The issue of boys vs girls in school.
Statistically speaking, there are more boy geniuses than there are girl geniuses; if this true, then why is there a major disparity in achievement between boys vs girls in school?
The problem occurs across all grade levels from elementary to high school. There are more girls as the presidents of school organizations, more girls enrolled in advanced placement classes, and more girls than ever becoming the valedictorian of their classes.
Girls are receiving scholarships to colleges that never dreamed of having an equal male to female ratio because this generation is producing overachieving girls, while a great number of boys are lagging behind.
So what causes these gender issues in school?
How has the system set different standards and expectations for boys vs girls in school? Finally, what can teachers do to make the classroom equal for both sexes?
These answers are not easy to agree upon, but there are some theories worth contemplating.
When the rules for affirmative action and equal rights for girls entered the school system, people jumped at the chance to educate females to a greater extent. After all, it is the God-granted liberty of every American to receive equal treatment under the law. When girls were finally told that they could be somebody, it empowered them to prove people right.
Women from all generations applied to colleges and universities, and teachers began telling girls for the first time that they too could be astronauts or scientists if they wanted to. This idea in theory was a good idea, but what ended up happening is that the bar for expectations changed and was set differently for boys vs girls in school.
This is true especially in the younger years, when elementary-aged students are praised for their abilities to “follow the rules;” many attitudes and ideals are molded during these years.
Girls are praised and rewarded for things such as keeping their hands to themselves, controlling their bodily functions, and sitting quietly.
Boys, on the other hand, are chastised for the opposite behaviors simply because they have more testosterone than estrogen. The old saying, “Boys will be boys” is applicable even to a school environment, but those very behaviors that make them boys, also make them associate school with rules and restrictions instead of an environment where they are free to explore and learn.
In one scenario, they are encouraged to box out an opposing basketball player with force or tackle the opposing team’s quarterback with everything they have, but in the classroom they are told to keep their hands to themselves and keep their mouths closed.
I am not saying that they should be allowed to run wild in school, but the outlet and pride that they find through things such as physical activity is not often found in a classroom setting. For this very reason, they are becoming less interested in learning and more interested in finding ways to be removed from the classroom in order to do what they want. As girls pass them in achievements on every level, they are challenged increasingly less to do better. What was once an institution dominated by boys, girls are exceedingly higher performing as a whole.
So what can be done to solve this problem?
First of all, our society needs more men to be fathers and mentors. As a father, if you only attend sporting events and never think to attend parent/teacher conferences, then you are unknowingly telling your child that a sporting event is more important than his education. He will always remember that mom does the education stuff and dad comes to the important stuff.
On the same topic, where are all the men in education?
The education of generations of future leaders is an important role, and men and women alike have great responsibilities to teach girls and boys alike. Boys need to see male role models who value education; what better way than by having a male teacher that they respect and learn from?
In elementary schools, teachers can do several things to help boys be more successful.
First of all, they need to realize that there is a significance genetic and hormonal difference between boys and girls. What boys find awesome, girls find disgusting. Teachers need to find a way to celebrate these differences without invoking anarchy but also without breaking spirits.
A common misconception is that behavior determines ability. This is a tragedy on our society. There are many boy geniuses graduating at the bottom of their class because their teachers gave up on trying to see past their behavior years earlier.
Boys respond to encouragement in the same way that men respond to respect. Educators need to focus on the achievements of their male students in the same way as those of their female students.
The topic of boys vs girls in school will continue to be heavily debated throughout the rest of this generation until there is a noticeable reversal in achievement standards. If small steps are taken in the elementary years to empower boys to be successful in the classroom, in much the same way they did for girls years ago, then the trend could begin to level out again.
We need our boys to grow up and become men, and they must have an education in order to see what they are capable of achieving.
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image of boy raising hand by annissat
I hope we can see how very differential treatment of boys and girls as early as one year of age is creating these differences in thinking, learning, motivation, and mental health. Boys are given more aggressive treatment to make them tough as early as one year of age by parents, teachers, peers, others. They are also given much less kind, caring, *verbal interaction, and support for fear of coddling. I feel this combined treatment is creating lags in verbal knowledge and other communication skills. I feel it is creating more activity (not testosterone) for stress relief. I feel the need for attention and approval is greater as boys are given love and honor only on condition of some achievement. I feel unless we begin providing the same kind, caring, verbal interaction and support by parents, teachers, and others, we will lose many millions of male students due to failure in the information age which requires much more support. I feel we really need to see how those differences in treatment from infancy are really hurting boys today.
As girls we are treated much better and enjoy more hope and care from society. Since we as girls are given by differential treatment, much more continual, positive – mental, social/emotional support, verbal interaction and care from an early age onward, this creates quite the opposite outcome for girls when compared with boys. We enjoy much more care and support from society from infancy through adulthood and receive love and honor simply for being girls. This creates all of the good things. We enjoy lower average stress for more ease of learning. We enjoy much more freedom of expression from much protection that makes us look more unstable at times. Of course we can also use that same freedom of expression to give verbal, silent abuse, and hollow kindness/patronization to our Male peers with impunity knowing we are protected. We enjoy much lower muscle tension for more ease and ability in handwriting and motivation to write. We enjoy much more positive, trust/communication from parents, teachers, peers, and more support for perceived weaknesses. We are reaping a bonanza in the information age. The lower the socioeconomic bracket the much more amplified the differential treatment from infancy and more differentiated over time through adulthood.
However, there is a much smaller number of Males from more middle class families in “many areas of the world” who are given much more stability, knowledge, and skills from a young age to compete very successfully in the information age. Mind you, they are still falling behind collectively from their middle class Female peers due to some still remaining, more aggressive treatment and less support. Those middle class Males are also given the dubious advantage of love and honor only on condition of some achievement, status, or position in the world. To those ends, many of those boys have been competing successfully in school and other areas to continue receiving those essentials of self-worth: love and honor from society. Since I consider those persons’ values as desiring having love and honor from others “ valuing the world, an essential need,” this can easily take on drug-like proportions for those more supported Males in academics, college, and competition in the technical fields where many are seeking out “continued love and honor from their groups”. Since those supported Males are coming from and pooling from all areas of the world, their numbers may appear much larger when confined to those smaller professions of society.
So here we have many many more women choosing to find levels of innersecurity in areas they love, but perhaps not in the stem fields. We also have a much fewer number of Males who are supported and continually striving for areas of greater “and continued love and honor from society, to continue to receive what they feel is that ongoing need for innersecurity from achievement.
Women are already taking over many areas of society, while Men are slowly losing out in every area due to more improper treatment from the archaic belief, “boys should be strong”. I say, even in the stem fields, as more and more women, “choose to go into the stem fields from more desire” they will slowly begin to take over those areas also. At the same time, as we see the middle class diminish and an increase in its more aggressive, destabilizing forces for Male children, there will be fewer Males able to reach into those professional ranks just as they are already falling behind more and more in society. Theory to all on request.