How the Schools Shortchange Boys

I notice that the writer blew off the workshop that was designed to teach him how to deal with students who have different learning styles. Maybe if he and other teachers actually did pay attention to the fact that different students learn differently (and that learning styles are not 100% correlated with gender), we would not be having pointless debates about whether schools/teachers favor girls and/or boys.
 
I can't think of any teachers i've had that favoured boys, i can think of a few that favoured girls. But that is anacdotal. so :D
 
Concern about schools and teachers encouraging docility and compliance in students is not new. See this report, for example:

http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/johnny.html

What's new is blaming this on feminism. So, in the good old pre-feminist days, schools rewarded aggressive students who questioned authority?
 
It's funny how in order to make a point about sexism, people have to push sexist stereotypes. "This is what boys are like", "this is what girls are like"....crap, all of it. Aren't we past that kind of idiocy yet?

And I love the notion that it's wrong to "correct" "boys' natural tendencies" by insisting they behave and do their work. Yeah, change the schools so they can be "natural"....and good luck keeping a job, ever. Employers just love people who won't do their work, won't shut their mouths, and blame it all on their gender.

Anyone who accepts the excuse "Billy gets bad grades because he's a boy and that means he's rationalistic" should also accept the excuse "Suzy gets bad grades because her girl brain can't handle math".
 
TragicMonkey said:
It's funny how in order to make a point about sexism, people have to push sexist stereotypes. "This is what boys are like", "this is what girls are like"....crap, all of it. Aren't we past that kind of idiocy yet?
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Depends on what level you mean, there is a clear difference between what boys are like and what girls are like.

And I love the notion that it's wrong to "correct" "boys' natural tendencies" by insisting they behave and do their work. Yeah, change the schools so they can be "natural"....and good luck keeping a job, ever. Employers just love people who won't do their work, won't shut their mouths, and blame it all on their gender.

Anyone who accepts the excuse "Billy gets bad grades because he's a boy and that means he's rationalistic" should also accept the excuse "Suzy gets bad grades because her girl brain can't handle math".
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That i do agree with. :)
 
Beth said:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_schools_boys.html

Any Comments?
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I read this a while ago when it appeared in the LA Times. The writer struck me as one of those jerks who desperately hunts for reasons to feel aggrieved and savors them like fine wine when he finds them.

The thing that is really hilarious in the piece is that it's all about how male "rationality" is devalued by schools, but the piece itself offers no rational evidence of any kind for its claims. Its rhetorical force rests entirely upon an appeal to our emotions based on the anecdotal case of Brandon, the brave, resourceful, intelligent boy whose crowning achievement in the writer's telling is to have found a way to say "******" to a classroom full of non-white students and get away with it. I'm not sure why, exactly, we're meant to regard this as evidence of Brandon's capacity for powerful reasoning, or of his courage (he clearly knows that he can hide behind the teacher's support), or of anything other than the fact that he's an antisocial little twerp.

All I can say is that I'm glad that I never had this idiot as a teacher myself. I hope that he finds a job more suitable to his talents and proclivities soon: perhaps as publicist for his local chapter of the KKK.
 
In my opinion, Garibaldi may have missed the target, but he was at least aiming in the right direction. Whether the blame lies with feminism or not (though I might as well admit that I think it does), the "cooperative learning" and "inclusiveness" approach is a dismal failure, and I believe that this is due to its attempt to stifle one of the most fundamental aspects of child behavior: competitiveness.

Children are fiercely, brutally competitive by nature. Boys and girls. Is that really such a hard truth to face? Would the Darwinian explanation help to make it more palatable? Is it really sexist to make the generalized observation that males tend to employ more direct and overt manipulative strategies while females tend to seek their ends more subtlely and covertly? Are attempts to explain these differences in terms of biology merely futher exercises in misogyny?

One of my friends has a kid who participates in a "non-competitive" soccer league. I'm not sure how that works exactly, but I'm pretty sure they don't keep score. They just kick the ball around for a while, then I guess they all hold hands and sing Kumbayah or something. If there are any heros, they are probably the ones who display the best conflict resolution skills. I'm not sure if an important goal of the activity is to prepare those kids for the adult world, but if it is, it seems to me that what it's preparing them to be is victims. Hey, how about a non-competitive boxing league, where they just stand there and talk things out?

