The Boy Gap
Problems start in preschool, where boys are far more likely to be kicked out for boyish behavior, writes Rao. “Boys are more likely to have trouble focusing and staying on task; boys have higher energy and tend to need to fidget to work off steam, which teachers and classmates can find distracting.” Most boys will grow out of hyperactivity, if given time, he argues. What they often get is a label and a prescription for Ritalin.
“Boy-friendly” classrooms let students move, explore, and touch — and let boys take their time to develop verbal and fine-motor skills. Teachers tolerate boys’ desire to fidget, daydream, challenge rules and fantasize about aliens, monsters, heroes and “robots fighting evil characters.” Children read adventure books, sports and nonfiction.
Yet when Whitmire went in search of gap-closing schools, he found that boy-friendly schools don’t teach boys differently than they teach girls.
KIPP’s middle school in Houston “succeeds with boys using methods that shred every bit of conventional wisdom about what works with boys.” Students are nearly all black; teachers are nearly all white and female. Class sizes are no smaller than normal. Furthermore, “the theories about boys — they need to walk around a lot, experience hands-on learning, etc. — are not in evidence at KIPP, which enforces some of the toughest sit-at-your-desk turn-in-your-homework policies you’ll see anywhere short of military academies.”
What KIPP provides is lots of extra help to get stragglers caught up.
“When you refuse to let even a single student slide by, you end up helping boys the most because the boys are the big sliders,” he writes.
Whitmire also looks at an all-male charter school and a district-run public school that have closed gender gaps. Both work very hard to teach reading to students who need extra help. To coin a phrase, they leave no child behind. The all-male school also provides character training to boys who may be growing up in fatherless homes, but there’s no reason boys can’t learn that in a coed setting, Whitmire theorizes.
Accused of shortchanging girls in a 1992 report by the American Association of University Women, schools pushed girls to study math and science. That gender gap has closed by some measures. It’s time to focus on the widening gap in reading and writing skills that leaves so many boys unprepared for success in college or vocational training. Perhaps boys will succeed with early intervention for reading problems. Perhaps some boys need male teachers, boy-friendly teaching, or an extra year to get ready for reading and writing. We should be experimenting with different strategies — including single-sex classes — to find out what’s needed to help boys succeed.
If nothing else, our educated daughters are going to want to marry educated men — not a “failure to launch” guy sleeping in his parents’ basement.
It may sound terrible, but the more I learn about how schools penalize normal little boy behavior, the happier I am that my son will not be able to enter kindergarten until he is six. If he had been born two weeks earlier, he would be eligible, but this state does not allow exceptions to that birthday rule even if you start somewhere else and move here in the middle of the kindergarten year.
At first it ticked me off to learn that there were no exceptions. But if it gives him time to calm down a little and not get tagged forever with a “learning disabled” label because of normal little boy behavior, it will be worth it.
No Kidding? Really? Boys are DIFFERENT?
How dare you go against the orthodoxy of the consensus! There is no difference between the sexes. /sarc/
The feminization and emasculation of the American male is almost complete.
To let boys run and play and learn by interacting with the world around them while they are little requires that the parents, both of them, with the mother staying home, take an active role in seeing that they have that opportunity. That is hard to do in today’s gotta have it now in debt up to our eyeballs so we can have the wall sized tv in the big house. Wtih the government saying that the parent’s can’t do it and you must put the kid into a prison at 4 years old.
Rebel against the machine and keep your kids and home and teach them yourself.
Dadofhomeschoolers
My wife home schooled three of our children for 4 years.
Talk about being strict,
get up at 7am, have a prayer, make beds, finish chores, eat breakfast and do Math, English, Sciences, Social Studies, Music, and even Advanced Algebra and Trigonometry,
for 9-13 year olds?
I was happy to get out of the house and go to work.
All three children now have High School degrees,
and College degrees.
One child has the highest grade point average ever performed at the University.
Don’t tell me that some home schooling is not a great idea.
Either that,
or these or not my kids.
Come to think of it the milk man did do a lot of personal deliveries.
“We should be experimenting with different strategies — including single-sex classes — to find out what’s needed to help boys succeed.”
I have always been a backer of single-sex classes. The biggest issue you hear is when boys interrupt classes so that girls can’t learn. Separate the two and let them focus on the class and not trying to impress each other. Bring them back together for other classes like music, art and such.
Of course, I’ve always believed that uniforms are a good way to keep the social hazing issues out of the class room as well. If everyone dresses the same, no one will be picked on for looking different.
My son, at 8, can read just about any book and is starting to read in two other languages. This is no miracle; it is the result of logical presentation of how letters make sounds and sounds “packets”. The methods used today to teach reading and writing are horrible, and it is not surprising that so many children are not progressing. Boys have the added burden of being targeted as disruptive.
