Gareth Southgate: we need to teach boys differently to girls to get the best out of them

[WarriorN]

Gareth Southgate: We need to teach boys differently to girls to get best out of them https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgp5g34kzpo

interesting article …

But that's a skill to learn, too: that the world doesn't work the way you want it to, and you have to find ways to cope.

Holy fuck. What in the stereotyping bullshit is this.

no, boys do not need to be exercised, allowed to roughhouse and taught only “boy” books.

girls are not naturally passive, they are taught it.

Both sexes need active play. Boys need to be taught consideration and not to play football or play rough games when others may be hurt. They can play football in PE lessons.

if boys were also trained to sit still and act nicely like girls are, maybe they’d get more out of their education.

more sport for both boys and girls. Stop with the “boys will be boys” crap and if they need to sit and learn they can. Girls do it, so can boys. Stop giving boys attention for being disruptive- the “class clown” is always male.

Seriously, boys need “rough play”? Take them to martial arts classes them, don’t be allowing them to beat each other up at school 🙄

Good discussion thanks. I don’t have much time to participate.

I think it’s about balance. some girls need same opportunities as boys. some boys are very sensitive and do not need what other stereotypical boys might need.

Not fitting the stereotype for both sexes has led to trans Id and I also think is fuelling diagnoses seeking. Certainly can drive disengagement at school. At the same time boys do certainly need very specific input from good male role models.

physical activity is good for many boys but not all benefit from competition.

the arts are not seen as an option for boys anymore. Boys rarely take art as a subject. I remember that this was a theme in adolescence.

I think that it’s good to have the discussion and also that it’s good to be able to talk about the sexes without the gender nonsense.

Agree, physical activity is a must for all children. It’s just that different personalities suit different pursuits.

There was a time, in fact twice during my 40 yr teaching career, when education was described as best practice when it was child centred and tailored to individuals' learning styles. I am hoping that we are due for the cycle to move around again. Education doesn't need to be dry and boring
It should be exciting, engaging and inspiring. The current trend in Secondary schools of looking at a screen all day is hardly likely to engage anyone.

Obviosly they exist, and lots of people prefer them; especially for girls.

Boys do tend to be far more physically rough and tumble than most girls; even when the girls are naturally sporty and active. I'm not sure that trying to suppress natural physical expression in boys in order to make them conform to an imagined ideal of masculine behaviour is the way forward.

There is a reason we have women's football and men's football...... due to the differences in physicality; and these differences start to exert themselves quite early on.

@Yetanotherone12Boys have several bursts of testosterone during childhood and that needs to be directed and absolutely NOT just in PE. That’s the issue, that is the problem we have, where activity is limited to 1 hour or PE twice a week. That is what needs to change.

If boys were taught to ‘sit nicely’ is precisely and exactly the problem. Why? It goes against what their body is telling them to do. This is also true for ADHD girls where they are taught to ‘sit nicely’ and end up having nervous breakdowns.

Teaching boys ‘consideration’ in a female way - or the stereotypical female way - has failed. We need to teach boys how to be men, who obey rules and look to support each other in a different way.

Many of these issue relate to ADHD girls, sitting nicely, no rough games does not appeal to them either. They want excitement, activity and movement.

We need to change our attitude to rough play and taking risks, these type of activities are good for boys and girls - if they want to do it. It is within these activities where we stop “boys will be boys” because we teach how to be rough and dangerous but respect boundaries, as in marshal arts. When we hold our hands up in horror at rough activities we are rejecting what many boys want, sending the message you are bad and we don’t like you.

Good post!

Also, education just needs an overhaul in general.

Subjects need to be brought right up to date and taught in a way that shows how they are applied in real life.

I mean, what is the point in children learning about the half life of a radioactive isotope unless they are also taught about the application nuclear fission and fusion?

(edited - sorry that was probably a terrible example 😄)

This was supposed to be in reply to posts above saying education needs to be reformed to make it more interesting and accessible to children.

Yes, of course- when possible.

But studying for example is hard and often boring. Hours spent poring over books or screens to revise is what builds the character, stamina and brain for the future - for hours in the lab, for hours trying and failing and trying again to get equations, or an engineering process, or a corporate structure or strategy to work.

