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My 5th grade son was about to go to recess to play football. It was perfect weather, the teams were picked, and he was excited. As he was heading outside, the school counselor asked him and other kids to come do a fun activity (it was a group of kids that work with the new kids to help them get settled into the school).
The counselor had them stand in a circle and act out certain animals. My son was so upset that instead of playing football, he had to jump around like a kangaroo (and they were not even jumping around like a kangaroo outside, they were inside!). He said the girls liked the activity because they hate recess anyway. Here's the question, do you think the counselor is a male or female?
Next, somebody took my son's favorite football at school (different day). The assistant principal heard that my son's football was taken, and the assistant principal went class to class looking for the football, and was able to find who took it and returned it to my son. Do you think the assistant principal is a male or female?
Just thought I would put a different spin this! I have two sons in school and to me it does seem like school is more geared towards girls, or girl behaviors and learning styles than boy behaviors and learning styles (in general).
As a mother of 3 boys, I have a lot to add. BUT, I'll let Ms. Sommers do the talking for me--her book is fantastic, btw. Here's an excerpt:
"In the past few years girls have been catching up in math and science while boys have continued to lag far behind in reading and writing.
One of the many things about which the report was wrong was the famous "call-out" gap. According to the AAUW, "In a study conducted by the Sadkers, boys in elementary and middle school called out answers eight times more often than girls. When boys called out, teachers listened. But when girls called out, they were told 'raise your hand if you want to speak.'"
But the Sadker study turns out to be missing—and meaningless, to boot. In 1994 Amy Saltzman, of U.S. News & World Report, asked David Sadker for a copy of the research backing up the eight-to-one call-out claim. Sadker said that he had presented the findings in an unpublished paper at a symposium sponsored by the American Educational Research Association; neither he nor the AERA had a copy. Sadker conceded to Saltzman that the ratio may have been inaccurate. Indeed, Saltzman cited an independent study by Gail Jones, an associate professor of education at the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, which found that boys called out only twice as often as girls. Whatever the accurate number is, no one has shown that permitting a student to call out answers in the classroom confers any kind of academic advantage. What does confer advantage is a student's attentiveness. Boys are less attentive—which could explain why some teachers might call on them more or be more tolerant of call-outs.
Despite the errors, the campaign to persuade the public that girls were being diminished personally and academically was a spectacular success. The Sadkers described an exultant Anne Bryant, of the AAUW, telling her friends, "I remember going to bed the night our report was issued, totally exhilarated. When I woke up the next morning, the first thought in my mind was, 'Oh, my God, what do we do next?'" Political action came next, and here, too, girls' advocates were successful.
Categorizing girls as an "under-served population" on a par with other discriminated-against minorities, Congress passed the Gender Equity in Education Act in 1994. Millions of dollars in grants were awarded to study the plight of girls and to learn how to counter bias against them. At the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing in 1995, members of the U.S. delegation presented the educational and psychological deficits of American girls as a human-rights issue.
During a three-month period in 1997 various questions about gender equity were asked of 1,306 students and 1,035 teachers in grades seven through twelve. The MetLife study had no doctrinal ax to grind. What it found contradicted most of the findings of the AAUW, the Sadkers, and the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women: "Contrary to the commonly held view that boys are at an advantage over girls in school, girls appear to have an advantage over boys in terms of their future plans, teachers' expectations, everyday experiences at school and interactions in the classroom."
Some other conclusions from the MetLife study: Girls are more likely than boys to see themselves as college-bound and more likely to want a good education. Furthermore, more boys (31 percent) than girls (19 percent) feel that teachers do not listen to what they have to say. The book is worth buying. I have so much more to post, but am tending to kids. The book is titled, "The War Against Boys" by Christine Sommers.
Absolutely nothing about the studies by C. Sommers surprises me. As per the "leader" of our country, if you are male, straight, and christian, you had better apoligize to the world for living.
You are being taught at a very early age nowadays that as a boy, you are inferior in intellect. Makes one wonder who will be running America 10 years from now, provided that we haven't already handed over our economy, and thus our country, to the rest of the world.
Just look at the commercials that make men look stupid...