The Feminists are turning America into Sweden.
I am opposed to affirmative action no matter the cause. I keep thinking how much affirmative action contributed to electing Obama. Ivy League colleges are full of it. A mediocre black can get in while top asians are rejected.
“…elite universities give extra weight in admissions to candidates whose SAT
scores are above 1500, who are African American, and who are student
athletes. A smaller, but nevertheless important, preference is extended to
Hispanic and legacy applicants. African-American applicants receive the
equivalent of 230 extra SAT points (on a 1600-point scale), and being
Hispanic is worth an additional 185 SAT points.”
http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/tje/espenshadessqptii.pdf
A white kid with a perfect 1600 gets rejected while a black kid with mediocre 1370 gets in! Just stupid. Black or white you should have to perform the same.
Hooray for KIPP! Sounds like a program that will continue to help all its students advance.
I went to public school in the 1960s and 1970s and then it wasn’t just “boy friendly”, it was “boy preferred/girl ignored”. From the description of today’s schools, I’m not sure I’d like the current environment any better. Especially if I had to sing songs that started “mmm, mmm, mmm”.
Homeschooling and charter schools are producing great results, as are the school systems that allow students to identify and pursue their interests in high school. Call me old fashioned or just old, the thing I worry about interferring with learning is technology. Does it contribute to shorter attention spans, less socialization, and poorer writing skills?
Boys don’t necessarily need special accomodations in the classroom, they need less actual school time. Kindergarten has been lengthened to full day in many parts of the US and is now daycare for working parents. Children, whether boy or girl, are missing out on the necessary free play time they so need. Boys need firm structure, explicit instruction, loving support, and lots of free time out of doors. Instead they’re herded like cattle on to school buses and into institutions at the ripe age of 5, and expected to concentrate on topics they have little innate interest in for 6 hours per day. How can we be surprised when they perform indifferently when all their natural inclinations are oppressed? A litte bit of oppression is called civiliation, hours of non-relevant mob control is torture for some.
Home school, people. Homeschool.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires every state to examine statewide test scores by race/ethnicity, special ed status, English language learner status, and free/reduced lunch status. What’s missing? Gender. Why wasn’t gender one of the required subgroups? Because the people in power knew that many schools would be flagged for boys’ low test scores which in turn would mean that schools would have to start expending resources to improving boys’ education (and thus their test scores).
My parents’ generation failed to raise their children. It is no surprise that their children (my generation) had no idea how to raise the next generation. This includes the obligation, honor, and responsibility to ensure their education.
Since I was an early failure of a ’60s education system I have been sensitive to the impending catastrophic failure now evident in nearly every classroom in government schools in every state and hamlet. My children are home schooled now and have been from the start.
It is remarkable how differently my two children learn. Every parent with boys makes the same observation. How can it be that the “education specialists” in teachers’ colleges missed this blatant fact? The only conclusion is “they wanted to.”
I think, though, that a simplistic conclusion of gender-blame for failures in school sidesteps one of the 800-pound-gorillas in the room: cultural differences.
A pernicious cancer within academia pushes that all cultures and societies are equivalent. As we assess the academic success of children — even boys — from different cultures we can easily note that children from some cultures (Asian and Anglo) consistently fare better than children from others (ghetto black and barrio Hispanic).
The PC conclusion sidesteps the cultural phenomenon and finds that poverty is the determinant. Yet, some poor children from Asian and Anglo families excel. Correlation is not causality, as was stated in the article. The true cause must be something else.
Do not be deceived. The observation of culture has NOTHING to do with race. My own observation shows that children of ANY race who engage in a ghetto black culture rapidly slide toward academic failure. Some cultural habits are the equivalent of a failure magnet.
The above statements address the personal and individual observation. The next is the systemic debate.
Before fixing the hole in the USS Primary Education, three things must change.
Firstly, parents must take charge of their children and their childrens’ education; even to the point of abandoning possession and accepting the call to home-school.
Secondly, we must reject the inferior candidates who fill our teachers colleges who are incapable of anythinge beyond inculcating our children with tripe acquired through years in government-school-preparation.
Thirdly, we must overthrow the notion that all societies and all cultures are equivalent — especially in academic pursuit. “Pants on the Ground” ghetto behavior in any child of any race is unacceptable. Gang membership is unacceptable. Misbehavior is unacceptable. It is far better to remove those distracting impediments than to demand the capable and prepared students strive for success with such a mill-stone around their necks.
It would be nice, too, if America recognized that, on average, far more resources are expended in government schools on positions and salaries that have no direct affect on the classroom. Nothing else quite explains the disproportionate costs between the worst government-school failures and the best home-school successes. Were this not a government monopoly, school administrators and board members would have been charged with fraud long ago.
