"Boys can make the grade, if they're not bored"

anitaw · May 22, 2007, 7:13am

My daughter and my sons are ‘male pattern’ learners as are their parents. I attended a single sex high school and absolutely ran away from it when it was time for university. I just couldn’t stand what girls did to girls- and throughout my life the most seriously disturbed working groups I have worked in have been all female.

Boys and girls both have protective mechanisms when things aren’t going right. Boys tend to externalize and girls tend to internalize. So, when boys are bored they tend to show it, girls tend to feel it. Teachers are notoriously unsuccessful at detecting internalizing issues, great at detecting externalizing ones.

What makes everyone so sure girls aren’t just as bored, but just are doing a better job of ‘hiding it’? I was bored to tears at phases of my education-- but enormously ‘successful’ throughout because I was simply too tough, too proud to let anyone get the best of me. It had nothing to do with gender. It had, and has, everything to do with an internal locus of control and a ton of flexibility.

Allmusic · May 22, 2007, 7:22am

We have two well known girls’ schools in our area, and I have heard all kinds of stories, particularly about one, that would prevent me from ever considering sending my own D there. The social competition, the material “one-ups-manship” is reportedly terrible.

Additionally, gender stereotypes are just that…stereotypes, as my S is more quiet and cerebral, and my D more active and physical. I really disagree with categorically dismissing or including activities, learning environments, etc., based on nothing more than gender.

bethievt · May 22, 2007, 7:45am

My son is quiet and cerebral too, but he’s had to deal with classrooms with kids–mostly boys–who are disruptive because they need more physical activity etc. It affects everyone’s learning.

Drosselmeier · May 22, 2007, 9:09am

Well, lets be fair. The pattern Alumother mentions here does exist, I think. And it does tend to rear its head when these sorts of discussions arise. Conservatives often scoff at hugging trees and eating quiche. And liberals tend to scoff at deforestation and fossil fuels. These differences find their way into discussions about education. While there are conservatives who think cooperation and life-skills ought to be taught in schools, and while there are liberals who think only the Three Rs should be taught there, generally, conservatives camp on the Three Rs and liberals camp on life skills. I think Alumother is just trying to make sure this discussion doesnt devolve into an us against them political war, as often happens when this sort of thing comes up.

It is relevant because it helps us get a better picture of where an advocate for a certain point-of-view is coming from. If an advocate claims Boys tend to like dolls, and girls tend to like guns, well, we want to know if the advocate has encountered this in her own children or whether she is just repeating something she has heard elsewhere. If we know the person has children of only one sex, then we have our answer.

But, of course, many people with both sexes disagree with you. It could be that the majority of parents with kids of both sexes would disagree with you and that your situation is anomalous. Perhaps you live in unique circumstances that influence your and your friends position. Perhaps your politics also plays a role. To give us an informal feel for what the case may be here, I think knowing the sex of the posters children is useful. The discussion doesnt have to be combative. Lets just try to see if some sort of constructive pattern emerges.

This could be, but I do not think we have much of a temperature on it. I think I may support single-sex education. Then again, I have seen so much success in mixed-sex settings I question whether the sex of the students matters very much when it comes to educational effectiveness. I suspect both settings have strengths and weaknesses. I know for a fact that as a result of my boys seeing great mathematical strength in many girls, they now have exactly the same expectations of girls in this area as they have of boys. They would be shocked to discover talk of a disparity between the sexes here. And my girls would completely reject the idea of boys having some built-in inferiority to girls when it comes to language arts. They have never really seen any such difference, and so would not be in position to readily accept that it exists.

