Great article about the context of boys failing in education

[BasilBabyEater]

www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/soraya-chemaly/boy-crisis-in-education_b_1655282.html

Lotto, I think we might be misinterpreting each other?

Sorry... Lotta.

Haven't got my glasses on... Unwise, I know :)

Maybe we are! I'm all in favour of children being seen as individuals. So I guess we're on the same side

I remember being part of some teacher training thing about attainment differences between the sexes. They decided that the reason boys were failing in subjects like english was because they were being provided with unengaging topics (I suppose books about love instead of guns?? dunno). And the solution was to pepper resources with a variety of gender-engaging senarios.

For example, I taught science, so to engage girls, I might have done an experiment with lipstick and to engage boys, calculating speed with cars. I was a bit at this too.

It did get us to think about if we treated boys and girls differently. I was shocked to find that I DID treat them differently...I had higher expectations of boy behaviour and attainment than girls - I was harder on the boys - something I'm not proud of and worked hard to negate.

The point of the article, is that boys' needs not being met in school, is a microcosm of women's needs not being met in the whole of the rest of society.

Lots of male (and female) commentators point to the idea that school is a heavily female dominated environment, fitted for females and that boys have ot somehow slot in and therefore they labour under a massive disadvantage.

None of those commentators notice that the rest of the world, is structured in a mirror image of that where women are concerned. They merely put women's lack of achievement, down to the fact that we're all thick and unmotivated and unambitious.

That's what the article is about, not about how we can ensure boys' needs are met at school. That's a different subject.

I know what the article is about, thanks. I just don't think it's a very helpful viewpoint.

What about girls needs being met though? All the hard work they do just to be resented for it. They are constantly receiving the message that if girls are succeeding then there must be something wrong with the system. Just because the majority of primary teachers are female doesn't mean they favour girls. Sometimes it is quite the opposite.

The years I spent in primary school education I saw lots of initiatives to engage boys but it was just assumed that girls would work hard. When books or films were chosen to be read/played it was rare to expect boys to sit through female centred fare but it was taken for granted that girls would listen to stories about boys.

Similarly little was done to expand topics such as the Greeks or Romans to include women's lives. I was once told not to use butterflies as an example of reflective symmetry because it would turn boys off (too Girly, see!)

So how about we appreciate how hard girls work and give credit where credit's due before we take it away from them and start blaming boys supposed failure on their success.

I don't think anyone is blaming boys failure on girls success. Also it's not a "supposed" failure. It's a real problem. My point is it doesn't help women's equality by not helping boys. You can should do both. Boys failing at school and women not having equal rights are. It mutually exclusive.

That should say... Are not mutually exclusive.

Yeah Eclectic I probably am projecting a bit. No one on this thread has said that but if I had a dollar for every comment I've read in response to "boy crisis" articles that automatically assumes that girls successes are down to a biased system I'd be able to retire.

But you're right it shouldn't be about gender reductionism and it shouldn't descend into a battle of the sexes, it should be about individual kids.

Maybe if boys had more effective education we could also teach them about women's rights...

I like this article. Is is men who are creating all the pink toys for babies (am guessing girls?) that is creating a divide at such a young age? I suspect they are the ones in the companies trying to make the extra money since their wives are at home bringing up their children and suffering financially/careerwise for it.

Such a weird lot of male/female stuff in our society at the moment.

Who's buying the stereotypical toys?

In what way is it unhelpful to point out that the world is designed to systematically disadvantage women?

certainly it is unhelpful to people who are hostile to feminism, but it is quite helpful to people who are interested in feminism, to point out how uneven the playing field is.

I know the new style welcoming feminist section may not be comfortable with feminist analysis though.

I'm not hostile to feminism, im a feminist and I still find it unhelpful. My opinion, please don't tell me what my position is.

messyisthenewtidy - spot on that when it's a `boy crisis' it gets the column inches.

No allowances should be made for behavure or otherwise at school based on the child being male or female. In fact I think they need to stop analysing the results based on sex it encourages it.