Until these three (maybe four) horrific systemic problems in government education are corrected, there can be no more long-term result than to pitifully bail while the USS Primary Education settles further and further to the gunwales and wallows before it disappears completely beneath the sea of forgotten generations.
I’m for gender separation. I don’t want to see girls held back or dragged down to narrow the gap.
Actually, our entire culture has devalued traditional masculine virtues and roles. Big surprise that schools mirror that shift. Read the ‘Sunday School’ scene in Tom Sawyer and ask yourself if every boy therein would be on Ritalin today.
You want to help boys, and kids in general, in school? How about getting the sociologists and unions out of the process? How about going back and finding out what actually worked best and re-implementing those programs? Also, allow the children the potential to fail. That means no more “self-esteem”(or more precisely ego) buiding. That would be a start.
Not to get all conspiratorial, but what makes anyone think the so-called “education” system’s goal is to educate?
The only thing I see teachers getting passionate about is their unionized salaries and benefits packages.
Oh, and getting tenured at Alabama. Lots of passion there.
One thing that would help would be a change of reading material. The central theme of nearly every book my kids were required to read in middle and high school can be expressed in one word: misery. A typical example, which seems to be used in every state’s school system now, is The House on Mango Street – families are dysfunctional and abusive, men are evil, religion is meaningless, women are oppressed, life is horrible all around. The rest of the reading list was similar, such as a “forgotten feminist classic” (whose name I have thankfully forgotten) in which the main character has a series of affairs and finally drowns herself. Not only does this sort of thing encourage a distorted view of life, it turns kids off of reading very quickly. When home schooling is not possible, it’s a real challenge for parents to counter the damage being done by the school system.
#11 phat shantz – I couldn’t agree more. You said exactly what I’ve been thinking for years, except you worded it better.
The most important factor in my entire education was Mr. Ouren, my 6th grade teacher in 1963, and also my first male teacher. And to be sure, he was a man, not some swishy woose.
Just the year before, our group of little darlings had driven Mrs. Rapp (our 5th grade woman teacher) to quit in 1962 before the school year had ended. Had done the same to Miss Winter, our 2nd grade teacher, in 1959. Nervous breakdowns they say.
We were not exactly model students. Talk about not being able “…to pay attention, follow directions, control frustrations, sit still, handle a pencil or crayon….” I distinctly remember that crayons in 2nd grade were for throwing at classmates. Those big fat industrial-sized half-inch diameter crayons broken to about an inch long worked best.
Then Mr. Ouren brought a heretofore un-experienced discipline to education.
The startling difference meant that school became fun and interesting. Same subjects as before, except now they were worth pursuing.
We students were still the same hellions. I know this because Mr. Ouren had to leave for a while and a substitute took his place for a week. The class dissolved into its traditional evil.
Do this day I recall recoiling in horror and guilt at how evil that class was. I resolved not to be part of that “old” class. Mr. Ouren had shown us how to learn, and learning was fun… an end in itself.
I fear the public school system today, as in 1960, has very few Mr. Ourens.
“If nothing else, our educated daughters are going to want to marry educated men — not a “failure to launch” guy sleeping in his parents’ basement.”
What a pity. All that alimony potential slipping away in some parents’ basement.
Interesting that out of the six countries listed in the article as having the widest educational gender gaps, five of them are the “PIIGS” countries — members of the European Union whose chronically dysfunctional governments and economies are dragging down the whole eurozone. As we’ve seen in the news recently, Greece will need a bailout to keep its government from defaulting on its treasury bonds, and several of the other countries are close. Coincidence or causation? I’m just sayin’.
Totally agree with Kevin-S #14, Go back to the old school ways. Discipline is #1. Once a child understands that he/she will be disciplined in the classroom setting they will shape-up. Also the De-emphasis of physical education from elementary to high school, I believe plays a big part in the disruption of the academic classroom. For reasons that I hope are obvious.
The gap since 1988. Does that give anyone clue.
Parents can’t leave the education of their children to government subsidized institutions without intense supervision. This is a simple truth.
My sixteen year old son is ADHD/Delayed Speech Development and very, very, very bright. Yes he is ADHD. Give him a six pack of coke and he is out like a light. The delayed speech came as a added issue with ADHD. My husband and I worked with every school, yes, every school he attended. We gave him medication during the school week only to help him concentrate on his studies. He needed a square box to be in and needed discpline constantly. Only there is no discpline in schools nowadays. In 3th grade we found out from testing that his reading/math scores were at 1st grade levels. WOw, there is the public school doing it’s job again. We handed him over to Sylvan (spent about $14,000) and put him in private school (another $4,500). By the time he reached 5th grade Sylvan had him at 6th grade levels – less than 15 months – and he was excelling at the private school. Sylvan repeatedly told me he was very very smart. However, middle school came along and things started downhill again. No discipline at the schools. We pulled him out of school and home schooled him using Abeka Academy curriculum. In eight grade he took the CA State Test and tested out at 12th grade levels in all subjects. He is now a sophmore in high school a 4.0 honors student and being recruited by U.C. Davis to attend their animal science department and go on to Vet School to be a Large ANimal Vet. He is a boy/man – he rodeos, belongs to 4-h, volunteers in his community/church, plays baseball and does all the things boys his age need to do. My suggestion – GET YOUR BOY out of public school and some private schools for that matter. Prejudices run deep at most schools.
