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The Trouble With Boys
Two years ago Kelley King, principal of Douglass Elementary School in Boulder, Colo., looked at the gap between boys and girls and decided to take action. Boys were lagging 10 points behind girls in reading and 14 points in writing. Many more boys --than girls were being labeled as learning disabled, too. So King asked her teachers to buy copies of Gurian's book "The Minds of Boys," on boy-friendly classrooms, and in the fall of 2004 she launched a bold experiment. Whenever possible, teachers replaced lecture time with fast-moving lessons that all kids could enjoy. Three weeks ago, instead of discussing the book "The View From Saturday," teacher Pam Unrau divided her third graders into small groups, and one student in each group pretended to be a character from the book. Classes are noisier, Unrau says, but the boys are closing the gap. Last spring, Douglass girls scored an average of 106 on state writing tests, while boys got a respectable 101.
Primatologists have long observed that juvenile male chimps battle each other not just for food and females, but to establish and maintain their place in the hierarchy of the tribe. Primates face off against each other rather than appear weak. That same evolutionary imperative, psychologists say, can make it hard for boys to thrive in middle school--and difficult for boys who are failing to accept the help they need. The transition to middle school is rarely easy, but like the juvenile primates they are, middle-school boys will do almost anything to avoid admitting that they're overwhelmed. "Boys measure everything they do or say by a single yardstick: does this make me look weak?" says Thompson. "And if it does, he isn't going to do it." That's part of the reason that videogames have such a powerful hold on boys: the action is constant, they can calibrate just how hard the challenges will be and, when they lose, the defeat is private.
When Brian Johns hit seventh grade, he never admitted how vulnerable it made him feel. "I got behind and never caught up," says Brian, now 17 and a senior at Grand River Academy, an Ohio boarding school. When his parents tried to help, he rebuffed them. When his mother, Anita, tried to help him organize his assignment book, he grew evasive about when his homework was due. Anita didn't know where to turn. Brian's school had a program for gifted kids, and support for ones with special needs. But what, Anita asked his teachers, do they do about kids like her son who are in the middle and struggling? Those kids, one of Brian's teachers told Anita, "are the ones who fall through the cracks."
It's easy for middle-school boys to feel outgunned. Girls reach sexual maturity two years ahead of boys, but other, less visible differences put boys at a disadvantage, too. The prefrontal cortex is a knobby region of the brain directly behind the forehead that scientists believe helps humans organize complex thoughts, control their impulses and understand the consequences of their own behavior. In the last five years, Dr. Jay Giedd, an expert in brain development at the National Institutes of Health, has used brain scans to show that in girls, it reaches its maximum thickness by the age of 11 and, for the next decade or more, continues to mature. In boys, this process is delayed by 18 months.
Middle-school boys may use their brains less efficiently, too. Using a type of MRI that traces activity in the brain, Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, director of the cognitive neuroimaging laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., tested the activity patterns in the prefrontal cortex of children between the ages of 11 and 18. When shown pictures of fearful faces, adolescent girls registered activity on the right side of the prefrontal cortex, similar to an adult. Adolescent boys used both sides--a less mature pattern of brain activity. Teenage girls can process information faster, too. In a study about to be published in the journal Intelligence, researchers at Vanderbilt University administered timed tests--picking similar objects and matching groups of numbers--to 8,000 boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 18. In kindergarten, boys and girls processed information at about the same speeds. In early adolescence, girls finished faster and got more right. By 18, boys and girls were processing with the same speed and accuracy.
Scientists caution that brain research doesn't tell the whole story: temperament, family background and environment play big roles, too. Some boys are every bit as organized and assertive as the highest-achieving girls. All kids can be scarred by violence, alcohol or drugs in the family. But if your brain hasn't reached maturity yet, says Yurgelun-Todd, "it's not going to be able to do its job optimally."
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Member Comments
Posted By: mayfieldga @ 11/03/2008 2:13:24 PM
Comment: 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.
Posted By: economicwrestler @ 09/05/2008 1:39:23 PM
Comment: Our public school education system is a disaster. This came about for many reasons. Society: parents aren't allowed to discipline their own child without fear that child services is going to knock on the door. A good parent knows what their own child needs, whether it is a spanking or time out. Also, single family homes aren't suited to put the child first. The single parent is working all the time and has their own life to worry about. Instead of reading to the child, playing with the child or showing the child how something is done, the single parent puts in a DVD so the child will be entertained and stay out of the parents way while she catches up on work, email, etc. Then when the child starts acting out or becomes restless, our society says we have to medicate the child because it has to be ADHD. Our society thinks everything can be fixed with a pill. I own pharmacies and I know very few children to be ADHD that truly needs the medicine. The others are an inconvenience so they get the medics. Society, in general, has allowed our educations system to flounder because we don't discipline our children, we tell our children that if they fail at something it is the systems fault not the failing child's fault, and way to many parents are unconcerned about the schools and the children in them. Except, of course, their own child. And sometimes he/she really doesn't matter. It also fails politically. Everything teachers do nowadays is watched over to make sure it isn't somehow biased. Making sure that woman had the same opportunity is an awesome idea in theory, but in practice some girls mom will feel that her daughter isn't given something so it must be sexism. She complains to the school and eventually all the boys start to suffer because all the resources are spent on the girls. If we could take a huge step politically and allow or mandate that all schools have subjects where the sexes are separate so that it enables both sexes to learn the material by using the best method for the different sexes. Some subjects should be coed, but the majority and the important subjects should be separate. Also, allow for recess and gym class. Oh, and uniforms. The government should make uniforms mandatory. Finally, pay our teachers more. They get into the profession to give back to the children. I know, there are some teachers out there that just plain stink at what they do and couldn't teach anybody. The school will find this out and fire her. But the majority of teachers are good people that are trying their best to educate America's future. Give the more resources, better pay, and children willing to learn and they will succeed. The child that is ready to learn will be disciplined at home, read to, worked with and taught manners at home. This would go a long way in helping our poor public school system
Posted By: mjkittredge @ 04/11/2008 3:50:39 AM
Comment: Ok, I couldn't ignore THIS: quote " If your child is not taking interest in studies it means teen are struggling from learning disability." That is BS. Not taking an interest in studies could come from a variety of reasons, foremost among them the classes being boring, and the material not relevant to the students lives.
The problem as I see it, is that teachers and the subjects they teach, and the way they teach them, the work they assign is given a free pass. It faces little if any scrutiny. Sure, teachers submit their lesson plans to the school board, but they get a free pass from them too. Parents just assume that what and how the teachers are teaching is the right thing, without having a clue.
The downside to this lack of scrutiny, is that huge amounts of young peoples lives are wasted, sitting bored in pointless classes learning material and subject matter that they will never put to use. Sure, they spend hours and hours copying notes until their fingers are sore. Sure, they listen to hours and hours each day of long rambling lectures. And they diligently fill in either (A)(B)(C) with their number 2 pencil. Unfortunately, when this information isn't put to any practical use on a regular basis, students will eventually forget most of it.
Not only is their time wasted, they become frustrated and distrusting of a school that forces these things upon them, and clueless parents with rose colored glasses who figure it's great learning preparing kids for their future lives.
The only useful things I got out of school, 1-12, was basic math, and touch typing. Things I could have learned on my own, without any schooling. The other subjects, I have had no use for other than a few questions in Trivial Pursuit games.
The classes and their coursework need a comprehensive review, and more relevant subjects need to be taught instead.