Hate it when my poor DS will only play on the Wii as a girl character when his friends are not here.. (digressing)

oh yes you'reone of those new fangled feminists

The ones that sounds like they don't like or agree with feminism

Analysing the results based on sex is the ONLY way to monitor any supposed sexism. In fact, the lowest achieving group of all is black boys - perhaps we should not monitor race either?

I'm not convinced that boys do worse because of a woman-bias in early schools but I was interested that the one of the proposed reasons boys do less well is because of an attitude of entitlement and superior confidence. I certainly felt this myself at school and observed it when I went back to teach - this rings true for me.

Anecdotally, they used to experiment with single sex classes in my old school - the teachers reported that the girl groups outstripped girls taught in mixed groups, but the behviour in the boy classes was verging on uncontrollable. So classes were remixed. I always thought it unfair that they preferred to accept lower achieving girls in favour of better behaved boys. But there...

Yes BFG, anecdotally also I remember a few times when girls would complain that attention was being given to disruptive boys who stopped the girls getting on with their work. I did wonder if classes should be single sex until I realised that it was always just a handful of boys (sometimes but not often girls) causing the disruption and that those boys who were neither super naughty nor super bright were losing out just as much as the girls.

I'm also unconvinced that the gender of the teacher makes a difference as I've seen a couple of male teachers unable to impose discipline, it has more to do with personality. That's not to say more male teachers isn't a good thing though.

I think investing more powers in teachers to enable them to exclude unruly children would enable the children who do want to learn to do so. I do suspect that boys might rest on their laurels a little bit. As a child I was very much aware that I had to work harder than my brother. And DS doesn't translate his desire to be the many male occupations he sees on tv to any increased desire to work hard for it! But I am extrapolating somewhat there I realise ....

The thing that gets me about the 'boys educational failure' argument is that people who say the system is set up for girls & favours them seem to neglect an important fact - the system was set up exclusively for boys! Initially only boys were entitled to education and only men could teach. It's not that long ago that women were forced to leave the teaching profession when they got married.

All this 'boys can't sit down for five minutes' stuff is utter nonsense, they could and did 100 years ago, they can and do at Eton and Harrow.

The real problem is that society as a whole undervalues academic success and achievement and has started to view education and teaching as a 'female' thing (and therefore of course worthless ). We value wealth not work. And if you want to know whose fault that is, well Mrs Thatcher's of course - but that's another thread

Fowl, yes, DS has made many comments along the lines of "school is for girls", and is often teased by other boys for his talent in science. Very sad.

It is also mixed with quite a bit of resentment that boys tend to be lumped together for the sins of a few disruptive ones. A minor issue but I do think the tendency of teachers to use the terms "boys" or "girls" to address them collectively should be avoided so children would see themselves more as individuals in this very gender segregated society.

'boys can't sit down for five minutes' stuff is utter nonsense - hear hear! Funny how the recent obession with 'learning styles' fits neatly into stereotyping boys as active, 'kinetic' learners.

I taught a top set GCSE class once and half the boys were off for half the lesson time each week to do a GNVQ in car maintenance or some such shit. They underachieved in science as a result.

But I don't think you can entirely blame MrsT for 'dollar is king' culture Fowl, we live in a capitalist society.

I went to a graduation ceremony yesterday at a very highly regarded university.

The number of male and female graduands from undergraduate degree courses seemed about equal as did the distribution of graduands with 'Firsts'.

However, when it came to PhD/DPhil students graduating it seemed only about 25% were women. Not sure what causes that. It was very noticeable though and we are talking about social sciences here so not typical male subjects like engineering.

Yeah, I seem to remember that's where the inequalities begin MoreBeta, even less women go onto postdocs and less go on to lecture, less to professor etc. No one seems sure why.

You've just reminded me though that at the start of my PhD lots of girls were having terrible troubles coming to grips with it (including me) forever complaining we were not 'good enough'. The first year is also the big drop out year for doctorates. The boys never complained and we struggled to explain our fears to them.