KIPP schools are selective. I’m sure you can always arrange for a group of boys to “learn like girls”. That doesn’t help the much larger population of boys who learn like boys.
Have you taken into account that boys consistently out perform girls in math? Good for them!
Why shouldn’t girls be better at some subject in school? Actually, the kids who are trying harder to learn and have the natural ability should do better, regardless of gender. Believe me, if a girl is disruptive or not focused, her performance suffers also(I know this from personal experience).
Maybe, girls excel in school for a reason. It’s supposed to be that way as part of some cosmic design.
Ultimately, out in the real world, men are hugely successful. Do we need to fix that too? Ronald Reagan was a C student in college, Bill Gates never finished. Whatever ills boys suffer in public schools and colleges seems to work in their favor in the end. And maybe that’s by design.
Male college attendance dropping catastrophically, women’s dating lives hardest hit.
A quick solution is to start boys in school one year later. Think about it. Most people will agree that girls mature sooner than boys, so what is so hard to accept that girls might be ready for school sooner and therefore do better. My birthday happened to fall 10 days after the cutoff and that meant I was almost a year older than the majority of my classmates. I had no trouble learning to read and school was easy for me. I attribute much of that to that added year of maturity because I have no reason to think I’m any smarter than the rest of my classmates even though I had a higher GPA than most of them. When you ask students to learns something that they are not mature enough to understand you doom them to a lifetime of failure.
Starting school at a later age, as #28 points out, would ensure that boys are mature enough to sit still when they need to and to pay attention. Many countries use age 7 as the starting age for school.
Also, children need to be TAUGHT how to sit still, how to hold a pencil, how to pay attention, etc. Today’s schools of education do NOT teach teachers how to do this–I know because I was a prof in one. In foreign school systems, especially in Asia, teachers assume that children come to school and do not yet know how to pay attention or how to sit still. So they have activities that slowly, but methodically every day, help children learn how to sit still and pay attention. Every child profits from this kind of methodical instruction. It used to be given 60 years ago in North America, but was tossed out by progressives, who don’t believe in such old-fashioned concepts as discipline, carefulness, and thoughtfulness and the fact that such things must be TAUGHT by somebody who CARES about them and the children.
Children look for patterns. Educators refuse to teach the basic patterns of the written code that is used by English speakers to write down their language–it’s called phonics. Educators instead force children to learn each word as a memorized individual whole. Such an approach, called “Whole Language,” is exhausting, boring, and literally makes no sense. Little boys, who normally will love learning the underlying “code” (patterns) of English spelling, naturally get turned off by a method which ignores the symmetry and methodicalness of the language.
24. cowgirl:
Give him a six pack of coke and he is out like a light.
That might be a place to start.
The other thing that boys need to do is play sports. Running around will burn off a lot of excess energy and keep them in shape. Soccer, baseball, ice hockey, football- take your pick, just make sure the kid is doing something.
First of all, teachers do not go into teaching to “join the union” and make big bucks. You have to have a passion to teach. It is about listening, questioning, being responsive. If you do not have the passion, you will fail in your student teaching. If you don’t have the passion once you get in the classroom, you will get eaten alive.
Sure some bad teachers get into teaching, but that is a very small percentage. Every occupation in this country has poor employees, eventually they get weeded out. New teachers have spent four year(or more) in college. Sure, some are great teachers from the get go. Some take a bit longer. Everyone learns diffrenently, from kids to adults. Come on, beginning teachers salaries are not anything spectacular. To advance on the salary scale, teachers go back to school, continue to learn, and pay out their own pocket to move up the salary scale. Quit hammering the unions. Responsibilty in the home is where it all starts. Some comments rave about private schools/charter schools/home school Sylvan etc. If you look at the bottome line. Their classes are much much smaller and kids get way more individual attention to their learning styles. Smallaer class sizes work, public schools don’t always get that option.
#29 Gloria:
“Little boys, who normally will love learning the underlying “code” (patterns) of English spelling, naturally get turned off by a method which ignores the symmetry and methodicalness of the language.”
And there’s motivation. I’ve made a very big deal of my son learning “The Secret Code”:
“Awww, no! He’s learning the SECRET CODE! If he does that, this kid will be able to do ANYTHING!”
