
How to Make School Better for Boys - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/how-to-make-school-better-for-boys/279635/
======
throwaway344
To me, one of the easiest ways to boost male achievement in education is
really simple.

Have male teachers.

An incredible 84% of teachers are female. [1] This has led to a dearth of male
role models in schol for all the guys there.

I have 1 male teacher. (I'm in high school) And he's the computer teacher, a
stereotypical male field.

[1] [http://www.edweek.org/media/pot2011final-
blog.pdf](http://www.edweek.org/media/pot2011final-blog.pdf)

~~~
mhurron
First, isn't the article about higher education, most professors are male.

Second, is that really a problem? Honestly so much of the world is becoming if
you can't physically see someone similar to you doing something you are
disadvantaged. Do you really need to see a male teaching a subject for you to
press yourself to do your best?

I had primarily women teachers too, probably everyone did. It didn't do
anything positive or negative to me. If you can not drive yourself, you are
going to be at a significant disadvantage when you move on to the working
world.

~~~
mattlutze
"It didn't do anything positive or negative to me."

Understanding that nurture is a force in developmental psychology, this
statement is unfortunately false. The people around you have an affect on your
epistemology and Super-Ego (if you care for that approach).

Only you can say what that effect was, of course. But it is disingenuous to
suggest that the people who you possibly spent more waking hours with than
your parents had no effect on you whatsoever.

~~~
mhurron
Just no. If you are so influenced by seeing the gender of someone doing
something that it sets your ability to do it you have problems well beyond
whom you see doing it.

This is just further down the road of of giving up personal responsibility. "I
never saw another man/woman doing it so I never tried. It's not my fault it's
society not giving me role models to emulate."

~~~
heurist
You're talking about children. You're saying children should be self-aware
enough to take that kind of personal responsibility for their own growth?

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pingou
Boys are born tinkerers,” she said. “They have a deep-seated need to rip
things apart, decode their inner workings, create stuff.”

Fortunately it was a woman who made that statement, it would have been sexist
otherwise, right?

~~~
cobrausn
No, because she immediately points to scientific studies backing up her
statements. Facts can't really be sexist, so if there is a problem with the
statement, then we need to determine why the study is invalid.

~~~
simias
Evolutionary psychology is always fraught with controversies.

I don't know if someone could read the paper referenced [1] and give some
insights on the methodology used.

I ask because studying the innate differences between men and women is
extremely hard, cultural bias is huge.

After reading many papers (on both sides of the "women and men are different"
fence) I've come to the personal conclusion that you can't really treat
evolutionary psychology as a hard science. It's just too controversial as it
is, everybody seems to be pushing a personal agenda. Just read the studies if
you can access them and make up your own opinion.

Maybe in a few decades when the dust has settled we might be able to reach a
consensus. As it is, I really wouldn't treat those papers as "facts".

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140)

I would like to cite more sources but the only ones that come to my mind right
now are in french. Maybe this would be a good starting point:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psyc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology)

------
DamnYuppie
It appears anything that is pro-boys is immediately seen as "anti-girls" which
shouldn't be the case. If we want true equality we need to have equal
opportunities but be aware that gender has different methods, motivations, and
desires.

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adt2bt
"Young men in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada have also fallen behind.
But in stark contrast to the United States, these countries are energetically,
even desperately, looking for ways to help boys improve. Why? They view
widespread male underachievement as a national threat: A country with too many
languishing males risks losing its economic edge."

As an American, I may be unplugged from many of these happenings, but I feel
like this is a stark difference between America and other countries. We seem
to have a laissez-faire attitude that "If there's a problem, and a deadline
for the problem, someone will just magically figure it out at the last
second." And we often attribute that someone to the free market. On a broader
note, as with any issue people seem to have significant worries about, what is
a good way to actually begin solving it, assuming this general American
attitude? I honestly don't know.

~~~
mattlutze
I'm not certain we attribute "that someone" with the free market in many
cases. Education is quite solidly considered the purview of the federal and
state governments these days, which I think contributes to that last second
feeling.

When an opportunity for work appears in the free market, there is quite often
a surge of responses. I hope it doesn't come across as cynical, but, I think
often when there's an opportunity for work in the public market, there's quite
often a surge of analysis and discussion and waiting until a response has to
be given.

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gz5
_Why aren 't they being implemented?_

Because votes can be won in the US on girls education but not on boys
education. For now. Agree there will be a tipping point.

Outside of politics, all US education needs to be addressed, independent of
any segmentation.

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belorn
_" Officials at schools at or near the tipping point are helplessly watching
as their campuses become like boy clubs, with a surfeit of men competing for a
handful of surviving women. Henry Broaddus, dean of admissions at William and
Mary, explains the new anxiety: “[M]en who enroll … expect to see women on
campus. It’s not the College of William and William; it’s the College of
William and Mary.”_

Just me who feel that it is slightly offensive and paint a picture of women as
sex objects? I wonder how they were allowed to print it without massive
outcry.

