<p>They’re never going to be free, PMK, if they’re held to the same standards as people who are developmentally ahead of them even when they’re perfect!</p>
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<p>My son has gotten the message a thousand different ways through his life that he is not being a boy properly. It’s a game he cannot win. I’m not willing to accept standards that exclude children, for any reason. </p>
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<p>Because I don’t see the evidence for it free of cultural bias. The more I learn about learning, the more I see these learning styles in both sexes. Gender has become an easy shorthand for learning styles but that doesn’t make it accurate. </p>
<p>Look, when I hear “nature”, “learning” and “gender”, it sets off a big red flag. It never worked well for girls, I just don’t believe it is working well for boys either.</p>
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<p>Embracing a much larger range of normal cannot include clinging to gender bias lacking hard evidence. I dont’ want any child stigmatized or medicated stricly for their learning style. That’s why I don’t want people approching eductation through this gender bias. Approach each child as if they were just as likely to best learn through A, B, C or D method. </p>
<p>There are just too many exceptions to these gender roles to make them truly useful for the overwhelming task of figuring out each child learns. You seem to have a lot of sympathy for boys you believe are being punished for not learning “like girls.” Where is your sympathy for boys who are mocked for not learning “like boys?”</p>
<p>PMK, I have the greatest respect for you, but I simply don’t agree and don’t believe we can reach a meeting of the minds. I’ve found your posts informative, though.</p>
<p>“I really wish there was a way of not knowing a child’s gender until they were at least three. Then we could see and value them for who they really are under the sea of pink and blue.”</p>
<p>I really wish that some folks could admit that boys and girls are different, and that these differences are hard-wired. I thought that the “if we just gave dolls to little boys and trucks to little girls, all of that silly stereotypical behavior would stop” nonsense had been purged by several decades of parenting experience in which we learned that little boys will turn anything into a weapon, and little girls will pretend that the trucks are babies who need to take a nap.
Many public schools have evolved into girls’ schools that tolerate boys. From AP course enrollment to honor society membership to valedictorian to newspaper editor to student council president – at many schools, this is an overwhelmingly female zone. These schools have largely failed at engaging boys, other than to discipline them.</p>
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<p>Gosh, I hope you’re kidding! </p>
<p>If not, you’ve got issues…</p>
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That’s not acceptable and I do understand where you’re coming from. But my son shouldn’t be told that he’s not being a girl properly.</p>
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<p>I assume the “down here” means Texas, and this statement is generally true, but still just a stereotype. But, having read this thread, there are so many stereotypical statements being made that are unfair that it prompted me to write my post #77.</p>
<p>Not all boys are underachievers, not all NHS chapters are biased towards girls because guys are too lazy to fill out the paperwork or do the service requirements, not all schools have leadership positions held by only females, etc.</p>
<p>clairemarie, I completely agree with you that boys and girls are different. Your examples of boys/weapons and girls/dolls is spot on. But, I don’t agree that public schools are turning into “girls schools that tolerate boys”. </p>
<p>If this is true in your district, then you should organize a group to fight this obvious bias. I can guarantee you that our district is not like this (having just researched the highschool websites and seeing the published names of the valedictorians, student council and NHS officers, and editors), but if it was, and I felt that any of my boys were being discriminated against because of their gender, I would be raising a ruckus at school board meetings.</p>
<p>I don’t think my district is special, other than the fact that the vast majority of kids generally are “college bound.” I doubt that it is inherently unique.</p>
<p>As a mom of 3 boys, my goodness yes they are different than girls! Certainly there is a wide variety within the gender (my 3 boys are wildly different even though raised fairly consistently), and I am sure cultural influences play a part, but honestly, I think a lot of it is hard-wired. I never would have thought this before having kids.</p>
<p>And don’t me started about these art projects disguised as school work! I’m still bitter about the board game based on “The Hobbit” S2 designed with another boy in 7th grade. (They got a “B” because it wasn’t as “pretty” as some of the other projects that received “As.”)</p>
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<p>I think that grade school teachers are people (mostly women) who succeeded at grade school. They naturally value ‘good grade school’ traits. I’d like to see true creativity valued - there isn’t much room for that, and limited ability to recognize it at the lower grade levels. Coloring in the lines and doing what your told to do do not count.</p>