He eats that up, and likes to stick his nose in a book, of which he has about half a metric ton of in his bedroom.
#32 teachtime:
“To advance on the salary scale, teachers go back to school, continue to learn, and pay out their own pocket to move up the salary scale.”
Which leads them right out of the classroom and into administration, does it not?
“Quit hammering the unions.”
No. Hammer the unions constantly until they become part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
The unions, NEA and AFT, have fought almost every metric imaginable for measuring teacher performance that’s come down the pike, have they not?
Why is that? Do they think that the people in a community won;t pay a better teacher more money than a sub-standard one?
Hardly.
The fact is that the unions are all about “man-days’” contributions to the various plans and funds they administer, so they want QUANTITY, as opposed to QUALITY of teacher. So to that end, they’ll happily fight every means of improving the education of students, if it means that a single position might be eliminated.
Look at the unions’ role in getting the School Voucher program killed…and that was working. That was showing results, and Obama killed it, while HIS daughters go to private school Sidwell Friends, which is a non-union shop:
http://www.sidwell.edu/employment/index.aspx
Teacha, puh-leeze!
It really is the job of the family to prepare kids for success at school, but public schools do have to deal with the kids as they arrive at the door. Start with discipline, good manners and explicit instruction.
It may be beneficial for some boys to delay school entrance, but not for all. All of my sons and my daughter were 1 1/2 to 2 years younger than their classmates (many had started late), and none of them had any social or academic problems. I am sure that their preschool/K years in Montessori schools were very helpful, since they were readers and had significant other knowledge/skills before they began first grade.
I can’t emphasize enough the necessity to eliminate the idea that normal boy behavior is some sort of pathology that needs medication. Make them run around the playground at lunch or do jumping jacks. I second the sports comment. Boys react well to explicit instruction (PHONICS, REAL MATH) and explicitly stated behavioral standards. Please, return to the ideas that self-control is an absolute virtue and that self-esteem has to be earned by real achievement. Boys like competition; who can get the most math facts right in the shortest time etc.
Not only are boys turned off by the constant artsy-crafty, touchy-feely, groupwork mush that takes up far too much time, but so are many girls, including mine. Teachers should teach and struggling kids should get help AT ONCE. More subject-area content is needed, across all the disciplines and emphasis should be on MASTERY. Read (and read TO younger kids) real classic literature and non-fiction. Aesop’s Fables, classic fairy tales, King Arthur, Greek and Roman myths, biography, adventure stories, science, history, inventions etc. appeal to most kids. Boys usually like the David MacAulay books (Castle, Roman City, How Things Work etc.) that show how things work or are built. They like Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer, the Rosemary Sutcliff books, the Sherlock Holmes stories, Swiss Family Robinson, the Jack London stories. The short story “Ransom of Red Chief” is a classic. Please get away from the journaling, writing about themselves, and feelings-based assignments and let kids write about early explorations, pond life, the history of flight, the Battle of Hastings or something objective.
They do need explicit instruction in organization and study skills; setting up a notebook, outlining, summarizing, reading chapter headings and end questions before reading the chapter etc.; so do many/most girls.
Why is it acceptable/desirable that sports and music must be explicitly taught and each new skill practiced to mastery before advancing while academic content is somehow supposed to be magically discovered and never mastered before passing along to something new? It’s a ridiculous waste of time and kids have been paying the price.
It is very telling , and indicative of the Misandrist system and women that work within it , that ;
they stood by and did NOTHING to prevent the dosing of defenseless young boys with RITALIN if they did not behave like girls.
There was NO general uprising by women teachers, no they stood by, some probably even being of the feminist bent secretly cheering it all on.
Why is this NEVER discussed. Verboten? Why?
There is nothing inherent with boys and learning. That the male children of rich whites and Asians perform at the same level as the girls means that it is due to culture. When one sees that the biggest gap in male/female achievement is with blacks, it should be obvious that the culture that the boys are raised in have much to go with it.
Sadly, the typical college grad entering ed school is in the bottom 25 percent of their class. You can’t teach what you neither know nor care much about.
#30. If you understand anything about ADHD you will know that caffeine puts ADHD kids to sleep. Ritilan is speed, which slows them down. ADHD kids respond to caffeine or speed completely opposite of normal people. It slows them down.
32 – TeachTime:
Class size has nothing to do with successful teaching. I went to Catholic Schools and we had an average of 40 kids in a class. There were very little discipline problems and if kids were failing academically they were keep after school and tutored by the nuns. The problem is that public school teachers, not all, but the majority of them, don’t care about teaching – they care about tenure. Just google “rubber rooms” and you will be enlightened. Teachers who can’t be fired are put in these rooms to pass the day. This is a travesty. The reason people home school, use charter schools and Sylvan is because the teachers there care and get the job done. They are successful. Public Schools are not. Period. End of Discussion. The test scores prove it. Also, home schoolers make up 2% of the students in the United States. They disportionately win 65% of academic contests, scholarships and awards. This has nothing to do with class size.