No, this is not about boys vs girls. Just that we should not just look out for ourselves, for our own sex because all of us are affected by one another. I can't help but recall that 80's crime that took place at Central Park, New York City (do you remember...those who were born already). The woman was working at some posh financial firm and was a Yale graduate, jogging thru the park. She got raped and beaten into a coma by some teen boys. So even when one thinks one is above it all, is ahead of the game, no man or woman is an island.
It will take a GENERATION Z+ President to acknowledge the problem in the education of boys.
Education rights for girls and women have come a long way. There are more female college students than males. Women have outperformed men in education over the years.
Yet females are not any safer. People talk so much about protecting girls and women or making sure we (I'm a woman) are getting all the educational access. This is fine. But nothing is being said or done about changing the way we educate boys from the get go.
Most of the violent crimes are done by the male sex.
Failure to address boys' educational needs (boys lag behind girls in academics and graduation rates) and incarcerating boys and men to no end WILL NOT make society safer. Girls and women will NOT be safer even with all the laws and regulations in place. Building more women's shelters will NOT make violence against women go away.
It's about CHANGING the way we educate boys. The bullies, the juvenile delinquints, the potential murderers and rapists, the psychopaths....they are there if we don't do something. They are not being raised and parented properly -- that is obvious.
So the public schools need to address this because where else can this be addressed? Prisons?
Do boys need more nurturing? Do they need more counseling? Do they need more (fill in the blank)? I don't know. What do you think?
I think the education of boys in this country is in SERIOUS NEGLECT and DIRE STRAITS. We do not have to neglect boys in order to educate girls, or vice versa.
We all live in this fish bowl and we all have to interact. Let educational opportunities be tailored for both sexes.
So now we're going to heap teaching boys to behave on our schools on top of everything we already do?
If we want schools/teachers to raise our children, I think we need to turn our schools into boarding schools. I'm sorry but there isn't much I can do to teach your child to not be a bully if you are teaching him to be one. Kids are in school 6.5 hours a day 175 days per year. We cannot undo what you and society do in the rest of the time in that amount of time.
At the end of the day, kids spend way more time under the tuteladge of parents, family, friends and neighbors than they do teachers and schools. If you add up the hours, kids spend about 1140 hours a year in school and over 4000 waking hours OUT OF SCHOOL per year. Why do people think we're miracle workers? Do you really expect us to do with 22% of the time what society, parents and family couldn't in the other 78% when we're already tasked with teaching your kids to read, write and do math in that time??? If this is what you want out of schools then the school day needs to be lengthened and the year extended so kids spend more time with teachers than they do with parents and outside of school.
You know, as a teacher, I'm not allowed to discuss things like morals or religion to your kids but it's my job to teach them to act like human beings? You know, the second I start doing that, some parent is filing a lawsuit because I'm trying to impress my morals on her kid.
If we're going to centralize raising our kids, I'd suggest we do it but the schools are not the place to do that. Perhaps, parents should drop their babies off, on the way home from the hospital, to orphanages where all kids will be raised to behave the same way. Parents could visit on Sundays.
It is NOT the school's responsibility to RAISE KIDS. Our responsibility is to educate them and in order for us to do that, you need to send them to us already knowing how to behave like a human being.
I'm sorry but if your kids can't behave and they're bullies, perhaps the better place to educate them is prison where they are confined and society kept safe from them. I have kids in my classes who scare the bejeebers out of me. One is headed for court the week after next. I'm hoping the court has the sense to send him to Juvinile detention where someone can deal with his issues. I teach chemistry. I don't have time to deal with his issues and he's costing other kids in the class an education because he doesn't know how to behave.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 11-07-2009 at 06:01 AM..
One reason girls have a better grasp on future plans and more often go to college is necessity. There are fewer career opportunities that pay decently open to women without an education than to men. Women do not have equal opportunity to get jobs in fields like construction and heavy labor. Even in grocery stores there are two tracks. Bagger to cashier or if you're lucky office clerk someday or stock to management which usually goes to a man. You don't see cashiers (usually women) promoted to managers. You see stock boys promoted to stock management and then store management.
The bottom line is, women have more need for education and more need to more carefully plan their futures. THAT's why you see more girls taking education more seriously and going on to college. It has nothing to do with our education system favoring girls. It has to do with the reality of being female and knowing you have to do more if you want anything in this world. Also, girls mature faster than boys so they understand the consequences of their decisions better and earlier.
