Why are boys lagging behind girls in today’s schools? Last week, The Toronto Globe and Mail published a whole series of in-depth articles entitled “Failing Boys” and focusing on the so-called “boy problem” in our schools and in the wider North American society. As recently as 1998, the popular press was full of stories about schools short-changing girls and residual examples of gender bias in our supposedly sanitized, politically-correct textbooks. There’s a new gender gap in education: in Canada and North America, boys now rank behind girls on nearly every measure of academic achievement and young men are gradually being superceded in universities and the professions. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/failing-boys/
Boys are lagging and the problem is fast emerging as the educational issue of our time. Searching for the root cause leads us in many different directions. In a fine Overview piece (October 16, 2010), Education Reporter Kate Hammer identified five key factors: the feminization of education, the appeal of video games, the boy code of behaviour, developmental differences, and the lack of positive role models. The most contentious of these is “feminization” because it raises fundamental questions about the unintended consequences of one of the most important social movements of the 1960s and 70s.
The “Boy Problem” has crept up on us in schools. But the basic facts can no longer be ignored:
- Only 31.9 per cent of boys have overall marks of at least 80 per cent, compared to 46.3 per cent who make the A grade.
- Only 20. 4 per cent of boys score in the top 25 % on standardized reading tests, compared to 30.1 per cent of girls. Thirty per cent of boys score in the bottom 25 per cent, while only 19 per cent of girls do so.
- Nearly one in 10 boys repeat a grade (9.9 per cent) compared to 6.5 per cent of girls.
- Boys are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed medication three times as often as girls.
- In Ontario, just 27 per cent of teachers are male, down from 31 per cent a decade ago. In B.C., 28 per cent of practising teachers are male.
- Young men are now the minority in most university classes , and women account for about 60 per cent of all Canadian undergraduates.
Talking about the possible feminization of education has been taboo until recently, at least inside the educational system. It’s already a raging debate in Western Europe where the “feminized pedagogy” is a divisive political issue and scholars openly debate whether “feminization” has led to a “softer” curriculum less suited to boys than girls. In Canada, English literature teachers are often accused of loading their course reading lists with “women’s books” by the Bronte sisters, Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, and Lucy Maud Montgomery. In its 2009 report, the Ontario EQA Office noted that boys are not reading as much outside of class, with those reading 3+ hours per week dropping by 4 percentage points to only 32 percent. While in class, the mostly female teacher force generally find today’s adolescent boys unruly, tuned-out, or inclined to skip heavy reading classes.
The Big Question arising from The Globe and Mail “Failing Boys” Series is What has Happened to the Boys in our Schools? How has the feminization of the teaching profession impacted upon the education of boys? Do new teaching methods such as pair-and-share, cooperative learning, and other “soft” pedagogies work to the disadvantage of boys? In diagnosing record numbers of boys with ADHD, are we in danger of treating “boyhood” as a disease? And what can be done to reverse the trend line for today’s boys and tomorrow’s men?
The feminization of teaching methodologies has been posed in Western Europe as an underlying cause of the contemporary “Educational Crisis.” Last week, I attended the Biennial Canadian History of Education Conference (Toronto, October 21-24, 2010) where Greetje Timmerman of the University of Groningen gave a fascinating academic paper on the subject. The paper, entitled “Tough or Soft?: The Invention of Feminine Pedagogy as a Cause for Educational Crisis,” raised a few eyebrows.
Dr. Timmerman identified “Feminine Pedagogy” as a major political issue and provided a very thoughtful analysis of its origins and legacy.
Here’s a capsule summary of the background:
Progressive educational philosophies, rooted in the writings of Rousseau, Herbart, Froebel and Dewey continue to exert a powerful influence in modern education. It has resulted in “child-centred education” where teachers strive to make schoolwork not only relevant, but sensitive to the interests of children. Instead of challenging pupils to master content, they simply entertain (i.e., try to make learning interesting or stimulating).
Educational reformers seeking higher standards have termed this approach “soft pedagogy” and contend that it has been furthered by the feminization of the teaching ranks, especially in the Western World. Pupils, they say, are no longer trained to have the strength of will to do the hard and uninteresting work of life. They are left by the school weak and flabby, demanding continual entertainment and capable of doing only that which appeals to their inclinations.