In the classroom, it's hard for a kid to distinguish himself (oh, sorry -- or herself) these days. At my kid's school, honor roll means: "nothing below a C on your report card". In a culture that seems to embrace mediocrity as the highest form of virtue, it's almost surprising that it isn't: "nothing below a C or above a B". You can have special programs for the slow learners, but you can't have an "accelerated" class, because that would be "exclusive", and someone's delicate little feelings might get hurt. It's like it doesn't matter if anybody actually learns anything anymore, as long as everyone goes home feeling good about themselves.

You want inclusive learning? Break the kids up into teams, and start giving out prizes to the team with the most improvement in their combined test scores.
 
This isn't exactly on topic, but...

Dymanic said:
One of my friends has a kid who participates in a "non-competitive" soccer league. I'm not sure how that works exactly, but I'm pretty sure they don't keep score. They just kick the ball around for a while, then I guess they all hold hands and sing Kumbayah or something.
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This is the kind of stuff that makes me think the Western civilization is collapsing, not with a bang but with a whiny little whisper and a puff of sweet-smelling pink smoke. A non-competitive soccer league? I played soccer in a youth league for 4 seasons when I was a kid (from 9 to 13). I loved it. More specifically, I was a goalkeeper and I loved being a goalkeeper. I loved it even though the team wasn't very good (we never had a winning season in all my 4 years of play). But if it had been a non-competitive league, you couldn't have dragged me on the pitch with wild horses. (If it isn't competitive, what's the point of having a goalkeeper anyway?) Something like "even though we're not keeping score, making that save was a valuable contribution to our common experience" wouldn't cut it with me now, and I'm sure it wouldn't have done so back then. I wanted to be the hero who carries his team to victory (or at least a draw :) ), and the very few times I managed to do something resembling that are among the best memories of my childhood; they by far outweigh the times I couldn't save the team and even the (as far as my memory serves, not catastrophically numerous) times I was partly/mainly to blame for the loss.

Non-competitive soccer league? Feh. If you want ballet with a ball, go dance ballet with a ball. Don't bring soccer into it.
 
Dymanic said:
In my opinion, Garibaldi may have missed the target, but he was at least aiming in the right direction. Whether the blame lies with feminism or not (though I might as well admit that I think it does), the "cooperative learning" and "inclusiveness" approach is a dismal failure, and I believe that this is due to its attempt to stifle one of the most fundamental aspects of child behavior: competitiveness.

Children are fiercely, brutally competitive by nature. Boys and girls. Is that really such a hard truth to face? Would the Darwinian explanation help to make it more palatable? Is it really sexist to make the generalized observation that males tend to employ more direct and overt manipulative strategies while females tend to seek their ends more subtlely and covertly? Are attempts to explain these differences in terms of biology merely futher exercises in misogyny?

One of my friends has a kid who participates in a "non-competitive" soccer league. I'm not sure how that works exactly, but I'm pretty sure they don't keep score. They just kick the ball around for a while, then I guess they all hold hands and sing Kumbayah or something. If there are any heros, they are probably the ones who display the best conflict resolution skills. I'm not sure if an important goal of the activity is to prepare those kids for the adult world, but if it is, it seems to me that what it's preparing them to be is victims. Hey, how about a non-competitive boxing league, where they just stand there and talk things out?

In the classroom, it's hard for a kid to distinguish himself (oh, sorry -- or herself) these days. At my kid's school, honor roll means: "nothing below a C on your report card". In a culture that seems to embrace mediocrity as the highest form of virtue, it's almost surprising that it isn't: "nothing below a C or above a B". You can have special programs for the slow learners, but you can't have an "accelerated" class, because that would be "exclusive", and someone's delicate little feelings might get hurt. It's like it doesn't matter if anybody actually learns anything anymore, as long as everyone goes home feeling good about themselves.

You want inclusive learning? Break the kids up into teams, and start giving out prizes to the team with the most improvement in their combined test scores.
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You yourself say that women are just as competitive as men. What, then, for you is the connection between a movement toward a less competitive learning environment and feminism?

One of the things I find odd about the original article and your post is how bizarrely scattershot both the supposed "symptoms" and the supposed "causes" are. You are saying that you think schools should be more "old-fashioned." Presumably you would endorse streaming, public posting of student "ranking" in classes, strict grade standards, rewards for high grades and (perhaps) punishments for low grades and so forth.

