Girls mature faster than boys. You do not have to do research on education or biology to have heard or read that phrase sometime in the past fifty years. This biological “fact” reads like a slogan with many in the various disciplines associated with human behavior. However, making the leap to the notion that girls start school with an inherent advantage over boys in learning is quite another matter. Yet, in the past fifteen years a mountain of research points to that idea with an emphatic and troublesome regularity.
My recollection of learning experiences and those of the boys and girls around me at school age is markedly different from that which this research bears out. Admittedly, it has been thirty-three years since I was last in elementary school, and the educational climate was quite different; gender roles, despite a burgeoning women’s movement in the early to mid nineteen seventies, had not evolved much since the time that our parents attended school in the fifties and before. Boys had a built-in advantage in the classroom which dates to the section of our history when girls either weren’t allowed or rarely attended school. Even in the nineteen-seventies, boys were more likely to be chosen by the teacher to answer questions put to the class; that fact alone manifested itself in demoralizing a good portion of a generation of girls, pigeon-holing them into conventional, gender-specific, “female” careers, if they desired a career at all after these early learning experiences.
While it is true that during my generation’s time in school, girls tended to be, in general, better and more eager readers than boys, boys did well enough to zoom past girls in math and science and mostly keep pace in other areas. When you factor in the advantage most boys had in enjoyment and success in areas such as physical education, any advantage girls may have had in reading and English was largely negated. Of course, some girls were able to overcome the gender-bias obstacles to chart a course to academic achievement; the valedictorian and salutatorian of my senior class were girls, and one of them eventually became a commercial airline pilot. Exceptions to conventional understandings aside, boys continued to benefit from gender-bias in the classroom throughout the seventies and eighties.
Fast-forward thirty-plus years. A generation of focus on helping girls to achieve on a level with boys has turned the tables; boys have now fallen behind girls in virtually every discipline, and girls are now even with the boys in math and science. The advent of hyperkinetic video games and other forms of entertainment and media stimuli, coupled with mass consumption of junk food, among other factors, have apparently changed the playing field when it comes to raising children, learning and education. A friend told me about a book titled “Raising Cain” (now a documentary with the same name) and in this revelatory volume author Michael Thompson provides insights on the emotional development of boys from pre-school to college and how school environments can put boys at a learning disadvantage. Thompson posits that most boys have difficulty expressing themselves in ways beyond violent or aggressive behavior; that they have many of the same feelings and emotional needs as girls but their peers and society in general make them feel as if they must stifle these emotions and “be a man.” Thompson views the struggles of boys in school and at home as a two-pronged problem; boys, unlike girls, do not develop an emotional vocabulary to express their feelings in ways that will help them succeed in school when issues arise; and due to biological differences, boys are often eighteen months to two years behind girls in developing the cognitive proficiency necessary to meet expectations in reading, writing and verbal skills. For the average boy in the first grade, school could feel like a running race starting on the curve of a track’s oval, with the girls on the inner edge and the boys on the outer edge. But how do we create a situation where there is a staggered start for the children, so all have a chance to keep pace? And would the solutions be pedagogically ethical?
