Grr. Why are all "bored" DSs allegedly unrecognised G&T? Teachers must tear their hair out!

[teslagirl]

Why is it that seemingly every 8 and 9 y.o. DS who announces he's "bored at school" is automatically regarded by his mother as being "very intelligent but under stimulated" by the school? Sometimes I feel I'm surrounded by it! I had 2 parents helping at the school disco who said this, separately. The DSs are both Y3- and as luck would have it, both in my DS1s class (he's Y4 in a Y3/4 combo) and HE said, when obliquely questioned that both DSs are in Maths 4 and Literacy 4- out of 5. As "very intelligent" Y3s they should surely be in 3 or EVEN 2 if they're REALLY G&T (bearing in mind group 1 is full of the brightest Y4s)!

I heard this also in the wash-up after Y4 parents evening- a few mums who told the teacher DS needed more work as he'd said he was "Bored", proof indeed that the school was evidently failing them... Surely it's cool for junior school boys to claim EVERYTHING is 'Boring'?- it's in the nature of being 8-11 esp whilst emulating the studied ennui of the older boys! It doesn't necessarily mean they ARE bored OR, if they genuinely are, let's not go assuming it's because our DS is an unrecognised G&T thus are under stimulated/failed by the school, but maybe entertain the possibility that DS can't be bothered/hasn't got the maturity to understand the value of engaging with his education! I know the DSs concerned and I don't see any glimmer of genius lurking within!

One further point- and I know this is thin ice: It also strikes me how many of the mothers concerned haven't got an O level to rub together. Perfectly nice people, all, but women who will admit they spent secondary snogging behind the bike shed but suddenly spout authoritatively on the nature of Education Theory and The Undiagnosed Genius.

I don't think that girls do well because they are docile. I think that they do well because
a. They can see the 'point' often far better, and earlier, than a lot of boys
b. They tend to be more organised and plan things better.....course work is a classic example. Boys tend to be better at the old style end of year 'death or glory' examinations. Modular exams and course work, that reward sustained effort tend to be prefered by girls.
c. They realise that rocking the boat and being a PITA is going to end up causing them grief. Why make a major fuss about a minor issue.
d. I think that they are probably better at entertaining temselves in the slack times at school, because they cam sit and chat to each other. Boys tend to want to do something else, and that can't be easily contained within a working classroom

NB all the 'tends to' in this posting. I know that there are boys who do not fall into these dreaful cliches!

Interestingly studies have shown that if a girl does well she tends to put the reason down to a good school and good teaching. If she does badly, she tends to blame herself. With boys the opposite is true, if they do well they take the credit, if they do badly, they blame someone else. I think that this mind set also has a part to play in behaviour and attainment in classrooms

Oooh I hate the idea that 'girls are better at coursework'. Not true of me and plenty of other women who were v. good at exams, thank you very much! I am so glad I just scraped into the last year of O-levels. Coursework would have driven me mad.

I can only imagine one thing worse than coursework - the current fad to re-sit a module again and again until you get an A.

A friend who works at a uni says she has students in tears when they discover they can't re-sit modules to get their mark from a high B to an A.

Being good at exams has a lot to do with exam technique and good short term memory, both of which I was good at.

But I quite anooyed coursework though as well.

Agree with MartianBishop about lessons having to be 'fun' all the time. DS1 in high achieving grammar school never got the hang of French verbs etc, and he too is a lazy, talkative, opionated sod, so with DS2 at same school, I have taught him the verbs he needed for Yr 7 exams off by heart as I was taught and can still remember (age 49)with the explanation that you just have to learn it, it is boring, get on with it. Result: passed said exam with pretty good mark (as opposed to DS1 who managed a C at GCSE....). Some things just have to be learnt and those 'bright but bored' boys CAN just learn it like that if they put their super brainy minds to it. Also agree with SueW. DS1 now at university (still doing bare minimum) reports fellow (girl) student crying as 'only' got 75% in first year exams. The re-taking of modules over and over again to get marks up to 'high' A or whatever is not v helpful when you only get one shot at it at university.(DS1 just scraped his, phew).

mb interesting post

am startign to think seroiusly about same sex education for the dds

differences between girls and boys learning very marked now they are ending year 3

Throws hat in with edam - coursework would have fried my head. Thank god for all night cramming and living on diet coke for three weeks every June.

Wow...this thread is SOOO fascinating. It's raising so many other issues outside the original theme of the post.

I for one was told to go out and get a job at 16 (my socio-economic grouping was probably one of the lowest going). My mum HATED that I insisted on going to college for 3 years. I was an anomaly as far as my family were concerned. The youngest of 6 from a council estate, I read fluently by the age of 4 (taught by my older sister); I loved exams and hated coursework (as many of the women on here did) and I had real, fire in the belly type ambition.