I think a lot of what we attribute to differences in the sexes comes about because of differences in behavior and perceptions of the sexes, not inherent ability. I have a monitor in my room here so that I can hear my youngest kids at night. Each morning when I sit here I get to hear them awaken. I am often stunned by the stark contrasts in behavior between the girls and boys. I am hearing war right now. My three year-old boy is roaring like a lion as he stalks some imaginary gazelle. He is talking about sinking his teeth into the gazelles neck and ripping it open. When my five-year-old girl entered the room, she became disgusted by the lion, by all the talk of blood and savagery. She also instantly became the gazelle. My three year-old is after her right now. How did this happen? I never taught that kid that he should identify with the lion and not the gazelle. I never taught my daughter to have compassion for the gazelle. It is always like this with my boys and girls. Why do the boys prize growling and wrestling and attacking, while the girls cherish civilization? I think there are differences, marvelous and fascinating differences. I love the things I see in my women and men here. I do not, however, think these differences mean boys and girls must have poorer performances in some pursuits than others. I place the same demand for superior mathematical performance on the girls as I do the boys, and as a result the girls are hitting just as hard as the boys. I also place the same demand for superior historical and literary analysis on the boys as I do the girls. And so far, the boys are hitting every bit as hard as the girls. I think where we as a society have gone wrong, dreadfully wrong, is that we have treated the differences between boys and girls as excuses for placing different demands upon (and having different expectations of ) them. The demands and expectations should be exactly the same. The way we affirm them as they meet our expectations should differ, this, due to the inherent differences between the sexes.

weenie · May 22, 2007, 9:17am

Kelsmom syas:

You’ve touched on a very important issue! Fortunately, this seems to automatically happen when men are in charge of the all-boys end of things. That’s what ultimately makes the difference, I’m sorry to say. (It seems like such a sexist remark, but it’s just what I’ve witnessed.)

epiphany · May 22, 2007, 9:22am

“Teachers are notoriously unsuccessful at detecting internalizing issues, great at detecting externalizing ones.”

Thank you. And just where do you come off making just an obnoxious, unfounded generalization such as that? You must find “teachers” (mega-category, by the way) absolutely idiotic, insensitive, unperceptive about student-to-student differences which you can obviously see, whereas a trained, observant, insightful, intelligent, highly educated, experienced teacher would not be able to see.

Well you certainly do not know me, nor clearly have you read even one of my posts about education on CC in the last 2 years.

This is the only real stereotype I see on this thread.

For clarification–the primary (not only, primary) reason for single sex education in the high school years especially, has been not an assumption that all girls learn one way or in a certain environment, whereas boys are the opposite. The primary reason in the high school years is to limit the dominance of (a) the immature aspects of male-female social interaction in this particular stage of development and (b) especially how point (a) affects the learning environment for both. It’s a matter of focus and concentration rather than any assumption of either gender being monolithic.

Clearly, any single-sex environment, at any age of environment, will reveal significant differences in styles, preferences, capacities when it comes to approaches used. For those of you who are parents of sons, no one is saying that it’s not possible to have a quiet boy or a physically active girl. (One of my daughters is “the son I never had.”) However, often segmenting by gender can reduce the variables in the learning environment, thereby helping the teacher tailor the approaches on the one hand, and freeing up the learner on the other. It’s a matter of efficiency rather than stereotyping.

Single-sex education does not work for everyone, includling in the high school years. I am not a particular fan, for a variety of reasons, of single-sex education below middle school or above high school, but I am glad that we live in a free & educationally diverse country where that option is available on all levels, including college. At all levels of education there are some social downsides, as well as some upsides, to a single-gender environment. Some adults, including people on this thread, are turned off by the female-to-female social interactions in those environments. As a teacher I’m far more nauseated by the posing, flirting, showing off behavior between the genders which dominates many coed high school classes & which directly interferes with the learning, than with the female cattiness & destructiveness others have noted in all-girls’ schools. To each her own. Some people would prefer to put up with the former, for the advantages of coed collaboration among students mature enough to benefit from that.

Below high school I have advocated for years a hybrid learning environment which variously allows for some gender segmentation. Again, it doesn’t mean that universal assumptions are going to made about that gender, when segmented. But it has been found that even before high school, such segmentation overall has a more profound (positive) effect on boys. In my experience with a variety of educational environments & approaches, this dramatic difference speaks more to the rigid assumptions, formats of traditional coed schooling than to anything else – i.e., they continue to be “built” far more for females (in the majority) than for males (in the majority).

coolweather · May 22, 2007, 9:25am

Post #18: “And I can see where the growing emphasis on NCLB testing and CA standards testing and teaching to the test is crowding out time in the day for these types of learning strategies and that is also a shame.”

