Mr Payne

Honestly, I think what a lot of men have realized is that degrees just don't make one that much money. For someone with middling academic success it can be a much better option to look into other career options for than get an AS or BA in something which has no earning potential.

gcf101

The answer:
Weak Schedule, Mediocre EC's, Good GPA and ACT - Chances?

Bay

Both my sister and I have husbands who have a lower educational status than we do. Both husbands make more money than we do/did. Maybe women need higher degrees to make the same amount of money that men do.

razorsharp

Maybe more women should choose higher paying careers. Other than being a combat soldier in the foxhole, there are not many careers women cannot pursue if they so choose.

chuy

Great, so a ton of women get english or communication degrees and become bank tellers and teachers, while not quite as many guys get engineering and science degrees and get higher paying jobs. Everyone gets to complain!

Shrinkrap

"Maybe more women should choose higher paying careers"

Or they could choose more "valuable" ones, like being physically responsible for fetuses (?feti), newborns, and toddlers. I dread the day when only income is valuable. Yeah, I know, men do this too.... and they go to doctors appointments, school meetings, etc. I know.

Inquisitive Mom

It is interesting that while women have far more Bachelors degrees the number of professional degrees and doctorates are almost equal. So a far higher percentage of men with Bachelors degrees go on to pursue higher degrees. Why is this?

Shrinkrap

Getting graduate degrees >>> the "bewitching hour".


The Bewitching Hour
http://www.bluesuitmom.com/family/pa...rt/grumpy.html

epiphany

Yep. And thank you for stealing my thunder for me, Hunt.

What are my MALE students doing instead of their homework? AND instead of outside reading, which improves vocabulary, as well as critical reading skills? Up all night, or nearly that, playing video games. Now, girls are often online instead of doing homework as well, but they're on social networking sites & Instant Messaging, and generally with slightly less passion than the guys who are on the games, who tend toward addiction & obsession.

Other reasons for male academic underperformance:

(1) Can't see/don't see/choose not to see -- benefit of the goal (i.e., good grades, and simply the skill associated with doing the work which leads to good grades). Guys being goal-oriented equates with: non-persuasive goals = insufficient effort.

(2) IPS (Inadequate paternal supervision). It's all in the details, Dads. Don't think you're doing your sons any favors to have a "hands-off" attitude & "let him be independent" (supposedly showing him you're respecting his physiological maturity as a "man" and his separate territory/ego-field apart from you). Merely checking in every so often, when you receive an absymal Progress Report from school, is hardly an example of prevention & cure. It's about the tiny daily picture which produces the Big Picture. If you're not down in the trenches with him, finding out what he has actually learned this week, you're frankly failing him. Over & over my male students falsely assure their fathers that "there's nothing to worry about," and "I'm doing fine, Dad." That's not surprising. What's surprising is that the Dads actually buy it, without investigation. Talk about naive.

[Edit: Naturally this does not include the Very Aware CC Dads.]

Maternal supervision is not the answer. They've had enough of that. Once they're teenagers (at the latest), the vast majority of guys are not modeling their behavior on their mothers.

(3) While female myself, I agree with the poster who referred to too much female influence in schooling, but I have known this since a very young thing earning my teaching credentials. I once taught in an Outdoor Education workshop in which girls were separated from boys, and taught academics in the out-of-doors. In that setting, the boys far excelled over the girls. The girls did not know what to do with themselves, appeared disoriented, & lacked motivation. The boys acted about 5 years older than their chronological age (or the behavior others have expected of them at that age), whereas the girls regressed. This was a shocking eye-opener, and I dreaded going back to the traditional classroom.

There is no question that the structure of the traditional classroom favors females, even when the teachers are male. It would help, yes, if more teachers were male, but unfortunately the male teachers I meet on the high school and middle-school level are often even less inspiring than the females on that level. While they do understand other males, they do not necessarily employ that understanding in their teaching or in the kind of initiative & communication (& lack thereof) they take with male students.

What would help is simply more awareness of the varying approaches that work with males as opposed to females, whether that approach is from a male or female teacher. I've been criticized on cc before for my statement that I speak very differently to my male students than to my female students. I have to be a lot more blunt, a lot less nurturing & "protective," and with language that has a lot more goal content to it. Otherwise I will have no impact whatsoever.

razorsharp

epiphany, can you describe in more detail what was the outdoor education workshop. How did it differ from a regular classroom? Why do you think the boys did better?

epiphany

It was so long ago, rz, that I don't remember all the details. It was completely outdoors (woodsy environment), and we teachers had to come up with curriculum and lesson plans that taught things like math and science and even language arts and studio art by utilizing the natural environment (in part). Thus, there was no "traditional curriculum," no books even. For my part, I stressed a lot of problem-solving, which really, really appealed to the boys. (Thus, how would you determine distance, with these materials only? And, map out and measure the following...... ) I forget what I did with language arts, but I remember that the boys were less resistant to writing in the out of doors than they often are in the classroom (as I had observed them previously).

