Why are over 80% of school suspensions boys?

[ZenAgainWoo]

Watched a tv show not long ago looking at children who have been suspended from school, and I think it stated that near 85% of school suspensions are boys. Why is this? Am I missing something glaringly obvious?

'Because mums raise their boys telling them they need to be tough. And they dress them in dark colours. And clothes that say "cool. Wild thing. Tough. Rough. Superhero. Here comes trouble" (don't even mention all the trucks/dinos/superheroes)
Look around you.'

1. Don't most kids at least start off with 2 parents?? I don't see mums I know telling their boys to be tough.
2. Ah the clothes. We go out of our way to avoid clothes that have words like 'future heartbreaker' for boys or "be kind" for girls on them but it's not cheap to buy unisex brands, and once your past the age of about 8 for boys it becomes more and more difficult to find clothes that are colourful. It's ridiculous.

It’s ‘tough dads’ that boys play up to, not mums.

even animals in the wild have behavioural differences between male and female, and that’s with no ‘wild thing’ t shirts or ‘boys toys’. It’s innate - and as human beings, we are not exempt from the 6 million years of evolution that came before us. Of course it’s tempting to believe that with the right environment we can stamp out some of the worst human behaviour, but I don’t think we can actually.

There are more female teachers and plenty of boys do not like being told what to do by a woman.

If you’ve ever taught in a secondary school then you’ll completely understand why this is the case. I tried it for a year and it was so hideous, I’ve stuck to teaching college students since.

Girls can be twats but they’re twatty in a different way, more vicious with words than actions iykwim which doesn’t often warrant something as strong as exclusion. Boys tend to be more violent, testosterone I guess. Witnessed boys throwing chairs across the room and full on beating each other up.

Come to think of it, it was very rare for girls to fight in my secondary school whereas boys seemed to fight every day.

And they dress them in dark colours. And clothes that say "cool. Wild thing. Tough. Rough. Superhero. Here comes trouble" (don't even mention all the trucks/dinos/superheroes)

Not sure I get the link with dinosaur/superhero clothing and definitely not with dark clothing. I wear dark clothing most of the time, I’m not violent. My DD used to think she was spiderman so dressed up as spiderman for months, she’s also definitely not violent or indeed a boy. I think that link is a bit stretched. It’s far more likely to be major issues with home life.

The reason is boys have surplus energy and mature way more slowly than girls.

There is insufficient PE time in the curriculum. If boys did a good hour a day this would really help.

Also the education system is pitched at the right brain not the left. Boys get bored and struggle to concentrate.

It's worth watching the BBC documentary about Y3 kids from a few years ago if you really think you don't know why

it's a two parter - watch both episodes as the second one goes over the positive outcomes for both the boys and the girls. Boys' observed bad behaviour went down dramatically.

Look up 'innocent socialisation' and all the figures around male suicide, men in prison, men's mental health. And obviously men's violence against women too.

Myths like this lead to less being expected from boys and thus worse behaviour.

I'm super academic (currently doing a PhD!) but my younger brother is not at all - I have never seen him open a book and his school experience sounds like your DS's. He didn't do well in his exams and my mum forced him back to school for 5th year (Scottish system) to get more qualifications but he dropped out. He dossed around, wouldn't go to college, couldn't get a mechanic apprenticeship like he wanted because no garage wanted to pay him the over-18s rate when they could pay a 16 year old less - my mum was at her wit's end.

He became friendly with the guy who runs a small local garage and he basically just hung around every day, learning for nothing and helping out even while being told there was no availability for an apprentice. Finally, when DBro was almost 19, the apprentice quit and he took his place.

He's now 26, absolutely loves his job, has completed additional MOT qualifications and earns more than any of us!

I can't speak to the academic requirements of a trade but I just wanted to offer a bit of hope - it might work out for your DS later. Funnily enough, my PhD research is looking at degree apprenticeships - maybe DBro and I are two sides of the same coin after all

Because they’re naughty little gits! My DS was always in the isolation room and getting suspended. I’ve always thought suspension was the most ridiculous punishment in the world though, I mean what kid wouldn’t want a day off school?!!

