Why Boys Are Falling Behind (Newsweek)

<p>Sjmom - of course you are right (and thanks for the thought), and we see tiny threads of progress "at life", just not at school, or anything closely school related. He islearning to be a leader in Boy Scouts, not through natural inclination, but by responding to the program, one of the goals of which is developing leadership skills in all the boys, not just the natural leaders. My feeling is the same as yours - "the system" just doesn't seem to work for many boys, why can't we change the system, that doesn't mean we ignore or demean the girls. My angst with the counselor is mostly because his private school is geared toward college, and we were at a point (end of 8th grade) where we needed to make a decision about public school, if that would offer more options. Its just a struggle, a struggle we never anticipated, DH is an oldest child, I'm an only, and DD is a typical high achiever - that's one of the saddest things about the situation, it is almost as if he doesn't belong in the family, DS is so different than all the rest of us, we have to get to know who he is.</p>

<p>Thanks Dmd - that is actually sort of where we are, he has one last chance on an essay test last week, and then we are going to set up a tutor for this summer.</p>

<p>marite-I was focusing on the fact that it was your son who started the petition. Yes, you get the credit for listening to him and showing him a constructive path to change. But it was he who had the courage to become an advocate for his peers. My son also started a petition in a similar situation. He, and likely your son, was the fearless one with a vision. At my S's school it was frowned upon by everyone but his homeroom teacher who encouraged him. My S has talked to us about how powerless the kids feel when the teachers treat them like babies. Many kids don't have parents like you and me who aren't afraid of the administration and will advocate for their kids till death!</p>

<p>My personal experiences: I was a fresh graduate with a bs in accounting having trouble landing that first job and my mother-in-law suggested I get a job as a secretary! I said, "Why would anyone hire me. I have no secretarial skills!"</p>

<p>I live in California. I won't mention the local community's name. In a nearby Elementary school this past year, a boy (2nd grade I believe), brought in an action figure toy (like one of the super hero types, ex: Fantastic 4, etc). Yep, that action figure was holding a gun. Yep, the 2nd grader was suspended for having brought a gun to school. (Doesn't matter that the height of the action figure was all of 3 inches, so you can imagine the size of the gun). Lucikly, the local paper chastized the school for "going a bit overboard'. Nonetheless, this boy suffered trauma of being sent home, after simply bringing a toy to show his friends.</p>

<p>lovetocamp-my S is always designing inventions and they include:
mousetraps (this has kept his attention for many years/versions)
squirrel/chipmunk/bear/fox/deer traps (no killing or maiming involved :))
trebuchets, slingshots, airplanes, parachutes, guns, rockets, foot-operated door-opener
Now, he has no intention of ever blowing anyone or anything up, but we have to be very careful that his gun/rocket illustrations don't make their way into school.</p>

<p>If you've seen October Sky (rocket movie), you'll know what kind of kid I have.</p>

<p>baseballmom:</p>

<p>Well, my S is not really fearless. But he did know that parents' input (not always a good thing!) is valued in the school, and that his mom had hired two of the three homeroom teachers in his grade (the music teacher was a specialist who went from school to school). In high school, he used to joke that the one student he feared was the female Science Team co-captain! She was born in Asia and does not seem to conform to the compliant math/science challenged female stereotype I'm encountering on this very American chatboard. Very strange.</p>

<p>I think it's possible to have the descriptive statements on this thread be largely correct and the analytical statements on this thread be largely incorrect.</p>

<p>Many boys are having trouble in middle and high school. Boys overall do better in math and science than girls. Girls overall are more likely to succeed in high school. </p>

<p>Those are descriptions. But we get lost in causality. I think because it's such a soft set of sciences, political science, psychology, sociology, with minimal biology and zero chemistry or physics. So as we lack data we tend to substitute our own anecdotal knowledge, which is then colored by our own experience, our political biases, our emotional make up, etc.</p>

<p>Katwkittens comes closest to having a data set:), given her 5 children...although I guess Beururah and Mstee are also large family people:)</p>

