• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

are public schools failing boys

Alceste

Vagabond
So I heard this talk and it had a very... well, curious and different proposal, I was really interested in hearing what people think:

[youtube]23Uuehgmd14[/youtube]
Ali Carr-Chellman: Gaming to re-engage boys in learning - YouTube

Yup. Good points. Lots of my boy students (and some of my girls) are really excited about the fact that my hubby and I make games, or that I can actually talk about MineCraft. They have all kinds of suggestions for games, too, and questions about how they can learn to make them.

I actually think basic programming, including basic game programming, should be part of a standard curriculum - or at the very least an option.

I wrote grant proposals a few months ago for a game design program for youth. One of them did not arrive in time for the deadline, but we are still trying. Hopefully they will come through. A lot of boys 9-14 are really interested in making games but have no idea where to start, and schools are not doing anything about it.

Not that this has much to do with educational games, except that making games is pretty damn educational.
 

Penumbra

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Anyone also care to address the hormonal differences between boys and girls.and how such biology might play into the school setting?
I think male and female hormones do play a role. I'm not sure if any amount of design will lead to boys and girls getting disciplined or dropping out at identical rates, and I'm not sure every person is capable of going through 12 years of all-day sitting and learning; we didn't necessarily evolve for that. Men also commit a lot more violent crime and are over-represented in jail, so it's not just a school thing.

That being said, I do think it's a responsible thing for educators to try to tailor their strategies to the individual students, with perhaps some gender differences in mind, to minimize the necessity for discipline and the incidence of drop outs. I have a lot of issues with the school system in general that are not particularly gender-specific.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
I agree the problem is complex and has multiple layers, however to ignore the vastly different numbers with regard to gender and say we just need school reform is not the best way to handle the situation. I agree we need to fix schools, one facet of that is to address the way in which schools are failing boys.
Consider schools are failing both boys and girls, I am willing to bet the gender differences are not due to school, but other sources. Such as parental involvement and/or lack thereof. Boys and girls are equally capable, and equally receiving the same lame excuse of an education. Maybe it's just that girls are not taking education for granted, since women in higher education is still a new thing.
You can look towards the schools for answers on why boys aren't doing as well, but you probably aren't going to find many of them there.
 

DallasApple

Depends Upon My Mood..
Umm...Not so sure I like the video.She pretty much said that boys are naturally violent.(Guns ,writing stories about tornado;s tearing down the house and "killing everybody? aren't allowed to get in fights in the playground?)/

I'm sorry I'm going to watch it again to be sure I heard her correctly its kind of late.But I swear she said telling them to sit down and be quiet and focus on their work we are telling them to be a girl?
 

DallasApple

Depends Upon My Mood..
He's "just a boy" ? O.K I'm trying to absorb that.

Now I do agree with the expectations of their abilities to be able to write a paragraph by the time your are in the first grade.

But she said that was telling them to "be a girl"???????????So girls can write a paragraph by 6 years old but we shouldn't tell boys they should?(like a girl?)

Oh and the answer is to give the boys video games to play?While the girls are writing novels?
 

Alceste

Vagabond
I think male and female hormones do play a role. I'm not sure if any amount of design will lead to boys and girls getting disciplined or dropping out at identical rates, and I'm not sure every person is capable of going through 12 years of all-day sitting and learning; we didn't necessarily evolve for that. Men also commit a lot more violent crime and are over-represented in jail, so it's not just a school thing.

That being said, I do think it's a responsible thing for educators to try to tailor their strategies to the individual students, with perhaps some gender differences in mind, to minimize the necessity for discipline and the incidence of drop outs. I have a lot of issues with the school system in general that are not particularly gender-specific.

I agree. In this area, teachers have been striking, not just for reasonable pay, but also for lower class sizes and higher teacher:student ratio and more aides for special needs students. They WANT to provide more individual attention, but with 30 or more kids in every class it simply isn't possible for them to do so.

I struggle to accommodate about 20 private students I only see for half an hour a week. I can only imagine what it's like to customize lesson plans for 35 kids for 20 hours a week, and give meaningful feedback.

The bottom line is that if we want our kids to succeed in school, we have to listen to teachers and give them what they say they need. Even if it costs money. If we decide lower taxes for corporations and rich people are a higher priority than educating our kids, we have to accept that the education system is going to fail more of them. We can juggle the balance so we fail an equal number of girls and boys, but it would be preferable to help every student succeed, to the best of their ability.
 
