Why Boys Are Falling Behind (Newsweek)

<p>cangel--made the same mistake here, I think. Our oldest probably would have had fewer problems in school had we waited (Oct. birthday). Kindergarten was great, though. Some parents of boys do two years of Kindergarten--that seems to work for some. We could have done that easily--we moved when S started first grade--but I didn't know what then what I know now! There were problems in 1st and 2nd grade, and then things got better until middle school, which was rough , then a couple of pretty good years in high school, and then a couple of bad years. Maturity issues played a big part, I think. Ha ha. I really was blind. I knew my H in highschool and he was pretty immature in some ways in highschool too. I really should have known! Once in high school my H decided to not do homework in math for a quarter, out of stubborness. Well, he flunked the quarter and got a C for the semester. Ah, memories.</p>

<p>Cangel: whups, a kind of dyslexia...a year <em>later</em>. D really made us sweat the decision. At 5, she was intellectually precocious and socially retrograde. I'd say the social didn't fully catch up until 11th grade. But keep her back a year and she would have been bored out of her skull. Almost literally.</p>

<p>weenie: I can relate to your sons' Jesuit school!! I went to an all girls school and my brothers (and now nephews) go to the all boys Servite school (Servants of Mary). Yes!!! NO frilly girly bulletin boards at all boy schools. No diaromas or other "crafty" projects. Certainly no "chick flick" discussions or girl books assigned to read. Too bad we don't live there anymore -- my boys' school is coed.</p>

<p>I'm glad my parents sent me to an "all girls" high school (brothers went to all boys). That way, girls could focus on academics without having to worry about what the boys in the class think. AND the boys could focus on academics without having to look at some sexy, leggy, half dressed beauty sitting nearby.</p>

<p>It really should have no bearing on your education.
The people aroud here to go to all girls schools turn into huge sluts, always begging for a guys attention.</p>

<p>It's all about how dedicated you are to your education. If you want to learn, a coed enviornment doesn't hurt and can certainly help you develop social abilities.</p>

<p>
[quote]
AND the boys could focus on academics without having to look at some sexy, leggy, half dressed beauty sitting nearby.

[/quote]
Not to worry. Those boys have vivid imaginations. They don't need real live girl classmates for their minds to wander.</p>

<p>I hear you TheDad, that was the issue with DD, reading at a 3rd grade level, 5 years old, and can barely hold a crayon properly. In the end she went to first grade - she was bumped out of the chosen private school by too many legacies, we decided to send her to the neighborhood public for k'garten, and the very night we decided, it got struck by lightning and burned to the ground! And they say God doesn't speak - our only other choice was 1st grade at another private school that we had felt was too far from home - the rest is history.</p>

<p>I have a boy and girl both in high school and they've gone to the same school K through 12. From the beginning, most of the teachers were women and explained things using "female" examples. In kindergarten they were much more likely to count butterflies than cars, for instance. All the way through the girls were rewarded for sitting properly in their seats, quietly memorizing information, spending many hours studying, then regurgitating that information. I guess that is what school is. In our school, the girls do better than the boys as a whole in every single subject.
My daughter has always been more willing to tirelessly memorize the periodic table than my son. However, at age 15 he has already started his own business, made thousands of dollars and has learned all about investing on his own. When I ask why he spends more time studying that than memorizing history, he says because it's stupid to memorize all those dates just to forget them after the test (he can look them up when he needs to) and he gets something out of learning to invest.
While my D's grades may be a little better, I am actually more concerned for her lifelong success than my son's. Being "good" and doing what the teacher says and memorizing things are what is rewarded in school. None of those things are rewarded in the workplace.
In my job, I see the tables turn. There are of course many exceptions but the young women right out of college as a group are less aggressive, less willing to jump into a conversation with an out-of-the-box suggestion, less seemingly ambitious and for some reason, more insecure than the young men. They don't ask for raises or try and get promotions as often. As a woman I hate to see it, but it happens so often that I try and mentor them so they have a chance of getting ahead.
I guess the moral of all this is that school is not working for a lot of boys, but I am not so sure that geting the best grades in school is the best predictor for life outside of school. If you always follow the leader, then you're not the leader.</p>

<p>Spartan: << The people aroud here to go to all girls schools turn into huge sluts, always begging for a guys attention. >>></p>

