Why are teachers failing the narrative for boys, is boy playing incompatible with school

[Leteer]

Does anyone feel like boy play is deeply unsupported and thoroughly discouraged in school up to the point where boys are questioning if play is actually good / encourages boys to question if their hard wired need for play is a bad thing. Isn't this a downward spiral for boys to not support what nature gave them which could in turn affect academic work.

Are you suggesting that male puberty does not affect boy's brains ? That men and women have the same neural hardware and all differences are the effect of socialisation ? If so that is a very quaint and old fashioned belief against all scientific evidence.

The thing is, even if there are ingrained , biological differences, these become exacerbated by environment, society and culture.

Just like a genetic predisposition for certain things isn’t a guarantee, but can be triggered by environmental and life style factors. Just like certain neurodiversities can be made worse by improper treatment/management/ the wrong environment etc.

@Neurodiversitydoctoractually the more 'old fashioned" belief is that men and women are substantially different and that's why we must treat them differently and put them in different societal roles. It's a much more modern and nuanced approach to say that actually yes there are sex differences but these are hugely exaggerated by the way in which we treat boys and girls right from the start.

There is an abundance of evidence to demonstrate this. On the flip side whilst we can observe differences, for example we know the male brain is 10% bigger on average we actually have very little understanding of the impact that would have. Most neuroscience is very good guesswork.

Until you're able to show me some decent studies where individuals are treated exactly the same and given the same conditions, responses and opportunities as each other I will never believe that the stark sex differences we see and the rampant misogyny in our sociecty is an undeniable and indesputable biologically destined fact.

In reception the b/g were very similar and most were friends in groups of both.
But there were a few mean boys who liked to tease/wind others up.
Gradually the groups changed by y2/3 it became boy or girl.
Imo the football is a very negative influence on the boys. It becomes the only thing many of them do and inhibits them talking to anyone else and excludes the non sporty boys
By secondary fthe boys behavioue it largely awful!.
Sexual comment to the girls/ some took a other boys workbook and ripped it up.
Girls are being used as a moderating factor of the boys.
Though girls have their own issues.

My own dds both more tom boyish. And for eldest she couldnt get on with large girl groups due to adhd her impulsive behaviour gets reported on.

Boys seem to be easier babies. Quite sweet toddlers and early years but then because they were so sweet the parents struggle to then discipline

all kids including secondary should be getting some exercise at school daily.

noone has the ball to tell boys off many are spending loads of time in behaviour support but that does nothing. whole schools pupils are having to put phones in piuches now because they cant stop kids using at school (talk about whole class punishment)

we need to use ks1 to actively teach kids how to play and apologise and work together. The curriculum is letting kids just free play. Many kids cant make or maintain friendships its all to do with parents organising them

Well I disagree.

I don’t think it’s because girls are raised to “believe” we are more nurturing, I think it’s because the female sex is more nurturing as a result of their biological make-up.

You don’t believe there are any intrinsic differences in the hard-wiring of the two sexes which in turn shapes a large part of their character, their traits and their behaviours and that’s fair enough, but I do.

And it’s fine to disagree.

You think there's a nurturing gene or something?

Explain please how biology would make a woman better at wiping a bum.

@LondonLady1980its not about beliefs. It's a series of consistent punishmenta and rewards which reinforce roles from birth all the way through life.

Social norms are an incredibly powerful thing. Just look at people who circumsize their babies in America because 'that's just what you do'.

That’s what you think the core of nursing is?

Wiping bums?

I suggest you go and educate yourself.

You’re being deliberately obtuse here.

Girls (in general) are raised to be kind, be gentle, be helpful, look after others, consider everyone else’s needs, pander to x,y,z etc. They get punished when they don’t and rewarded when they do. After years of this it becomes as ingrained as biology. Stepping outside of the norm comes with shunning, name calling , derision and hostility.

Don’t pretend that none of that has an effect.

Also you can’t ignore history , bias and misogyny. For decades women could not be doctors, nursing was everything that was available to them. Go back a bit further , and women with healing skills and abilities were brutally murdered. Then as it became a predominantly female profession it lost respect and wages were low and still are. There is still often an assumption that the doctor will be male. None of this happens in a vacuum.

@LondonLady1980 again another leap and no of course not. I'm generalising lots of caring and nurturing roles and trying to use humour. Who ends up wiping most bums in society... Through parenting or care work? Oh right, women.

Unless you're denying that?

Yeah, I’m sure a lot of people working in nursing roles and who are passionate about their career and proud of the very important care they provide found your post very humorous.

You're using a straw man because you have nothing to actually respond with.

And do you know what I would consider accepting that 'argument' if 'female' jobs didn't get paid a whole lot less than 'male' ones.

Anyone can be trained to do the practical aspects of nursing but what makes a truly good nurse is their character and the communication skills they possess to enable them to support patients and their families in very vulnerable times. They need to be compassionate, sympathetic, empathetic, openly be able to show care, concern, emotion and understanding, be able to read people and their emotions and adapt to them, build trusting relationships, be able to have difficult and upsetting conversations whilst making people feel safe and heard and protected. They need to not only show warmth towards the patients and families they work with but they need to genuinely feel it too.

I 100% believe that these are skills and qualities that women have in ways that men just don’t, and not simply because we were socially conditioned in some way when we were little girls.

I really don’t know why it bothers you so much that I have a different opinion to you.

So if you don't believe it's down to conditioning and environment what do you think it is?

You genuinely think there is code in our DNA to be 'better listeners'?

Genuinely, what do you think is the mechanism that supports your hypothesis?

