<p>Well, in my S's case, the signatories were pretty evenly divided between girls and boys. In 7th and 8th grades, it was hard to know whether the more disruptive kids were boys or girls. Dishonor was pretty evenly divided, I'd say.</p>
<p>I think it is interesting to note that many of us who are telling war stories of our sons' experiences with the school system have boys that are very successful academically. I can't imagine what it's like for the boys who aren't as academically inclined. It's easy to see how they would quickly lose interest in school and feel it had little relevance to their lives.</p>
<p>My sons are both in college now and I haven't heard either one complain about dumb assignments that weren't directly related to learning the material. I told both of them that if they ever got an assignment in college that required the use of colored pencils or markers outside of an art class I would refuse to pay their tuition. So far that hasn't happened.</p>
<p>Well, when your teachers assign projects and 1/5 of the grade is based on "Creativity" and "Neatness", many males find it difficult to do something they have been taught is "unmasculine" all of their lives. Many males, *including myself (although I've learned how to be "creative" when necessary) also don't see the relevance of making something nice and pretty if the whole goal of the assignment is to learn the material.</p>
<p>In high school I generally did well in class when the teacher was male. they were generally laid back and concentrated on the stuff rather than the logistical things. female teachers paid attention to details which were sometimes insignificant. once I got B on an otherwise A english exam essay because 1. I did not write the title (just the quwstion number). 2. my margin size was wrong. when I asked my teacher about it she said it was her 'rule'. next year english course was tought by a guy who did not care about such things and i got A throughout. I don't mean either sex is superior. But females were more picky about such things. but maybe boys don't do well because america has so many female teachers in primary and secondary levels. that was also the point i think of the 'father figure' thing in the newsweek.</p>
<p>Matt, when you get into the business, academic, or technical world: presentation counts. Including spelling, neatness, and creativity. Of course, some managers in the business world get to a point as quickly as possible so that they can hire women to do this part of the job for them.</p>
<p>And of course, this leads to another malady, people who think any problem can be solved by [bad] use of Powerpoint.</p>
<p>I believe this thread is intended to discuss what boys face in the educational system as currently constructed, and the hope that something can be done to improve their experience.</p>
<p>To Tsdad ~ I hope that no one would ever equate the problems experienced by these children with the horrible injustices suffered by African-Americans, and the later struggles faced by women. I would like to think the common thread would be to seek out injustice and inequality in whatever form and to whatever degree and to try to rectify it.</p>
<p>I can't imagine how disheartening it must be to fight the battle you have fought over the years and see the government back slide the way it has. I am a child of the 60s, and I do not forget those values taught by the likes of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Those lessons are passed along to my son. I teach him to be vigilant, because if people will abridge his rights in small ways, they will abridge the rights of others in even greater ones.</p>
<p>The point I'm trying to make, and one I hope is valid, is that maybe this battle you have fought is stalemated in the short term but won in the long-haul because hopefully it is a societal change influenced by the children of babyboomers such as myself whose values were changed at an early age, as we witnessed a revolution.</p>
<p>Please don't lose heart. The work you have done and continue to do makes a tremendous difference. Although there is a vocal and visible element that tries very hard to divide us, there is a strong element that respects and encourages the diversity and will prevail.</p>
<p>Going way back to a post on the first page. I think it's funny that finally after spending 15 or so years in school (I'm a Junior in college) I'm finally allowed to study about war (I'm a history major) and such and there is no problem with it. I recall however being much younger and that not being something that you can be interested in, since it was seen as being violent. </p>
<p>As far as being creative, in somethings I find myself very creative, in other areas not at all. It all depends on what I'm trying to do. I honestly am amazed when I look at pictures my 7 year old sister draws and I realize that they are better then anything I could even do now. I'm just not artistic. However in terms of planning and putting events together and getting people to work together I tend to do very well.</p>
<p>I never could draw to save my life and bitterly resented biology assignments where beautifully drawn pictures of animals or plants received higher grades. I knew the stuff, darn it! Now both my Ss are very good at drawing. S2 shined in a graphic arts class.</p>
<p>Are there studies supporting the claim that boys are not good at "creativity," painting and drawing?</p>
<p>It seems clear that there is enough data to support the conclusion that girls do better than boys in grade school. We can guess at the reasons but there doesn't seem to be any data to support explanations. Some of the reasons may be explained by old cliques:
Girls mature faster than boys.
