Are our boys falling behind in education? Earl Hipp on how to handle this issue in fairness to both genders.
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In a short article titled, Save Our Boys, by Esther J. Cepeda in the Washington Post, she describes her conversation with Dr. Leonard Sax. Dr. Sax is the author of the book, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. Dr. Sax, M.D., Ph.D., is a family doctor, a PhD psychologist, and the founder of the National Association for Choice in Education (NACE).In the description of his book Dr. Sax says, “Something scary is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. While Emily is working hard at school and getting A’s, her brother Justin is goofing off. He’s more concerned about getting to the next level in his video game than about finishing his homework.”
At the heart of her story, Ms. Cepeda uncovered Dr. Sax’s disappointment with how often showing up for boys is seen as being anti-girl. It’s sad, but often the reality I’ve encountered in speaking to groups. In Ms. Cepeda’s interview with Dr. Sax, he said, “. . . I didn’t have an appreciation for the degree to which this topic is political,”. . . . “The assumption is that if you advocate for boys, you are right-of-center, and if you advocate for girls you are left-of center. And you must work very hard to make people understand that not only are the politics not the most important issue, but that if you’re seeing boys as the ‘losers’ of good education and work opportunities, girls are not the ‘winners,’ either. But when you start talking about offering boy-friendly instructional strategies, then you must be against girls.”
Dr. Sax does offer gender-neutral prescriptions in his book. He told Ms. Cepeda, “With just a little bit of training and permission, administrators and teachers can greatly boost achievement for boys without drowning out girls,” Sax said. “It is not a zero-sum game. Gender-aware instructional strategies don’t cost much money and have the potential to get boys excited about writing and girls excited about computer coding. But the notion that boys and girls need something different to love writing or computers is deeply offensive to scholars.”
Sadly, Dr. Sax has become cynical about ever finding a motivated audience and has returned to full-time medical practice. I believe Dr. Sax is very much on the right track. Too many of our young males are “adrift,” and would benefit greatly from experimentation with young-male-focused educational approaches. I also feel the overarching quest should be to come up with an educational system that brings out the best in all of our children.
The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which collects test results from 65 countries for its rankings, says in 2012, “U.S. students ranked below average in math among the world’s most-developed countries. They were close to average in science and reading.” Taken directly from their data, 29 nations outperformed the United States in math, 22 in science, and 19 in reading, all much worse performance than the data collected in 2009. All of our kids deserve better.
As you consider the idea of more young-male-literate educational approaches, check out what comes up for you! Are you carrying a gender bias when it comes to their education?
You can read Ms. Cepeda’s full article on her Washington Post web page, and find Dr. Sax’s book on Amazon.
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This article originally appeared on The Man-Making blog.
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I think that in a perfect world, everything about us humans would be a lot less “either / or.” Just as the world is learning to accommodate a rainbow of sexual preferences, we could as well learn to accomodate a wide range of learning styles. Gender, as in male/female, as Jonathan points out above, is still a limiting a description for learning style. While some aspects of learning style may relate to a persons chromosomes, it would be wonderful to a wide range of choice in approaches to education for everyone. As I stated above, I think the best teachers… Read more »
I do think I get what Danny is saying. Gender has been made a divide in schooling, much like financial/socioeconomic status (rich or poor) has. Politics and money has fragmented our experience in so many ways. I am a father of a girl and a boy, respectively. They express themselves in a few ways that would be considered traditionally appropriate according to their gender, but they also express themselves in ways NOT considered stereotypical– my daughter being a “tomboy” and my son being sensitive and soft-hearted. (And this even with my son’s self-contained classroom teacher saying he was “all boy”… Read more »
What has been changed specifically? I can see that the schools have cut down on recess time, but I feel like that hurts both boys and girls.
This was spot on. Having raised a son and daughter, it’s not hard to raise your son to where he needs to be without affecting your daughter. Both are individuals with their own skills and talents. A bit of anecdotal information. My facility has had a 15 bed “recovery home” for boys for a number years now. It’s more or less a halfway house for teen boys. Something has happen that we’ve seen a marked change in attitudes. Historically, a few would get jobs and move on but for the most part they would do their time until the courts… Read more »
@ Tom Brechlin One boy I was working with made huge strides especially after he joined the military. He takes pride in being a soldier, but that shouldn’t be unexpected since his parents spent several years trying to break down his self esteem. He accomplished something many couldn’t do and has noticed the respect people give soldiers. Recently we had a conversation were he related a discussion he had with a drill sergeant. The sergeant spoke of how guys would jump on a grenade to save 5 other guys. He said he wouldn’t do it. Now he said he’d do… Read more »
Hey Earl, haven’t talked to you in a while, been so long ya probably don’t remember me. Nonetheless, nice seeing you in here.
Remind me. But like how you see the world!
Problem is if boys and girls learn differently, then helping one does hurt the other if both are taught at the same time all the time. You can find a middle ground where both are helped and hurt equally, but is that really the solution. Society will never accept separate, but equal. I think maybe separate and together education may work. During high school retreat the boys and girls mainly did activities together, but at times the genders were separated and each did their own activity. I wonder if that model would work.
What’s keeping the idea of separate education from happening? Coed schooling has been around for a long time, there was a time that it worked, why doesn’t it work now?
Thing is Tom it didn’t work not for girls, but things changed. When I was growing up we had boys vs girls math and science quizzes and spelling bees. You used to grade the paper of the kid next to you. Now we’ve moved to collaborative over competitive and FERPA won’t let teachers highlight a grade. We also have a problem with some teachers relating to boys. I had a female math teacher who I didn’t get along with. Her math team consisted of 5 girls, the top 5 students in the class. She gave these girls extra tutelage after… Read more »
“The assumption is that if you advocate for boys, you are right-of-center, and if you advocate for girls you are left-of center. And you must work very hard to make people understand that not only are the politics not the most important issue, but that if you’re seeing boys as the ‘losers’ of good education and work opportunities, girls are not the ‘winners,’ either. But when you start talking about offering boy-friendly instructional strategies, then you must be against girls.” That’s what happens when politics rears it head. All of a sudden if you want to help boys you’re a… Read more »
I hear your frustration, but I’m choosing to stand strong for the middle ground for all our kids. For me that’s the best educational experience we can muster for each one. While I’m all for gender difference in educational experiments, even that may be too broad a distinction. Given the sorry state of educational outcomes in the U.S., (in spite of heroic efforts on the part of so many educators), any innovation in approaches to give each young person their best learning experience should be a good thing.
I support the middle ground as well Earl.
We need to make education about helping kids, not trying to screw this side or that side over.
Danny, I have to agree and disagree with you at the same time. I think that both sides get attacked when you try to help one gender specifically. As if trying to help one gender with issues is in itself akin to some kind of prejeduice. I get attacked on this very website often because I speak up about my experience as a woman. When I speak up about things I understand as a woman, I’m told I am doing harm to males. Recently in an article about violence against women, this article was seen on an attack on males… Read more »
If I didn’t say it before, great piece Earl.
I’ll agree that both sides do get attacked, I was mostly relaying my own experiences.
Yes I agree with Earl as well and I think removing the identity politics and side taking would do a lot of good to that goal.