<p>I spent the weekend at a state science competition. It was interesting to see gender ratios among the teams. There were male-heavy teams and female heavy teams. Our near neighbor school, with higher demographics, had a male-dominated team. Our school, with a significant school-lunch-subsidy population, was female dominated. Maybe social class figures into the support of male achievement in school?</p>
<p>It seems to me that this is a subject in which ideology gets in the way of observation. Thus, because stereotyping is bad (with which I agree), all observed behavioral and aptitude differences between the sexes are based on invidious stereotyping (with which I do not agree). It seems to me that many of the stereotypes are based on real differences in trends (obviously not universal). Nobody will convince me, for example, that males, on average, are not more physically aggressive then females. This is an element of a lot of the stereotypes.</p>
<p>DD’s NHS induction is this evening so I’ll check in later and let y’all know the gender split. I can tell you that the certified gifted group for her grade is dramatically skewed towards boys; I believe there are 20 GT kids and only 4 are girls. Now in younger DD’s certified GT group, it skews heavily towards girls.</p>
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<p>Yes, yes, yes!</p>
<p>A friend has a child who is probably PG–don’t think he’s ever been tested, but it seems obvious. In elementary school, they were assigned to draw a picture that was supposed to contain detain that made it clear that it was depicting an earlier historical era. Her S drew a completely anatomically correct picture of a passenger pigeon flying over a field. (The passenger pigeon became extinct formally just after the turn of the last century, but effectively in the decades before that. This is something the kid discovered from his own reading, not in class.) The teacher gave the kid a B because she didn’t like the way he colored in the sky.</p>
<p>The D of another friend was given an English class assignment–at a private school–of creating a wearable mask. She actually created a life mask of her own face, painted it, decorated it elaborately, and so forth. She was given a B, while kids who had bought a halloween mask and glued a few things to it received As. Why? Her mask, although wearable, didn’t actually have the strings attached. The bought ones, of course, came with elastic! :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>That was true in my S’s class also. That didn’t prevent the “top ten” from being mostly girls, and most top boys being overlooked for book awards. Unweighted grades strike again.</p>
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<p>As the mother of boy/girl twins, I never found this to be true, at all. If anything, dd is more aggressive than ds.</p>
<p>This link contains some information related to the discussion going on here. <a href=“http://crr.math.arizona.edu/GenderKeynote.pdf[/url]”>http://crr.math.arizona.edu/GenderKeynote.pdf</a></p>
<p>*The Trouble with Boys
Get 70% of Ds and Fs.
Make up 80% of discipline problems
Make up 70% of learning disabilities
Make up 80% of those on Ritalin
Are 1 to 1 ½ years behind girls in reading and writing
Make up 80% of HS dropouts </p>
<p>Girl behavior becomes the gold standard. Boys are treated like defective girls. Dr. Michael Thompson, PBS Series Author of Raising Cain*</p>
<p>Just a small sample of the brain-based differences between boys and girls:
*With more cortical areas devoted to verbal functioning, girls are better at: sensory memory, sitting still, listening, tonality, mental cross talk, and the complexities of reading and writing, i.e. the very skills and behaviors often rewarded in schools.
Boys have less serotonin and less oxytocin, which makes them more impulsive and less likely to sit still to talk to someone.
The more words a teacher uses, the greater chance a boy will quit listening. *</p>
<p>Also, Richard Whitmire blogs about this issue. [Why</a> Boys Fail](<a href=“whyboysfail.com - This website is for sale! - whyboysfail Resources and Information.”>http://www.whyboysfail.com/)</p>
<p>Well, it was the quickest school ceremony ever: 27 minutes 
We didn’t get a program, but it seemed about 60% girls/40% boys. A number of boys who got inducted didn’t make the ceremony though and of the 5 seniors who ran the ceremony, 3 were boys.</p>
<p>At our school, the students are invited to apply for NHS as juniors. One requirement is a certain number of hours of community service (a number which seems to change each year). If selected, the kids are inducted spring of junior year. But then, in order to maintain their membership, they must complete additional community service hours. Here was the problem for my son and other boys: a certain number of the hours had to be school-related. But the NHS-approved school service opportunities that were publicized either conflicted with after school sports practices, or were all “girly” activities like baking for bake sales and sewing quilts for babies. S had plenty of outside hours, but had zero time or interest in baking or sewing, so he lost his eligibility for senior year. Friends of his never applied or were rejected due to the service requirement because they had paying jobs which took their time. This is a sexist generalization perhaps, but it seems that boys are often more interested in owning cars, which means they need money.</p>