My step sons who never went to college do quite well. One is a grocery store manager (he'll be the first to tell you few women have a track to his position) and the other is a construction manager having worked his way up from heavy labor to management. If my daughters were to not go to college, what careers would be open to them? Very few and they will grow up fast enough to figure that out before college.
My girls WILL go to college because they NEED to go to college. My boys could and did get away with not going to college.
^^^Kudos to you for that post! My BFF and I were discussing this issue one day, and came to the same conclusion. Men make more at every educational level than women, and some men with high school educations make more than women with advanced degrees. I'm not talking about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, either. I'm talking about a lot of "Average Joes". Also, women these days know they will probably have to support themselves for a goodly amount of time due to later marriage, divorce, etc, so they better get a good education to do so.
I remember when George W. Bush was starting his 2nd term. Laura Bush announced that boys being left behind in our schools was going to be her cause. Then <poof> no one heard another word about it.
My 5th grade son was about to go to recess to play football. It was perfect weather, the teams were picked, and he was excited. As he was heading outside, the school counselor asked him and other kids to come do a fun activity (it was a group of kids that work with the new kids to help them get settled into the school).
The counselor had them stand in a circle and act out certain animals. My son was so upset that instead of playing football, he had to jump around like a kangaroo (and they were not even jumping around like a kangaroo outside, they were inside!). He said the girls liked the activity because they hate recess anyway. Here's the question, do you think the counselor is a male or female?
Next, somebody took my son's favorite football at school (different day). The assistant principal heard that my son's football was taken, and the assistant principal went class to class looking for the football, and was able to find who took it and returned it to my son. Do you think the assistant principal is a male or female?
This sounds so much like my son.... He LIVES for playing football at recess. During recess, the 4th grade boys (without any adult direction) have formed these complex football leagues with try-outs, playbooks, rotating positions, designated student coaches, referees, team managers, etc. It has amazed me because it is quite complex and generally very fair. They try to balance the skill level of the teams. And those kids who don't want to play are taught how to referee or manage the teams. Yesterday, one boy was caught cheating and the others were furious and are now devising a penalty point system. I have always argued that A LOT of learning takes place at recess and with team sports.
My son would be quite annoyed if a teacher interrupted his football time so he could role-play a kangaroo! But that IS the kind of stuff I've seen from teachers who don't understand boys. Luckily, my son's teacher gets it. At the beginning of the year, my son told me he would be bringing "Stitch" (the name of his favorite baseball) to school because his teacher said he could lightly toss/catch it while doing math problems. At conferences (he is in the gifted program), the teacher told me he was a very "kinetic learner" and confirmed he could toss the ball while working. And then I realized he usually fiddled with a ball (or some other object) while doing homework at home. I used to tell him to put down the ball so he could focus. But the ball actually helped him to focus! I grew up in a household of all girls and have had a lot to learn about educating boys....
I've also noticed that, while my son has a high reading level for his age, he is less interested in Reading/Literature as compared to Math/Science. For him, he has to really be interested in the subject matter in order to read a fiction book (otherwise, he'll choose a Non-Fiction loaded with facts like "History of the Chicago Bears"). It does seem that there are fewer books with subjects that appeal specifically to boys of his age (e.g. he enjoys Rick Riordan, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.). My daughter seems to have many more "girl-oriented" books from which to choose. If I ever have any spare time, I'll write exciting, action-packed books geared to 10-12 year old boys because we need more of them!
p.s. Just want to add that I didn't realize how differently boys think/learn as compared to girls until I had one of each (and I know there are many exceptions). I remember giving my 2 year old son a babydoll so he could learn how to behave when his sister was born. But he just kept using the doll as a baseball bat despite all my patient lessons on how to care for a baby! I have been guilty of trying to force my learning style on my son when it was I who needed to adapt my methods for him.
Last edited by GoCUBS1; 11-07-2009 at 11:44 PM..
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Do you really expect us to do with 22% of the time what society, parents and family couldn't in the other 78% when we're already tasked with teaching your kids to read, write and do math in that time??? If this is what you want out of schools then the school day needs to be lengthened and the year extended so kids spend more time with teachers than they do with parents and outside of school.
