Neglect and aggression hurts Males, pulling up by bootstraps. It creates higher average stress that inhibits learning and motivation. It creates the Male ego or defensive cushion Males develop to protect them from aggressions they receive. This defensive cushion alienates the Male from social and academic supports. High average stress and defensive cushion accumulates in harm over time. Men are given love, honor, and respect on the condition of achievement, money, power, and status. They must fight through confrontations from an early age to achieve feelings of self-worth. Society has created through prejudice and stereotyping, a Gender Cast System of Males and over support of Females. This is creating early training for Males to perform more menial tasks while women are being prepared for white-collar positions.
1. I fear followers of the genetic models will try to build a case for genetic learning differences or body mass requiring more activity or tactile learning. Note that nice middle class Males do not have this problem. Also the view of differences in brain activity are more due to large differences in differential mental, emotional, social, physical, and educational reinforcement over time, not organic differences.
2. I also fear the use of Male classrooms with more discipline and more time on task will only lead to more stern and even more harsh treatment and stereotyping of Males to perform more physical or menial labor to match the growing cast system being portrayed in the media against Males today.
We must learn to realize that our current, single/multiple intelligence models were simply accepted out of hand years ago and held on to by many who were in control and apparently felt satisfied enough with their own life. Such ones could not see the tremendous disadvantage and damage such narrow, short-sighted beliefs would have on others, even among some persons who are closely related to them.
I tell those who would still cling to the myth of permanence in ability they are killing their students whereas my learning theory offers two large, cognitive tools to continually improve ability and hope for children and adults. They are free to choose the myth of permanence in ability or my theory that provides hope and improvement.
The Male Crisis is one application of my Learning Theory. My Learning Theory provides two large tools we can teach to students and adults to continually improve thinking, learning, motivation to learn, and most importantly, mental/emotional health for all students and adults. My complete Learning Theory and its Cognitive tools are free to all by e-mail ??? mayfieldga@bellsouth.net Feel free to make copies of all files.
The Trouble With Boys
They're kinetic, maddening and failing at school. Now educators are trying new ways to help them succeed.
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Spend a few minutes on the phone with Danny Frankhuizen and you come away thinking, "What a nice boy." He's thoughtful, articulate, bright. He has a good relationship with his mom, goes to church every Sunday, loves the rock band Phish and spends hours each day practicing his guitar. But once he's inside his large public Salt Lake City high school, everything seems to go wrong. He's 16, but he can't stay organized. He finishes his homework and then can't find it in his backpack. He loses focus in class, and his teachers, with 40 kids to wrangle, aren't much help. "If I miss a concept, they tell me, 'Figure it out yourself'," says Danny. Last year Danny's grades dropped from B's to D's and F's. The sophomore, who once dreamed of Stanford, is pulling his grades up but worries that "I won't even get accepted at community college."
His mother, Susie Malcom, a math teacher who is divorced, says it's been wrenching to watch Danny stumble. "I tell myself he's going to make something good out of himself," she says. "But it's hard to see doors close and opportunities fall away."
What's wrong with Danny? By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind. In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes. High-school boys are losing ground to girls on standardized writing tests. The number of boys who said they didn't like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001, according to a University of Michigan study. Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses. Thirty years ago men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body. Now they're a minority at 44 percent. This widening achievement gap, says Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of Education, "has profound implications for the economy, society, families and democracy."
With millions of parents wringing their hands, educators are searching for new tools to help tackle the problem of boys. Books including Michael Thompson's best seller "Raising Cain" (recently made into a PBS documentary) and Harvard psychologist William Pollack's definitive work "Real Boys" have become must-reads in the teachers' lounge. The Gurian Institute, founded in 1997 by family therapist Michael Gurian to help the people on the front lines help boys, has enrolled 15,000 teachers in its seminars. Even the Gates Foundation, which in the last five years has given away nearly a billion dollars to innovative high schools, is making boys a big priority. "Helping underperforming boys," says Jim Shelton, the foundation's education director, "has become part of our core mission."
The problem won't be solved overnight. In the last two decades, the education system has become obsessed with a quantifiable and narrowly defined kind of academic success, these experts say, and that myopic view is harming boys. Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls--and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one. "Very well-meaning people," says Dr. Bruce Perry, a Houston neurologist who advocates for troubled kids, "have created a biologically disrespectful model of education."
Thirty years ago it was girls, not boys, who were lagging. The 1972 federal law Title IX forced schools to provide equal opportunities for girls in the classroom and on the playing field. Over the next two decades, billions of dollars were funneled into finding new ways to help girls achieve. In 1992, the American Association of University Women issued a report claiming that the work of Title IX was not done--girls still fell behind in math and science; by the mid-1990s, girls had reduced the gap in math and more girls than boys were taking high-school-level biology and chemistry.
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