Why did the boys do better? I believe that there were a number of factors:

(1) physically, the environment appealed to them & served their physical needs much more.

(2) I think they appreciated being respected enough to "take charge" of some of the intellectual challenge, rather than being made to be docile and "take orders" all the time.
(My relationship with the boys became very strong, instantly; they showed me a lot of respect for these opportunities.)

(3) I think that most boys thrive in settings which include exploration & initiative (& again, problem-solving). The opportunity to apply strategy is an important aspect of that.

Supporting #1 above, someone recently unearthed an "ancient" daily schedule of St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA, run by the Christian Brothers. It was in its ancient days, all male. This is roughly how the schedule went: Period #1: Classics (or something like that); Period #2: 30 minutes of physical exercise; Period #3: Mathematics (or similar); Period #4: 30 minutes of phyical exercise; etc. Every seated academic period was followed by physical movement.

I do believe in single-gender schools on the high school level (minimum, maybe even middle school), because recent studies have shown that they are as beneficial for boys as they are for girls. People who freak out because they're worried about a teenager's later "social adjustment" are just on the wrong path. Sure, if you haven't had much experience dating in high school, your learning curve is often slightly longer when you do start seriously dating, but that tends to be particularly true if you were never nearly as comfortable with the opposite sex as you are with your own. (That's been my observation as parent, teacher, student of one single-sex school; not based on empirical studies.) The point is, the psychological, social, and intellectual positives of single-sex education seem to far outweigh its negatives, especially during that critical adolescent period. Most successful single-sex schools have partner other-gender schools with which they share some classes, and/or e.c.'s, and/or social experiences. At the very least, I think that every child should have the option of attending a single-gender school if he or she wants that, and I do think there are different approaches educationally which have proven to work better with one population vs. the other, on the whole. There are some students of both genders who will never go for that and for whom it is best not to push it. But as an option, I think there are not enough such schools.

In the department of negative reasons (why my female students did not perform as well), again, a lot of this appeared to be very physical/biological. The girls appeared out-of-sorts in a learning environment which was not enclosed. They kept kind of drifting together as if to form an artificial "boundary" or wall-structure, and were very uncomfortable with the open-ended, exploratory setting as well as curriculum. Their body language changed dramatically (improved) when I had to bring them indoors when it rained; they became focused again. In contrast, the boys were liberated by the setting and behaved, well, like men.

I felt very upset having to return to the regular classroom, because I could no longer pretend that boys were being sufficiently well-served by it.

razorsharp

epiphany, your post is an interesting read. It raises the question of why hasn't this been implemented or tested in our schools on a larger scale. On the one hand, I am very big on gender equality and would like to see as much mixing as possible, but on the other hand, it looks like boys are falling behind and part of that is they don't seem to have best teaching methods available to them. If you wanted to write a book or article, this could be your topic. I would certainly read it.

epiphany

fabulous, rz. You've given me a great idea.

Thanks for the feedback.

As to why it hasn't been implemented more, I think the reasons are three:

(1) political

(2) misunderstanding about the benefits of single-gender education, and exaggerated worries about the "harm"

(3) the increasing surrender of parental decisions to minors. In my work, I see that most parents seem to feel that they need to ask their children (even young ones) for permission to do anything with regard to the current & future welfare of that child. (Psst, parents: you're in charge; this is one of the privileges of parenthood.)

nbachris2788

Actually, that seems like a great idea. However, I'll bet many men wouldn't want to become primary school teachers because that's like so gay.

epiphany

^Not really, chris.

The reason that I have seen over the years that more men don't become teachers is that most are ill-suited to it (or uninterested) especially at the young end. Why? Because there's a lot of detail involved. Daily detail, lots of patience with the detail, when The Light at the End of the Tunnel is often not yet visible. Guys tend to want to get to the goal quicker, and generally have less patience dwelling on detail unless the goal is more immediate.

The whole reading process, for example, requires tremendous patience and attention to detail to succeed, especially with a variety of learners. (As opposed to merely one's own child, if one's child doesn't have a clinical need in the reading area.) Full reading readiness spans the years from preschool to Grade 3. A classroom teacher may have in any 1st or 2nd grade classroom, children who include that entire 4-year spectrum of readiness.

It's one reason why male teachers tend to gravitate more toward grade levels where they can pick up the pace more (especially high school, and because certain high school courses like history have more content and less methodology).