did anyone read the article in last sunday's observer about raising boys...

[beforesunrise]

... and thought it was really, well, a bit crap? it was all about boys are being shortchanged by society, are much more likely to go to jail or be knifed etc. so far so good.

but then it went on to identifying the reasons as an increasinlgy "feminised" education system and teh fact that boys don't get to run around enough.

no mention of the huge impact of fatherless households, or of the stark divides of those crime stats by racial and economic background.

but, more fundamentally, i just don't think it is true that boys have it so hard. i mean, girls get into trouble in ways that don't make the headlines- ie they get pregnant, for example. and women are still marginalised and discriminated against in many parts of society. i reckon it's still harder to be born a girl than a boy. and raising girls is as hard if not harder, in the long run.

maybe because i am a mother of two girls, but i am still annoyed by it- so superficial, and so WRONG...

anyone else?

but that doesnt mean the school system inherently favours girls. after all, mothers are female too and they (usually) do a decent job of bringing up boys.

It's the usual sexist crap. It used to be the case that exam results were adjusted to make sure that girls did worse than boys as it was regarded as unnatural and wrong for them to outperform boys.
I do think that primary education should allow more running around and letting off steam for all DC though.
INterestingly, DS dad, who is starting to train as a primary teacher, says that on his first day in a school, many of the children called him 'Miss' as they were so unused to a male teacher...

boys are drawn and will listen more to male teachers. seen it happen on playschemes i've worked on.

Are we supposed to be somehow specially bowled over by the fact that his sons sit on his head? Big deal, I'm sure most parents have been fairly comprehensively climbed on by all their offspring male or female, so why are we compelled to give him a "long slow look of recognition?"

Yes I note there is no mention of the fact that in spite of the fact that overwhelmingly, most teachers are women, when you look at the percentage of teachers who have made it to the top of their profession IE are headteachers, the number of men who have that role is wildly disproportionate to the number of men in the profession as a whole - you are much, much more likely to end up a HT if you are a man, than if you are a woman.

Funny that. Must be all that disadvantaging of men in the education system.

Tried to read that article but got as far as this delightful part and had to give up...

"I think little girls are terrific too, but I find their self-containment, their ability to sit and talk and colour in for hours on end, peculiar and unnatural. Obviously, because of the way I experience it, I assume the business of childhood to be a chaotic thing, all flailing limbs and raucous, throaty laughter, but clearly the way girls and their parents approach it is very, very different."

Load of sexist tosh . What a twat.

Totally agree with beforesunrise.

Should have said Totally agree with beforesunrise's post of 12.59 although I'm sure her others are very sensible too!

Southeastastra - I agree - are you a teacher?I am a teacher and definitely think the classroom at primary level is feminised. My cousin (a female just like me) worked in an MLD school last week for pupils who have been permanently excluded from mainstream primary. I think she said 21 out of 22 were boys.....why?

I am the mother of twin boys (5) and a dd (4) and an ex primary teacher. I do think the current system shortchanges boys big time.

Boys and girls are very different, I know it's not pc to say so but it's true.

My 3 are soooooo different. My boys are chalk and cheese but both although very good readers are so not into pencil and paper activities. My dd a year younger is far more interested. She has developed so differently to the boys even though she's very similar to one of them in personality and has always played with the same toys. It's been very interesting to watch.

My dd adores the outdoors but she doesn't have the same need to get out regularly like my boys do. From the minute they started walking I had to get them out by 10 am,they are so much happier after a run around,climb etc.

This was no surprise to me as I taught rec/y1 for years. Every single class I had the boys were itching to get outside and the girls practically lived at the writing table.

Yes many girls love the outdoors too but I feel they are equally comfortable with pencil/paper activities in a way boys in the early years aren't. They're just not ready and they need to run around. There will always be exceptions to this rule.

I also feel there aren't enough male teachers for all boys not just those without dad at home.One of the reasons I chose my boys school was the fact it has several male teachers,the behavior is amazing throughout from rec-y6 I firmly believe some of this is due to them all having good gender role models. Boys and girls both need good role models, so many boys at primary level don't have them outside of home or even at home.

Yes the current system isn't ideal for girls either but I feel it shortchanges boys more. Until you have boys yourself or teach in the early years I don't feel many people fully appreciate how much.

Just read the Guardian article in the link( v quickly ) and thought it was fab.

so what's the solution? start school later for everyone? would that shortchange girls? separate sex education? won't that take us back 50 years? and how come 20-30 years down the line all those shortchanged boys end up earning way more than their female peers (for example- i know money isn't everything)?

of course i don't have first hand experience of boys but this attitude incenses me. THIS really is trying to institutionalise sexism from infancy.

dd goes to a montessori nursery and boys are just as able as girls to sit and concentrate for HOURS from a very young age on tasks of their chosing (often dishwashing, i shoudl note ).

i am horrified she'll start formal schooling at 4- but that's a whole different story. i think we shouildn't make excuses for boys because they're boys, anymore than we should do the opposite for girls in things like PE or maths or science or any of the other traditional male roles.

should have added that i don't think the capacity to concentrate and the need to run around are mutually exclusive as MilaMae seems to imply.