Last edited:

DallasApple

Depends Upon My Mood..
Uhhhhhhhh...NO!

Hes a boy don't expect him to pay attention and write stories.But if you do hes a boy he likes to write about violence(cuz hes a boy) and its fine if Johnny and Jo Bob beat the **** out of each other in the playground cuz they boys that's what boys like!Oh and let the boys play video games shooting munsters at school they like that cuz they boys!

What I would go for???Right off the bat is plainly just more EXCERSIZE ..physical..and HEY how about not feeding the kids cinnamin buns macaroni and cheese and oily pizza for lunch? Did anyone consider these kids just need more EXCERSIZE and a better diet?LESS time zoning on a video game? ONE in THREE children born today (today as in newborn) will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in their lifetime.LOOK at the obesity rate in our children....

What do they do when they go home??????Eat sugar and fat and......... sit inside and PLAY video games.

They are couped up before they even GET to school.And not saying "every parent" but come on can parents take some of this "blame"?

I think boys(on average) may just have more shere physical energy maybe.
 

DallasApple

Depends Upon My Mood..
I struggle to accommodate about 20 private students I only see for half an hour a week. I can only imagine what it's like to customize lesson plans for 35 kids for 20 hours a week, and give meaningful feedback.

Yes over crowding.We have "nice' schools in comparison and still they were crammed in like sardines and even rotating kids to different homerooms to not be "breaking the law" ..it wasn't 35 per class but over 21 to 25 in each.And we are talking 6 year olds to one teacher and one floating teachers aid.
 

DallasApple

Depends Upon My Mood..
I think male and female hormones do play a role. I'm not sure if any amount of design will lead to boys and girls getting disciplined or dropping out at identical rates, and I'm not sure every person is capable of going through 12 years of all-day sitting and learning; we didn't necessarily evolve for that. Men also commit a lot more violent crime and are over-represented in jail, so it's not just a school thing.

That being said, I do think it's a responsible thing for educators to try to tailor their strategies to the individual students, with perhaps some gender differences in mind, to minimize the necessity for discipline and the incidence of drop outs. I have a lot of issues with the school system in general that are not particularly gender-specific.

The thing is we are talking even kindergarten through 5th here .Its age 3 -13.I mean really how much do "hormones" really play that big a role in that age group?
 

Penumbra

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Through public schooling, due to test results and stuff, I was placed in gifted classes that fortunately kept maximum class sizes at only 15. There was a lot of freedom in them, with difficult subject matter, and there were not any behavioral problems with any boys or girls, nor any noticeable performance differences between boys and girls.

But not all classes had that option, so for some classes I was in other sections where there were 30 or so students in a class. My general observations were that boys were more aggressive on average, had more prevalent use of drugs, and many of them had a sort of macho culture where doing well in school was seen as uncool, which was not a culture that many girls had. There were more fights between boys, although occasionally fights between girls occurred, or in rare cases, a girl vs a boy. In younger grades there was less or none of some of those things, but boys tended to have more energy, it seemed.

School performance seemed to often be related to socioeconomic status. The students that did terrible, typically had rather difficult home lives due to poverty, abuse, neglect, or just a general lack of discipline for schooling. There were of course exceptions.

So my experience was that the school basically met the student where the student was at. If a student entered with willingness to learn, she could go into honors or gifted classes with smaller class sizes. If a student wasn't interested in school, or ran into trouble, they would generally find themselves in large classes with other students like themselves, in a negative feedback loop.

It seems to me that parents had a larger impact on a student's performance than the school itself. Out of students I knew, well-performing students tended to have organized home lives and educated parents, while poor-performing students tended to have difficult home lives, with parents that were less focused on the idea of their children doing well in school. Not every time though, innate differences in intelligence and other variables could result in a mismatch with a student that does well despite parents that are not interested, or the other way around.

So from my observation, I tend to view school performance as more of a parent thing than a school thing. I jumped around a few schools during kindergarten and first grade, until settling into one school system. Students that brought with them the mindset that they're going to do well in school, could work pretty well in any class setting. Other students were not caring of doing well, typically. Figuring out how to assist those students is important, but for me that's a tricky concept to figure out, and I haven't really studied education techniques.
 

