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?

I find this somewhat confusing.
Are you saying that it is solely because of men we have Silicone Valley and computers.
My children seem to have so many crossovers and contradict so many of the stereotypical statements you have made. I find it sad/worrying that a teacher will be pigeonholing children based on their sex.

Yes there are differences but I'm not convinced that they are the ones you are describing. And I definitely don't believe it's as black and white as you are making out.

I can accept nurture changes the outlook for childrens life wholeheartedly Bigbella - I am a mum of a severely autistic child and have researched this obviously thoroughly. I am looking to start an MA in autism studies within the next couple of years as it utterly fascinates me - why can't you accept that nature plays a role. Its not just me saying this and i have no beef against women (I am one!) and men (i have 2 DS's). I don't understand why theis social conditioning idea takes complete domination over nature for you.

here is why women shouldn't try to do things like engineering and finding out how things work...

OH FGS!I gotta go now as have screaming autistic child on lap demanding to watch the same video on youtube again - will be back

fgs - is that enfield?(didn't get a chance to look)Its a comedy programme taking the piss out of old fashioned views/values/lifestyles.

Nature and nurture play a part imo.
But nature can mean different things regardless of whether you are a boy or a girl.
I think that looking at gender is a bad starting point when considering behaviour. There are lots of other influences. Once these are addressed then what is left is probably that *person's/child's nature.

I think it's harder being a teenage boy in an inner city. Many are being stabbed and attacked or getting into fights for looking at someone the wrong way.
Lots of parents still believes that boys need toughening up when ime they are often more sensitive/easily hurt than girls! This is also the attitude that prevents them expressing themselves
They suffer a lot from not having a father figure/male role model.
So it is hard for boys and girls who don't have supportive family and friends. Just in different ways.

I agree with your post, MrsGruffalo.

Expectations are different for boys and girls.

I think it is more to do with our expectations (agree entirely with before sunrises earlier post)
Why should a 4 year old girl find it easier to sit still and listen and do writing etc etc? Because girls are encouraged from birth to do as they are told that is why!
We still live in a society that prefers males. Just look at earnings if you need concrete proof.
Btw I think that formal education for any child below the age of 5 is wrong, kids should be playing and learning through play and not forced to sit and write before they have good fine motor skills.
In other countries kids are allowed to do this until the age of approx 6/7 and yet they out perform British children when it comes to exam results , surely this should be telling the government something.

As for the "feminised" education system, what is wrong with having a female point of view. Good on Jacqueline Wilson, JK Rowling et al is what I say. I would hate for my children (both boys and girls) to be educated as I was. Reading Janet and John books. Married Mum and Dad , Dad the breadwimnner Mum at home baking,never leaving the house. 2 kids as God forbid that was what was normal, Janet never left the house, it was always John who did the exciting things. Even as a young child I remember thinking Jesus why doesn't Jane get to do anything exciting? why is it always only the boy who does?
totally wrong.
As I have boys and girls I have been to parties for both and let me tell you if you think that boys and girls are treated the same and equally then you are very wrong!!!!!

Also have vivid memories as a young child of the teacher asking the class what we wanted to be when we grew up.

The choices were very clear.
She even showed us pictiuers of what we could "choose from"

The girls choices were as follows:
Nurse, Teacher, Hairdresser- I kid you not!!!!
Oh but hazzard a guess as to what "choices" she held up for the boys. Yes train driver, fireman, even astromnaught wow.
At the time I sat dunmstruck "Well Luna, which one are you going to be?" "Well non actually as I don't like those choices I want to work in air traffic control"
Oh dear no, you don't have a penis so no can do.
rant over.

To right as well luna.

It would be not only inappropriate but also dangerous to have women doing air traffic control.

You may not realise that the job involves a lot of concentration and is very pressurised. Hard and important decisions have to be made. Women do not have the correct sort of brain for this type of work. It is therefore best that they don't think about doing it, from the point of view of their own happiness and for the safety of our skies...

