Boy-orientated teaching

[nannygoatgruff]

Hello

I'm currently looking round Primary schools for DS5, who is due to start Sept 2011.

One of the schools made a big selling point of the fact that it tailors its teaching towards boys - not too much sitting still doing pen and paper work, doing number work by running in playground collecting numbers, good work stickers having dinosaurs and spiders on etc.

The Head said that girls thrive with pretty much any system of teaching.

I was so impressed, I have 4 boys and 2 girls, and I am convinced that boys learn differently to girls.

Then I went to another local school. I asked the Head if they did anything similar, and she said that she had never heard of such a thing - girls and boys progressed equally in her school - and had the same teaching methods.

Now I don't know if the first Head was talking rubbish or not. I really liked that school, although it is further away - not in walking distance.

Any opinions anyone?

BALD - I was replying to mrz asking me where her source had said anything about sheep. I was pointing out that the description of girls makes it sound like girls will go along with any old thing.

Being amenable and eager to please are not useful life skills, though I can see how they would be useful traits in a classroom which is probably why it's not considered a bad thing to reinforce them, even if that's not in girls' best interests.

Indelible - you really don't think being amenable is a useful life skill? It is on my planet.

I work very hard with my DS to build his amenability. For DD it comes more naturally.

Actually girls are much more likely to do things to please others, whereas boys more often function on the "what's in it for me?" level. You might find it insulting but it is well researched.

Does the picture stay the same at University?

some info here about university. It seems the gap does close with first class degrees. I would suppose that's because students choose the type of degree most suited to their learning style

c0rns1lk it isn't a permanent state but brain research indicates that boys brains develop differently to girl's so from birth girls are more socially attuned boys do generally catch up but this is still in evidence in primary years.

"so from birth girls are more socially attuned"

or more socially conditioned?

How can a child who has just been born be conditioned?

There are crude generalisations from BOTH Heads here. From a teaching point of view recognising that 'traditional' learning methods don't suit all children is common-sensical, there are clearly learners who learn different ways, and that is particularly true given the way children develop. And at a level of research into the social effects of education (which boys do worse at but then grab all the sodding wealth anyway) it is necessary to consider how excluding some learning styles may exclude some groups (gendered or otherwise).

But for someone to combine those two discrete and sensible facts to state that they have built a teaching policy not around incorporating movement and activity into learning, but around 'boys' being different suggests (a) they are a bit simple (b) they are selling the school because you have a DS who runs about and (c) that they are quite happy to make societal norms semi-prescriptive within schools. If your DS at 7 has developed into a 'girly swot', or wants to wear knickers to school or dress as Scooby Doo's Daphne to a Halloween party, what support exactly is that school going to give him, and what is it teaching him about being male more generally?

it's more than just conditioning juuule

A child that has just been born will only have it's own basic personality but babies learn very quickly how to respond to the adults caring for them.
It might be that girl babies in general are more socially attuned from birth than boy babies (I'm no expert) but from what I've seen with my babies they are only interested in the basics (enough food, warmth, cuddles, clean bottoms etc) at birth and for a while afterwards.
In what way can you tell that a girl baby is more socially attuned at birth than a boy baby? (genuinely interested).

Experts consider this skill in new born girls to indicate a more mature brain and superior "wiring" for communication and emotion as a positive thing yet I'm getting the impression that some posters find it an insult?

Which experts? Based on what? All of the explanations of scholastic performance based on gender read to me like a slightly more academic version of 'how the tiger got its stripes'

Take heart anyway op, regardless of his academic performance, current and historic trends indicate that your son will most likely be paid more, promoted higher and generally enjoy a better standard of living than any girl in his class

I don't find it an insult, I'm just intrigued as to how it manifests itself at such a young age.

I'm genuinely interested in finding out more about this because although I read it and hear about it and obviously lots of people are convinced of the gender differences, I feel that there shouldn't be such generalisations dependant on gender. For it to get to the point where a child of a certain gender could be excused certain behaviours or thought odd purely because of their gender seems not quite right to me.

AdelaofBlois seems to be talking sense.

