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.

Boys will be boys is a gateway drug?
Well this probably sums up the 21 century we are in now and it's ludicrous to males and females to be so fearful of male energy it's considered a gateway drug!

If anything the boys who fall in the "boys will be boys" category to some are usually the ones who advocate for female spaces the most!

This is not my experience of multiple secondary schools.

Usually a good long walk to school gets rid of excess energy with a stop at a playground on the way. When I was at school in the 60s everyone coped! Yes, a few boys might take rough play or tag a bit too far but mostly they didn’t. We had a class of 40. So what’s happened in the intervening 60 years? Why have children changed so much? Most dc I come across are great, so an element must be parenting.

We had opportunities to play with other dc outside school. We explored a bit too. Got home in time for tea! Rode bikes and even biked to the swimming pool 5 miles away. Parents didn’t come.

We seem to put dc in front of computers and don’t pay enough attention to their other needs. My DD2 went to a girls prep school. Many of the brothers of the girls went to a boys prep. Loads of sport and “boy” activities. Bookish boys catered for too. Maybe this is the answer? Separate sex classes?

Wow - I've been a teacher for 30 years and have taught in girls' schools, boys' schools, mixed schools, private and state, and in primaries too, and I have never worked in one which had a 'no physical contact' rule. Sounds inhumane, frankly.

And I’ve known and read about girls who later went on to form girl football teams who report being excluded by boys on the pitch.

I say this as someone who has worked in multiple schools and as part of my job still visit numerous schools every year where one of the topics I speak about is football and sports more generally.

In my school admittedly many years ago - but I was one of two girls allowed to play football and basketball with the boys in Year 6.

Most of the girls weren’t that interested in playing ball games so they didn’t really argue about it, but looking back it was pretty brazen the boys just announced that only certain girls were allowed to play and teachers didn’t bat an eyelid.

Ive always thought the children who want to just sit should be given a small area of the playground or even inside if they arent bothered about being outside. It's more important that short time the kids are outside has lots of physical play. Those who dont want that do not need the space to read or chat as per their preference

Great idea

I'm a teacher. I have a boy. I don't think he was a real boy though, because he was never really into rough and tumble and high energy play. Hated football. Did break a bone playing British bulldogs once. Boys always end up with more physical space than girls because football is king and football takes up more space.

I find it bizarre in high school that boys can't keep their hands off rack other. Girls seem to manage all day, but so, so many boys are constantly trying to touch each other or wrestle in corridors or at the end of lessons. Is it a need for dominance? Like chimps? Should we encourage chimp behaviour?

If anything the boys who fall in the "boys will be boys" category to some are usually the ones who advocate for female spaces the most!

Hard disagree.

Male energy isn't the problem. Excusing, or even encouraging, violent and aggressive behaviour by saying 'boys will be boys' is the problem.

No but if you restrict it so much, that one time there is contact and the boy doesn't know how to regulate that contact because he has had no contact with another boy for 5 months may react negatively as they feel it's an attack when it's just play.

When and where does that even happen? In real life.

More staff are needed for separate areas. Children can’t sit outside and read in the winter. Schools would love to provide more options but it’s not easy and it’s far from a new idea.

Maybe it was because they know that for many reasons, the girls are likely to be disruptive rather than productive in the game. It isnt innate. This is all gendered socialisation. "Haha giggle giggle, how funny to get the boys attention by disrupting their game" OR "I am not confident at my skill here so to deflect that, I will mess it up for everyone because its just silly football, who cares?"

As I said, at my son's school, anyone who was looking to play properly was welcome. Including children with SEN. What the kids found intolerable was the purposeful disruption that others insisted was genuine contribution or otherwise appropriate.

I have two young sons. Both love wrestling and rough play and sports. At home, we do all of that stuff and they are constantly on the go. But at school they know it’s not okay. It’s not safe to be play fighting and wrestling around children who may not enjoy it and it’s too busy to play rough games safely. They take part in all sports, live for their play times and dinner times (extra incentive not to get into trouble, as they’d hate to miss any play!) I have two brothers and this was also true for them many years ago. School is for learning. Schools do not have the capacity to monitor play fighting.