I think (am back but prob only for a second) that many people on here may have issues relating to their own expectations of stereotyping girls from the 60s/70s (whenever they were children) and not the realities as i see it everyday from within education. Sure media and everyday life is rife with images which bombard us with ideas about what a girl should be and also what a boy should be - transcending all of this though is nature. They are of equal improtance - i wish people would stop banging on about the old cliches of well when i was at school we were told only to be hairdressers etc and the boys were told to be engineers - of course that is wrong - what about the boy who wanted to be a hairdresser?

stillenact you have said yourself that having an enquiring mind - wanting to understand how things work - and enjoying things like engineering are activities best suited to the male brain...

Only one person has mentioned their experience in school in the past as an example - hardly "banging on".

it is you who are asserting that men and women are intrinsically different and that those differences mean that men are more enquiring and interested in how things work 9ie are more intelligent).

I do not think that the social stereotyping I experienced when I was at primary school, is at all desirable, however, I do agree that much of today's education, certainly at primary level, is delivered with a very feminine bias. Of course it is, there are so few male teachers in primary schools now. I know of several that have no male teachers at all, the only males in sight are the school keepers. I don't think anybody has said that there should not be any feminine perspective in educating boys, just that there needs to be a balance.

When it comes to GCSEs, it is true that many boys find this so much harder because of the coursework elememt. Girls, generally, find coursework far more appealing than boys. Coursework was introduced in order to help balance out the fact that girls tend not to do so well in a fully examined system. Fair enough. But, why subject boys to the same type of disadvantage? That doesn't make it fair. For most subjects, it is still possible to choose an 'exam only' option, but schools don't generally do this, so we have now swung from being unfair on girls, to being unfair on boys.

I do appreciate that there are still some areas where girls/women find it hard to progress, but the way to deal with that is to make it equally as difficult for everybody, not to make it so much harder for one sex than the other.

Big bellas you are right. I must go and do the ironing and other "womens work" for which I was born to do, I am thinking too hard now and don't want to upset my pretty little brain.

Stillenacht- I would be delighted if my ds wanted to be a hairdresser, it would save me a fortune. Especially if he became the next Nicky Clarke.
The point is boys were discouraged from becoming hairdressers, nurses etc, they were given the option of train driver, fireman, doctor, headmaster ie incharge of the "women's roles" of teacher and nurse.

I don't think either system is right and if you read my post I said that I believe that ALL formal education for young children is wrong.
Leave them to play and learn through that until they are ready to sit down and write.

My other point is that the only reading books that I was given in the first few years of school consisted of a family of 4. Where the Mum stayed at home and Dad worked. The daughter NEVER did anything other than help her Mum with domestic chores. I applaud Jaqueline Wilson who is actually in touch with reality in her writing, not all children live such an existance. My mum told me that I actually went home from school one day and asked her where my older brother was. Such was the profound influence of being confronted with such crap every day of my school life.

stillenacht Fri 17-Apr-09 11:36:09 Add a message | Report post | Contact poster

"I think (a back but prob only for a second) that many people on here may have issues relating to their own expectations of stereotyping girls from the 60s/70s (whenever they were children) and not the realities as i see it everyday from within education."

surely there has been more recent research showing that boys still get more attention from their teachers?

certainly looking at the award chart in dcs infants school bore this out; boys would get good behaviour stickers if they sat still for 5 minutes; good and hardworking girls could go through whole year without ever getting a sticker

perhaps (on consideration) this does favour the girls though; they learn to work without constantly needing praise

I find it patronising in the extreme to say that women who argue that teh old gender stereotypes are alive and kicking must have had some kind of bad experience in their own school career. The implication being that it's not a rational idea, but one borne out of bitterness due to ambitions frustrated at school.

My personal experience, as someone who attended single sex academic schools and studied science and maths at a-level and went on to do a physics degree, is not one where I was met with any gender based ideas about what i should and shouldn't do.

The reason that I argue the case I do is that I have observed sexism very much at work from age 0 upwards, and it is certainly not sexism towards boys...

