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 …

Where is this school where you claim that in classes boys are told they can run around but girls are told they must sit still? What school is this? Its not one I have ever encountered. Or indeed even heard of. So where is it?

But yes. boys do like rough active play. Telling them they should not is asking them to conform to female norms. That's wrong.

By boys are much smaller than their peers. They don't choose to ' roughhouse' at school and their peers have never tried to make them - despite what you appear to imagine. Its consensual. Because its play, not bullying. From my kids description, when the boys play they like this they choose to go into the ' circle. Kids who don't want to, like mine, just don't go in and that's fine. My boys don't play like this with their peers as they are smaller. My eldest however, did very much enjoy playfighting with me when young, and now he has a brother, they both enjoy playing like this at home.

One of the problems we have with ' teen spaces' is that they are designed with male norms in mind, of active team play. Teenage girls tend to prefer to have somewhere to sit and chat. Because (as a population) boys and girls prefer to use parks in different ways.

I'm sorry, but its just true. And its not hard to work out the reasons for these differences, and no they are not all 'socialisation'.

I never attended a single-sex school, but judging from the comments here seems to be "boys = rough active play", "girls = study" etc.

Surely the single-sex schools allow for more diversity (academic boys, sporty boys etc), instead of these gender stereotypes that seem to permeate through mixed-sex schools.

I know you hear of girls schools having problems with girls self identifying as male. But I wonder whether you have as many boys transitioning in all boys schools? The benefits of accessing opposite-sex spaces and being lauded by girls don't exist in single-sex schools.

Eh? Since ancient times schoolboys have been expected to sit still for hours to work! Read the graffiti in Ancient Egypt and Rome!!!

You may think that’s undesirable, but it’s certainly not a modern feminist re-programming of historical educational theory and practice.

I’ve always thought that a lot of blame lies with the local authorities who were allowed to sell off playing fields and school sporting grounds.

I absolutely think boys should be capable of sitting still in school, that’s not what I said - I didn’t mention schooling at all. I said boys need rough and tumble as part of life, not suggesting it’s part of the curriculum!

This 'rough and tumble' can manifest in different ways according to the boy. I've brought up a girl and two boys, and whilst my daughter was always very physically confident she just didn't automatically look for physical 'adventure play' in the same sort of way that the boys did. Both of my boys were attracted to stalking, making pretend weapons out of sticks and 'survival' type games - when we would go out walking in the woods, or in the countryside.

One of the boys used to spend hours drawing these tiny, very detailed little drawings of soldiers and military figures, and then when he was older looked into studying Military History at university. The other boy was really into the cadet force at his school; doing long treks, camping; rifle shooting etc. Now as an adult he still likes to take himself off and do wild camping, alone. Bear Grylls sort of stuff.

Both were very 'well behaved' at school and certainly didn't get into actual fights with other children, but they did like more obvious physical style play. In my experience ( as a sporty girl myself, as a mother, and as a teacher), even with girls who are physically confident and sporty they tend to have more focus on relational styles of play; on pair bonding and so on.

My granddaughter used to play football, liked climbing, rode her bike without stabilisers at a very young age;, she also liked kicking and punching so we had her doing karate for a while: but she would complain about how rough the boys were in the playground when they play football. After about age 8 the girls and boys largely tend to play in same sex groups by inclination - and the girls tend to think that most boys are silly.

What’s wrong with rough and tumble play? I liked play fights and messing about when I was young. I like rolling round and rough play with my dc when they were young. I still enjoy active play now. I remember my D.C. rolling round the floor wrestling, most of the time no one was hurt, lots of laughter and physical play. Why is this a bad thing?
It can become a bad thing if children are not taught limits, but the discussion and application of rules and knowing when to stop is one of the reasons why this type of play is important. Poor parenting, letting boys be boys with no discussion of limits and boundaries is just that, poor parenting.

I think that there are population-level differences between boys and girls (without getting into the nature vs nurture debate). However, it is also true that there are plenty of girls and boys who, for whatever reason, defy those differences. My experience is that single-sex secondary schools are more inclined to acknowledge those differences within a population and cater for them, whereas mixed sex schools tend to just see 'boy' and 'girl' differences and overlook those children who are defying the norms for their sex.

I think he's worth listening to.

He delivered an excellent Dimbleby lecture on Resliance a couple of years ago.

How can you say "It is not about men versus women..." when Southgate specifically is focussing on the difference between girls and boys! He could have just raised concerns about education generally (there are lots of negatives to our system that impact both sexes), he was the one that bought sex differences into it.