Yes, shame and shame here California! S had STAR test before AP test, then came back for STAR test at the middle of last week. Yesterday he was till in STAR test. And for the rest of the year, kids just watch movies or do nothing to the end of the 3rd week in June.

weenie · May 22, 2007, 9:41am

By the way, I for one, fully appreciate that boys come in all stripes and colors - the “cerebral,” nerdy, super charged, athletic, straight, gay, whatever. (My own boys are non-athletic musicians.) I actually have seen them ALL better accomodated in an all-boys setting. Really, the boys find their niche, they don’t feel pressured to be “manly,” and, gasp, it’s cool to be smart! They are NEEDED (wanted!) to participate fully in choir, drama, and soccer equally.

epiphany · May 22, 2007, 9:53am

Thank you, weenie. Your post is an illustration that much of the anti-single-sex argumentation (including off this thread) is based on lack of experience – on fear, prejudice, assumptions about just what a single-gender environment will supposedly do to, or not do for, one’s child. (That’s separate from whether an individual student or family simply prefers a coed environment – wholly different issue.) You have experienced very clearly that it is absolutely not the case that boys’ differences from each other will vaporize in a single-gender setting.

And if you’re the one that made the comment about guys being in charge, I agree with you there, too (as a female). I’ve learned to really listen to my male pupils show me how best they learn, and I enjoy that process thoroughly. It’s a joy to give boys some say in how to construct the learning environment – or even a single lesson – for them.

sjmom2329 · May 22, 2007, 10:21am

weenie, your post expresses my view better than my own comments! When all students are male, there’s less “role playing.” My earlier point, echoed by epiphany, is that I think you have to actually have some experience with single gender schools to really understand how they are different.

By the way, I also have cerebral, quiet, musician kids.

Alumother · May 22, 2007, 10:42am

I really don’t think anyone is saying single-sex education isn’t one great way to educate children. For some kids some times it is great. As I said, I attended a single-sex school in England for a year. I loved it.

It is also interesting to hear other ways of approaching the issue. I, like Drosselmeier, have also thought of this as boys being built to engage in battles and hunts and girls being built to maintain societies. On average. Because as a girl, I as I said was outspoken, aggressive, etc. So educational and societal options which support the differences of the genders without binding anyone to their gender unwisely are a good thing.

anitaw · May 22, 2007, 10:42am

Epiphany put your claws down and read the research. I was not responding to you nor was I commenting on you.
TEachers are excellent at picking up ADHD and the disruptive behavioral disorders- much better than parents in accuracy studies.
TEachers are less accurate, much less so, at picking up depression and anxiety. The research is replete on this topic.
‘Teachers’ is a generic categorization which does not mean every single teacher. ‘Boys’ does not mean every boy, ‘girls’ does not mean every girl. I guess that in addition to classifying our children you expect us to qualify every word in our posts and state our qualifications for making them.

I have read many, many of your posts. I have also been professional in this field for 25 years. I do my reading. I have the greatest and utmost of respect for teachers and even have been one.

epiphany · May 22, 2007, 10:56am

Wow. Put down your own obvious aggression, which you initiated,and stop generalizing, PLEASE.

I’m not your statistic. And I’m apparently way more intelligent than is possible for you to understand, let alone appreciate. I have “read the research,” thank you, and certainly do not need to be “informed” by you, or lectured at. You made a huge generalization about “teachers,” and have just done so again. I have yet to met a single teacher, personally, that is not at least as interested in the internal processes as in the external manifestations, & able to differentiate & apply those observations. But hey, maybe I just hang out with the fringe minority.:rolleyes:

I have, however, met a number of teachers unwilling (or hesitant) to apply those observations, due to frustration with their own responsibilities, competing accountabilities, etc. It speaks much more to a failure of the system (and to the over-systemization of public education) than to whether teachers have absorbed & are capable of applying the core learning in their credentialing programs, which most definitely includes internal processes. I have met a number of teachers who have admitted to being liberated in a different environment, such as a more autonomous classroom, school, etc.