Comment:
Greetje Timmerman’s paper questioned the validity of such speculative claims, but certainly stirred considerable interest. Even though “feminine” or “soft” pedagogy is a serious public issue in Europe, here in Canada and the U.S. raising the matter remains an educational taboo. When we can discuss it freely and openly, then we will be discussing another “elephant in the room.”
Great topic!! I’ve experienced this first hand with my son. There is no running, jumping, throwing, catching, slipping or sliding allowed in schools. It’s like there is no breathing allowed sometimes. Little boys and little girls need to run and play, but little boys go a bit crazy without these things.
Then , there is so much paper pushing. In grade primary, my son was refusing to color and the teacher (who was great, God love her) came over and spoke to him about his work. He said, ” I’m an alien and aliens don’t color.” She didn’t miss a beat and leaned in and whispered, ”All the other aliens are coloring…” He looked around , bright eyed, and picked up a crayon. It worked for that day.
Then there was the redoing of a butterfly project because it wasn’t neat enough. He redid it , much to my metal anquish and frayed nerves and the second one was only slightly more neat than the first. They were always on him for his level of neatness and my two daughter’s work was really no neater when they came along, but the issue was not raised with them.
I’ve had alot of conversations with ohter Mum’s who also feel that school is not designed for boys.
The elephant is a pink one isn’t it? There’s another angle to all of this and the taboo is how we teach from the very beginning.
Here’s an excerpt from Malkin Dare’s SQE op-ed on boys’ failure:
“A theory that isn’t even being considered, however, is the change in the way children are being taught to read. In most North American schools 50 years ago, teachers used a mixture of Look Say and phonics – not the best way to teach beginning reading, but better than the current Balanced Literacy, which typically contains even less phonics instruction.
“The reduction in phonics is obviously not the only factor in boy’s decline. However, it is well accepted that a student’s reading ability at the end of grade 1 is a powerful predictor of his or her academic achievement in high school and beyond. At a minimum, it would surely be a good idea to teach every child to read in grade 1.
“Due to language differences, it is hard to draw conclusions from the fact that the size of the gender gap varies greatly from country to country. However, there is one English-speaking country where gender differences are smaller than in the rest of the English-speaking world – and that country is Scotland.
“As late as 1992, there were no gender differences in the reading scores of Scottish eight-year-olds. At that time, Scottish children were reading well above grade level on average. The usual explanations don’t apply. The storybooks in Scottish schools didn’t contain more masculine heroes, there were just as many female teachers, the Scottish curriculum was quite similar, nor was the biology of Scottish boys different in any way.
“When good phonics programs are introduced, there is always significant improvement in students’ reading. A typical experiment in Bristol, England tracked about 700 primary age children who were taught to read by means of an excellent phonics program. Although there were children with every sort of special need, including some in the severe and complex category, not one child was omitted from the results.
“The average reading and spelling age for these 700 children was 15 months ahead of chronological age at the end of their reception year (when they were about five years, nine months old). In addition, the boys did just as well as the girls. Disadvantaged children did as well as advantaged children. No child developed “dyslexia”, even though many came from “dyslexic” families where the older siblings had struggled to learn to read.
“Most if not all of the usual prescriptions for improving boys’ academic performance (male role models, masculinised books, all-boys schools, etc.) are difficult to implement and unlikely to yield major improvement, certainly not in the short term.”
Mosy of this gender stuff is tangential to the real problems in education. More boys, not just in raw numbers but as a percentage of the 18-25 cohort, are going to university than ever before. The issue seems to be that girls have come from behind and are now leading in the education race. So what? One of the genders has to lead he other one.
To use an analogy on a scale of 1 to 10, boys have moved up from 7 to 8 but at the same time girls have moved from 6 to 9. Both are making progress but girls are making more progress.
Both genders would benefit from a more activity-based program, not just boys. Yes,boys waste an incredible amount of time on video games but before that they wasted alot of time on street hockey or shooting a tennis ball against the garage door.
Interventions to tell them to knock it off and get to work like their sister are seen as cruel especially by the father who says “boys will be boys” until it is too late.
Upper class and middle class boys are doing fine and going to college at high rates. Working class girls seem to realize that school is the only way to improve their lot in life while boys cling to the idea that they will be a professional athlete until it is time to go work at the plant. (Which BTW is not there any more as a safety valve)
The total destruction of the manufacturing base of society without a shift to “value added education” and VA jobs is the real crisis.