Your further point is literally agreeing with mine! "unfortunately not all schools have many, or even any, male teachers at primary level anymore."

Whose fault is that? That is something literally only men themselves can change by deciding to train as teachers. So, again, if men agree that boys should be supported differently in schools, they need to put some effort in themselves and make that happen, not pontificate to a majority female workforce of teachers about what they, the people who do actually turn up and teach kids every day despite all the challenges, are doing wrong!

I’ve really changed my view of this watching my children.
i worked hard and did really well academically. I thought this was because I was a hard worker but now I actually think I was just gifted academically so I did well and got praised. And so I worked harder as I was successful and enjoyed the fruits of my success. It was a lovely virtuous cycle that made me feel good and I got great results. And I got a great degree. (I hated the job it led to though !)

My daughter has clearly struggled to read. So academic work is hard and she doesn’t get much success and nice praise. So really it’s not much fun and (now) she puts in the minimum effort. She can work hard but she saves that for things she’s actually good at.

So point is that I think people work hard when they have an aptitude and get success.

I think this is really interesting.

how do you think it would go down if the schools did a massive push to recruit men?

Boys and girls are fundamentally different in behaviours and learning needs. Those talking about ADHD girls etc who have different needs also need to think about what messaging they're sending their children about future needs. If ADHD means a girl can't sit still then what is that child's future going to be like? They will have next steps to face as a woman later in life.

Or put students on different tracks as they do in US high schools. My DCs sat in maths classes with kids of all ages.as 17 year olds they had a few 14 year olds who were already doing Calc II. As 14 year olds they had 17 year olds who had got as far as advanced algebra.

So many contradictions in one post.

A man tries to help, but he’s criticised for doing so. Then you suggest it’s men who need to step up and deal with this problem. But then it’s insulting if someone who isn’t a teacher makes a suggestion, even though the profession is largely female and they haven’t managed to fix it so far. And it’s largely women who are raising these concerns.

I think we’ve had years of double standards which need to be unpicked very quickly. On this thread alone there are acknowledgements of differences between the sexes but also denial that girls conforms and denial that boys can’t conform, then there’s no such thing as pink and blue jobs but also boys have different interests etc etc.

I haven’t thought about it in great detail but a poster made a great point about single sex schools being more accommodating to those who don’t fit with the stereotypes rather than the lazy boy/girl split you have in mixed schools.

I went to a mixed school but thinking about it now I believe single sex schools are the way forward.

There’s an interesting point made by a previous poster about the arrogance of the boys who went to the local all boys school - I only know one all boys school and I agree the boys seem obnoxious, but it’s also in an incredibly affluent area so I’m not sure it’s the single sex experience more than the general cult of Rich Kids that’s to blame for that. I also think there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance and I wonder if being “arrogant” is preferable to leaving a mixed school filled with self-doubt and general teenage misery.

When I started school in the 70s it was very much promoted that boys did better at school, but looking back I am guessing that they were comparing results in STEM subjects, where girls were not always encouraged to take these subjects and ignoring results in Arts and Humanities. It also ignored the rump of boys who left school with no qualifications.

As with many things schools are expected to sort out all problems with society.

If rough play is meant to help boys learn to control their behaviour why has male violence always been a problem. I’m sure many siblings have been bullied under the guise of rough play and boys will be boys.

That's not true; the basics of the modern education system were laid down post-1880, when schooling was compulsory for both boys and girls, and if you look at education discussion prior to that point, you will see that the needs of girls featured as prominently as the needs of boys (such as in the report of the Royal Commission into education in 1861, which gives girls equal consideration as boys over its 3000+ pages). And, of course, education has changed a lot since then. There is a lot of pseudo-history about education in this thread; I mean, there was never a time in British history were girls were not allowed to go to school; there's a popular narrative about girls not going to school, but the statistical evidence indicates little difference in attendance by sex, which disappears entirely post-1870.

Interesting as well that STEM subjects tend to be ones where sitting still and listening and focussed attention is required and many boys do well in those

This has a very straightforward explanation in that STEM subjects tend to have outputs that can be graded with relatively objective marking schemes, in comparison with the more subjective humanities outputs.

There has been a lot of research into subjectivity in marking; the historic work (between the 1970s and 1990s) strongly indicated that marking of subjective outputs would place girls on a normal distribution, with a relative steep peak, and boys on a far flatter distribution when the sex of the pupil was known to the marker. Mark anonymously, and the difference in outcomes between the sexes would virtually disappear. Objective outputs (such as what might be generated in STEM subjects) would not follow this same pattern.