StickerShock · May 22, 2007, 11:26am

Epiphany, I wanted to highlight some of your points & state how much I agreeed. But I’d have to highlight every word. You nailed it. Especially the part about single sex education reducing the variables in the learning envoronment.

Weenie, I think this is a very succinct way of summing up why all types of boys thrive in single sex high schools. And for the rough-around-the-edges jock, it can be enlightening to see a fellow teenage boy shining & developing the artsy side of his nature. The jocks will come to see that side as masculine, too, much more readily than the jock in a coed school where the girls are leaders in those areas.

Dross: You speak of your kids not buying into the “built-in inferiority” of one gender. Nobody is claiming any INDIVIDUAL boy or girl is destined to be inferior in verbal or mathematical ability, respectively. But it is indisputable that there are more boys with extremely high mathematical/spatial aptitude than girls.

timely · May 22, 2007, 11:43am

Washdad,
As a mother of 2 boys and 1 girl, all homeschooled (did I remember all the relevant info I was supposed to post?), I don’t have any experience with magnet schools. However, from what I have read, they are very effective. Maybe it’s due to the choice factor that is a strength of the collegiate system. Does anyone know why this type of school has to be rare?

As an aside on the issues of boys and single-sex environments, our son is in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M university. Girls were first admitted to the Corps in the mid-70’s but were housed separately and formed separate outfits from the boys. As you would imagine, the harrassment they faced was pretty severe. At some point, the all-girl outfits were disbanded and most units were gender-integrated.

Our S does not disrespect the girls in his outfit (well, some of them he does), but he resents them being there. Basically, it seems to come down to the level of competition being reduced due to the female cadets being physically weaker as a rule.

There is one dorm housing the only 2-3 remaining all-male outfits. The other males in the Corps refer wi****lly to that dorm as “the last castle”. :-)

anitaw · May 22, 2007, 12:02pm

Now I will reply to Epiphany;s comments, specifically:
“None of the girls I have taught, even the most active ones, have needed quite the degree of control, freedom, independence & flexibility of the learning environment that boys have, including the physically quieter boys. It’s as much a function of psyche as of physiology.”

I think that if this has been anyone’s life experience as a teacher then they have not met the full range of the female sex.

I attended 4 years of all girls schools and perhaps because I needed control, freedom, independence and flexibility in my learning environment- it was simply not my cup of tea. IT doesn’t mean it is not ideal for some…

My classmates were indifferent students whose intellectuality and sense of personal power were not enhanced by an all female school experience. Rather, it brought out some of the worst attributes of ‘mean girls’- the fear of those different than themselves, the need to control through bullying, etc… Mind you, this was many years ago, but I think that most of us truly thrived only once we were in an environment where there was balance of many sorts.

I long ago recognized a bully when I saw one.
Epiphany preaches and bullies out of both sides of her mouth. I should have learned it my last time around on CC…

Drosselmeier · May 22, 2007, 1:39pm

And of course I never said anyone claimed an individual girl or boy fits these molds. My point was that there is a common belief that girls have a nature that means they will have a tendency to do poorer in math than boys:

Until recently, it was believed that male-female differences in math and science were caused by biology. In other words, girls’ and boys’ brains are different, so they are better suited for different things. The notion is that boys have superior spatial abilities, making them better suited for certain mathematical manipulations. Girls, on the other hand, are supposed to be better at language and writing. Evidence shows that boys do excel in math, and girls appear to do better in verbal-related skills.
<a href=“http://www.nncc.org/Curriculum/sac52_math.science.girls.html[/url]”>http://www.nncc.org/Curriculum/sac52_math.science.girls.html</a>

I am saying that as a result of a coeducational setting, my kids, both male and female, will find this belief hard to accept because they have seen equally superior performances in mathematics in both sexes. Because of their environment, we see none of the dominating behavior many have reported because all participants recognize that everyone else has significant ability to contribute. The girls do not defer to the boys in math, and the boys do not defer to the girls in literature.