<p>That is a horrible thing to say/write. I doubt that you would have first hand knowledge of such things so how do you know it's true of every student at the school???????????? Stop exagerating. I would bet that there are just as many, if not more, sexually active girls at coed schools.</p>

<p>You have to know the difference between an image and reality. I was just stating the general "aura" radiated from people at the school and from the general word on the street. I'm sure there are quite a few diligent hard working girls at that school, probably more than you would notice.</p>

<p>But you can't deny that being in an enviornment totally devoid of the opposite sex in modern society (where you have to work with them constantly on a daily basis) can't be the healthiest thing. Why is it harder to ignore hot girls in high school than in college? Or when you are 25 in the workplace?</p>

<p>Having two boys with July birthdays, I faced the same dilemma. We were in Calif at the time and the cutoff is Dec 1 or Dec 2 (I forget). Since my boys weren't near the cutoff and they both could read in preschool, I sent them at the "scheduled time." Luckily, it worked for them socially and academically. However, during middle school & early high school, my second son was the shortest in his class (very late puberty). However, now he's in high school and (FINALLY) in a growth spurt (Dad is 6'2" -- hubby grew 6 inches in COLLEGE - also a "late bloomer"). Even if our son had waited a year, he still would have been short in middle school and early high school since his growth spurt happened soooooo late. Thankfully, even tho he was short, he didn't suffer socially.</p>

<p>All in all, I don't think we would have made a different decision.</p>

<p><<< Why is it harder to ignore hot girls in high school than in college? Or when you are 25 in the workplace? >>></p>

<p>First of all, I think that girls dress sexier in high school than they do in college (in college a lot of girls relax their dress/make up standards for class.) </p>

<p>Secondly, once a guy is in college, he's probably a bit more mature and education oriented. I'm not saying that ANY guy of ANY age can ignore a totally hot babe in his midst, but in high school, the hormones are NEW and ranging. By the time college hits, the hormones are still ranging but they aren't new.</p>

<p>I think pushing your child ahead to begin with, then holding them back if they can't cope, is the best method of evaluating them.</p>

<p>I, personally, am an October 88 baby and won't even be 18 when I enter college. However, if I had been held back a year, as some of my friends with november bithdays were, I would have been miserable. I'm pretty bored by the school system now, but if I were a year older, It would be awful.</p>

<p>Give your child a chance, and if it seems that in the middle of elementary school they aren't keeping up, THEN hold them back. But don't doubt your child.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The people aroud here to go to all girls schools turn into huge sluts, always begging for a guys attention.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Way to go, Spartan. That's exactly the kind of attitude that prevails at the school just down the road from you. (I know because my kids all went there.) Nice to see the district is keeping up its reputation. Quite a nice little party scene going on there, btw--my kids gained a few "social skills" I as a parent could have easily done without. </p>

<p>The thing about all-girls schools, Spartan? There are no boys there calling girls "huge sluts."</p>

<p>cangel, I loved your post #172. </p>

<p>And tsdad, I love how fired up you are! We harldy ever see that on CC--this being the land of cotton wool. </p>

<p>Even though most of the cases described here are quite privileged, some of the issues are most serious for URM boys. There is value in the discussion. Says me anyway. </p>

<p>Also;

[quote]
In my job, I see the tables turn. There are of course many exceptions but the young women right out of college as a group are less aggressive, less willing to jump into a conversation with an out-of-the-box suggestion, less seemingly ambitious and for some reason, more insecure than the young men. They don't ask for raises or try and get promotions as often. As a woman I hate to see it, but it happens so often that I try and mentor them so they have a chance of getting ahead.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I agree. Teaching girls to be compliant authority pleasers in primary and secondary school does NOT help them become competitive in the construction/business/medical world.</p>

<p>Well, putting a child ahead and then pulling them back can result in a sense of failure, undermining the whole notion of school. But that's hardly the biggest problem with SP's posts.</p>

<p>Cangel, my D had a different problem. Some mild vision problems--focus and tracking, diagnosed, thankfully--made her a late reader as far as reading went. And the books that she could actually read bored her silly. However, she was used to being read <em>to</em> and developed a sense of both story and vocabulary. When she was four, in response to a question she said, "Oh, mother, I was transfixed." It took us six weeks to figure out where she had picked up the word...we don't talk exactly like that at the dinner table. </p>

