White working-class boys at the bottom of the class

White working-class boys have been falling behind for quite a while. We've been trying to target them at our school for the 8 years I've worked there.

I do think it's more to do with the culture of the underachieving pupils than it is to do with teaching methods, especially seeing as the non-white working class boys are performing better than their white counterparts.

My school is a "nice" school and yet we still have the working class boys with an attitude of "trying hard at school is pointless and only for geeks/nerds" whereas the working class girls have the attitude that "I want to do x as a job so I need these qualifications". The working class community in our school tend to have very old fashioned and sexist thought processes, the boys expect to take over their dad's farm or other small business and hire a woman to do the books, the girls expect to get a job on their own merits (or settle down and have babies asap)

And yet, anecdotally speaking as I have no evidence to hand, I think it is accepted that kids of Asian families in the USA are massively over-represented in the elite Universities. If I am wrong, apologies, but I have read how these kids come from families where study and graft is expected from day one. So it is not uncommon for so-called disadvantaged groups to succeed through hard work.

I'd be interested to see cross-correlations with other factors, such as absent fathers and unemployment in the identified failing group.

Oh, and can someone please phone the patriarchy and let them know they are slipping up?

Forgot to say - I'm not surprised that not only are we talking about boys failing but white boys. Of course there are social elements with regards to home support/expectations etc but I do not believe that current learning methods are better suited to children of colour than they are to white children (this would be a horribly racist notion), and the same goes for sex.

We cannot possibly know without extensive study of the sort mentioned by mathanxiety, what the reasons are behind this.

We certainly cannot assume that; education has become over feminised and the way of learning that favours girls (coursework, presentations etc) favored over that which favours boys (exams).

It is much more likely to be about socialization than 'feminized' ways of learning - unless by feminized we mean 'methods of learning that involve behaviour that girls have been more socialized to express than boys'.

Girls are socialized to behave, to sit still, to please, to listen, to be quiet, to do what they are told and to work extra hard if they want to achieve. Therefore is is not surprising that girls do well with evaluation methods which involve working hard all year and not just on exam day.

Boys failing is not a good thing - anyone failing is not a good thing. I suspect the answer lies in educating boys to knuckle down and work hard and not expect male privilege to save them the bother of having to work as hard as their female counterparts. (I say that as someone who taught in a university for 10 years and who also taught and tutored 'failing' students in apprenticeships.)

Math that's very interesting...so looking at the culture in the low-achieving group, in this case white working class British boys British....what is it that's causing them to fail? And what's making the girls do better?

Really don't see what the two things have to do with another. Maybe it's a factor, but so could be lots of things.

Am not surprised that the downfall of white man is being lamented by DM though. How imaginative of that drivel led paper to finally find a new angle.

It is a reflection of the importance of culture, both within the family and within the wider community, in education.

There is an interesting phenomenon in NI where it is protestant working class boys who fall behind, whereas Catholic working class boys tend to do better (not as well as MC boys, but better all the same). The explanation for the failure of WC protestants lies in traditional expectations of the two different communities where work after school was concerned.

Protestant boys could always look forward to walking out of school into a good job in the NI industrial sector. Catholic boys had this path blocked to them due to rampant discrimination in NI. The Catholic community therefore traditionally emphasised education as the only way to get on in life, to the point where now, the protestant community is put off Queens University Belfast as it is 'too Catholic'.

This paper explores the dynamics and factors involved. [pdf]

When you have a disparity even within a low-achieving group you have to look to the culture of the low achieving group, and not at girls' achievement or female teachers or IQ or whether more working class boys were dropped on their heads as babies.

At that age its a gender differential in cognitive brain development.

I do think education has become over feminised and the way of learning that favours girls (coursework, presentations etc) favored over that which favours boys (exams). I do not know what the solution is. There definitely needs to be more male teachers. Having boys failing is not good for anybody.

You know you're going to get bollocked for posting Daily M links don't you?