Well, fine: there's a vast body of educational research out there that will show you A) this has been tried on a massive scale and B) it cannot be shown to reliably produce better results than the more touchy-feely approach you don't like. Moreover, you will find that arguments about this have raged throughout Western society since at least the time of the publication of (the famously anti-feminist) Rousseau's Emile. Fashions have gone back and forth and back and forth in the ensuing two centuries: but now suddenly it's all "feminism's" fault? Or haters of "white anglo-saxon males"'s fault? Huh? Was Rousseau a black woman and no one told me?

But regardless--you list your preference for this kind of education as being in some sense in support of the article in the OP. But in that article the guy mostly seems to want to give white boys who make a nuisance of themselves in class more scope to be disruptive. That seems to be his main policy proposal: "freedom for unruly boys!"

Well, my grandfather taught in the kind of classroom that you would have loved. Streaming, ranking, strictness, all the rest of it. And if some boy had said to him "why should I be bothered with this crap" in a lesson he was teaching, that boy wouldn't have been sent for evaluation as a "Special Needs Learner"--he'd have been brought to the front of the classroom and caned. And he'd have kept getting caned until he stopped playing up.

So how, exactly, are you "agreeing" with this author?
 
I went to a lot of different schools, thanks to a parent in the military. All of my teachers seemed exhausted. They were so glad to have at least some students who would behave themselves, and learn things, and not throw tantrums every five minutes. They didn't have time to "foster" anything, whether it be somebody's inbuilt gender learning styles or somebody's paradigm for synergistic inclusiveness. They were busy trying to cram everything the state told them they must down the throats of the bored, the unwilling, and the unable. And a few of us who learned out of an appreciation for learning not unmixed with a deep, deep pity for our teachers. Any sinister philosophical agenda for education is doomed simply because teachers do not have the time to implement any. They're too busy trying to teach verbs while keeping the crazy kid from eating the class hamster.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I went to a lot of different schools, thanks to a parent in the military. All of my teachers seemed exhausted. They were so glad to have at least some students who would behave themselves, and learn things, and not throw tantrums every five minutes. They didn't have time to "foster" anything, whether it be somebody's inbuilt gender learning styles or somebody's paradigm for synergistic inclusiveness. They were busy trying to cram everything the state told them they must down the throats of the bored, the unwilling, and the unable. And a few of us who learned out of an appreciation for learning not unmixed with a deep, deep pity for our teachers. Any sinister philosophical agenda for education is doomed simply because teachers do not have the time to implement any. They're too busy trying to teach verbs while keeping the crazy kid from eating the class hamster.
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Ah yes, but if she let him eat the class hamster (because he was just rationally testing boundaries as darling little boys must) he'd have grown up to be a nuclear physicist. It's obvious!

Well...that or a serial killer. But these are the chances we have to take if we want to compete with China!
 
Yoink said:
You yourself say that women are just as competitive as men. What, then, for you is the connection between a movement toward a less competitive learning environment and feminism?
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I would say that it is not feminism per se, but some of the assumptions embraced by the feminist movement (or, if not the movement per se, its most zealous adherents) -- principally, the tabula rasa, or "blank slate" model of human behavior. Equally competitive and identical in behavior are not the same thing.

You are saying that you think schools should be more "old-fashioned."
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If you don't mind, I usually like to be the one to say what I'm saying.

there's a vast body of educational research out there that will show you A) this has been tried on a massive scale and B) it cannot be shown to reliably produce better results than the more touchy-feely approach you don't like.
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"Vast bodies of research" are difficult to address in a meaningful way. If you care to provide an example or two, we might discuss details. Pending that, it seems obvious that "better results" could be defined a lot of different ways. Better for the slow students? Better for the more advanced students? Better overall? I also wonder if these vast bodies include comparisons with public school systems in countries where student performance in, say, math and science, greatly outranks that of students in the U.S? Did you know that in Japan, for example, high schools are ranked, with students admitted based on their performance on entrance exams? Like it or not, we live in a competitive world, and as crazy as it may seem, I do feel that approach by which students are advanced based on merit is the best way to prepare them for that.

