And girls, being smarter, have always known that boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.

Those who are worried that there’s a “boy crisis” where boys are (God forbid) falling behind girls academically, you can rest easy tonight. A new study shows that boys have been academically behind for a pretty long time with no appreciable difference in recent years to concern yourself with. You’re welcome!

An analysis published by the National Psychological Association took grades from more than 30 countries for almost a full century (1914 to 2011) into account and finally confirmed what middle school students have long suspected: boys are, in fact, more stupider. (Further evidence is needed to prove Jupiter’s role in the phenomenon.) At least, while they score higher in math and science than girls on standardized tests, their regular school grades are worse than girls’ in every subject.

Looking at more than 500,000 each of boys’ and girls’ grades, they also determined that, while boys do lag behind girls in their studies, they haven’t dropped any further behind in recent years. The grade gap is smaller in the fields of math and science, while girls are even farther ahead in language subjects.

Susan Voyer, co-author on the study said, “The fact that females generally perform better than their male counterparts throughout what is essentially mandatory schooling in most countries seems to be a well-kept secret, considering how little attention it has received as a global phenomenon.”

However, they had a few excuses explanations for the boys’ performance, which may be due to social factors like parents placing less emphasis on boys’ studies, because their performance may be erroneously assumed to be better. It could also be partially because of different learning styles between genders, where girls place higher value on mastering a subject, while boys focus more on studying to take highly-weighted final tests.

So not only do girls get better grades, but it’s because they’re so smart that they even know how to learn better. Man, only an idiot would believe that boys are smarter than girls… which I guess explains why so many men think so.

(via Phys.org, image via woodleywonderworks)

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