Boys in primary school

[HopeClearwater]

I’ve been teaching for a long time. This year seems to be the worst ever. With the usual small number of exceptions, the boys sit there while the girls tidy up around them. They wait for their books to be handed to them from a foot or two away rather than reaching for them themselves. They allow pencils to roll off the table on to the floor and wait for someone else to pick them up. They do not bother organising themselves. They want extra attention in class and expect me, or their peers, to stop speaking and attend to them immediately when they want to ask something. This is white middle-class Middle England. What’s happening?

That makes me really sad, my son isn't at primary yet but I wouldn't have that behaviour at home and I would want to know about it if it was happening at school.

Doesn't everyone have to tidy up together?

Could they take it in turns, all the boys gather the pencils and the girls put the books away or vice versa?

It must be depressing but there is to be a way to change it.

Are you looking at ways to turn this around? Book/chair/pencil/milk monitors of either sex, helper of the day?

So what are you doing about it?

Parents enable this kind of princely behaviour by pandering to it. I don't let my boys get away with anything like this!

You have had nearly a whole academic year to sort this out. What strategies have you put in place?

So, stop the girls tidying up. The boys are behaving like this because the behaviour is enabled by the girls willingness to attend to their needs.

Irrespective of home situations, this is an ideal scenario in which to reach self sufficiency to the boys.

Did I say I hadn’t put in strategies to deal with it? I did not. That would indeed be useless of me I did not ask for advice about how to deal with the practicalities of it. I most certainly have put in strategies. Everyone tidies, everyone has a job. I don’t allow the girls to do the boys’ jobs for them. I’m right on top of that.

But you can see that the girls are already falling into a ‘I may as well do it if they can’t be bothered’ trap. I feel as if I’m fighting this attitude day in, day out. Kids are in school for 6 hours a day, 190 days a year. It’s not enough time to reverse the messages from home. My question is, why in these apparently more enlightened times of equality, are the females STILL supporting the males? Why aren’t the girls saying ‘Do it yourself’? Why are mothers STILL behaving like this with their sons? Are they not busy enough themselves? These boys’ mothers also work outside the home and have many plates to keep in the air.

These boys constantly need reminding that they’re on duty to do this or that. It reminds me of the threads on the Relationships board about husbands who ‘don’t see’ jobs, or wait for wives to ask them to do things. Essentially my girls are already doing wifework in the classroom if no one steps in to stop them. I find it deeply frustrating.