I have only skimmed the article - am supposed to be working atm, but one thing that strikes me as interesting in all of these arguments about whether we are doing the right thing by boys (or indeed girls) is how little mention is made of single-sex education. If there really is a gulf in the educational needs and development of boys and girls, would this not be a sensible way forward?

When choosing my pre-school I purposely steered away from our local Montessori for the very reason you've mentioned BS and I know several other mums of boys who felt the same.

No way did I want my 2 being made to sit and concentrate at 3. They just wouldn't have coped. Maybe the boys at your Montessori are those more able to sit still at 3.

I'm in no way being critical of Montessori as a whole but just didn't choose our local one as it wouldn't have suited my dc.

I don't know what the answer is. Most people in early years ed I know worry about how boys are being short changed and are just expected to get on with it. I think it's a subject that is often discussed with no simple answer.

I've 3 boys and 6 girls. From my experiences with my children I would have to agree with Beforesunrise and say that the differences are down to the individual child and not down to their gender.

my point about montessori was that some educational methods seem to be able to encourage concentration among young children regardless of their sex, and without constraints. a lot of the montessori activities are actually very active, such as scrubbing etc, and very visual and systematic (such as dealing with weights and shapes etc) which the article did mention was a more masculine way to think about things.

they are not made to concentrate as they would in a normal school, they choose to, and that's the key difference i believe.

i am not happy with an education system that restricts that freedom and funnels children into set patterns of concenration, and while i can see that for very young boys it's a problem more than for very young girls, i do think things eventually level out and many problems in girls just don't get spotted because they manifest themselves in more subtle and less disruptive ways (eg eating disorders, or even the apparently great incidence of undiagnosed autistic conditions in girls)

now, juule, that is a statistically significant sample!

[bows over in admiration]

beforesunrise as the article referred to boys, my thread was directed at that issue. I do also believe that formal education at 4ys is crap for girls too. If they are all the same and all this 'sorry for boys' stuff is crap .... how come a majority of people in our prisons and young offenders intitutes are men? Why is it that most suicides are men? How come most people suffering from mental illnesses are men? Why do girls achieve better GCSE and A Level results then boys? Why is it that boys are more likely to be excluded from school then girls? The list goes on and on ...... By the way, I don't have any answers to these questions, but as a mum to 2 boys, am desperately worried about the facts and have experienced first hand how difficult they have found primary schooling so young.

I think eating disorders are more to do with society,media and the family girls are born into than the school system.

I've read countless articles that say eating disorders are more prevalent in bright girls from high achieving families none that say the education system is to blame.

The reason that men commit more violent crime than women is not linked to the schooling system

Do you think that when the education system was supposedly more male orientated than female, say 60 years ago, that the prisons were rammed with women and men were far less likely to commit crime?

While I agree to some extent that there may be "innate" differences between genders this "difference" is no way across the board and pales into insignificance next to social conditioning.

People say they have to take their boys out for a run. Well durr. Little girls need to be taken out for a run too, ideally. But instead of being taken out they are told, no you sit quietly and do that, climbing a tree is not ladylike, it's for boys, you might get dirty, why don't you shut your mouth and play with this ironing board...

Which is why there is a huge difference seen even by age 4...

ICANDOTHAT Do you think it might be due to age rather than that they are boys that your children found primary schooling so difficult.

And while school might play a part in the things you mention, I don't think it's the whole story.

Agree with BigBella

So mothers of boys reestablish this stereotyping Bella by saying that our sons need to go out an get a run etc and think girls don't...thats crap... so parents of girls are all adding to the social conditioning by telling them to sit and play dollies...i don't understand...to me that seems a little towards parents of girls.. (am mum of 2 DS's myself)

I have been teaching for 14 years and have spoken to many colleagues about this issues since the last time i discussed it on here and between us all we have taught thousands and thousands of children, I am a GCSE examiner as are my colleagues and the large majority agree that there is a bias within primary education, socially and educationally towards girls...i am sick of hearing this whinging about how difficult it is for girls to make their way in the world - I would disagree and sya that an average academic girl has a lot more opportunities available to her than an average academic boy.

Of course the bias of the system was 'the other way round' in the 40s/50s/60s but i think what is needed is a fairness to all which from the experience of myself and many of my colleagues is not happening in the day to day realities of education.

Apologies if some of that doesn't make sense as DS1 has been hanging over me talking whilst i was typing.

I see it every day stillenacht. I saw it at my postnatal group when all the little girls were done up like dolls and due to the complicated clothing had to stay still to have their nappies changed, while the boys wore practical clothing, off on and ready to go.

I saw it when all the babies started crawling and the little girls were impeded by their dresses as they would crawl up inside them and topple over while the boys were able to zoom off.

I saw it when the parents hovvered over the girls, catching them is they stumbled and sitting them on their laps while the boys were encouraged more, hovvered over less and if they fell they were picked up and encouraged to do it again.

At toddler group different behaviour is expected of the girls than the boys. The girls are told to play nicely the moment they step out of line, the boys don't tend to have their behaviour commented on/adjusted until they have done much more.

DD is 22mo so that is what I have observed so far.