” Progressive educational philosophies, rooted in the writings of Rousseau, Herbart, Froebel and Dewey continue to exert a powerful influence in modern education. It has resulted in “child-centred education” where teachers strive to make schoolwork not only relevant, but sensitive to the interests of children. Instead of challenging pupils to master content, they simply entertain (i.e., try to make learning interesting or stimulating). ”
That passage from Educhatter prompted me to do a little digging to explore the issue further.
In Europe, the education systems are experiencing the same problems with the under performance of boys. There are a great many studies being undertaken, and there is some serious questioning of progressive educational philosophies. On one European site, I read a series of stories from young men who were all 18, coming from variety of backgrounds, where the main message from the young men, was that the boys were not pushed to excel. They were not challenged or even expected to achieve.
Thanks to the SQE blog, I spent the afternoon reading about Dr. Reuven Feuerstein.
”HEREDITY, shmeredity! You have to do something,” says Dr. Reuven Feuerstein in answer to the endless argument over whether disadvantaged children do poorly in school because of inherited traits or because of their environment. The human organism, he says, ”is an open system, very plastic. It can be changed and modified.” The question is whether educators have the will, the confidence and the instruments to ”do something.”
“”Optimistic” and ”active” are words that appear over and over in Dr. Feuerstein’s conversation. His flowing white beard and black beret supplement the image of confidence. Although he studied in Geneva under the late Jean Piaget and admires the great child psychologist, he challenges Piaget’s approach as too passive, relying too much on chance encounters between children and objects or situations. At the heart of the Feuerstein theory is active intervention – he calls it mediation – by experienced adults. With an ”investment” in daring strategies, ”retarded performance levels can be raised considerably.” Dr. Feuerstein rejects, almost angrily, the use of I.Q. tests to predict children’s future capacity. ”The conventional I.Q. test,” he says, ”captures a moment in an individual’s life under specified conditions, looking for characteristics which are supposedly stable and unchangeable, and then predicts how that individual will do in 20 years under any conditions.” Similarly, he contests the view that a child affected by poor environment is forever limited by it. ”
Active intervention, that would indeed put an end to under-achieving boys, as well as the under-achieving girls. It’s a real pity that Dr. Feuerstein theories are not being discussed in Canada, at all levels of education.
The National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA) and the Israeli-based International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential (ICELP) have formed a partnership to address the need for improved student achievement. Dr. Reuven Feuerstein is the Chairman of ICELP, which currently houses 70 centers in 30 countries around the world. The partnership was formally announced in Birmingham, Alabama at the NUA conference, “Teaching for Intelligence,” April 27-29, 2007
http://www.nuatc.org/news/feuerstein.html
The video: Near the end, listen closely to a poem by a boy.
The video speaks for itself.
More boys by absolute count are going on to universities, but fewer boys as a percentage of their cohort are gaining sufficient education to be competitive in today’s economy. The ‘boys doing better than ever’ argument tries to brush the problem under the rug. We are already seeing an inversion of the pay gap in the 25-30 year olds.
Sadly the ‘solutions’ have changed little over the last decade. Parents need to stop excusing laziness in their boys. If boys are behind, they need to encouraged to ‘go for it’. That, more than any tinkering with our imperfect system will bridge the gap.
Of course there is one reform that always works everywhere and makes THE MOST significant difference.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/class-size/7-class-size-myths—-and-the.html
“The total destruction of the manufacturing base of society without a shift to “value added education” and VA jobs is the real crisis.”
All I can say, poppycock. And ditto for your simplistic version on gender issues, that borders on stereotyping based on psycho-educrat double-speak or as I call it mumbo-jumbo.
As for value-added education, and how it is being applied, it would fit in with Doug’s take that genders don’t matter, and of course all the other variables do not matter either.
It took me a while, to find a simplified version, that describes the gist of value-added education and how it is being used in today’s public education.
“What is value-added assessment?
Value-added assessment is a new way of analyzing test data that can measure teaching and learning. Based on a review of students’ test score gains from previous grades, researchers can predict the amount of growth those students are likely to make in a given year. Thus, value-added assessment can show whether particular students – those taking a certain Algebra class, say – have made the expected amount of progress, have made less progress than expected, or have been stretched beyond what they could reasonably be expected to achieve. Using the same methods, one can look back over several years to measure the long-term impact that a particular teacher or school had on student achievement.”