One study by Harvard Medical school identified this early "empathy" in newborn girls. Girls (from birth) show more interest in faces and voices whereas boys more often wanted to look at everything else - mobiles, lights, and doorknobs - and are less interested in making eye contact. Another study showed that typical female newborns less than twenty-four hours old respond more to the distressed cries of another baby - and to the human face - than male newborns.

can you give us the name of the study or any of the researchers, I would be v interested to read it myself

'Experts' may be wrong mrz-as equally expert figures such as Cordelia Fine (The Gender Delusion) and Ben Goldacre have pointed out in terms of neuroscience in particular. And no expert suggests that there are fixed gendered roles, just that some things seem to occur more frequently in male and female children (which might make some sense, we'd all accept that women are more likely to have a vagina, for example).

Isn't this getting away from the OP somewhat though? I think the point I was trying to make (if any) was that seeking a school which will respond to the individual needs of a child and imaginatively engage all types of learners is one thing, but that there are real issues over whether a school that seems to believe that 'gender' can be used so crudely will respond to individual needs which cannot be forseen at 5. I'd run a mile because I'd find the Head slimy or stupid, but she doesn't feel that. But perhaps she does need to return and question what is meant-is it giving different styles and reward mechanisms-or is it encouraging assumptions which may damage her DS if he develops differently to 'pattern' over the next few years.

Not something that I noticed in my own children. Perhaps I was just unobservant. But all of them apart from 1 always preferred eye-contact from birth and for a while afterwards.
The one who didn't make eye-contact from birth had delayed visual maturation and it was the fact that the others had made eye-contact from birth that was a contributing factor to me knowing something was amiss.

I realise I am only going off my experiences.
Perhaps I should read the research. It's probably very interesting.

books.google.co.uk/books?id=dGfQ2TMB1lIC&dq=the+female+brain&source=bl&ots=pWLqw1uB3S&sig=Yp3DHdXrI95a4MKVWePh9WGKBKw&hl=en&ei=-4reTJL2GMq7hAez572VDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ

books.google.co.uk/books?id=7nRS090UYwEC&dq=the+male+brain&source=bl&ots=R3py4DW9j9&sig=ME4td4q-mal0uv98j2Nct6KbAlE&hl=en&ei=R4veTJGvO8KAhQeAyeCMDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CEkQ6AEwCg

brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/119/5/1763.abstract

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1985.tb00361.x/abstract

Thanks for the links. If I get time I'll probably have a look at them.
However, the first sentence of the 3rd link isn't very encouraging.
"Normal brain development during childhood is a complex and dynamic process for which detailed scientific information is lacking"

differences may be a function of different socialization processes for males and females, which may be adaptations to innate gender differences in temperament, or adaptations to existing sociocultural pressures

Is a quote from the abstract of your last link

How exactly does this confirm your argument that there are innate differences due to sex?

I didn't bother with the book links, tbh, any shmo can write a book, they aren't exactly peer reviewed

juuule. It isn't, it's often circular and uninformative. It leaps from 'observation' to generalisation rather randomly-why, for instance, should interest in faces demonstrate 'empathy' (my pre-school children look at me a lot, but their behaviour doesn't demonstrate themn to be massive empaths)? And neuroscience shows which bits of the brain are active, but can't fill in the gaps to causation. It's like someone looking at a car turning a corner, noting that there is a huge correspondence between that and an indicator flashing, and assuming that cars turn corners because indicators flash.

And obviously the whole thread is concerning to many of us because underlying all of this is a belief that 'boys' are 'failed' by the system somehow because they do worse than girls, whereas women's 'failings' don't produce calls for systemic reform, but are explained away as individually or biologically determined.

But the OP doesn't think that, and perhaps we should have this discussion elsewhere (in the feminism thread under 'other stuff' for example)

I realise that the thread has gone off at a tangent AdelaofBlois but didn't want to ignore questions from other posters.

If it's any consolation I also think the head appears "slimy" and would be very wary of taking his "selling point" good schools meet the needs of all children.

Have started a thread in the feminism section called 'exiles from boy-orientated teaching'. Perhaps less fertile ground for OP (who can ignore it if they wish) but also perhaps wider range of expert knowledge on gendering there (and a useful meeting point between two trends in discussion).

Sorry to OP, hope she (or he) will forgive me.

AdelaofBlois I don't see it as a "feminist" issue or indeed an anti feminist issue just a matter of fact boys and girls are different whether we like it or not