Recent scientific research and studies in educational performance point to the turning tide of gender role reversal in the classroom environment. In a recent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof shares data that is stark in its contrast to just fifteen years before. He cites a report from the Center on Education Policy that shows boys lag behind in reading in every single state; the average high school grade point average is 3.09 for girls, 2.86 for boys; and in federal writing tests, “32 percent of girls are considered proficient or better, for boys the figure is 16 percent” (NY Times, 2010, Mar 27). In her book “The War Against Boys”, Christina Hoff Sommers states that “girls now outnumber boys in student government, in honor societies, in school newspapers, even in debating clubs” (2000, pp. 24-25). In Britain, studies found not only parental indifference and family break-ups as reasons for boys slipping behind, but more importantly they are often “held back by a peer culture which encourages low aspirations and holds intellectual endeavor in contempt” (Mail online, 2008, 31 Jan). These findings echo much of what Thompson discusses in “Raising Cain” in that both parents and educators often dismiss troublesome boy behavior with the “boys will be boys” mantra. Interestingly, as long ago as nineteen-sixty, researchers referenced “differences in patterns of motivation, perceptions, and cognitive structuring so striking that the data for boys and girls were interpreted separately (Perkins, Univ. of Maryland, 1965). However, the most revealing findings come from the scientific community, in biological differences not previously discussed in the purview of educational development. In a 2006 article in Newsweek titled “The Trouble with Boys”, Peg Tyre reports that male brain chemistry may be at the core of developmental gender differences. Tyre states: “Sometime in the first trimester, a boy fetus begins producing male sex hormones that bathe his brain in testosterone for the rest of his gestation” (2006, Jan 30). This is a complete game-changer in terms of both emotional and cognitive development. Tyre goes on to cite new studies showing that prenatal exposure to male sex hormones directly affects the way children of both sexes play; and that hormones can influence learning throughout life, with a Dutch study finding that when males were given female hormones, their spatial skills dropped but their verbal skills improved.
In “Raising Cain”, Thompson illuminates three scenarios that best illustrate the emotional development divide that lies at the heart of boys underachieving in school, and hint at both pedagogical and parental solutions. The documentary contains a scene where all the children are given a writing assignment that, it could be argued, is a tad female-centric. When some of the boys in class attempt to craft stories with violent or aggressive imagery, the teacher prevents them from doing so on the basis that the themes are disturbing to many of their classmates. This leads to a failure on the part of some of the boys to express themselves and secure a passing grade; they simply shut down and tune out. A scene from the book describes an informal group therapy session involving Mr. Thompson’s co-author Dr. Dan Kindlon and several average seventh-grade boys gathered to discuss teasing. The boys, all of whom attain decent grades and are generally well-liked by classmates, are rendered speechless when Dr. Kindlon delicately attempts to engender responses to the question, “when has teasing gone too far?” A third scenario, also from the book, depicts Mrs. Alvarez’s kindergarten class, representing nine girls and six boys and their varying states of readiness as Mrs. Alvarez prepares for story time. In contrast to the girls and one of the boys, five of the six boys cannot master the seemingly simple task of sitting still long enough for Mrs. Alvarez to begin reading. These examples best demonstrate the crux of the problem of boys’ developmental and emotional needs and how societal constructs can do severe damage to boys’ progress in school – and life.
Solutions are almost as varied as the individuals involved. Thompson theorizes that solutions are essentially meaningless until the larger issue of the emotional needs of boys is addressed. Thompson believes that the development of “emotional literacy”, a concrete method for boys to recognize their emotions and develop the oral, aural and spatial skills necessary to effectively communicate their feelings and express themselves in meaningful and productive ways, is paramount in tackling this predicament. Thompson sees the first step in this process as “convincing skeptical parents and educators that boys suffer deeply as a result of the destructive emotional training our culture imposes upon them, that many of them are in crisis, and that all of them need help.” If we accept that a paradigm shift in how we view the emotional development of boys is necessary before we undertake solutions to leveling the educational playing field, what of the pedagogical perspective? What are the practical steps to helping boys achieve equality with girls in educational development? Since reading skills seem to be the primary driver for measuring success, perhaps Kristof’s idea of introducing more “lowbrow, adventure or even gross-out books that disproportionately appeal to boys” (NY Times, 2010, Mar 27) is a strong candidate for implementation. This approach might be helpful in the aforementioned classroom from the Raising Cain documentary, where it was ultimately decided that the boys could write stories involving death and destruction only if the “bad guys” were the only ones to die. An approach to classroom dynamics that is gaining steam in the educational community is gender-specific classrooms. The 2006 Newsweek article highlights a middle school in Pueblo, Colorado that has randomly grouped fifty sixth graders into single-sex classrooms, with what, on the surface, should be considered encouraging results. The boys are less organized than the girls in chemistry, for example, but the boys are often “willing to go beyond what the lab asks them to do” (2006, Jan 30). Still another pedagogical model worthy of attention is “classrooms with movement.” The same Newsweek article shows how Kelley King, principal at Douglas Elementary in Boulder, Colorado, incorporated fast-moving lessons into the curriculum; examples included breaking the children up into small groups to act out characters in the books they read, thus addressing, among other things, the inability of the boys to sit still for lessons. This segues nicely into one more solution worth mentioning, that of spontaneous, unstructured play. Far too many children in our society have no idea how to play without rules and formal structures dictating their every activity. Many is the day one can visit their Facebook page to find parents lamenting the long weekend days filled with soccer and softball games from morning to night. Scientific research points to unstructured play representing a key developmental component for boys and girls; this could be addressed both in schools, through more recess time, and with parents by encouraging them to relent from their obsession with mapping out each moment of their children’s lives.