The radical leftist, feminist teachers unions have declared war on anyone with a penis. Not the individual teachers necessarily, but certainly the lesbian dominated union leadership. Of course, this type of misandry is institutionalized, accepted and even expected nowadays. It is the cruelest type of child abuse. The war on boys isn’t just a book title.
Your right, Class size has nothing to do with successful teaching. It has all do to with successful learning. I am glad you attended Catholic schools. Your parents paid for it. They made sure you probably did your homework and all the other things private schools have you participate in. Your parents had a much bigger investment in your education and held you accountable. If you broke the rules, the school can kick you out, no questions asked. That can’t hardly be done in the public school setting.
You make it sound like hardly any public school teachers care? Are you kidding me? That’s and insult to a whole lot of teachers around this country. Teaching is a choice and a passion for nearly everyone who gets into teaching. Unfortunately, not all students choose to learn in the public schools, nor do their parents choose to help them.
This is an interesting discussion about the “so called” learning problems of boys. This is plain hogwash because the schools contain mostly female teachers in the primary grades with a few males in the middle and highs schools.
I just completed nine years after retirement as a volunteer teacher in the school system where I live.
Boys require structure applied with a firm hand. Our current schools are so politically correct and afraid of law suits from parents that little disapline is present. When I took a class for a teacher that was out for illness, the first thing was to establish who was in charge. It is amazing how the boys respond when they understand that they are not in charge.
Now I am going to make a few women upset with this next part. Most women cannot speak a complete structured sentence with a subject and a predicate. They instead use partial sentences or just phrases and this drives boys minds up the wall. It doesn’t take much of this type of language to completly turn a boy into a non-listener and then the trouble begins.
I once sat in a teachers lounge listening to a group of female middle school teachers have a conversation. This went on for about 20 minutes and during that time the number of complete sentences could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Boys are not stupid, but when faced with this type of environment,they do not do well.
I taught myself to read when I was four by listening to my father and grandmother read to each other from the morning newspaper. This was when reporters could write good sentences. Today it would be difficult.
Until we clean up the mess in our public schools, we will continure to have learning problems with boys and girls as well.
Home schooling where there is a good measure of structure and a caring mother/father/teacher will produce superior results most of the time.
The clean up of the public school system will have to be done by caring people of the community. This really begings at the college and university level. Faulty teaching methods are being used to prepare the teachers for schools and until this is corrected, not much will change.
42. The problem is not that most teachers don’t care, but that the parasites actively interfere with those that do care do prevent them from accomplishing anything, lest the scam be revealed.
European caucasian boys should also have their history restored, where they can be proud of their culture, and not always be the villianous oppressors of other peoples and sexes. This has a negative effect on their psychological and social well being. They have a right to their own history, mythologies, story and stories. Robbing of them of this, to appease other groups is downright unethical, nearing cultural genocide.
#45 EscapeVelocity:
“European caucasian boys should also have their history restored, where they can be proud of their culture, and not always be the villianous oppressors of other peoples and sexes.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m perfectly okay with my heritage of being the oppressor.
From what I’ve observed, it rather obviously beats the dickens out of wallowing in a heritage of being the oppressed. That doesn’t seem to make for a good attitude towards life…and the older I get, the more I appreciate what a major factor attitude is in one’s success.
I went to public school from 1939-51. So far as I know, there was no achievement gap between boys and girls. Our women teachers were usually older women who had become teachers when teaching was one of the few professions open to women, and they were very good. I had some men teachers in highschool. The only poor teacher I ever had was a man teaching physics.
Differences between the sexes appeared in highschool, where I was the only girl in math courses and chemistry and physics. (We chose our own courses.)
Except the choice isnt between being a victim and a villian, Bilgemann. That is Leftwing narrative.
Your worldview and heritage has been framed by those hostile to you, and you dont even know enough, to break free from it….still drowning in the false dichotomy. Perhaps that will show you just how powerful these narratives are.
#48 Escape:
“Your worldview and heritage has been framed by those hostile to you, and you dont even know enough, to break free from it….still drowning in the false dichotomy.”
Yes, that must be it:
“HELP! I’ve fallen into someone’s narrative, and I can’t get up!
(Does this stupid button even WORK?)”
Actually, being defined by someone else’s narrative is arguably also called “culture”…at least when you are not hostile towards it.
“Except the choice isnt between being a victim and a villian, Bilgemann. That is Leftwing narrative.”
Well,it may be a Moonbat narrative, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also true, (even a stopped clock gets it right twice a day).
