Being a normal boy is a serious liability
in today's classroom. Boys tend to be disorganized and restless. Some have even been known to
be noisy and hard to manage. Sound like any boy you know? But increasingly, our schools have little
patience for what only a couple decades ago would have been described as "boyishness."
As psychologist Michael Thompson has aptly observed: "Girl behavior is the gold standard
in schools. Boys are treated like defective girls." As a result, these "defective girls" are not
faring well academically. Compared with girls, boys earn lower grades, win fewer honors and
are far less likely to go to college. Boys are languishing academically, while girls
are prospering. In an ever more knowledge based economy, this is not a recipe for a
successful society. We need to start thinking about how we can
make our grade school classrooms more boy-friendly. Here are four reforms that would make a very
good start. 1. Turn boys into readers.
In all age groups, across all ethnic lines, boys score lower than girls on national reading
tests. Good reading skills are -- need I say? -- are critical to academic and workplace success.
A major study in the UK discovered, not surprisingly, that girls prefer fiction, magazines, and
poetry while boys prefer comics and non-fiction. Boys whose eyes glaze over if forced to read
Little House on the Prairie may be riveted by the Guinness Book of Records. Boys will
read if given materials that interest them. If you're looking for suggestions for books
that have proved irresistible to boys go to guysread.com 2. Inspire the Male Imagination.
Celebrated writing instructor Ralph Fletcher contends that too many teachers take what
is called "the confessional poet" as the classroom ideal. Personal narratives full of emotion
and self-disclosure -- stories girls commonly write -- are prized; whereas action stories
describing, say, a skateboard competition or a monster devouring a city are not. I recently
read about a third-grader in Southern California named Justin who loved science fiction, pirates,
and battles. An alarmed teacher summoned his parents to
school to discuss a picture the 8-year-old had drawn of a sword fight -- which included
several decapitated heads. The teacher expressed grave "concern" about Justin's "values." The
boy's father was astonished, not by his son's drawing which to him was typical boy stuff,
but the teacher's overwrought -- and female-centered -- reaction. If boys are constantly subject to disapproval
for their interests and enthusiasms they are likely to become disengaged and lag further
behind. Our schools need to work with, not against, the kinetic imaginations of boys. 3. Zero Out Zero Tolerance.
Boys are nearly five times more likely to be expelled from preschool than girls. In grades K-12, boys account for nearly 70% of suspensions, often for minor acts of insubordination
and sometimes for entirely innocent behavior. Hardly a week goes by without a news story
about a young boy running afoul of a school's zero-tolerance policy. Josh Welch, age 7, was recently sent home
from his Maryland school for nibbling off the corners of a strawberry Pop-Tart to shape
it into a gun. Josh -- like many other boys punished for
violating zero-tolerance policies -- was guilty of nothing more than being a typical 7-year
old boy. 4. Bring back recess.
Believe it or not, recess may soon be a thing of the past. According to a research summary
by Science Daily, since the 1970s, schoolchildren have lost close to 50% of their unstructured
outdoor playtime. Much-loved games have vanished from school playgrounds. In schools throughout the country, games like dodge ball, red rover and even tag have all but disappeared; too
damaging to self-esteem or too "violent" being the usual excuses. One popular classroom guide
suggests tug of war be replaced with "tug of peace." Boys need to work off their energy.
They need to be free to play games they enjoy. And keeping them cooped up inside all day
will not help them learn. As our schools become more feelings centered,
more competition-free and more sedentary, they move further away from the needs of boys.
We need to reverse the boy-averse trends. Male underachievement is everyone's concern.
These are our sons. These are the young men with whom our daughters will build a future.
If boys are in trouble, so are we all. I'm Christina Hoff Sommers of the American
Enterprise Institute for Prager University.
The Guinness book of World Records is what got me reading.
"Zero out zero tolerance!" Yes!
tug of peace, boys should do that in private.
This has been going on for a while.
One day in 1st grade, I was eating a sandwich in the lunchroom, and got the great idea to take my half-eaten sandwich and pretend to wipe my butt with it. I was like "ohhh yeahhh" and then took a bite out of it because there was now pretend poop on my sandwich; my friend Nigel thought it was fucking hilarious. Parents got called, spoiler alert is that the administration insinuated that I was being molested outside of school because of this newfound fascination with my ass. I was homeschooled for second grade and read many Zoo Books.
Tug of peace..
Zero Tolerance is one of the worst things to happen in school. I was charged with Assault after I defended myself from an attack. It got thrown out in court, but the fact that I was even charged is BS.
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Why does everything have to be a war? War on women. War on men. War on boys. War on muslims. War on Christmas.
It's just a load of crap that makes for inflammatory sound bites and buzzwords that people can sling around rather than actually thinking critically about problems and conflicts.
Women make less money on average? "Oh shit, it's THE WAR ON WOMEN!!!" No. It's fucking not. It's a complex set of conditions and social patterns that you might actually have to read a couple pages about to understand.
High-profile company starts to use "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" in their ads? "Oh no- they're waging a WAR ON CHRISTMAS" Well, either that, or they're appealing to a broader customer base and an ever-changing consumer demographic, never really cared about Christmas (or anything religious for that matter), and are solely trying to make as much money as possible.
It's just lazy. Lazy and stupid.
Edit: Whoever gave me gold for my whiny post- thank you. The arguments I have with imaginary people whilst showering now seem more worthwhile.
It's interesting the first point about reading, until about 7 I was actually in special classes because I was so terrible at school. Then I started reading Dahl's books and by the time I was 8 I read the hobbit and went onto lord of the rings straight after. Within a year I went from the bottom 10% to one of the best performing students in my year.