Many puzzling questions spring from the research. If boys have always had a biologically developmental disadvantage, why haven’t they always been behind girls in educational measurements, and not just the last fifteen years? Is it pedagogically ethical to provide distinct learning models for boys and girls? When has teasing gone too far? Our horrific experience with school shootings and hazing point to the dire need to address the emotional makeup of boys as a vital first step in the inventory of solutions. Single-sex classrooms seem an efficacious answer to the achievement gap; the results from the Colorado school show that the girls-only class had the highest test results, followed by boys-only and the co-ed classes last. However, this country’s experience with separate but equal shows us that it is rarely, if ever, equal. And that pesky question of why the gap between boys and girls was practically the reverse twenty-five to thirty years ago, brings to mind many factors that could be considered, such as the disproportionate amount of time that today’s boys spend playing video games. Perhaps it is instructive to look beyond our borders for answers, to an educational system that routinely finishes at the top of world rankings, that of Finland. The Finnish schools have one outstanding feature that would seem counterintuitive to success; students spend less time in the classroom than any country in the developed world. In addition, a BBC News report found that Finnish children start school only at the age of seven. This delay alone would virtually eliminate the biological head-start that scientific research has found girls have over boys starting at the age of five. The report states “the idea is that before that age they learn best when they are playing and by the time they finally get to school they are keen to start learning” (BBC, 2010, 7 Apr). Wow, more time moving and less time sitting. Now that is something that boys could really get used to!
References
Bernard, S. (2006). Are boys falling behind girls in academic achievement? Edutopia – The George Lucas Educational Foundation. Accessed at: http://www.edutopia.org/are-boys-falling-behind-girls-academic-achievement
Bleuer, J. (2002). Are boys falling behind in academics? ERIC Digest. Accessed at: http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-4/boys1.html
Burridge, T. (2010, 7 Apr). Why do Finland’s schools get the best results? BBC News online. Accessed at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8601207.stm
Clark, L. (2008). Working-class white British boys falling behind everyone else at school. Mail online. Accessed at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-511615/Working-class-white-British-boys-falling-school.html
Holly, J. (2010). Classroom strategies to get boys reading. Getting boys to read.com. Accessed at: http://www.gettingboystoread.com/content/classroom-strategies-get-boys-reading
Kindlon, D. and Thompson, M. (2000). Raising Cain: Protecting the emotional life of boys. New York. Random House.
Kristof, N. (2010). The boys have fallen behind. New York Times online. Accessed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28kristof.html?src=me&ref=homepage
Perkins, H. (1965). Classroom behavior and underachievement. American educational research association. Accessed at: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1162063
Steffen, A. (2004). Finland. The world’s best school system? World changing. Accessed at: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001779.html
Tyre, P. (2006). The trouble with boys. Newsweek online. Accessed at: http://www.newsweek.com/id/47522
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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