Boys lagging behind in education
It’s all over the news. There seems to be a serious disparity between the success of boys and girls in school. Boys are lagging behind, have a higher dropout rate from high school, and are less apt to pursue college. How can we help our male students become more successful?
One of the more prevalent suggestions to aid boys seems to be gender-divided education or at least partially separate education for boys (Sax 2007). The reasoning behind this theory is that boys need more stimuli than girls, who can sit quietly and read much better than boys (Gurien and Stephens 2007).
Throughout my long teaching career I have come to know many girls who learned best when they were engaged and boys who devoured books like candy. I think it is destructive to categorize children’s learning by their gender. I believe that all children can and are willing to learn.
In order to be able to learn a child must be curious about learning new things. However, traditional classrooms almost immediately squelch this curiosity and replace it with rote memorization, drawing within the lines and prescribed art projects (Thompson 2006). Some children are good at these. I was not one of them. I have always been hands on, outside the lines, constantly forgetting factoids and wiggly when bored. I know for a fact that all girls do not like to sit still and read.
I don’t think the problem is necessarily gender related but how we as teachers present learning. I strongly believe that we need to revisit Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences when we are teaching our students. Not many of our children can be categorized into either mathematical or linguistic intelligences, yet most schools and lessons still focus on those according to Dr. Gardner (Gardner 2006).
Our society is changing and often a strong mathematical/logic or linguistic talent is not at the center of our careers anymore. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills emphasizes that students must be engaged in the classroom in order to graduate students that are ready to succeed in today’s global society (Route 21).
So how can we make learning more interesting for students? Allow them to use their intelligences by varying lessons to match most of their intelligences. This needs to happen K – 12. Foster their love for learning by tapping into the skills they already love to perform. Success breeds confidence. Consequently students will be more apt to try out skills they are not good at.
Our boys will benefit from such classroom instruction, not from being separated or singled out.
Sources:
Gardner. c2006. Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. New York: Basic Books.
Gurien M. and K. Stephens. c2007. The Minds of Boys. New York: Wiley, John & Sons. http://www.michaelgurian.com/the_minds_of_boys.html
Gurien Michael, 2008. “Boys in crisis” CBS News Video.
Route 21. Partnership for 21st century skills. http://www.21stcenturyskills.org
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1754194n%3fsource=search_video
Sax. c2007.Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated and Underachieving Young Men. New York: Basic Books.
Stahl, Lesley 2003 “The gender gap: boys lagging – girls move ahead”, CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/31/60minutes/main527678.shtml
Thompson, Michael, 2006. “Raising Cain: Focus on Boys” PBS documentary. http://www.pbs.org/opb/raisingcain