girls blardy girls again - no wonder boys are failing

[cod]

Message withdrawn

how come boys do better in mixed schools than single sex then?

my ds(13) gets fed up with badly behaved boys and girls in his class too

I get fed up with badly behaved (nt) kids in classes too and I am the teacher!

We even have them in the sixth form ffs!

we'll come full circle in time you'll see, just like we're getting back to the basic 3 R's in primary schools.

In the tv experiments I've seen boys do MUCH better in single sex classes (and when disruptive kids are excluded). The boys also seemed to thrive on the old way of teaching the sciences with dissection and chemistry experiments producing a great deal more interest in the subjects.

in a mixed school somewhere in the north west has experimented with separating boys and girls in some key curriculum areas, maths was definitely one, and both sexes benefited greatly. Boys learn differently from girls so they respond differently by using different teaching styles in certain core subjects.

girls respond better to coursework so tend to outpace boys this field. boys for example may not like to sit and write paragraphs and sentences in MFL but will jump at the chance of videoing each other in roleplay.

The trouble is Ghools, that quite a lot of boys nowerdays just want to arse around when you do those lessons. They don't have sufficient self control, and the old things that used to keep a lid on behavious are not there any more.

A for example.

We do dissection with kids, it is food grade stuff, kidneys and heart.

Some of the kids get a massive amount out of it, but there is a hard core of lad who just want to fuck around. And it pisses me off, if all they want to do is that, whu not buy some liver from the shop and do it at home. They don't want to learn from it, just arse about.

And after a while you thinkm well can I be arsed to do this , with all the extra work and hassle it gives me, if they don't 'learn' from 'doing' any more than from other activities.

oh I know mb - who'd be a teacher these days? You deserve more than a gold clock!

You see, if I was in charge, the ones that 'fcuk about' would be excluded from the lesson and made to clean the loos or something.

I know the argument is that education is failing these kids, but by keeping them in lessons when they continue to mess about means all students are suffering! There is only so much cajoling you can do.

I don't know what the answer is. Did you see the Ballet Changed My Life series? It was excellent and they were stroppy but much troubled kids learning to believe in themselves. In day to day education though there just aren't the resources or the manpower to counsel troubled kids. A lot of them, though given an opportunity still walked away and sometimes I think you just have to let them.

DS used to get perfect scores in maths tests - but were they up on boards for us to admire? No, just the multicolour gelpen stuff. I have 2 dds who underline etc., but still feel the injustice! But also nag ds about presentation too.

I honestly think that if kids don't want to be in school at 14 they should be allowed to leave. They should also have the total 100% funded right to return for 4 more years in school when they want to learn.

I get pissed of with them , if I am honest, and tend to use the 'No shit Sherlock, don't mess with me' school of teaching. Trouble is they work the system. Behave for a lesson or two and then start the arsing round all over again. It wears you out.

At 14 you should be able to sit still and cope with being bored if you are NT.

School isn't entertainment, some iof it is hard work, tough shit, so is life.

Last year I had a sixth form girl tell me that I was expecting too much of her when I told her to do 30 minutes revision every night. I sugested that she go tell her co -workers in Mac Ds that they were paying their taxes to keep her in school and she couldn;t be bothered to revise for 30 mins a night, and see what they said.

She had the decency to look ashamed.

I'm not sure the system is against boys, tbh. Certainly it used to be biased against girls - there were fewer grammar places for girls so they had a higher pass mark for 11+. More boys got into grammar school. Now there's an equal chance for either sex to do well, everyone is moaning that the poor lambs are being discriminated against all of a sudden.

It's not so long ago that messing about in class or inabilty to concentrate was not tolerated. Boys seemed to do perfectly well in the days when they were made to sit quietly and pay attention. So I don't buy the 'boys are more physical and find it harder to keep still' line.

agree, agree, agree edam

I sometimes feel I am always harping back to the old days!

I have a boy and a girl. My son is more physical, but then my bro was more physical than I was and he managed to behave in classes

If children are NT they should realise that school isn't all fun and games and they have to work. And that poor behaviour has consequences.

Taught a bright lad last year. Chronic underperforemer, always buggering about in class, acting the fool etc. Saw him walk into the school to get his GCSE results, cock of the walk, sure he was going to get 9 good grade. What a surprise, he didn't. I hope that he can now learn from the experience and learn to work.

I don't necessarily think it's just about being physical...i just think boys learn differently.
I do think the current system favours girls
I have one of each too and i can already see how innate traits that my daughter has will stand her in good stead at school.
I don't just think it's my 2 either
And i used to teach in a secondary school too

Ok, so if you are right and boys (in general) learn differently from girls (in general) how come they did perfectly well in classrooms of the 50s and 60s when there was an awful lot of rote learning and you had to sit quietly for the whole lesson?

I think that, in general, boys tend to be more prone to kinesthetic learning. The difficulty is that standards of behaviour have fallen such that children cannot get to the point where they can do the kinesthetic bit.

For example, I teach a middle set, year8. Nice kids. trouble is, if you set them a practical task, half of the boys (and they are all the ones who would learn most from the practical work) can't listen for the 3 minutes that it takes to explain what you want them to do. They just want to 'blow things up' in the style of Brainiac.

And if, pure magic, you get them to do the practical, they don't want learn about how and why it happened the way it did. they just want to go on to blow up the next bit!

I had a boy in year 5 visiting last term( a whole class actually ). When I asked them if they had any questions he asked me if they could set fire to a slug, or melt one in acid. Somehow I don't think he is going to be learnin much in science lessons, sadly since his expectations are so twisted.

ds changed school a year ago from a relatively reasonable school to one which promotes the Building Learning Power stuff. They only have 1 male teacher now (2 left in the summer) but a few of the women teachers are like men in any event! Ds has come on in leaps and bounds in the last year and his work would be unrecognisable to his old teachers.

That said, we went on a school trip last week and the children, instead of singing bawdy songs on the coach sang Land of Hope and Glory!!!!! WTF!

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

thats excellent cod. I dont think there's enough nice young men teachers.

I don't think that there are anything like enough male teachers either.....particularly in Primary. It can be an issue if the boys have no good male role models and come to feel that acting like a nob is being an adult male IYSWIM

Message withdrawn

I don't buy this argument and I was going to say that thing about the 11+ but edam got there first.

The reason they used to give for making it harder for girls to get into grammar school was that boys had to become the breadwinners

Low-paid, traditionally 'feminine' jobs that involve looking after small children don't tend to attract men, though. Not sure how you solve that one.

It's all a state of mind edam

May be boys used to behave better (ie, in the 50s) because they were beaten if they didn't. Also, the school leaving age was lower, so we didn't force children to stay in school when they had lost interest. I agree with you MB we should let children leave at 14 if they want to bugger about in class - they spoil it for the children who are interested in learning. They should be able to go to college full time to learn a trade if that is what they want to do. Why teach them history and geography if they want to be a plumber.

Single sex boys schools do exceptionally well round my neck of the woods, with one of them being one of the best in the country. It is a grammar school, but then kids are kids whether they are in grammar or not.