They need to learn to work hard and face challenges and try and fail - especially when they’ve been acclimatised to the instant gratification and constant flitting between screens since toddlerhood. We cant and shouldn’t make everything quick and easy.

I agree with some of these points but also think it goes back to a fundamental issue with education from the earliest years. COVID really showed up the problem for me.

DS went to a nursery which was an 'outdoor nursery' with plenty of opportunity for the kids to go outside and play in mud.

What happened? Well the boys all ended up doing that and the girls tended to stay inside and do colouring.

You need to examine why and what the consequences of this were.

DSs year were the one in reception when lockdown happened. As a result many of the boys never learnt to sit down and do a bit of writing / colouring/ whatever.

By the time school eventually started back properly, they were expected to be sitting down and learning to write, having missed this crucial middle stage of learning to sit down for short periods and pay attention. For some it almost has felt like they missed the window of opportunity because school was playing catch up on these basics whilst the curriculum raced on. It was an amplification of something that way already happening though.

From a very early age, the expectation was that the boys would run around and behave in a certain way. The girls, however, were expected to behave in a different way. It gave them soft skills and a head start over boys from the word go.

And you see this issue throughout primary about expectations of behaviour from adults.

Boys not reading is something of a reflection of attitudes that books are more for girls. It doesn't help when the subject matter of books doesn't match the interests of boys. Tbh this has improved vastly over the last few years, particularly with comic books having a big resurgence and providing an entry into reading. But the point still remains.

By the time you get to teens, if you go look in your local Waterstones, the majority of the young adult section is aimed at a female audience. The number of good books aimed at teen boys is still limited by comparison. There isn't a demand and so there isn't the books there. Yes Manga is more popular than ever and there's now a big section for that but it shows up part of the problem too - the girls are reading wordy stuff whilst the boys haven't really progressed past the comic books and the content of these Manga books is frequently highly sexualised and often violent (and arguably often not particularly suitable for teens in the first place because of this).

Attainment is linked to reading age and access to books so this remains a fundamental and central point. If you don't learn to sit still and to like reading early on, you are at a massive disadvantage.

We can focus on education not being set up for boys til we are blue in the face. It still comes back to sexist attitudes and expectations from a very early age from everyone around these kids. Couple this with socio-economic attitudes to education and working class white boys always come out worst for fairly obvious reasons.

Yes boys need to be treated differently to girls in school, but that's because they've already been effectively put into a position where they lack the soft skills early on to match the girls so they are playing catch up in many respects from the moment they get to a formal school setting and are expected to read and write and this is reinforced throughout primary by the attitudes around them in terms of behaviour and expectations. By the time they hit high school frankly I think it's an uphill struggle and you are fighting a losing battle in terms of motivation.

Add to this that it's easier for a lot of boys to effectively 'check out' especially when parents don't do much to get them off their games and even help around the house (again girls are much more likely to be expected to help and less likely to totally immersed in games - they use mobiles but this at least engages with the real world to an extent). You then get parents suddenly wondering why their child is unemployable because they haven't expected their child to do anything since they were little. It's excused as just being children - in the past the emphasis was on preparing for the workplace at a much earlier age and parents training children to be adults by giving the responsibilities and having expectations placed on them at a young age.

It's getting worse because parents are increasingly infantilising their children and have no expectations for them for every basic stage of life - from getting dressed themselves, to organising themselves etc - and this is particularly excused for boys too.

My friend yesterday said to me "I'm so worn out from trying to remember everything for everyone - who has this on this day and at what time" whilst commenting that her husband doesn't do this and how nice it would be if he reminded her of all these things instead so she didn't have to do it and be super organised. So when we talk about roll models it's fascinating to note this observation about what is expected of girls and boys in this context too and why it might affect employability in an ever increasing complex society. Again soft skills not academica.

It comes back to these two points for me - soft skills and expectations from adults, not so much the failure of schools and education.

This is the sort of anti-reality, anti-science nonsense that puts people off feminism. And I say that as a committed feminist.

