The results of “Ten Model Students” eventually came to light, crowning only six female candidates with no boys, to most people’s surprise. There came allegations concluding that boys are generally weaker than girls in the areas of competition. In my opinion, however, this is entirely not the case. Boys are equally qualified to be models as girls.
One indispensable quality to being a model student is outstanding leadership skills. Being a successful leader requires both character and interpersonal skills. In short, as in the case of management, a leader makes plans and gives orders. We cannot deny that girls generally enter the stage of maturity earlier than boys and may thereby be more insightful in defining and addressing problems. On the other hand, boys outrank girls in ordering placement and supervision under most circumstances, especially in times of urgency when bold and quick decisions are required. More importantly, for orders to be formulated effectively, a leader should, to a great extent, be assertive and look powerful. Boys simply outplay girls on that by instinct. That’s why in most schools, boys, rather than girls, are selected as head prefects or chairpersons of student organizations. When both sexes possess their own strengths in leadership, how can one immediately draw the conclusion that “female students are stronger leaders”?
Throughout the competition, candidates are compared in terms of their academic performance as well. There were consistently reports revealing that female students had more accomplishments than their male schoolmates in the academic field in general during the past decade. Some even showed that females are outnumbering males in university enrollments. Yet, are these sufficient to support female students’ election as “model” students? Regarding the public exam results, among those best performing candidates who are the most likely to be “model” students, we, nonetheless, discovered that male students have been enjoying sweeping victory. In view of that, it is actually more the case that male students are more qualified to be “models” in the academic field.
According to the organizing newspaper, all finalists are also tested on their language abilities. Most people have a self-produced perception that girls are used to keeping close relationship with classmates and friends, and therefore are better in self-expression. In fact, the use of language is not all about secret talks. It is more about literacy, listening skills and idea expression through utterances. One occasion where students’ language intelligence can be tested thoroughly is in debating competitions. Just in the drop of a hat, contestants have to listen carefully to the other side, jot down and summarise the counter side’s arguments, plan the speech, and voice his objections convincingly– their language skills are examined comprehensively. While we observe that most top student debaters are males, only if gossiping is considered as a type of language usage will boys be weaker than girls then.
The final area of judgement in the competition appeared to be knowledge of the world. It is rather difficult to define a solid ground for arguing which gender generally acquires more knowledge than the other. What we can study is at most the difference between the two’s curiosity towards unknowns. Girls often are keener on matters concerning them or surrounding them. Unlike girls, boys are comparatively apathetic towards small talk which they usually regard as gossip. What they are concerned about though tends to be matters not in fact related to them closely but to the public or to the world. That is probably why we usually see more male students than female students joining worldwide exchange programmes. Driven by a higher eagerness to gain knowledge of international matters, male students tend to be more knowledgeable than their female counterparts about the world.
To sum up, the speculation that boys in general are weaker than girls is an insensible talk. Students of both genders have their unique strengths. While some casually conclude that girls are brighter than boys, we do find a lot of aspects in which boys do better than girls. As a matter of fact, both male and female students are fairly eligible for being models.