Mrsruffello you are right I have witnessed many occassions whilst watching my son playing football when parents have spoken in appauling ways to their sons. Telling them to stop crying and act like a boy I always wonder whether they would speak like that to their daughter.

sayithowitis

Data from ONS showing that girls have outperformed boys at GCSE since 1992/3. Also outperformed boys at a-level over the same period.

here

In 1992 I'm sure that GCSEs were not the coursework orientated programs that they are now, but were examined. I took GCSE in 1990 and it was certainly all exams then.

I take issue with the idea that UK qualifications were changed in order to get better marks for girls. That again implies that girs are more stupid than boys...

Stephen Biddulph did make the point that many boys fail when there is no suitable male role model in their lives. So although the title of article may be similar, there are significant differences.

this has turned into an interesting debate but not really the one i was expecting! tbh it is almost irrelevant whether differences between boys and girls are down to nature or nurture, just as it is, in my opinion, a no brainer, that boys and girls are different in many respects.

what i think we are still not really addressing (well, some posters are, but others are choosing not to engage on that) is this attitude that i see creeping up, of which the article was a good example, of boys being singled out as needing more and being somehow disadvantaged by modern life and society.

boys and girls all need a lot of parental input and support, but in differnt ways. i have two brothers. they both needed a lot of academic support during their schooling years (through university, actually). i didn't. i needed a lot of emotional support which was in many ways a lot harder to demand and get than just a couple of hours a week of extra maths tuition. my parents worked extremely hard for each one of us and they never ever tried to blame the school or the system either for my brothers' academic challenges or for my psychological issues (bullying, insecurities etc). today we are all reasonably well adjusted and professionally fulfilled individuals and we totally owe it to their commitment. i don't think my parents would say that my brothers were harder work than me, just different work.

so in a nutshell and generalising yes perhaps it is harder to support boys through their education but it is harder to support girls through other aspects of their life.

and tbh i see women being discriminated against on so many levels from such an early age that it makes my blood boil (both as a mother of girls and as a woman) to hear a man whine about how his boys have such a tough time because their teachers are female....

BBBB: 'I take issue with the idea that UK qualifications were changed in order to get better marks for girls. That again implies that girs are more stupid than boys...'

I don't think it does, does it (haven't read the whole thread, apologies)? It merely suggests that qualifications may have changed to suit girls' learning styles, surely? I have absolutely no evidence to support this, but it could be that boys are better at one-exam-and -that's-you (as in old-school O levels), while girls are better in continuous assessment style qualifications, as in GCSEs. This has nothing to do with intelligence per se.

Firstly the results that I linked to show that girls have outperformed boys since at least 1991/2 ie before these new coursework heavy exams were brought in.

So I don't even know where the idea that the exams were changed to make them easier for girls comes from - as they were outperforming boys before they were changed (at least in the stats I can find).

So the exams were changed for some reason, clearly not to help girls as they were already doing better. So the constant assertion that teh exams were changed to help girls comes from where? It is looking for an excuse that boys are failing. Saying that the exams have been changed to "suit girls learning style" is code for "made easier". I will fight anyone who tells me that it is not easier to be able to do things again and again until you get a good mark for anyone, irrespctive of gender.

So the exams have got easier for everyone, yet boys still fail. That is another way of looking at it.

This upsets people I suppose because boys are supposed to be brighter and do better? So there must be something wrong with the exams, and it is the fault of women/girls if there is...

Nobody has once said boys are inherently cleverer than girls - what is cleverness anyway - there are so many areas of intelligence BBBB. As a teacher my experience and that of many (but of course not all) teachers is that there is a female bias within the primary sector delivery of the curriculum.

btw i sat GCSE's in 1989 and many many of my GCSE's had coursework (Music - 40%, RS - 40%, Eng Lit - 40%, Eng Lang 50%, Biology 15%, Italian,Latin,French,German - 15%)in fact as i recall Maths was the only one that didn't (it does currently although i think its being phased out) My sister is the year below me academically and she took Geography and had to undertake a project which amounted to 25% of her grade. Coursework has been an element of GCSE since its inception.