Girls are more socially adept and compliant than boys.
Boys have too much testosterone and energy to sit still in class.
Most of the teachers are from Venus and the boys are from Mars.</p>
<p>In the absense of good data, I guess we can only speculate and relate based on our own experiences. After many decades, I can still remember hating grade school, especially English classes. I can remember an English teacher who had us write an essay about "the image of man in modern society." Yuk. I remember being bored and feeling restless sitting at a little desk all day. I did have a couple of male teachers and enjoyed those classes. I signed up for another year of Latin because of a male teacher and because I like to read about Caesar's conquest of the Gauls. I had a science teacher who was male. I loved that class. I listened in class, I studied the textbook and learned the material, but I didn't participate in class. I got to the point where I was so advanced that the classes became boring. I guess the cliques fit. I was immature, not very social, and too restless to sit still.</p>
<p>By college that seemed to change abruptly. Although I continued on with science, I developed some intense interests in the arts, literature and philosophy. I don't remember any gender competition, but in college it seemed that the girls lagged behind. At that time very few girls went on into the sciences.</p>
<p>Who said anything about oppression??? Why does it have to be about oppression???
My son is not one who is doing well, thank you, he is barely, because of the skin of his teeth making Bs (and not always Bs). He finds school boring and irrelevant. He did so poorly in middle school that it will not be possible for him to catch up, the basic skills just aren't there. Mostly that was his own fault, except for science - lots of those stupid activities everyone talks about, and grammar skills. Seventh grade is the big grammar grade at his school, and his 7th grade English teacher had a nervous breakdown (probably because of the horrible kids) and had to be replaced in Feb. It was too late, though, she basically had not taught them anything in Eng for the whole year - I wondered why he had As all of a sudden, those were unknown in our house.</p>
<p>This kid in Boy Scouts, is recognized by the adults as a hard worker (with just the usual grumbling), a developing leader, and one of the kids who is always ready to go, only needs to be told once - completely unrecognizable as the same child.</p>
<p>Boys, most boys, need something different. I'm sorry Tsdad, that you feel we are turning "oppressors" into artificial victims - I see a good-hearted 14 year old boy who will never get much recognition because he is not athletic or artistic or academic. He will never have an opportunity to go to a school as good as the Univ of Wisconsin. (I actually feel somewhat sorry for you, that you feel so bitter over your life's work, and cannot recognize how far we have come - celebrate the victories, there is still plenty of work to be done) He can't get in to Auburn unless his grades improve.</p>
<p>The thing though is he comes from a family that highly values education, that can afford to support him until he matures, that can give him the "doctor's kid Walmart therapy" - this is a treatment given to young men in the summer after the first year of college, and involves ditch digging or Walmart warehouse, and generally results in better grades; severe cases come home from college on academic probation and do the therapy second semester. What about all the young men, black and white and Hispanic who don't have that luxury, that support from their families. We need a country where talent is encouraged not wasted.</p>
<p>response to cangel (post 117)</p>
<p>No, he wasn't elected president. He wanted to run, but teacher was the one who chose the three contenders for the office! (nice lesson in democracy, eh?) He was allowed to run for prefect against two other and won by a landslide.</p>
<p>Cangel, it was suggested that boys are biologically incapable of "submitting" to female teachers.</p>
<p>there have also been several disparaging comments on girls in general. Not from you, or many other thoughtful posters.</p>
<p>We have also been entertained by the girls who like math have mustaches theory.</p>
<p>When people claim that the entire system is working against one class of people, that is a claim of oppression. And that has definitely been made here. Much stereotyping has been done about "what girls are like" and "what boys are like". If your kid doesn't fit those stereotypes, well, check for mustaches.</p>
<p>"Girls tend to be satisfied with a well-timed eye roll...which is much less disruptive to the class. Teachers can even ignore it if it suits them."</p>
<p>1Down2togo--using Marite's story and your response about the eye-rolling:
Thus, the girls passively submit themselves to engage in an activity they find demeaning. Perfect training for life as a victim/doormat. The boys openly rebel and they are labelled as trouble-makers. They are trying to change their world and communicate directly! The teacher is out of touch and rather than inspiring them, her lesson is insulting to their intelligence. In Marite's example, if not for the boy's actions, the entire class would perform like mindless robots!</p>
<p>Cangel, if you're talking about basic skills like writing a coherent essay while using grammar correctly, I suggest you get an English tutor for your son. Having him write, discuss, and correct two short essays a week would solve the problem in one summer. It would be far cheaper for him and you than a lifetime of struggling with writing.</p>
