Stuck in the middle

In the well curve perspective, Rob Paterson links to Daniel Pink’s Wired magazine article on "the well curve"—a 180 degree shift of the normal distribution curve. Rob believes the well curve has implications for schools:

Our school system is firmly rooted in the middle ground. It means that in the middle are only a few kids. Most of the kids are on the wings.

According to Francis Galton, deviations from the normal distribution would occur only during periods of transition—periods like the Nine Shift. Over at the Nine Shift blog William Draves and Julie Coates point out the inherent weakness of an education system that presupposes everyone's normal:

The problem is that schools try to treat everyone as normal, so they can teach one way, fail to respond to each student's unique needs, and do mass education like a factory does mass production.

Boys seem to be more effected by this failure and the explanations offered by both Rob and Draves and Coates point the finger at the normalising culture of school. Quoted in a BBC News article, Draves and Coates argue that boy's underperformance is because boys exhibit behaviours "like taking risks, being entrepreneurial, being collaborative" that while rewarded in the workplace, are punished by school cultures that encourage regression to the mean.