I do not dispute this. My concern is that we ought not allow “facts” like this to influence us so that we create [educational environments that have expectations of boys that we do not place upon girls](<a href=“http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_n7-8_v35/ai_19175932”>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_n7-8_v35/ai_19175932</a>). I think we have done this for thousands of years so that we have lost tens of thousands of [phenomenal</a> mathematicians, this, simply because they were female](<a href=“http://www.sonoma.edu/Math/faculty/falbo/noether.html]phenomenal”>http://www.sonoma.edu/Math/faculty/falbo/noether.html). We have done precisely the same things to blacks. Indeed, I think this sort of negative selection is so pernicious that it causes women and blacks to select themselves out of what they were meant to be. There are women, even now in the twenty-first century, who think a woman’s place is in the home only, and that she has no business “wasting her most fruitful years” in academics. This is not just a monstrously Neanderthalian idea held only by a few women. In vast regions of our world, even of our own country, it rules the day. Imagine girls in possession of the intellectual vigor required to do good math, being raised in such a cave-man world as ours. Even if we give girls every opportunity, the cave-man influences all around them will persist, ever threatening to knock them down. I think that is quite possibly why “it is indisputable that there are more boys with extremely high mathematical/spatial aptitude than girls.”. Boys have had a somewhat arbitrarily designated jump on girls (likely due to sexual dimorphism in our species) of several thousand years. I do not think human intellect has changed fundamentally in that time, and so, I suspect a change in culture would find us selecting far more girls than we now do, who have extremely high mathematical/spatial aptitude.

Please excuse my shameless plug of a place that increasingly becomes dear to me, but I must take a minute here to applaud how Princeton treats its students on this issue. My oldest boy once visited a lecture on Surreal Numbers at the school, given by the great mathematician John Horton Conway. Arriving about an hour early, he began reading a book, eventually to get into a conversation with another Princeton academic (whose name escapes me) on an issue having to do with Imaginary Numbers. My daughter eventually joined the discussion and the three of them haggled for the entire hour, until the lecture began. Afterward, they exchanged information and continued their discussion. My son was completely blown away by this, and so was my daughter. The boy said something like ‘At Princeton, you can be black, white, green, yellow, red, female, gay, straight, and everything in between, but when you step into Fine Hall, none of that matters. You are perfectly at home because those people just expect that you are packing some ability, and that you belong there’. That you belong. You belong there with all those huge brains. That sense alone represents an enormous selective pressure that WILL, not may, but WILL sift through any population, even a population of girls, to find those with superior math ability. I am saying this sort of pressure has existed for boys and against girls for thousands of years. We need to apply it everywhere, as Princeton does, and for everyone. It needs to exist in our homes, in our neighborhoods and all over the world. Personally, and I do not mean to offend here- I just feel very strongly about this, but when I encounter people and cultures that do not adopt this attitude toward women, I do not tiptoe around what I consider the FACT about those people and cultures. They are clearly inferior.

Alumother · May 22, 2007, 1:49pm

Funny I just found this on the Princeton website. Did not know Drosselmeier had posted a Princeton comment. Promise. This is a description of a senior thesis done by a young woman on decision-making by gender. I think maybe we could all agree there are differences between men and women, boys and girls. And maybe we could all agree that there are several different ways in the education system of coping with the differences - including just improving the educational experience for all with smaller classes and more hands-on, experiential learning. And maybe we could all agree that the ways of coping ought to understand the differences and not force them upon people. Because in any group there are outliers. Outliers with feelings.

<a href=“Senior tests gender differences in political behavior”>Senior tests gender differences in political behavior;

BTW, the reason I brought up politics at the outset because I once saw one of these threads degenerate into people saying boys did badly in school because of feminist teachers. Which I just couldn’t swallow.

StickerShock · May 22, 2007, 1:52pm

Nothing offensive in your post at all, Drosselmeier. But what if at that Princeton lecture on Surreal Numbers, the ushers noticed that three times as many men as women were entering the auditorium, and they decided to stop admitting men until the gender balance in the room was 50/50? I think that would be nuts. And that’s going on in college admissions today at tech-type schools.

4Giggles · May 22, 2007, 1:55pm

Clearly the person who defined boys at being better at math/science has not met my D!! who by the way can’t spell to save her life, who also requires no punctuation as everything is one free flowing thought!

Nor have they met my S the drummer who only wants to write music.

"Boys can make the grade, if they're not bored"

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