<p>My son's not biologically incapable of submitting to female teachers - he's biologically incapable of remembering his homework and consistently doing things that he perceives are "stupid". He's not at all uninterested in learning, or totally lazy, although I confess in the war zone that has been our home in regards to school, he's been called lazy, it is something else.</p>
<p>My beefis akin to BBallmom's point - even his guidance counselor said, "Oh well, he's a boy, most of the parents i talk to are here about their boys, they will mostly all grow up at about 16" my DH, the high school teacher is sitting next to me, hearing this, and nodding. I'm thinking, at this rate, he will only qualify for CC or the military, I need to know if we should put him in a non-prep school, where trade school type classes are an option, something. If most of them don't grow up and start achieving until they are 16 - and this is a bunch of upper middle class kids - why are they wasting time in school, and what about poor kids whose single parent is working 3 jobs and can't come to school to seek help for him or her?</p>
<p>The math and mustaches thing - huh? My daughter just finished her calculus requirements in college - and she didn't like it, OK a stereotype, but she comes by it naturally, I learned math because I had to, I never truly understood it either.</p>
<p>OK, so I read the article, thought about it, and then read ALL the posts.</p>
<p>Have not quite become convinced about the boys being "lost" and the girls taking over. Granted this is coming from my expereince, of being a single parent with NO dad in the picture at all and having 3 boys and 2 girls all about a year apart, imagine steps. And it is girl, boy, girl, boy, boy. And they are all not biologically mine, kinda messes with the genetic factor!</p>
<p>So, what has hit home with me was not really that the girls did feminine things and the boys masculine or even reversed. But rather they were much more individualistic and being around each other did have more of an effect than anything else. Yes, the boys played (play) sports, football even, and in turn the girls were athletes. DD, the one who last week tore her shoulder up doing some crazy dive off a 10 meter platform is considered the toughest of the kiddos. There is no way her bros would go off the 3 meter doing a back 2 and a half no less doing it 30 feet above the ground from a hand stand position!</p>
<p>All through high school she was the one who tire easily of creative group projects or having a binder check for neatness. And she was the one who would acually say something to the instructor. Many times she was in class with her brothers and they would tell her to keep quiet, don't stir up trouble! Size-wise these are big boys, offensive and defensive lineman, and she was a gymnast first, hence the 4 ft 8 under 100 lbs. And they were like this K-12. The boys played football for 8 years and she was a gymnast for 7, so they had these "stereotypes" since they were little.</p>
<p>And yet, they weren't really pigeon-holed by teachers. They had both male and female teachers. By far the kiddos liked the no-nonsense, this is the syllabus, these are the points, this is what you need to do to earn an A, B, C... Straight-forward and up-front. If discussion points or participation points played into, kids asked how much, what kind...</p>
<p>So thinking about all this and rambling I keep coming back to, its the individualistic nature of the child. My boys had coaches, albeit male to influence a great deal of their lives and my DD's had female coaches. And sometimes the male coaches were very huggy-touchy-feely and the female coaches (esp. daughter's gym coach) wasn't, NOT EVER. Daughter's coach was the one who coined the phrase in our family "no points for second place". Thinking about my kiddos, and in particular the 3 closest, DD has to have some sort of freakish "risk" gene, which affects everything she does. The more risk, the better. My boys do much better with calculated and acceptable risk. However, she still sleeps with a night-light on, as does her youngest brother.</p>
<p>I don't see any pattern in the kiddos with respect to gender but with respect to personality types. Maybe some personality types are more present in males vs. females. #4, son, is more on top of his game academically than either of his sisters. He can read a teacher better, grasp the material in a flash, and know what is necessary and what is not. He is class valedictorian by a large gap and is also team captain of several sports, yet the girls in his class remark how understanding and compassionate he is ESPECIALLY compared to his "take-no-prisoners" older sister. He is definately respected and adored (his teachers, classmates words) as a leader at school while his sister was respected and FEARED. </p>
<p>I understand what the article was saying, I just did not see it in my 3 boys and 2 girls while they were growing up. The only thing I have noticed, and this is recent due to our move, was that son's AP teachers this year and last here in the south are 90% male versus on the west coast for older son 2-3 years ago almost all were female. Don't know if this figures in the equation, but it is something we noticed very early with our move to the south.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>