Now, imagine how this plays out in schools, where pupils will only have anonymous marking of their work at a few particular points, so a boy might believe that they are good at maths, and bad at English, on the basis of subjective marking, when they are actually average at both. But this then feeds into where they put their effort, so the boy from our example might become actually good and maths, and actually bad at English, on the basis of how hard they work, which then results in meaningful difference in the marks in terminal exams.

Note this phenomenon also exists on the basis of race, and potentially is the reason for a focus on STEM subjects by ethnic minority students and parents.

(I have a PhD in the history of education; if I had my notes to hand, and could be bothered working through them, I could provide hard stats in relation to a lot of the assertions made on this thread.)

Plenty of earlier feminist studies showing that from birth, girls are cuddled and cooed at more, boys are bounced etc. Girls are socialised away from direct and brave relationships between themselves, their bodies, and the world even before they sit up or utter a syllable.

Playgrounds are already too late to show what is natural.

We often read about needing more male teachers, it’s noticeable to me that private schools have more male teachers. However a poster upthread said boys do better with male teachers and I have heard this before. Can no-one else see that this is probably just more of the same from boys/men? Boys are raised thinking men are stronger/better, they are fed a diet on the TV and in films of men working/bringing home the bacon/people tough therefore they already have the view that men are better and therefore respect their teacher more and will listen/try hard. The test here is whether the male teachers are doing anything radically different to female teachers. I suspect not. Perhaps boys feel they can speak to male teachers who will understand them more and I get this and it’s very positive.

However I am convinced this stuff is just so ingrained from a young age eg children treated differently from birth and the gender stereotypes that it’s not education that can fix this but society as a whole, specifically men (but they don’t want to give it all up do they).

Thank you for your input Solrock.

One of the things I appreciate about this board is that there are posters with a deep knowledge of subjects that I only know a bit about - the discussions about genetics and chromosomes etc re Imane Khelif at the Paris Olympics were led by posters who were qualified in the area, and as a result the discussion could rely on verifiable sources of facts, not just 'feelz'.
I learnt a lot!

So the input of someone with a PhD in the history of education is useful.

I believe I'm right [because I did a bit of research before posting it elsewhere] in saying that the shift from exam-based to coursework-based assessment was not made, as if often claimed, because girls do better at coursework that boys.

My understanding is that it was part of the educational reforms made by the Conservative government at the time to make education less 'ivory tower' and more relevant to the needs of the British economy.

I don't believe sex was a factor, so the idea that education was deliberately 'feminized' to the detriment of boys in the 1980s is not true.
Apart from anything else, I don't believe that feminists, esp the radical kind who are often blamed for making everything so awful for men and boys🙄 were involved in setting educational policy in the 1980s.

Have I got that right, Solrock?

On the subject of Gareth Southgate - I don't know much about him, but from what I've heard I think a decent heart beats behind all those waistcoats, and fair play to him for acknowledging that the behaviour of some men and boys is a very serious social problem, and trying to address it.

There being sex based differences ( at population level) doesn't need to mean 'us versus them'. It simply means recognising that there are some general differences and taking them into account going forward.

Why does it have to be someone's" fault"? Why can't it be that our culture and society has evolved and developed in certain ways, and every now and then we need to take stock of where we are and look at how it is, or is not, working.

I think you are taking the comments about schools and teaching too personally. His comments were more generalised comments about sex based differences not about your personal teaching style or your particular school.

I think there needs to be reform of education, but I would hate for any reform to mean that all boys are taught differently. My DS was (and still is) a quiet soul at school. Wasn't in to rough play, playing football etc, much happier reading in a corner. He played sport and was active but could sit quietly in class

I think there need to be more options to cover a variety of needs, but not necessarily segregated by sex. DS was more than ready for school at 4, he would have hated to have a delayed start just because he was a boy, if it was felt that boys mature later than girls and therefore start later.

I used to listen to readers at his school. One year they introduced an exercise session first thing in the morning (which I had to join in if I was there at that time). Interestingly, the pupils who failed to engage with this were mainly boys who were usually the ones who needed to let off steam and struggled with being in class.

Yes.

What we need is gender equity.

The presence of ADHD in girls generally does not mean they have problems sitting still - it's more to do with not being able to concentrate. I'm massively generalising here but girls with ADHD often do very well at primary school but then often don't meet their potential in late secondary school and university. Girls generally are not diagnosed at school because they dont fit the ADHD stereotype exhibit by boys - which is why lots of middle aged women are being diagnosed now.