<p>If I could stand behind a pulpit and pronounce the discussion over, I would want everyone to vote - who believes boys are different from girls? And then ask those who believe boys are different from girls in a way that is statistically significant to go do 5 years of studies. I, for one, do not want to do the mustache study....I do believe boys are on average different, I just think that curve of boy traits and girl traits, on many many parameters, would overlap enormously. As a result, the question of what to do about boys in school is difficult to discuss without real numbers.</p>

<p>Katwkittens made a point about personality types, and maybe more boys having certain traits that make some school environments difficult for them. That's worth thinking about. The one girl that I know well (mom is a good friend of mine) that is having big problems in school has some of these same personality traits that seem to be getting boys in trouble. Orangeblossoms and Cangels posts I can so relate to, esp. with my oldest son. I simply had no idea that school would be so hard for him, it came as a shock, frankly. If I had had some sort of clue, maybe I could have helped him somehow, more than I did. Hindsight, you know. </p>

<p>So, anyway, his siblings benefit from what he went through. After my oldest graduated from the local public high school (by the skin of his teeth) we sent the next two kids to a different school which seems to have made a difference. S#2 still had a kind of rocky road, but he made it through in much better shape than his older brother, though he had some of the same issues, in particular the <em>homework issue</em> so frequently mentioned here. For whatever reason, the overall school culture at the local public seems to damage kids, and perhaps boys have a harder time coping, I don't know. I do know of several cases of boys not doing well at all, whose sisters seemed to be able to do well in the same school. I've always thought, and I guess I still do, that a lot of the problems stem from the school just being too big and overcrowded. The teachers don't really get to know the kids or the families, and kids just get lost there if they are having problems. And there are so many problems at the school (lots and lots of discipline problems, for starters) that the problems of individual children not doing well just don't get dealt with. And the kids that aren't the achievers, aren't on the honors/Ap track seem to get lumped in with the riffraff, with negative assumptions made about their ability, and low expectations. I could go on and on but I think I'll stop here!</p>

<p>Still can't think of a single woman scientist, girl math nerd, etc. that I know that has a mustache . . .</p>

<p>Alumother, since both boys and girls are human, they must necessarily have a lot in common! However, based on things I've read in cognitive psychology, there are gender based differences in brain development. Whether or not these differences are enough to require policy changes regarding education is debatable. For example, there are some studies that correlate excess testosterone in utero to increased math/spatial abilities. I only mention this as one example of how the brain's architecture is influenced by hormones. If you are interested, here is a quote from one source:
<a href="http://www.geniusdenied.com/articles/Record.aspx?NavID=13_13&rid=11363%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.geniusdenied.com/articles/Record.aspx?NavID=13_13&rid=11363&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Another such influence, even in the absence of injury, is a male-related factor, probably circulating testosterone, which can also slow cortical growth on the left and produce the same neuronal migration to the right with actual enlargement of the right hemisphere, and a shift of dominance to the right side."</p>

<p>Further information regarding the Geschwind and Galaburda theory can be found on page 36 of this article by Ellen Winner:
<a href="http://weber.ucsd.edu/%7Ejmoore/courses/web159/ExpIntWinnerSavants.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jmoore/courses/web159/ExpIntWinnerSavants.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
Whether or not these differences are enough to require policy changes regarding education is debatable.

[/quote]
Yes. Or are there far more important problems that are having the more measurable impact on boys but still affect girls, i.e. the over-crowding that Mstee mentions? And are the discussion and the curative efforts best spend on those issues rather than the what makes them different question?</p>

<p>Alummother-Do you mean social vs. science? The President of Harvard got himself in quite a pickle by the mere mention of studying the science question.</p>

<p>As I said way back in the beginning, we are talking about small biological differences that interact in very subtle ways with environment, social conditioning, etc. Differences that may be very hard to demonstrate in individuals, but can be very important when talking about a whole population.
Let's assume that the data is correct, and boys' brains on average develop efficient "processing connections" at a later age, or in a different sequence than girls. And that this immaturity of processing makes them on average, again, more distractable, or they have to work harder to follow directions - then it is not hard to see, as Mstee and Alumother mention, how being in overcrowded classrooms, could be more detrimental to the more distractable kids. It will take a lot of data to prove all those connections, but common sense will tell you that a smaller class is better than a larger, unless you have a highly selected student population, or much older students - like say college.</p>