How is it different? “In the past, students and schools have been ranked solely according to achievement. The problem with this method is that achievement is highly linked to the socioeconomic status of a student’s family. For example, according to Educational Testing Service, SAT scores rise with every $10,000 of family income. This should not be surprising since all the variables that contribute to high-test scores correlate strongly with family income: good jobs, years of schooling, positive attitudes about education, the capacity to expose one’s children to books and travel, and the development of considerable social and intellectual capital that wealthy students bring with them when they enter school.
In contrast, value-added assessment measures growth and answers the question: how much value did the school staff add to the students who live in its community? How, in effect, did they do with the hand society dealt them? If schools are to be judged fairly, it is important to understand this significant difference.”
Keeping the last paragraph in mind, and the idea that value-added assessment measures growth: “How does value-added assessment sort out the teachers’ contributions from the students’ contributions?
Because individual students rather than cohorts are traced over time, each student serves as his or her own “baseline” or control, which removes virtually all of the influence of the unvarying characteristics of the student, such as race or socioeconomic factors.”
Below is one affect, out of many:
“If a teacher has 25 students and a number of low-performing students drop out during the beginning of the year, won’t my ratings be raised?
The level of student performance is not an issue in an individual educator’s value-added score because what is being measured is growth, not absolute achievement. Value-added assessment measures the difference between a student’s projected score – which is based on past performance – and his or her actual score. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what the mix of students is at the start of the year or if any specific students (whether they are previously low achievers or high achievers) drop out.”
http://www.cgp.upenn.edu/ope_value.html#1
One can see how twisted and so far removed from the economic use of value-added. Value-added in the education world, should only be used in a limited context. Such use as measuring a teacher’s effectiveness over time.
The soft pedagogy can continue, the elephants in the classroom can remain, including the pink one, and children become the victims of low expectations.
Putting boys in smaller classes and doing the same ineffective instruction is a non-starter. Been there done that.
No, there is an easier and cheaper solution to eliminating the gender learning gap. Read my post again. If you want to read the summary on the Watson & Johnson Clackmannanshire study I refer to here goes
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/02/20682/52383 (Note on UK terminology differences: synthetic = systematic/explicit; and analytic = what we call Whole language/Balanced Literacy here.)
“Conclusion
It can be seen that the gains made in word reading in Primary 1 had increased 6 fold by the end of Primary 7, going from 7 months to 3 years 6 months ahead of chronological age. The gain in spelling was 4.5 fold, going from 7 months to 1 year 9 months ahead of chronological age. This is very unusual, as the effects of training programmes usually wash out rather than increase out (Ehri et al, 2001). Although reading comprehension scores were tending to diminish over time, at the end of the study they were still significantly above chronological age and were good given the children’s somewhat below average levels of vocabulary knowledge.
The sample of children studied showed a skew towards coming from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds, so the gains in literacy skills over what would be expected for chronological age are particularly noteworthy. It was also shown that at the end of Primary 2, children from disadvantaged homes performed as well as those from better off homes if taught by the synthetic phonics programme, whereas with analytic phonics teaching, they did significantly less well. Furthermore, although children from disadvantaged backgrounds usually have poorer literacy skills from the start of schooling, the children from less well off homes in this study were only starting to fall significantly behind at the end of Primary 7, and then were still performing at or above chronological age on word reading, spelling and reading comprehension.
It can be concluded that the synthetic phonics programme led to children from lower socio-economic backgrounds performing at the same level as children from advantaged backgrounds for most of their time in primary school. It also led to boys performing better than or as well as girls.”
The full study can be found here:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/02/20688/52449
The “data” says otherwise.
The conservative forces in education are data collection crazy but they seem to think the mere act of collecting data, like test scores actually shames people into some kind of action. It doesn’t. You actually have to DO SOMETHING.
Every time the data shows that the number one problem in education is a class based problem you can hear the conservtive forces saying, “what does the data show is the second worst problem”
It is like “lets talk about boys because we have no intention of doing anything about poverty.”
It is not just conservatives who want to talk about boy problems at school. If you break down the data, the worst performing group would be poor minority boys. Are you saying that fixing the gender problem in low income families would not narrow the class gap?
This is not some tiny group that’s commanding a disproportionate share of concern, it is half the student population, half the minority population, and half the underprivileged population.
Yes, poor girls are doing better than poor boys and blue collar girls are doing better than blue collar boys. They get it. They read for recreation.
This boys problem is almost 100% the problem of parents.