But that isn't even my main objection. It is that the so-called "touchy-feely" approach is anything but; it is out of touch with what really makes kids tick. It is a model based on a fantasy in the minds of those who wish life was a stroll through a grassy meadow with butterflies and fuzzy kitties, where the sun always shines and everybody just gets along. But kitties don't always get along, any more than kids do. My standing policy has long been never to intervene in cat fights. To do so is unnatural. Cats have been working things out on their own for a long time. What kids want more than anything is to look good in front of other kids. When learning something is the best way to do that, you can't hold them back no matter hard you try (like when the curriculum involves drugs, or sex, or video games). Deny them the glory, and they'll find other ways to make spectacles out of themselves. In Garibaldi's story, Brandon's problem was that he didn't see any good reason to learn the material.

But in that article the guy mostly seems to want to give white boys who make a nuisance of themselves in class more scope to be disruptive.
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Again, I think Garibaldi missed the target, but I also think you missed Garibaldi's point. Your "KKK" comment in particular I found WAY over the top; this appears to be a rather emotionally charged issue for you.
 
Dymanic said:
I would say that it is not feminism per se, but some of the assumptions embraced by the feminist movement (or, if not the movement per se, its most zealous adherents) -- principally, the tabula rasa, or "blank slate" model of human behavior. Equally competitive and identical in behavior are not the same thing.
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Ah--the famous radical feminist John Locke is at the root of it all. Now you mention it I do remember the chapter on bra-burning in his 1689 Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

If you don't mind, I usually like to be the one to say what I'm saying.
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Care to say which part of the scenario I described you disagree with. Other than the label "old fashioned" what did I get wrong (it sounds very like the Japanese model you go on to praise).

"Vast bodies of research" are difficult to address in a meaningful way. If you care to provide an example or two, we might discuss details.
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You're the one who has a specific claim. If you think you have evidence to support it, let us see it. I merely hold that the evidence is unclear.

Pending that, it seems obvious that "better results" could be defined a lot of different ways. Better for the slow students? Better for the more advanced students? Better overall? I also wonder if these vast bodies include comparisons with public school systems in countries where student performance in, say, math and science, greatly outranks that of students in the U.S? Did you know that in Japan, for example, high schools are ranked, with students admitted based on their performance on entrance exams? Like it or not, we live in a competitive world, and as crazy as it may seem, I do feel that approach by which students are advanced based on merit is the best way to prepare them for that.
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Oh, I see, you "do feel" that. Sorry. I didn't realize you had so much compelling evidence to adduce.

But that isn't even my main objection. It is that the so-called "touchy-feely" approach is anything but; it is out of touch with what really makes kids tick. It is a model based on a fantasy in the minds of those who wish life was a stroll through a grassy meadow with butterflies and fuzzy kitties, where the sun always shines and everybody just gets along. But kitties don't always get along, any more than kids do. My standing policy has long been never to intervene in cat fights. To do so is unnatural. Cats have been working things out on their own for a long time. What kids want more than anything is to look good in front of other kids. When learning something is the best way to do that, you can't hold them back no matter hard you try (like when the curriculum involves drugs, or sex, or video games). Deny them the glory, and they'll find other ways to make spectacles out of themselves. In Garibaldi's story, Brandon's problem was that he didn't see any good reason to learn the material.
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(I'll skip the curious fantasies about kittens and the odd digression into cat behaviour--I don't see its relevance). Getting back to Brandon: do you think most children see a "good reason" to learn most of what is taught them at school? Do you think that Japanese schools (since you seem to regard them as models) choose to make all subjects that children dislike optional? Do you think that the children in Japanese schools who say "this is crap, what's the use" get specially rewarded?

Again, I think Garibaldi missed the target, but I also think you missed Garibaldi's point. Your "KKK" comment in particular I found WAY over the top; this appears to be a rather emotionally charged issue for you.
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When he bangs on and on and on about how terribly downtrodden and oppressed the white "anglo-saxon" people are and singles Brandon out for special praise because he found a way to say "******" in front of his non-white classmates, I don't think it's a bizarre stretch to think that the writer has some serious issues to do with race. In fact, I'm not sure how else a KKK member would be likely to speak.

ETA: I didn't realize this site filtered the "naughty words" (how paternalistic). It's probably clear from context but the ****** above is replacing what is often referred to in America as "the N-word."
 
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Garibaldi and Dynamic seem to belong to the "things aren't what they used to be and it's all the fault of <insert favorite villain here>."