<p>Science is just beginning to unravel these issues, and I think the more research is done (even if they can't do it at Harvard ;)), the more complex the interrelationship between genes and environment appears.
To me, I'm more familiar with cancer biology, than neurobiology - in cancer research we now know that almost all cancers have some genetic component - even those that are obviously primarily due to environment like smoking-related cancers or radiation-induced cancers. We know things about tumors at either end of the spectrum - the ones that are truly "inherited", single gene defects, and the ones, like rad -induced leukemias, that are mostly due to an environmental insult. We are being to work out the subtle interplays of genes and environment in the huge middle range that are some of each. Why do we need to know all this? Because if you know the mechanism, you can find places to intervene with new drugs and therapies.</p>

<p>the same is true to some extent about this topic - if boys truly reach brain maturity later, then maybe as a group, they should be expected to start school later, or go to school longer, or do gender separation at critical ages. All different interventions, hopefully trying to change the "natural history of the disease" as we say in regards to cancer.</p>

<p>Very sensible, Cangel.</p>

<p>more articles
:)</p>

<p><a href="http://www.oregonbrains.org/outreach/baw/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.oregonbrains.org/outreach/baw/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>cangel:</p>

<p>
[quote]
if boys truly reach brain maturity later, then maybe as a group, they should be expected to start school later,

[/quote]
</p>

<p>This, indeed seems to have been a fairly widely applied strategy among families we know. Parents often cited the later blooming of boys as a reason for letting them start school later rather than earlier.</p>

<p>Interestingly, SES had an effect here, too. It was middle class parents (who could afford the day care fees longer) who kept their boys back, while poorer parents enrolled their children into public schools as early as they could. So it would be necessary to disentangle SES from age and gender in a study of differential behavior among boys and girsl in the same grade.</p>

<p>We also found quite a few families who chose to hold sons back a year, but it was usually with sports in mind. Since our son had a summer birthday, he was sometimes younger than kids in a lower grade. When he was in the early elementary years I found that to be a little irritating -- he might be behaving like a typical 6 year old in a group of 7 year olds -- but it evened out as he got older. He did turn 18 during the summer before college, although I know of a few kids who entered at 17.</p>

<p>As a September kid, I would have been much better off to have entered school a year earlier. My D, also a September kid, had similar issues but not as pronounced. As with everything, there were pros and cons.</p>

<p>Our son is a January kid, and intellectually he was waaay ready to get into a school environment but rules is rules and he had to wait a year. We thought this wasn't bad in that it would give him a chance to develop his social skills. But he always marched to his own drummer, and does so today as a 20-something. I started school at 4.5 (April kid) and then skipped ahead and also started college at 17.</p>

<p>?TheDad? a year earlier or a year later? My husband is a Sept kid, and he started at 5, nowadays he would have been 6, almost 7.</p>

<p>That is the biggest mistake I think we made, sending my July son to kindergarten at just turned 5. My mom, the 35 year schoolteacher, was very adamant that children should go as soon as they were old enough - I still would be hearing about it 9 years later had I held him back! During kindergarten, I thought we HAD made the right decision. He started first grade as a beginning reader, one of only a few boys reading at all, and had had a great kindergarten year in all respects - it was downhill from there!</p>

<p>When my cousin was debating about her late spring, very scrawny 4 year old boy, 2 years ago, she and her Mom asked my opinion which was "Hold him back". The Mom (another veteran teacher) was aghast, but I was honest, I think we made a mistake.</p>

<p>Cangel, BTW, I concur on the "very sensible" comment.</p>

<p>The boys being held back thing is a conundrum. My S is an end of April boy. Can you believe he was the second youngest boy in his class? He was going to school with kids more than 12 months older than him in 8th grade. Imagine a 13-year old in class with 15-year olds. And somehow the kids held back were always the early growers. My peewee S and the six-footers:).</p>

<p>He's finally growing and will probably get to 5'10" but man, he's put in his time as a peewee given his birthday...Did your son have this issue at all?</p>