Sitting down and shutting up nothing new

Interesting comments on the alleged gender gap in education at Majikthise. Yesterday I read the thread on Althouse about this issue and found it unsatisfying, as usual. Beyerstein puts her finger on precisely what was niggling at me through this entire discussion:

It's crazy to think that it's unfair to boys for the school system to reward sitting down, shutting up, and doing your work.

Schools have stressed these dispositions for longer than than women have been allowed an education.

When I read this post by a teacher, I couldn't articulate why I disagreed so strongly with him, despite his wealth of experience with young boys and my relative lack. But as Beyerstein points out, wrestling on the floor of a classroom was hardly countenanced in earlier days. In fact, until the past few decades such conduct might have earned the wrestlers corporal punishment. If standards for behavior were higher in the past and boys achieved then, what's holding them back now?