I don’t think schools have the space or staffing for the level of supervision that is required for a lot of the above. Really it is up to parents to provide this.
Certainly I know rough play is not allowed in most schools as someone can get hurt or it can get out of hand.
There should be space in all schools for everyone to run round but sadly there is not,

Whatever the argument about ‘boys’ needs vs girls’ needs’, ALL children in this era of increasing obesity, screen addiction and inactivity need sufficient opportunities to be active every day.

This cannot, and should not, be a need where responsibility lies solely, or even mainly, on schools. Society as a whole should be ensuring that all children, of all ages, of all socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicity, get enough exercise and active socialisation every day.

Every organisation, from parish councils to national government; from nurseries to sixth forms; from playgroups to professional sports clubs; from the NHS through DfE to transport to whatever the environment dept is called these days; from
parents to ministers and from lunchtime supervisors to full time sports coaches should be working together. Every child has the right to play actively, indoors and out; has the right to access community spaces and sports facilities; to experience the full range of sports and pastimes, whichever sex they are traditionally associated with. The barriers to them being healthily active - whether practical or to do with attitude, history or prejudice- need to be systematically examined and dismantled.

Then schools can take their rightful place in that ecosystem: they can teach sports, provide play opportunities and learn actively when age and subject appropriate, but also assume that every child’s life contains sufficient activity across the week so that they can get on with their primary purpose of education.

Anyone who could be on this site and think women are intrinsically more caring or compassionate is absolutely deluded.

Verbal reasoning and comprehension partially lives on the X chromosone, language centres in the brain have oestrogen receptors ( hence word finding difficulty in meonpause). Yes on balance females have better verbal recall and males have better visuo-spacial skills because of their brains. Give women testosterone and their ability to parralel park improves.

Some sources :
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/189221#:~:text=Results%20Treatment%20with%20estrogen%20increased,for%20memory%20in%20postmenopausal%20women.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/10.3389/fendo.2019.00654/full

There are loads more oestrogen and testoterone are neurotransmitters. I struggle to see how this can be disputed in 2026

Heartily agree with @cantkeepawayforever

My ds was not a boisterous boy, far from it. But plenty of boys - and girls - have a lot of energy and to deny this is asking for poor classroom behaviour.

The dcs’ primary school banned running in the playground. Also if the day of the week had a y in it PE or Games was cancelled. Sports Day was non-competitive and the kids “participated in modules” doing stuff like beanbag throwing into hoops. Even I - a couch potato supreme - would have been driven up the walls with this drive to be stationary!

I'm clearly not a proper woman, because I don't have a nurturing bone in my body. At least, no more so than dh.
Which is why I'm a better parent to teenagers than small children.

Neither of my kids appear to have had the memo either, because their behaviour is just.... them. Ds is, and always has been, wholly impervious to peer pressure and how a boy 'should' behave, just as I was a girl. Dd wants to fit in and has adapted her behaviour accordingly. She was by the far the wilder of the two until she learned the social 'rules' in school about how a girl should behave.

In reception the b/g were very similar and most were friends in groups of both.
But there were a few mean boys who liked to tease/wind others up.
Gradually the groups changed by y2/3 it became boy or girl.
Imo the football is a very negative influence on the boys. It becomes the only thing many of them do and inhibits them talking to anyone else and excludes the non sporty boys
By secondary fthe boys behavioue it largely awful!.
Sexual comment to the girls/ some took a other boys workbook and ripped it up.
Girls are being used as a moderating factor of the boys.
Though girls have their own issues.

My own dds both more tom boyish. And for eldest she couldnt get on with large girl groups due to adhd her impulsive behaviour gets reported on.

Boys seem to be easier babies. Quite sweet toddlers and early years but then because they were so sweet the parents struggle to then discipline

all kids including secondary should be getting some exercise at school daily.

noone has the ball to tell boys off many are spending loads of time in behaviour support but that does nothing. whole schools pupils are having to put phones in piuches now because they cant stop kids using at school (talk about whole class punishment)

we need to use ks1 to actively teach kids how to play and apologise and work together. The curriculum is letting kids just free play. Many kids cant make or maintain friendships its all to do with parents organising them

well you go and supervise a couple of hundred kids where yr 6s are ploughing into reception/yr 1 children every two minutes playing tag on a concrete playground and then we'll see how you feel about it. Even when they are split into different key stages it's still children a good two or thee years older and bigger knocking over smaller younger children and causing multiple injuries every lunch time all winter.

play fighting is completely unnecessary and benefits no one at school, I was bubbled with a reception class many years ago and most of the boys would physically fight each other at every given opportunity and it was hell. We had two adults to around 25 children and that was a much much higher adult/child ratio you'd normally get at lunchtimes due to covid. All lunchtime was constantly breaking up fights, crying kids, multiple first aid visits and no one gained anything from it. In actual fact that class became one of the smallest and has remained so throughout the school due to the number of parents who pulled their children out over that year and the next due to the boys incessant physical fighting. don't even get me started on the sexism.

Sounds to me like you want school to allow a child's boisterous behaviour so you don't have to bother managing it yourself.

children in general need more play time at school imo but not fighting.

we need to use ks1 to actively teach kids how to play and apologise and work together. The curriculum is letting kids just free play. Many kids cant make or maintain friendships its all to do with parents organising them

This is exactly the purpose of the EYFS and its curriculum - spanning pre-school / nursery and Reception.

If children are in KS1 without these skills, then we must first look at what is going wrong in Early Years. Is it that Nursery / Reception have become too academically focused, with pressure on later years (from Phonics Checks; KS1 assessments etc) being passed down (‘if we start even earlier then we have a chance of getting there’)? Is it that children are arriving in Early Years settings of all types without the basic skills and attitudes that it was until recently assumed that parents were responsible for, so these are added to what these settings have to do?

Whatever it is, we need to get 0-5 right rather than assuming that the first step to take is to change 5-7 and 7-11 education.