I had my child late in life (partly by design; partly because of fertility issues that this bought) and I am now a very contented SAHM. I don't believe that's down to my upbringing or a lack of self belief. I've sold myself a hundred times...told employers I'm bigger, better stronger than the boys and proven it...gotten the rewards too. But you know what? I love being a mum more than anything and I love being at home helping young boys who are struggling with their reading on a voluntary basis and basically bringing up my girl.

Now...I think the OP was saying that she's cheesed off with hearing people say that their DS's are disruptive in class and underachieving only because they're G&T, which is statistically unlikely. I agree with her.

The issues in education around boys and girls and their learning methods do have merit. The 2 boys I'm currently helping at school are both incredibly bright, articulate, engaged and interesting boys who have reading ages way below their actual age. They are both, however, fully participative in class because they know that fooling around will get them nowhere.

I KNOW they get bored with reading. It's a real struggle for them. It would like us trying to decipher Japanese with just a few clues being given to us. But they try. They may be easily distracted but they don't disrupt everyone else. THAT is down to their parents, I believe.

I do think the school has failed them to some degree. They will get by because they are brighter than the average kid and (in the case of one of them in particular) more determined to succeed and more persistent than most.

I do think that boys with reading issues (and statistically there are more of them) should be tackled before they reach Y6 (where my boys are). The scheme I'm involved in is usually only executed in secondary school, but the government have pushed it into primary schools to avert the SATS crisis that we're having in our area.

It's not good enough really. But what's the answer?

I think that schools need to step in earlier with support for children who struggle...regardless of their sex.

I think that parents need to take responsibility for their children's behaviour and stop giving the 'out' of 'poor boy, he's bored' because as an earlier post says, it becomes a crutch that gets leaned on so often that it can follow a child into adulthood. And then where will they be?

The implication that bored boys must be gift initiated the placid girls must be sheep argument and I think it's, quite rightly, been dissembled by right thinking mums who know...placid girls have just twigged it's not worth causing trouble in class. They're perhaps a little street smart a little earlier than boys!

I think I've waffled enough now and hopefully I haven't made myself look too daft in the process. Boys who say they're bored all the time aren't necessarily gifted. Sometimes they're just spoiled and out of control!

I think maturity is hugely important as weel. Girs are more mature than boys at GCSE age, but by A level age they are pretty much the same

Last week I helped out on a school trip and it was fabulous. The whole day was great fun and tremendously stimulating. 95% of the kids loved it, the teachers loved it, I loved it...but you always get the few who pee about and claim to be 'bored'.
Those boys, and they were all boys, were not the brightest pupils but the next day their Mums were at it as usual saying thier little Johnnies found the whole thing 'childish' or 'tedious'. Sorry, but no, they were just being a PITA.

I think I should have done coursework.

I got by (on occasion, rather fantastically) on cramming for the 3-hour firework display of exams until that got me all the way to grad school in the US ... and then I got a horrid wake-up call, about how flashy superficial & trivial my being-glib-on-the-spot looked next to people who'd given themselves time to think about the scope of the issue, mull it over, review the possible avenues & then choose the most interesting.

(These people were of course very especially clever, so without having got to a position of comparing myself with them I'd probably have gone through life thinking there wasn't anything wrong with fireworks. However - I now think very differently, and I think things might have been altogether different if I'd learned that lesson pre-university rather than post.)

This is interesting as I have a ds who many say falls into the bright bored category (not sure myself).

Ds cannot be bothered with things like reading and writing and would much prefer to do more hands-on type tasks which interest him. I think the problem for him is not that "he is so bright he needs to be challenged more" but more that he is bright enough to do the minimum required without engaging himself to any degree and the school are happy with that.

I suspect that there are a fair number of children who fall into this bright-enough-to-coast category without being in anyway gifted. Don't know that I have a solution to offer except a need for teachers to be aware (and I am sure that most are) that all children do not learn in the same way and what is riveting for one may need spicing up for another.

I married one of those annoying cleverclogs insightful types alas bink, which might explain why he did something hefty at Cambridge and I partied and winged it cheerily on a mod langs course elsewhere
Ahem, we both got the same class of degree however, and I use mine much more in my work than he does. We still tackle workplace projects the same way even after 20 plus years

Do you mean you party & wing your workplace projects???
In which case you sound suspiciously like my dh, who does quite exactly that (annoyingly effectively).