When the other kids were playing Cowboys and Indians, I don’t recall havibg the option to play the Chinese Railroad worker…you? (h/t to “Death to Smoochy!”).
What might be lost on some folks is the fact that you can be oppressed one day and then the next be the oppressor..and more often than might be realized, you can be both at once.
In economics, I think they call this “Free Market Capitalism”, which ‘splains why Lefties hate these subtle distinctions so, does it not?
It’s MUCH easier if the oppressors and the oppressed just stay put in the danged slots that the government/media/academic committee decided they belong in, isn’t it?
“Perhaps that will show you just how powerful these narratives are.”
True dat, but nothing in God’s creation has enough power to forestall its’ own demise. And rest assured that that is coming.
This sub-culture has only been ascendant since 1975 or so, and look how bankrupt it is widely perceived to be.
Look at the many examples of those who have bought into it, (to a greater or lesser degree), are personally known to you to be leading hateful,lonely and embittered lives of chronic loserliness.
It’s rather like Jerry Springer used to do for us…get these freaks up on stage to spill their guts on his air so that the rest of us could go:
“Eeewwwwwww!”
and then have a grand old time pointing our fingers and laughing.
Now the kids might have a rough go of it, since these folks are so ostracized from adult society that they can only inflict themselves upon captive schoolchildren, but rather more quickly than we might give them credit for the youngsters dope out what’s what…and then they get to point and laugh at these miserable wretches and their bankrupt Racist Imperial Caucasian Heterosexual Patriarchy shtik too.
men are minorities too? sorry Bilgeman but your heritage as an oppressor is not that impressive. we were here first. i have a hard time wrapping my mind around what constitutes a minority, if there are more than two, i’m a minority only being one. all kids think different but there is a trend as far as the generalities between men and women. the socialization occurring in our schools is a problem manifesting itself in the achievements of boys. misandrist in its leanings, i don’t want to short change women to bring boys up but that is what has occurred to the boys. they have been knocked down to even the field. popular culture shows are a prime example ,head of households are shown as bumbling idiots whose kids and wife are far smarter and impressive than them.
LMAO! You though the American public school system was there to teach students how to think? This is just liberalism in action…shortening the gender gap in education.
We all know who elects the Democrats…unthinking young white (male) liberals. Dumbing down America is a Democrat’s dream!
Teachtime,
Please stop with all the hagiographic accounts of how noble and selfless teachers are. We already know about the NYC schools’ infamous rubber rooms where unfit teachers are paid to do nothing because it’s too expensive to fire them.
While parent involvement is important, I’m tired of public school advocates blaming their relative lack of performance on the fact that parochial and private schools somehow attract a better class of students, or better parents.
I went to a Hebrew day school for K-9 and a public high school. I didn’t notice my parents being less concerned about my grades when the tuition bills stop. My parents were just as demanding of my siblings, who attended public schools for K-12.
FWIW, hostility to boys by female teachers long predates the rise of feminism. In 1967 not a single boy in our class got better than a C from Mrs. Paris, our English teacher. A couple failed. Most of us went to fairly elite universities, a few are lawyers, one’s a doctor, and we probably averaged over 600 on the English side of the SAT. It’s not that we didn’t know how to diagram a sentence, Mrs. Paris had a problem with adolescent boys.
Teachers like to put the blame on parents but the truth is that an elementary school teacher probably spends more time with her students than the kids spend with their own parents. During the school day how many parents spend 6 waking hours with their kids?
The old saying that failure is an orphan while success has many fathers applies in spades to public school teachers. When I read that bumper sticker I don’t thank a teacher because I learned to read from a book called Fun With Phonics. When students do well, teachers like to take the credit. When students do poorly, someone else gets the blame. No wonder the teachers’ unions support the Democrats.
Fun With Phonics was a brilliant book. Not only did it teach basic English sounds but the title includes one of those quirks of English spelling that can make it challenging.
I dont propose to deny anybody else their story, mythology, history, and narratives.
What I propose is that White Euros, Christians, Males, not be denied theirs, or theirs subjugated to others.
This is what the New Left since the 60s has been pushing, its a subset of what is called multiculturalism, but is hostile to “historically preferenced groups,” or whatever the hell they call them.
I heard on the NPR radio show Tell Me More, Michelle Martin, was saying that she was at a hospital doing production work for the show, and the Human Resources gal, told her proudly that the hospital was “85% diverse.” The sharp Martin responded, what does that mean? Presumably, that they still had 15% white Euro heterosexual male Christians, that they needed to get rid of in order to achieve 100% diversity.
That story says a lot about where Western Civilization is today, and the Western Left in particular.
#50 john from cinci:
“i don’t want to short change women to bring boys up but that is what has occurred to the boys”
Again, true dat. But then there wasn’t a third option that they could shortchange was thare?