FWIW, I went to an all girls grammar school and I genuinely don’t remember anyone ever getting suspended. We didn’t even have an isolation room and it was a massive thing if someone got a report card as it was so rare 🤷‍♀️

I think the op asked this question knowing fine well it was an agenda to start up a male bashing thread.

I find it hard to believe that these suspensions and crimes and prison sentences are due to boys/men being raised differently than girls/women?

In prehistory, both women & men were hunters & defenders. I wish I could remember the historian's name, but she wrote recently about comparative aggression in female mammals, & archeological evidence of ancient women being buried with weapons.

There weren't enough humans to sex-segregate vital roles - if you were fit enough to run & hunt, that's what you did. Only much later did roles become defined, to the ultimate benefit of the physically stronger sex.

Therefore, women were just as naturally aggressive as men. But that aggression was socialised out of them. Which begs the question - if we can socialise violence out of girls & women - & we clearly can - why are we not doing so for boys & men?

I simply don’t believe that ‘evidence that women sometimes did men’s roles’ means women and men are naturally equally as aggressive.

You can see in some other cultures that young children, including boys, are socialised not to be aggressive. Our culture socialises boys to be aggressive, and girls to be aggressive in a less obvious way. Our cultural belief is about individualism, competition, and the survival of the fittest.

And even if it is natural for some males to be more aggressive, we can socialise those boys to be less aggressive or use their aggression in productive ways such as sports.
It is why martial art is so often recommended for more aggressive boys. Because you have to learn lots of control around your aggression.
SAS are trained in the same way to be very aggressive when needed, but to be able to control that aggression.
This idea that if you are naturally aggressive you can do nothing about it really is not true.
I agree with the old Victorian ideals that children are naturally born with certain temperaments, but parenting is about encouraging the good parts of a child's temperament and discouraging the bad parts.
But children learn most from what they witness. And many many boys witness or hear their father being aggressive or violent towards their mother and themselves.

Which cultures?

The Ifaluk of Micronesia. But just google, there is lots of anthropological research on this.
I went myself to Iceland forty years ago and was struck by how non-aggressive it was in all its interactions. Went back there pre-pandemic and it has changed significantly. But I am not an anthropologist, their research is best for this subject.

Their population is 500 people, this really cannot be used as a reliable sample can it? As for Iceland, 130/136 of their prisoners in 2018 were men. Surely if men were socialised out of violence like women are, the ratios would be equal, even if overall crime was low?

You would have to know if all those men were raised in Iceland. There has been a lot of migration. But even if they are, maybe socialisation is successful with the majority, but not all?

okay, but that shows that like I suggested, socialisation helps but cannot prevent male violence.

okay, but that shows that like I suggested, socialisation helps but cannot prevent male violence.

Personally I think we as a society really let down many boys. I’m speaking as education, as society and as families. We are all responsible. Boys also often have more severity in some developmental diagnoses such as ADHD, autism, conduct disorders, mental health problems. Yet the services are woeful, minimal if any real good interventions for behaviour difficulties, schools are not equipped at all to deal with them. For many boys also they have to be tough to survive, within their homes, in their communities.

You do not know all the crimes were crimes of violence. But even if it shows socialisation does not always work, it does show it is pretty effective.
And as I said this was in 2018. Things have changed a lot from when I first visited there for a long stay 40 years ago. I remember staying on a campsite for example, with a lot of drunk Icelandic teenagers. That would have frightened me in Britain. In Iceland they were all just chilled out, giggling and stumbling about. There was zero hint of aggression.

No it's biology

It’s not that ‘women sometimes did men’s roles’, it’s that the roles were played as necessary by either sex.

I don’t know the specific research referred to, but the relative equality within small scale societies has been remarked upon before, in circles of knowledge. The ways in which we believe other people live or lived, elsewhere or in the past, often tell us more about how we are ourselves now, to be honest.

A quick Google brought up this older piece www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists