someone else, because each of us has our own individual experience. It also comes from the way we were treated when we were young children. Freud inflicted the greatest harm on humanity, ruined the entire XNUMXth century. But, nevertheless, the early brain is plastic in young children, so what parents write on it is not a neutral thing, but the most important inscription. If you forget about these Freudian idiocy, then you just need to keep in mind that early experience is very important, you cannot erase it. Further, it depends on where you ended up, what system you were brought up in, who these people were, what you read, who you were friends with, everything is written in the brain. So you can’t deal with bad people, you can’t eat bad food, you can’t drink bad wine, you can’t read bad books, you can’t listen to bad music.
Once I was in Italy, in Tuscany, dined at a family restaurant, it was possible to die of happiness — it was so delicious! And there was a picture hanging on it, a glass was drawn on it and it was written “life is too short to waste it drinking bad wine.” What for? That is, if we have an idea to get out as soon as possible, then yes, you can.
Question: I need your advice as a teacher. What should I do in the classroom if I teach both boys and girls, and I understand that they are different. Do you use diagrams and signs? Or is it different for boys?
T.V. Chernihiv: — You can’t treat boys and girls differently within the same class. How to get out here? I think this is a question for the Ministry of Education.
Question: Should men teach boys and women should teach girls?
T.V. Chernihiv: You are asking the question too harshly. But men should definitely be in school, otherwise children will receive only female education, do you understand? They must also have a different model.
Question: — Men are not harmful to girls, but not useful to boys?
T.V. Chernihiv: – I would say yes. But I would not want to talk about it, I’m not a teacher. Therefore, I did not want to take responsibility and seriously answer. This is nothing more than my opinion. But my opinion is of little value here.
Question: – Within the framework of this topic, it would be interesting if you touched on such a topic as transgender people. Because such a story is now at the hearing. And have there been any studies on those people who change gender?
T.V. Chernihiv: — I have not conducted such studies, but I have a close friend, a good sexologist, Gleb Shcheglov. He was very famous in his time. Despite the fact that this is his specialty, and he must be loyal to everything, he believes that this is a very bad road.
Question: — That is, is it a story imposed by society or?
T.V. Chernihiv: — Both this and that. There are people who, indeed, did not have a hormonal, so to speak, concert. They are really unhappy, what should they do? But society is playing along. I do not want to take any conservative position, but I think that there in heaven they know what they are doing. Maybe we will not interfere in this matter? I’m afraid that it’s not our business to get into this, there may be bad consequences. But, I repeat, this question is not for me, this is not my specialty, I am incompetent to answer seriously.
Question: — If a person was born left-handed, but then he was retrained to be right-handed, does this affect a person’s life in the future?
T.V. Chernihiv: — I answer yes. My grandmother told me when she was almost 100 years old. She said that when she studied at the gymnasium, they had left-handed girls. Their left hand was tied so that even in their thoughts they would not have to use it. That is, hard pressure. Now everyone in the world agrees that retraining is out of the question. Because you are not retraining the hand, but the brain. By the way, when I talked about dyslexia and so on, one of the questions was: did they retrain or not retrain? Because it’s an effect on the brain, it’s a violation of the brain, which can cause tics, stuttering, and so on. Of course, not everyone. But why arrange it? Well, he writes with his left hand, what do you feel sorry for, or what? Well, let him write with his left hand. Well, to health, it’s better for him, because if, God forbid, there is some kind of stroke, then everyone will lose everything, but he won’t.
Thank you very much. Goodbye.