I think there's more truth here than you might think, and is probably a key factor in the challenges MOST boys face in K-12 education. As I said in an earlier post, I think boys and girls are just plain different, but both can be successful -- we just need to find ways to reach them. From personal experience, I think many boys, even very bright ones, just don't have that 'organization gene' thing going on. This is where I think many of them, including my sons, need some scaffolding to keep it together until they learn how to do it themselves. And, honestly, I think some men just never do! So maybe one thing parents can do is to actively teach organizational tricks to sons that girls seem to just get.</p>
<p>Cangel, please forgive me if I'm butting in too much, but I think it's too soon to think your 14 year old is headed for a community college or the military. He must only be in 9th grade, right? I think there are many things you can do to help him focus on academics -- my Dartmouth son didn't really seem to get his act together until midway through sophomore year. I didn't have the pleasure of raising a daughter, so I just had to work with what I had, and I think I probably micromanaged some aspects of homework until my kids got sick of it and took over.</p>
<p>
Your post # 137 really bothered me, so I've taken a little time to think before responding. You seem to suggest -- in that time-honored pattern of abusive situations -- that it's O.K. for victims to turn around and abuse their former oppressors. I'm sure you don't mean to suggest that Dr. King's goal was to just invert racism? Or that the women's movement really wants to treat men the way women were treat for too many years? I have a basic philosophy of life which I try to pass on to my children -- Respect for the Individual. I would like to see a world where gender and ethnicity are just interesting conversation points, like "Where did you grow up?" or "What sports do you play?" It should be a sidebar, not the main issue. When I worked as a systems engineer, I didn't want to be referred to as a "Female Systems Engineer." My gender and ethnic background should have nothing to do with anything, if I'm qualified to do the job.</p>
<p>
[quote]
In Marite's example, if not for the boy's actions, the entire class would perform like mindless robots!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No. As I said, half the signatories were girls. The point of my anecdote should be that if it were not for my S having an assertive mother who had suffered her share of discrimination along the way, the whole class would have been made to perform the silly skit. I could not stand another day of my S whining about that skit and told him how he should deal with it or shut up. He elected to write the petition as I suggested. The boys and girls who did not sign (because they were too compliant) were green with envy.
As for my personal experiences: "Aren't you afraid you won't be able to get a husband?" "Why do you want a Ph.D.? You'll be taking a job away from a male bread winner." "Are you being fair to your children, pursuing a career full-time?" and so on and so forth, from both men and women. I've learned it does not pay to suffer in silence. Both my sons are benefitting from my acquired feistiness.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You seem to suggest -- in that time-honored pattern of abusive situations -- that it's O.K. for victims to turn around and abuse their former oppressors.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>sjmom: I'm not sure where you can be getting this from Tsdad's post. What he is saying is the opposite, that the historic victims are not now oppressing the oppressors. If this is a thread about what problems boys are having, why do ninety percent of the posts complain about girls, female teachers, and genetics? Aren't those all ways to blame the other, rather than looking at other sources for answers?</p>
<p>Might a lot of boys be having problems because of the pervasive stereotypes in our society which are still treated as gospel rather than as socially structured?</p>
<p>Why is being disruptive in class touted in some posts as a badge of honor ,trailing hints of "boys will be boys?" Why are mind-numbing activities described as female, as girls are lauded (or denigrated) as automatrons who will go along with the program?</p>
<p>Why in a country where we ghetto girl's toys to the pink aisles of the toy story are we surprised when girls, and boys, live up, or down, to our preconceived notions?</p>
<p>Why do we accept biological determinism as fate? Do we not see as intelligent women that if we remained locked in biological straitjackets, that we'd still be waiting by the cooking fire for the hunter to bring us food? And that brute strength would be the only arbiter of power?</p>
<p>We invented civilization to get evolve past an essential self-centeredness which places the more physically powerful sex over the less so, and the economically powerful race over the less so. We have slowly recognized that oppressions hurt everyone, oppressor and oppressed. Yet now, when an historically stronger group runs into problems, the cry of victimization goes up, rather than an honest examination of where in our society old attitudes, the same ones which always oppressed, might be harming these kids, who it seems to me, if they are vicitims of anything, it is the exact same stereotypes which have been lobbed against their sisters.</p>