~~~
adt2bt
It's interesting how flipping the gender provides a different emotional
reaction. It reminds me entirely of the rapid sorting test in Blink by Malcolm
Gladwell. You are given two categories, such as (White or Good) and (Black or
Bad) and sort things on the two axes (face color and goodness). Apparently,
people (all colors alike) do far better with the categories as I outlined than
if you flipped good and bad, and put white with bad and black with good.
Essentially, these stereotypes (white is good, men compete for women as if
they are prizes, etc), become a part of everyone. Innately.

I'm curious, if you wanted to make a similar point as the article, but imply
that coeducational studies are more productive, how would you do so?

~~~
derefr
I don't know how much "(White or Good) and (Black or Bad)" being
psychologically-ingrained categories has to do with _race_ , though.

Some things early _homo sapiens_ knew about, that are white: rice, fatty
tissue, soap, and safe sunny environments.

Some things they knew about that are black: mold spots, dried blood, charred
flesh, and dangerous moonlit environments.

(Same for red with "sweet berries, fresh blood, flushed skin, and fire"; green
with "medicinal plants, unsafe still water, vomit"; etc.)

I bet there wouldn't be nearly as clear an association if the colors were
"vaguely dark beige" and "vaguely light brown".

~~~
adt2bt
Interesting point. Just to clarify, in the original study you were to sort
actual images of faces. So when I say white and black, I don't mean they were
sorting things such as "rice" to the "white" bin.

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mabhatter
The biggest difference is that boys are about DOING and girls are about
TALKING. That's not about just schools, but the last 400 years of men's and
women's role on society.

Boys don't typically learn by talking, they learn by pulling things apart and
doing skills. In addition, because of all the push to "score" children, we've
taken away the basic "boy" traits almost entirely.

When I was in elementary school it went form 9am to 3pm with sn hour of recess
AND half hour of lunch. There was plenty of time for boys to wiggle and make
noise and stuff. My kids current schools were from 8am to 3:30pm with about 45
minutes between one recess and lunch/recess. That's more "chair time" than
most office workers are expected in a workday. All the "hands on" things have
been removed for cost... Art, music, shop, gym are all drastically scaled back
to maybe one of each one time a week if at all. School is strictly "listen and
repeat" and MOST boys in history don't learn that way. As modern skills like
computers, machining, manufacturing,etc require equipment folks just don't
have at home, most boys never have a shot at the typical "boy jobs" until they
are 16 and go to a career center or go to college or start working.

------
jskonhovd
As a person who attended a Title 1 high school, I saw a lot guys who came from
single parent homes get kicked out after freshman year. I mean a lot them
didn't understand the concept of not talking, but at times I felt like a lot
teachers where just out to get them.

------
d0m
>> How to Make School Better for Boys?

Make them __run __more, damnit.

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russelluresti
Okay, I was willing to read this and keep an open mind. But then I got to the
fourth paragraph and saw this:

" Officials at schools ... are helplessly watching as their campuses become
like retirement villages, with a surfeit of women competing for a handful of
surviving men."

Is the argument here that women only go to college compete for men? And that
colleges with more women are "retirement villages" because there aren't enough
young men to hook up with?

Yep, done with this article.

~~~
jiggy2011
That might be an extreme interpretation but I don't see it as unlikely that
romantic possibilities are a factor for college aged people when choosing a
place to spend several years of their lives.

Somewhere with a healthy gender mix feel more inviting overall than somewhere
with a "bro club" atmosphere (or the opposite of that).

~~~
mabhatter
That's where we have a bit of a double standard of expectations. We expect a
girl to go to college ZPRIMARILY to get an MRS. Degree, preferably ABOVE her
social standing. When guys go to school we expect WORK first, Mrs. Second. You
end up with this situation where women should compete with men fairly, all the
time... Except when they want to stop competing and get married. Even then,
men are competing for FOOD ON THE TABLE, every day, the next 40 years. Women
don't have the same "skin in the game" because Daddy pays for school until
hubby marries them.

~~~
jiggy2011
I don't know if that is necessarily true. At least amongst my peer group, men
would place a high weight on non academic factors in university choice. As
long as the the university offered a course they wanted and had enough
prestige to match their perceived social standing and families expectations
factors like distance from home, cost of living , party reputation and where
their friends were going were the big factors.

From my recollection the women tended to be more conscientious about their
studies too and often had added pressure from being the first woman in their
immediate family to have attended higher education.