Boys and girls (as a population) are not the same. They do develop differently, at different stages. This is well documented. Its not just socialisation. Boys do tend to enjoy rough play in a way most girls do not. This is not surprising given the different roles in society men and women are evolved to have in days before birth control.

Both boys and girls need greater opportunity for physicality and for risk taking, but boys will probably benefit most from this. The over concern for safety in schools and society is ridiculously over the top.

One of the few benefits of gender ideology is that it seems to have caused more feminists to accept that men and women are indeed not the same. If they were, there would be no need for sex segregated anything, after all.

I’m afraid that society is still so misogynistic that by the time children start school many things are enbedded. Many women, mothers support this, many men, fathers expect it and lives their lives by it. Giving girls and boys different toys, expecting girls to sit quietly whilst boys are encouraged and praised for running around being loud. Blue jibs and pink jobs (with no balance).

Ever since being on MN esp this board, I see how society pushes traditional outdated gendered roles. Our children are being conditioned, when boys and men can’t live up to this societal stereotyping they feel they've failed. Until society changes this attitude it’s going to be very difficult to change this. Just educating differently won’t cut it. Boys and men need to understand and accept that roles and expectations have changed. Perhaps educating them in this might help, but it starts at home.

Quite - it's a narrative that infuriates me. It's not as if girls enjoy sitting still and being obedient, it's that we expect them to do it, and we punish them if they deviate from it. We are far more tolerant of boys who misbehave and we use the excuse of "boys will be boys".

In the 19th century children sat quietly in rows and listened for hours on end - it's not as if being expected to sit quietly is a new thing. Indeed, children have far more opportunities for active rather than passive learning now than they did 100 or 200 years ago.

Yes exactly "Raising boys achievement" was a named priority initiative when I was teaching mainstream in the 1990s - replaced by "targeting the C-D boarderline" and then by something else .... Although all that was ever done was data collection and mentoring a few targeted kids.

The problem with initiatives in mainstream education is they're always more about showing that you're doing something than actually doing anything, and every initiative is just layered on top of the last and quietly replaced by some other headline priority a few months or terms later.

Raising boys achievement has been on the carousel of fashionable initiatives to bluster loudly about for decades...

One of the recommendations for kids with ADHD is walking to school.

Walking to school is something that is increasingly not happening and we wonder why behaviour in school declines.

The idea that this is for schools to fix, is something I think misses a huge part of the equation.

Children sat still because they were whipped and caned if they did not. You can torture people into doing anything you want. That this is true hardly makes your case.

Disagree. Obviously there are exceptions in both boys and girls, but as a general rule boys need physical activity. They need rough and tumble because it teaches them about strength and how to control strength. Essential for when they are bigger, because they learned about self control when they were younger. My sons would rough and tumble with each other, their dad and me. They learned respect, limitations and also how to protect themselves and others if needed. There are natural biological differences between the behaviours of boys and girls. Get over it. The problem is some people think boys should conform to an unrealistic generic code of conduct written by women. Which is every bit as bad as girls being expected to behave to a code written by the patriarchy.

And it’s utterly ridiculous to say they should go to specific classes! Expensive much?!

Yes, I've noticed there's a huge number of old fashioned knucklehead tradesmen still around. And some of them are young enough to know better. I can understand why a bright, hands on youngster probably wouldn't want to work with them and be part of that culture.

Totally this

walking helps all people with learning.

Some office workers now get treadmills to walk on when they’re working

there’s a lot of research on how going for a walk helps creativity and productivity, and learning.

It’s a sensory approach we use for some children in send. I even remember one child had it as part of his emotional regulation plan. When he recognised he was at a certain level of irritation he would show us a card and he’d go off for a walk.

He did come back though. It really helped him. Very adhd. Not medicated. Medication isnt always useful or effective

“Men on the other hand, who have been used to being too dog, having everything done for them, making the rules etc have not matured, grown and developed.”

He’s talking about children

Very well said. I have joys and the idea that they should have any blame or suffer any mistreatment because some other men that they never met and are not related to experienced privilege is just wrong.

It’s well-known that as a cohort boys and girls benefit from different teaching styles and perform better (and worse) under different testing regimes.