Why boys can't be boys

Feckless · #1 4th-September-2008

Quote:

Why boys can't be boys

Girls thrive at school while lads lag behind. So who's to blame?

Tony Mooney
The Observer,
Sunday August 19 2001
Article history

Once again, girls have out-performed boys in their examination results and once again the Government is talking of how to close the gender gap, this time commissioning a three-year, £300,000 project from the University of Cambridge to analyse boys' under-performance.
The research team could begin by considering the remarks made last week by the 81-year-old writer Doris Lessing. Boys, she told the Edinburgh international book festival, are being undermined by a culture that makes them feel guilty about the crimes of their sex. She told of her visit to a class of nine- and 10-year-olds where the young woman teacher was telling the children that war was the result of the violent nature of men. The boys, she said, sat there 'crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives.'
There is a growing body of published education research that supports what she was saying. I first became aware that women teachers might be discriminating against boys in primary schools when I started to read for a doctorate in the early 1980s. As long ago as 1964 researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles showed that women teachers might be slowing the progress of five-year-old boys: when 72 boys and 60 girls were taught to read with a machine, there was no difference between the sexes in their reactions to the gadgets and the girls scored lower than the boys. The children were then taught conventionally by women teachers and tested again. This time, the boys' scores were inferior. It looked as if the women teachers might have been the cause of this dip in performance.
Girls now outperform boys in developed countries around the world and governments want to know why. Increasingly, it is being suggested that the predominantly female profession (83 per cent of primary school teachers in England and Wales are women) will have to change its approach to the teaching of boys. Women teachers may point out that studies show they give three times as much attention to boys as to girls. But the same research shows that much of this attention is spent chastising boys for what is seen as inappropriate behaviour.

Could it simply be that women primary school teachers find the natural behaviour of young boys too noisy, too aggressive and too boisterous, especially among boys from low-income families?

The findings of one Australian study just published in The British Journal of Educational Psychology could not be more emphatic in highlighting the bias against boys. The authors followed the progress of 148 children for two years from the age of five. They were particularly looking at the classroom learning behaviour and perceived achievement of children from low- and middle-income families.
According to the study, 'teachers displayed a significantly more negative reaction to virtually every boy who showed inappropriate learning behaviour, while at the same time displaying no such reaction to corresponding girls.'
The teacher bias was particularly evident against boys from low-income families who the researchers found were significantly poorer learners at the age of five compared with those from middle-income families. The working-class boys were labelled as disruptive, demanding and difficult to teach at the outset of their schooling. The labels once given, stuck. It was concluded that: 'Many teachers do appear to be stigmatising these boys. These images clearly colour their academic expectations and in turn the way they teach these children.'
When children fall behind in the early years at school their future is comparable to trying to walk up the down escalator. They go on falling further behind. What happens at GCSE and A-level can often be traced back to the early years. We can surmise that girls do better in these exams because of the increase in course work but we still need to ask why can't boys cope with coursework as well as girls.
Women teacher bias is occasionally mentioned in educational research though it is not seen as politically correct to emphasise such findings. But for the sake of future generations of boys we cannot afford to stifle this debate any longer. The improvement of girls' maths and science results have shown that how teachers approach their pupils can effect great changes. For example, maths and science teachers faced up to the sexist nature of their teaching and made their subjects more girl-friendly.
Government must now concentrate on how to engage boys more. Simply trying to get little boys to behave as little girls is not the answer. We need to allow boys to be more physically active than they are at present and this may mean that we shouldn't expect them to concentrate for as long as girls. It also means the Government will have to relax the stranglehold it has over the curriculum and give teachers more say in how and when to introduce formal learning.
And for their part, teachers - particularly women teachers - must accept that boys simply enjoy fighting and throwing themselves around more than girls do.

Tony Mooney: Why boys can't be boys | Education | The Observer

Tyrael · #2 4th-September-2008

Please add the title, author, date of the article on top.

**Percy** · #3 4th-September-2008

Quote:

this may mean that we shouldn't expect them to concentrate for as long as girls.

Even with the best will, even friggin' MEN seem to lapse into crap and girl-stroking and purvey means to even more damage to boys.

Where is the evidence that girls concentrate for longer than boys?

I would argue that there is NO such evidence. In fact the opposite.

I would argue that boys concentrate far and away better and for longer than girls.

Have you watched girls in a classroom? I have. They are a constant buzz, under the teacher's radar.

These commentators and researchers have no idea what is going on in a small girl's head when she is staring down at a page. She is more likely than not daydreaming, as most people of all ages do.

The comentators and researchers 'assume' that girls are 'concentrating' more because they are comparing their quieter, more subtle and subterfuging lack of outward behaviour with boys who are often more fidgety and interactive, attracting far more attention.

Sweet FA to do with concentration.

The 'results' that underpin their rationale for the 'assumption' are gained via continuous assessment, which requires little or no protracted periods of concentration. A one or two hour test, we already know, leaves girls far behind boys in terms of 'results'.

These tests are the very aspects that require concentration !

Indeed, the introduction of widespread continuous assessment was due to girls' failure to concentrate as well as the friggin' boys !

Friggin' DULL SHIT Journo, foloowing the winding, torturous feminist path of mendacity.

Rothzael · #4 4th-September-2008

I used to work in the public primary school system. I fixed computers and saw this kind of behaviour from female teachers all the time. I once saw a class full of kids doing a science experiment, gravity or something. The girls sat around, disinterested and meek. Two boys were really into it, they thought it was great! They dropped pendulums and got really excited as the ball swung back and forth. Too excited, apparently. They were yelled at for being noisy and told to go and sit outside to calm down. This is education; chastised for learning.

nivek · #5 4th-September-2008

Yeah i'm with you there Percy, They found out all the reasons why girls were under performing and made the changes to suit, And now they stupidly ask why boys under perform.
why the f*** do they have to conduct a new study when the answers can be found in the old ones, Its outfuckinrageous.

Kuuenbu · #6 4th-September-2008

Quote:

Boys, she told the Edinburgh international book festival, are being undermined by a culture that makes them feel guilty about the crimes of their sex. She told of her visit to a class of nine- and 10-year-olds where the young woman teacher was telling the children that war was the result of the violent nature of men. The boys, she said, sat there 'crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives.'

After more than a decade of clamoring over the self-esteem issues of young girls, I'd say it's time we gave this issue a fair bit of attention.

I can definitely say I know how those boys feel, and that I know fist-hand how it can slaughter the morale and psyche of a young man.

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Why boys can't be boys

Why boys can't be boys

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