<p>My apologies in advance to CC's marvelous moms and doting dads of delightful daughters, but here is an hilariously true letter to the Editor published in today's edition of the New York Times that explains why schools work for girls and not for boys:</p>
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[quote]
Boys and Girls in School (1 Letter)</p>
<p>To the Editor:</p>
<p>David Brooks ("The Gender Gap at School," column, June 11) addresses important issues about why boys are falling behind in schools. The scale of the challenge goes far beyond reading lists that fail to appeal to boys.</p>
<p>To see the problem clearly, imagine being a girl in a school that is the mirror image of today's schools.</p>
<p>Imagine a school where the vast majority of teachers and administrators are men and where competitive sports are compulsory.</p>
<p>Imagine that students get rewarded for being overtly aggressive in school and that there is a zero tolerance policy for being passive.</p>
<p>Imagine getting extra credit for resisting authority, and having points deducted for being compliant with arbitrary rules and meaningless deadlines.</p>
<p>A school like this would feel as hostile to girls as today's schools feel to boys.</p>
<p>As parents generally know, and schools generally ignore, boys and girls need different kinds of experiences and training as they grow. Book lists that appeal are part of the answer, but not all of it.</p>
<p>Nelson D. Horseman
Cincinnati, June 13, 2006
The writer is a professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati.
<p>First, on a logical basis: the opposite of sports being mandatory would be sports being banned--hardly the case at most schools (in fact, gym class IS mandatory in most places).</p>
<p>2nd, on an ideological basis: 'overly agressive' behavior isn't masculine, it's violent, and i can think of a bunch of good reasons to keep violent behavior out of schools (in the same newspaper that published this letter, there was an article about the memorial dedication at Columbine High). </p>
<p>What would the reader want a school for boys to look like, free of all those silly "meaningless deadlines" and full of rewards for disobeying teachers? How would those graduates function in the real world? And how does the author explain actual all-male schools, whose students achieve great success despite being, well, the opposite of the 'mirror image' he describes? Or male teachers, who not surprisingly run their classrooms much like female teachers do (and nothing at all like this letter might suggest)?</p>
<p>I almost don't want to take this letter seriously, but although the tone is facetious i think many people share the sentiments behind it. In my opinion, the boys who are failing aren't falling behind because schools are too girly, but because family and societal pressures are telling them that proper, moral, behavior (which should be universal) is girly. And until being like a girl stops being such a negative, that's not going to stop.</p>
<p>"Being like a girl is not negative. But boys are not like girls and they shouldn't have to act like girls no matter how much girls want them to."</p>
<p>I think you missed the point of stacy's post. You say that boys "shouldn't have to act like girls" when stacy is saying that they should act morally and with discipline. You make it sound like what should be universal good behavior is "girly", which is precisely the problem to begin with. The solution, then, is not to cater to our current idea of the masculine man (which seems to mean violent and disrespectful) but to actually solve the universal problems in the schools and remove the pressure that we put on boys to be """masculine""".</p>
<p>To start with, we could remove things like arbitrary rules and meaningless deadlines. We can encourage intellectual challenge in the environement without destroying all structure in the classroom. We can make boys want to be successful rather than cool and masculine. </p>
<p>To improve schools is not to make them "girly".</p>
<p>I agree with the two people above on that book issue. A lot if not most of the books I've read were written by dead white MEN, I really don't see how the reading requirements are more partial to females.</p>
<p>Ihave two girls
My oldest attended private school K-12 , because she was very girly
I knew she would get lost in a classroom of 32 kids, where the ones who got attention were the ones who demanded it.</p>
<p>She was nice and sweet and blond and petite and would get strokes for being quiet and sitting in her desk- I didn't want a setting that would reinforce her natural tendencies, I wanted one that would challenge her to step beyond what was comfortable.</p>
<p>My younger daughter is more of an auditory kinesthetic learner, and I agree the school system does not often teach students who learn "outside the box", but I wouldn't say that boys are the majority of students who learn that way.</p>
I think you missed the point of stacy's post. You say that boys "shouldn't have to act like girls" when stacy is saying that they should act morally and with discipline. You make it sound like what should be universal good behavior is "girly", which is precisely the problem to begin with.
You define qualities that are typically associated with girls as moral and good, while qualities that boys typically manifest are bad. Girls are not inherently moral and disciplined. Boys are not immoral and undisciplined. This isn't a nursery rhyme where all the little girls are made of "sugar and spice, and everything nice" and boys are naughty. For instance, there is value to society to have some members who willingly demonstrate courage and determination and who will be risk-takers and question authority.</p>
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The solution, then, is not to cater to our current idea of the masculine man (which seems to mean violent and disrespectful) but to actually solve the universal problems in the schools and remove the pressure that we put on boys to be """masculine""".
I'm curious, have you always believed that masculine men are violent and disrespectful or did they teach you this in school?</p>
To start with, we could remove things like arbitrary rules and meaningless deadlines. We can encourage intellectual challenge in the environement without destroying all structure in the classroom.