It is a most interesting thread, I agree with MBs comments.
Girls tend to be more suited to course work but I am glad I just had the exam system because, like belgo, I am good at exam technique and short term memory.
I think that boys in particular are failed by education being very academic and everyone having to jump through the same hoops. My middle DS struggled all through school but now that he has an apprenticeship he is getting distinctions-he is so much better at hands on stuff.
I was brought up to have a career and my parents made no distinction between myself and my 2 brothers, but like Fizzbuzz, I don't find it that important. I couldn't possibly sell myself like Xenia-I am simply not interested.
I think that DCs are much more likely to mess around because they have not learned the basics and so can't apply them.
I have just had an interesting part time job teaching 2 groups in small classes.
Group 1 was high achieving year 5s. We had a fantastic time, they were keen to learn and I looked forward to each day. They were so enthusiastic! They were sad when we finished and all said that my lessons were exciting, we had Maths and Literacy and we were able to bring in games, drama, art and much more.
In contrast I had under achieving year 6s and I hated it. We started off in the same way but they didn't want to learn and had any excuse to get off track. In the end I was unable to teach the way that I wanted to and it was down to crowd control. Needless to say we didn't have exciting lessons. They knew it was a small group and an opportunity to get individual help but sadly they didn't take advantage of it. They had a well established pattern of not engaging in school work-it was nothing to do with not being stretched.

abbey you say

'We started off in the same way but they didn't want to learn and had any excuse to get off track. In the end I was unable to teach the way that I wanted to and it was down to crowd control. Needless to say we didn't have exciting lessons. They knew it was a small group and an opportunity to get individual help but sadly they didn't take advantage of it. They had a well established pattern of not engaging in school work-it was nothing to do with not being stretched'

God I could have typed that myself. In general I find that the more a class needs to do innovative group work (to improve interest and attainment) the less likely I am to do it with them, because their behavior is often too poor to stay on task and avoid buggering about.

I teach a class of kids who struggle to understand abstractions, but will not do role play to make things clearere because it is 'crap' and 'childish'. My sixth form kids, OTOH, love this sort of stuff and see how helpful it can be.

I was dreadfully bored at school, but was never naughty. I just drifted off, into a fantasy world inhabited by hobbits and rugged elves, and Enid Blyton-type picnics, andwhen I eventually woke up, I was 17 and had missed the boat.

Girls suffer with boredom too - but it's not as obvious. I did enough work to keep me out of trouble, put no more real effort into school than the naughtiest boy in the class, but he got noticed and I sat there with a sweet vague smile, and drew pictures of pretty dresses all over my exercise books while he got yelled at and sent out.

The irony is, he did a lot better than me because his behavior led to intervention, and my non-behavior allowed me to coast for 5 years.

'God I could have typed that myself. In general I find that the more a class needs to do innovative group work (to improve interest and attainment) the less likely I am to do it with them, because their behavior is often too poor to stay on task and avoid buggering about.'

I couldn't agree more!
I took the year 5s out in the playgound and we made freeze frames from part of a poem, we did role play. I had lots of fun maths games that they were always begging to play. They appreciated having a small group. I was touched by their leaving card because they wrote really personal things with 'in' jokes.
I had to sit the yr 6s in rows with a strict seating plan, I wouldn't have risked taking them outside and I couldn't even do something simple like give them a white board and pen.I had to keep them busy all the time. They didn't even give me a card when I left! They would have benefited enormously from the sort of activity I was able to do with year 5 group.

God MB snap! The naughtier a class, the less intersting the lesson. They don't seem to be able to with it, and misbehave more and make life difficult for everyone (myself and other students)

I frequently tell them that if they co-operated and behaved they would have nice teacher and nicer lessons..but they don't..... I give them the choice and tell them it is up to them...but they still can't behave.

One reason my children have all been at single sex schools is the issue on this thread. If everyone in the class is a boy, as my 9 year olds have, then "the boy" is the norm rather than some naughty and rather behind version of the girl. The books they read at school are boy books. The rugby and other sport they play are boy things. Some of their teachers are men. It's just a nicer environnment for boys to be in than being compared with girls all the time.

There is some who think co-educational school, but single sex lessons.

When it was trialled I think results rose for both sexes. I agree some boys do better with a male teacher and like to red male type books.

Ditto girls

There are some of course.........

I would love ds1 to be in a boy's school. His reading group at school are all girls. He feels left out by the other little boys.

Sometimes a disruptive class are never more content than with 'turn to page 27 and copy...'

Yes...they do seem to enjoy that..is it because it is mindless writing?

I find posters have this soporific effect as well. One of the subject I teach is Art. Give naughty Y9 boys some clay and they are quiet as mice...every single time without fail