<p>This whole discussion does bring up the notion of single-sex schools & classrooms. Anent womens colleges, I'm one who came to scoff and stayed to pray. Never dreamed my D would go to one but not only is the intrinsic experience for her outstanding, I'm convinced that a large contributing factor is the single-sex aspect. The co-ed version of her school would be Amherst and I think she's far better off where she is.</p>

<p>One of my sisters in-law was the president of a girls high school in Denver for many years and she swears by it for girls. She's now CFO for a noted private school up EmeraldK's way.</p>

<p>My daughter is at a single-sex school after years of increasing frustration at her public high school. The experience has been as advertised -- all that good stuff people say about single-sex for girls has turned out to be exactly the case. </p>

<p>However, having said that, it--like most ss schools--is also a private school and it's parochial, so there is no way to fairly lay all its success at the feet of the single gender factor. There are many other factors that come into play with a private school. As wonderful as it has been for my daughter, I'm not ready to get on the bandwagon and start advocating for single sex public schools just yet. Some (many?) of the problems that we ran away from at the public school would still be present even if the school wasn't coed. But my daughter has very much enjoyed and benefited from being free of many of the biggest social distractions in the classroom, including the distractions created by the girls (removing the source of the drama (boys) cuts down quite a bit on the drama).</p>

<p>DH, the high school teacher, supports single sex schools, at least as an option. His reasoning is that children were taught that way for thousnds of years, although we don't want to teach girls "girl things" and boys "boy things", as it was done from ancient Rome to Victorian England - but perhaps the idea of some separation has value. He thinks what holds it up is "being sued" mentality. He sees principals/school board/ supers, caving in when some parent with a boy perceives the girl's classes are getting something the boy isn't, and threatening a lawsuit. He doesn't feel it would ever work on a large scale without a real change in attitudes.</p>

<p>Cheers, I agree that teaching girls to be compliant pleasers, does not help in the corporate world, but I'm seeing something interesting in the medical world. Medicine will be the first profession to be 50-50, I think we discussed that on this thread, I see MDs, both male and female, becoming more "feminine" in their outlook, more concerned with hours and lifestyle. Don't know about the academic world, maybe QUiltguru will chime in, academic medicine is cutthroat in a different way than private practice.
My point is maybe it is the corporate expectations that are broken, not the girls' attitudes? No matter what we want for our daughters, the biologic imperative that the women have the babies is not changing anytime soon. Our mothers were the pioneers, we established the normalcy of women in the workplace, our daughters are the ones who will deal with long term solutions to the fact that women will have babies. Fun times.</p>

<p>More fodder here. <a href="http://www.singlesexschools.org/jacksonville.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.singlesexschools.org/jacksonville.html&lt;/a> This is an article from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2005 about middle schools going single-sex. </p>

<p>Also, the Hope, Arkansas school system is going single-sex for 9th grade. "The board was unanimous in its support for same-gender classes in the ninth grade building at HHS, with Muldrew joking that part of the rationale was to 'help us men catch up with the ladies.' He said research has shown that boys have fallen behind girls in mixed classes and the gap is widening. 'Ninth graders have some inherent issues that they bring to the table,' Muldrew said.
Brown said HHS administration would like to implement the idea in the fall in core classes such as math, science, English, and civics. She said the student/teacher ratio should remain balanced in the ninth grade, that 85 percent of ninth grade teachers approved of the idea, and that it should improve discipline and student participation."
<a href="http://www.hopestar.com/articles/2006/01/24/news/news1.txt%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.hopestar.com/articles/2006/01/24/news/news1.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Marite wrote:

[quote]
I never could draw to save my life and bitterly resented biology assignments where beautifully drawn pictures of animals or plants received higher grades

[/quote]

I know what you mean. I had a biology assignment to chart out all the plants in our yard. We had a big yard and my parents were really into landscaping; my Mom and I went all around and she identified all the plants in our gardens and told me things about them. I got a <em>lot</em> out of it (as well as a good 'bonding' experience with Mom). But my chart was messy; there was just too much stuff to fit on it, and I'm not neat anyway. I was crushed to recieve a 'C' on the project.</p>