<p>I think Leonard Sachs, "Why Gender Matters", has a more intellectually satisfactory but therefore more complex answer to the question. He covers differences in:
1)hearing (girls hear better in the higher ranges such as the voices of most elementary school teachers)
2)brain anatomic organization
3)vision and eye microanatomy (girls see color and texture better; boys see motion better)
4) relative maturation in emotional development
5) attitude to the teacher (for girls the teacher is your friend; for boys he is the quiz master)
I agree with most of the earlier posts. Being male is not about sports and being aggressive. There are plenty of male drama nerds and female jocks.
Being male is about using your greater physical strength to help those in need.
Sachs' solution is single gender education. The numbers show that you get more males doing art and literature and more females doing math and science. Both genders benefit. This is most helpful for boys in the first five years of school. It is probably here that we are losing the potential college boys.</p>
<p>there is a zero tolerance policy for being passive.</p>
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<p>I'd love to see more encouragement for students to speak up (and grade consequences when they don't). Public speaking used to be a required part of every public school curriculum. I don't go quite that far, but I do think every child should be expected to speak up for herself and defend her ideas in real time, and no student should be considered "educated" if she can't.</p>
<p>I've said this before on CC and I'll say it again. My boys attend(ed) an all-boys high school and it is heaven.</p>
<p>However, I think an even bigger problem educationg boys is elementary school. The concept of a learning environment that is predominantly sitting still and **listening<a href="as%20well%20as%20crafts/coloring/worksheet%20activities">/b</a> just isn't a boy model, it's a girl model. Elementary education is almost completely female driven, to the detriment of our boys' intelligence, creativity, spontanaity, and initiative.</p>
<p>"Moral and good" are not gender specific traits. I've seen enough of the "queen bee" problems among girls my daughter's age to know that it isn't just a problem among boys. It should be a goal for both genders.</p>
<p>I think the issue is that one size or kind of curriculum does not fit all students. Some students need encouragement to come out of their shell while others need restraints to keep them blowing out of the room. Managing those extremes in a room of 32 students would be next to impossible.</p>
<p>The evidence is clear that - in general - boys are falling behind in school, that something has changed in our school system or society that is keeping them - as a group - from succeeding. I hope someone finds the answer and soon.</p>
<p>Good points. I think the ideal situation would be not a totally single-sex school but one where the core language, reading, science and math classes are single sex, but that the fun stuff -- music, art, PE when they're younger -- would be mixed. Lunches and assemblies or after-school activities obviously mixed. Numerous studies show this would be a huge boon to struggling boys in low-performing schools as well. The other thing would be more male teachers. One thing I try to do for my son now is steer him into classes taught by men when possible. It's not that their classrooms are zoos with boys running wild or anything, but male teachers tend to get the fact that boys are not girls and they are not "wired" to sit still and be quiet for long periods of time. </p>
<p>DRG: I agree with you. The assertion that boys are "pressured" to be the way they are and that the goal should be to change the definition of "masculine" is a huge part of the problem. Boys are not defective girls. Their energy and rambunctiousness are not precursors to violent or aggressive tendencies. Boys need to be physical and they need to feel physically competent compared to other boys, even if they're not particularly athletic. Boys need the approval of other boys; they need to be included as "one of the guys." If success in school appears to be too much of a "girl thing" in certain classrooms or certain schools and communities, then the boys will distance themselves from that success. And that constitutes one more pressure to turn off from school, on top of the ones they tend to find for themselves like playing video games and refusing to read. </p>
<p>In the bad old days, girls were held down by stereotypes that girls were not good at math or science or that girls who were athletic were unattractive tomboys. Those images have undergone radical change and "girl power" reigns in the classroom as well as on the athletic field and it's a good thing. As a society, we now need to take steps to reinforce boys in the classroom and do more at the high school level to recognize boys who shine in arenas other than sports. It is not a positive thing for our society to have large numbers of boys decide that academic achievement is a "girl thing;" it is not a positive thing when boys decline to participate in clubs or nonsport activities in high school because serving in those leadership positions is a "girl thing." It's not a positive thing when the only avenue boys see to gain respect for themselves in high school is sports; not everyone is gifted that way and not everyone can make the team. I think we have a long way to go to promote "brain power" for both genders.</p>
<p>Correction: I misspelled Dr.Sax' name.
I omitted one other of Dr Sax' points: there is actually less gender stereotyping in single gender classes as noone gets the idea that a certain activity belongs to the other gender and therefore not appropriate for him or her.
Sax believes that teachers of either gender can be trained to handle a class made up of all boys or all girls. In an all boy class the teacher will act as the quiz master, be confrontatory, tolerate a larger amount of noise and physical activity and not ask the students to verbalize about feelings. He or she will assign more Hemingway and less Steinbeck.
Sax would argue that even art and music should be separate in the early years because girls will draw better "images" using 17 colors tending toward the bright, while boys will draw "verbs" such planes flying using 5 colors usually dark and drab. In a mixed gender art class the boys will get the idea that art is a "girl" subject.</p>
<p>H>every child should be expected to speak up for herself and defend her ideas in real time, and no student should be considered "educated" if she can't.</p>
<p>Why does this seem so revolutionary? Given that public speaking is the #1 fear, greater even than the fear of snakes, as a requirement this would engender a schnogglefrump* of discomfort in students, the cost for such an improvement. Students would need to have something to say, and something to say worth defending. How would this challenge compare with the debate team activities which the most ambitious students take on by choice?</p>