There are references to show that this attitude is very common. There was an article in the American Mathematical Monthly a couple of years ago tracking that sort of thing in math education -- it happens about every 20 years. (Sorry I don't have exact date/issue.) For a more precise reference, check out a book called Fantasia Mathematica by Clifton Fadiman, published in the 50s and republished in paperback in 1997. There's a chapter called Peter Learns Arithmetic written by H. G. Wells in the early 1900s in which Wells laments how bad most students are at math -- due to the fact that most elementary school teachers are no good at math either. Actually, that sounds a lot more plausible than "feminism did it."
 
EBU said:
Garibaldi and Dynamic seem to belong to the "things aren't what they used to be and it's all the fault of <insert favorite="" villain="" here="">."

There are references to show that this attitude is very common. There was an article in the American Mathematical Monthly a couple of years ago tracking that sort of thing in math education -- it happens about every 20 years. (Sorry I don't have exact date/issue.) For a more precise reference, check out a book called Fantasia Mathematica by Clifton Fadiman, published in the 50s and republished in paperback in 1997. There's a chapter called Peter Learns Arithmetic written by H. G. Wells in the early 1900s in which Wells laments how bad most students are at math -- due to the fact that most elementary school teachers are no good at math either. Actually, that sounds a lot more plausible than "feminism did it."
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Yes. The amazing thing to me is that if you look back at any controversy around education over the last two hundred years, we tend to hear the same things being said over and over and over again. It's the same "wets vs. drys" arguments over and over, and the same "back in my day" crap over and over.

If you were to string together the daisy-chain of people saying "the world has gone to hell in a handbasket, why in my day..." and push it back a few hundred years you'd expect to find a time when everybody emerged from primary school speaking five languages and tossing up between pursuing PhD's in Physics, History, or Music. But, sadly, no.

</insert>
 
Back in my day, at the height of educational excellence, we had a name for kids who could speak five languages at the end of primary school: slow.
 
TragicMonkey said:
It's funny how in order to make a point about sexism, people have to push sexist stereotypes. "This is what boys are like", "this is what girls are like"....crap, all of it. Aren't we past that kind of idiocy yet?

And I love the notion that it's wrong to "correct" "boys' natural tendencies" by insisting they behave and do their work. Yeah, change the schools so they can be "natural"....and good luck keeping a job, ever. Employers just love people who won't do their work, won't shut their mouths, and blame it all on their gender.

Anyone who accepts the excuse "Billy gets bad grades because he's a boy and that means he's rationalistic" should also accept the excuse "Suzy gets bad grades because her girl brain can't handle math".
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Excellent response - as a teacher, I was headed to it but thought to check first. There is a limit to how much distractive activity can be acceptable before education (on topic education as opposed to random/hit-and-miss)can no longer be effective and timely. That also applies to cultural effects - I can do deadly insults in eight major cultures (body position, etc. )- not even hitting words, but I don't by a long shot know all and should not be expected to. Students coming into a US school need to learn to operate in US culture and, if aspects of their culture are distractive, need to learn to abstain. School is for providing subject information - in the classroom - and that requires limited distraction. If that is boring, against a groups nature or culture, they need to quickly adapt (although I do not care for it as practiced the theoretical No Child Left Behind requires No Child Holds Up Learning for Others).
 
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Thanks. Interesting comments all. Different takes from my reading of the article as well. I think I mainly agree with Dynamic but I didn't see his position as a desire to return to the "good old days". Garibaldi was off-target in attributing the root cause of the problem to feminism, but I think the idea that this is about 'excusing' his behavior is mistaken. Rather, it's a recognition of a "learning style" that doesn't seem to be being addressed in our school system. A learning style more typified by boys than girls (I'm always amazed at how people with jump to idea that the person is stating that either ALL boys are like this or that NO girls are. Almost never the case.)

At any rate, what I see both Dynamic and Garibaldi arguing for is that while our schools might have been shortchanging girls 25 years ago, now they are shortchanging boys and we ought to do something to change that. At least, that's what I think.
 
And public schools could end their funding woes by selling the organs of the misbehaving students. Want to talk back to the principal, Timmy? That's going to be a detention and a kidney! Is that a cigarette, Nancy? Tut tut, those corneas are going to a more deserving nonsmoking student who can afford the price.

I'm just kidding. The bad kids should be ground up and used as fertilizer, and then the schools could all grow prize-winning roses. That would bring in tourist dollars as well as foster appreciation for horticulture. The young simply don't appreciate horticulture enough. I blame TV.
 
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