What one gave to the Indians, one had to take from the Cowboys…and vice-versa.
All this might be a little easier to swallow, had the women and higher education actually DONE something with it better than males had.
This isn’t to say that many females haven’t justified the structural bias tilted in their favor by going on to have careers that were rewarding and enriched the society as a whole, but one also cannot ignore the bumper crop of meaningless majors and degrees that equip one only to drive a cab or deliver pizzas that colleges and universities have started offering since 1975 or so…and the mountains of wasted government subsidies to provide such hog-wash.
Whose bottoms fill the seats in such classes? And to what end? Vanity?
And then they end up bewailing the dearth of males in the schools.
Kinda hard to get an “MRS” degree when there ain’t no “Misters” around, ain’t it?
“popular culture shows are a prime example ,head of households are shown as bumbling idiots whose kids and wife are far smarter and impressive than them.”
john…there’s fantasy, and then there’s reality. TeeVee shows are fantasy.
They are produced and aired to keep the chronic losers entertained by reinforcing them in the philosophy that led to their loserliness.
This is done for the sole purpose of keeping their eyes on the screen long enough to watch the commercials…period.
So if the slack-jawed unemployed dirt merchant, po’d at the world because she CAN’T “have it all”…even with a cum laude college degree in Medieval French Literature, wants to feel superior to SOMEBODY, then air the show that fulfills that need, and maybe then they’ll buy the Subaru…many waitresses do.
“How to Win Friends and Influence People”-Dale Carnegie…you don’t buy things from your enemy, you buy things from your friends. What constitutes a friend? Usually, it’s someone who agrees with you.
Ergo, if I’m trying to sell you a Subaru, I’m not going to tell you that you’re an over-educated loser with a p!ss-poor attitude and without the common sense that the good Lord saw fit to give to a hamster, now am I?
No…rather, I’m going to flatter you by reinforcing whatever prejudices and biases you already have. Does it matter WHAT these are? Not really…all I’m really interested in is selling Subarus.
“sorry Bilgeman but your heritage as an oppressor is not that impressive.”
Just between us two, I agree. I’m oppressively unimpressive,(unimpresively oppressive?)
In the 70s it was clear that boys were and had been performing better in school and went to and graduated from college at a greater percentage than girls. A great deal of research was done and work performed to alleviate this.
They were very successful. Boys and girls learn differently so school administrations and teachers unions developed curriculums and pacing that worked for girls. The boys were forgotten and now shoehorned in and the system is just as skewed to the girls as it was to boys then. Somehow they are surprised at this result. They can’t seem to figure out how teaching was done years ago that worked so well for boys.
That quarter century gap of lost boys has had dire results in the sciences. We are now very much on the edge of being a second rate scientific nation. We are only held up by the immigration of men from other nations that weren’t suppressed in their school years.
4 boys, 4 girls.
The single biggest problem I have with my sons’ teachers, especially the young women, is that they consider boys, in general, to be inadequate girls. “Well, he’d be fine if he could sit still.” If he had more than the county-minimum-15-minutes-of- recess-per-day, he’d be able to sit still. If he could sit still without more recess, he’d be a girl.
#40 Cowgirl concluded: “Also, home schoolers make up 2% of the students in the United States. They disportionately win 65% of academic contests, scholarships and awards. This has nothing to do with class size.”
What?? Think about that statement for a second.
What is the average size of a home-schooled kid’s class? A decent home-school teacher can do so much more, PRECISELY because of the small, virtually one-on-one environment.
KRB
Please share your language curriculum! I’d love to see what you’re using.
Teachtime: stop parroting the NEA party line. I am also a teacher (community college level) and the majority of the posters on this board are expressing anger at what I see every day and experienced with my own children in the public school system. There are so many flaws with our current school system it is difficult to even begin to describe them all. One of the local school districts made the area paper because of a negotiation over the number of MINUTES the teachers wanted in their contract. What other profession counts their time in minutes and then finds ways to reduce instructional time even further through “in-service days”, “collaboration time”, “prep time” etc??? And why are we so afraid to be evaluated and paid according to performance like other professionals?
There is a fundamental deficiency of accountability in education, a lack of incentive to take teacher evaluation seriously, too much union interference, and the practice of using teacher credentials as a proxy for teacher quality. Until we start accepting responsibility and start addressing the serious flaws within our profession, our kids and our nation will pay the price.
57. The home schooled student also doesn’t have to put up with all the nonsense that the state tries to foist on public school students.
Tjo, die Sachverhalte konnen so trivial sein! Herzlichen Dank fur eure Erklarungen
Thanks for the good writeup. It if truth be told used to be a enjoyment account it. Look complicated to more added agreeable from you! By the way, how can we keep in touch?