As a teacher, I have no problem with children in my class needing to be active. I factor in movement breaks whenever I can for the whole class. But the play fighting some of the (mostly boys) choose to still do is incredibly unsafe. Some are taller than me now and the constant spa-ing or grabbing each other is not okay.

You have to factor in parental complaints too. We had a large group of older boys get into a play fight which then escalated and two were left with marks on their necks.

I have found that when children are in play fight/wrestling mode, they am often stop listening to teacher directions completely and become wrapped up in the moment and this is why is becomes unsafe very quickly.

No, it was sexism.

These are girls who clearly were interested in football hence I mentioned they later went on to form their own school football teams or joined local girls team.

They were more serious about football than many of the boys that were allowed to play.

I recently did a workshop at a school where the girls were proudly wearing their medals for a football tournament they’d attended earlier that day.

Apparently that school had once had issues with the boys including girls in football too and yet it was the girls who brought back a school trophy.

If a child has no knowledge of play how can they know it's play. It happens all the time and is one of the reasons why teachers are wasting so much time reporting to parents events because the recipient child didn't know play was approaching and complained to the teacher. So much energy is taken away from teaching because of this gap.

I think a lot of schools do this now, dd's has a sensory area with lots of benches.

Exactly, and I’m curious did these boys never hang out with each after school? Go to football or rugby clubs within school or on the weekend? Do martial arts? Play computer games at their friends houses?

We let them do running games; we tolerate play fighting, but try to keep to only the children who want to be involved; they are allowed to climb trees and have big outdoor toys and balls at lunch.

We build in movement breaks for all and sensory circuits for anyone who needs them. At times, we teach the curriculum physically eg. Maths, for those that struggle to sit.

We run forest school for all, and have a compulsory outdoor learning part of our school planning seperate to this. It is an SLT requirement to have local playground trips frequently. We have rambunctious free play wherever possible including in EYFS.

We are a trauma informed school and we have MH workers in school for our most affected. All our sanctions are designed with this in mind. We are frequently heavily, heavily praised for our support and inclusivity.

None of this stops the fact that the kids are just pure feral. I am sick of being sworn at, barged, stamped on, hit/kicked; stopping what I'm doing to protect a different staff member; dealing with a playground scuffle that turned into a massive black eye and a nose bleed because both sides got angry and were taught to seriously fight (not play fight), so someone kicked the other at full force in the face... We are not failing boisterous kids (because ours like this are JUST as likely to be girls!). Our school is actually not very nice if you're NOT boisterous because we expect it to be so and it's set up to accommodate it more than for calm and peaceful children. This is still what it looks like. Schools that are set up just how you want them, still have the same problems OP... I suspect we just have rather higher levels of staff assault.

This 'story' is literally a classic example of a boisterous boy not taking enough care resulting in other children being hurt, and you want excuses/exceptions made for them?! Incredible.
This is where entitled men come from who think everyone needs to just move out of their way.

Children not touching each other for 5 months? Never seen it happen in any of the schools I’ve worked in or had contact with(in various keystages), other than Covid times.

One reason we chose an all boys school for our son was the amount of sport. In the school day they have 4 days with sport. Every before school, lunch and evening are more sporty opportunities. They also keep the boys in prep till the end of Y8 meaning they have an extra two years to grow up.

to be fair my daughter is at all girls where they have an equal amount of sport. I don’t think it’s about “boys play” as much, more the lack of sport and fun in childhood.

Im utterly horrified there are schools out there banning Tag. What is the world coming to.

This is silly. My daughter and her mixed sex group of friends was more likely to enjoy those things than my son and his quieter, mostly male friends.

Although frankly, neither of my children liked 'rough and tumble' play. It was exactly the sort of thing they both hated as children, as the other children would invariably take it too far and not know when to stop, resulting in children getting hurt or having their belongings damaged.

Their own opinion as younger children was that if more of the other children had an ounce of common sense or self-control, school would've been much more fun. But my kids may be a quiet, bookish anomaly.

Nobody is advocating for children not to be allowed to play. What they don't want, is rough play, which has zero place in schools.
You just want your child to be allowed to be rough and not get on trouble for it

That sounds like an awful environment for everyone concerned.