Mathematician

Reason, and reason again
I'm a high school science teacher and the culture of apathy or even disdain towards boys who aren't academically inclined is staggering. Furthermore boys are punished much more harshly starting at even a young age. But this is just a preparation for the gender-biased penal system.

Secondary concern: primary education is primarily designed and taught by women - exclusively. It's like the engineering field for women. Boys don't have a male role model in class until middle school or high school. Children on average better identify with adults of their own gender.
 
Last edited:

Curious George

Veteran Member
Consider schools are failing both boys and girls, I am willing to bet the gender differences are not due to school, but other sources. Such as parental involvement and/or lack thereof. Boys and girls are equally capable, and equally receiving the same lame excuse of an education. Maybe it's just that girls are not taking education for granted, since women in higher education is still a new thing.
You can look towards the schools for answers on why boys aren't doing as well, but you probably aren't going to find many of them there.

I wholeheartedly agree that schools are failing both boys and girls, and I certainly accept that the whole of the problem does not rest on the schools shoulders. But schools are rife with discrimination and gender bias. The fact that girls experience such as well does not cancel out the gender bias and discrimination which the boys face. I will gladly take any bet you want to lay down suggesting schools are innocent in the disparity of academic success between the genders. Or that schools do not add to gender differences.
 

DallasApple

Depends Upon My Mood..
Does anyone know how/if the ratio of female to male primary school teachers has changed as compared to before boys started falling behind?
 
Last edited:

Alceste

Vagabond
I'm a high school science teacher and the culture of apathy or even disdain towards boys who aren't academically inclined is staggering. Furthermore boys are punished much more harshly starting at even a young age. But this is just a preparation for the gender-biased penal system.

Secondary concern: primary education is primarily designed and taught by women - exclusively. It's like the engineering field for women. Boys don't have a male role model in class until middle school or high school. Children on average better identify with adults of their own gender.

Just out of curiosity, what were your own reasons for choosing high school over elementary or kindergarten?
 

dawny0826

Mother Heathen
More boys are disciplined more harshly in schools.

More boys drop out of high school

Boys perform lower in testing in the primary grades

So, are our schools failing the young boys, or are boys just less capable?

Please provide statistical data to support these claims, particularly for the first.
 

Alceste

Vagabond
Does anyone know how/if the ratio of female to male primary school teachers has changed as compared to before boys started falling behind?

I don't know about the ratio, but since teaching used to be "women's work", I expect the few male teachers there are in ECE are a relatively new phenomenon, like male nurses and secretaries.

I didn't have a single male teacher until grade seven. Then it was about half and half.

It's funny that all those women taught me nothing but men's history. I got the impression that "real careers" were not for girls. If the boys were sitting there thinking education was not for boys because the teachers were all female, that's a crappy deal for everybody.
 

DallasApple

Depends Upon My Mood..
Of course this is only my personal experience but thinking back I went to primary school in the 70s.I can only remember 1 maybe 2 male teachers during k-5.In contrast I can remember (by remember I can picture their faces and remember some of their names) about 8 female teachers.During 6th 7th and 8th (early 80's) I start to remember a lot more male teachers and on up the ladder more.

Also depictions of teachers in the media namely t.v shows and some movies I'm old enough to remember reruns of shows from the late 50's and into the 60's and they were mostly females.Including depictions of Catholic schools all the teachers being nuns.Ya know carrying their rulers around smacking the kids on the hands for wiggling in their seat or chewing gum etc.The boys being hauled off by the collar of their shirts to the principals office (always a male) for a paddling.
 

Alceste

Vagabond
What do you think of gender separated schools or classes? Would it help?

I don't think that's the answer. Not all girls are the same, and not all boys are the same. If you bring in some strategies specifically designed to inspire boys, those same strategies will also benefit some girls. Likewise, as Vouthon mentioned, some boys learn in a way typically associated with girls. (Soak up the lesson, whatever it is, as opposed to only soaking up what they're most interested in).

What you want is smaller class sizes and more opportunities for self-directed learning for both genders, understanding that those opportunities will generally be particularly appealing to boys.

I don't know how to get more men to teach ECE. If they don't want to, then :shrug:
 
Last edited:
Top