Do not allow video games in the home. Don’t send kids to do homework, sit in the same room and make sure that is what they are doing.
Amazing study from UK, Chinese kids seriously outperform native UK population, poor Chinese kids only 2% behind affluent Chinese.
Chinese parents say the difference is that we do our job. The school cannnot do everything. We tell the kids you have one activity one hobby, one recreation, and that is to do well in school and bring honour to the family or do badly and bring disgrace to the family.
You not only go to English school all week, you go to Chinese school on Saturday and after school.
Guess what, these kids are highly successful. Did you hear the word PARENTS in there.
The kids are told from day 1 the goal is university and the higher professions.
“The kids are told from day 1 the goal is university and the higher professions.”
And they have elitist private schools like the one you administer Doug, to help them out. Those with the means to do so that is.
You can’t have it both ways, claim the poverty angle on the one hand and then take from the parents of those Chinese children with the other.
(just finished reading the accounting of Mr. Little at Retired Educator website).
Doretta – I have to agree with your sentiments.
Surround yourself in data-smog if you wish the reality says something very different.
How many boys are bored to tears with lessons and curricula torqued to the female perspective? It wasn’t until high school and through more choice available that learning was exciting for him.
There are private schools for all races.
The curriculum is basically, fine the boisterous can’t sit still, loud can’t concentrate boys need to be told and shown to sit down shut up and study hard. Many in fact most boys can do it. Kids are taught in school agression is wrong, wars are wrong, you need to share, bullies are bad, your loud behavior disturbs others, don’t hit people, be peaceful. Girls seem to get that. Most boys seem to get that. Some boys can’t seem to learn that due to their parents upbringing of them.
Hockey, MMA, football, video games, the military etc seem to teach bad lessons reenforced by ignorant parents that egg kids on.
Blame the behaviour, but never the curriculum or instruction, eh Doug? If that does not work, than blame the parents, the ultimate scapegoat for the educrats. But never blame the bullying programs, the equality programs, or the latest in Ontario, body image. Not a thing on reading and writing from the unions. Just a lot of social indoctrination, that not only confuses the boys, but as well as the girls. Student aggression may very well stemmed from what is being taught in the curriculum which is not based on reality outside the school’s walls. And not from the parents.
Par for the course for Doug. Boys’ low achievement is the boys’ own behaviour coupled with ignorant parents. LD students just not worth the effort to remediate their learning problems, coupled with parents’ who want too much for their children. What is next on your hit list Doug? Obese children? Parents who sent their children to cadets? Or are you going to target parents who sent their children to tutors?
By the way, I did not know there was private schools for a single race. News to me, since private schools that I know of do not have a box, asking for your race background.
Coming back to what you stated on Chinese students and their parents. The next link, is a Chinese professor at an American university, that would beg to differ. She has the opposite view point.
“Even middle-class Chinese children face problems in school, however, concludes Li in “Tensions, Dissensions and Literary Practices” (2002), her year-long study of European and Canadian teachers’ interactions with and perceptions of Chinese Canadian students and their families.
Because they value traditional ways of schooling, upper- and middle-class Asian parents often challenge the status quo of mainstream schooling and the teachers who provide it, according to Li. Such cultural clashes, she says, indicate the power imbalance between the teacher/school and the immigrant parents.
“When school becomes a ‘site of struggle’ between teachers and parents, immigrant children of all social classes may be placed in a dangerous position of school failure and discontinuity between home and school,” says Li.
“Because of the value placed on compliance, humility and deference to authority in many Asian cultures, poor children may never be disruptive or ‘act out’ their frustration. Without assistance, however, many of them fail quietly, shamed by the popular assumption that because they are Asians, they naturally will do well in school.”
“Despite the popular rhetoric, academic accomplishment is not easier for Asian children, particularly those who live in ghettoized, relatively poor ‘Chinatowns’ like those in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other large American cities.
“Like many other minority children,” she says, “they often fall through the cracks in overburdened and underfunded public school systems.”
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/5975
The success rate of the Chinese students put the lie to all of that.
Problem the attack on teachers and the severity of the underpayment of teachers means that males have no interest in teaching elementary school and increasingly no interest in teaching high school.
Constant attacks on teachers and union bashing means very few males want to teach. Add in terrible pay and you will soon have no males.
Lou Gerstner former CEO IBM, underpaying teachers who have the next generation in their hands is not smart.
A significant series of raises, I mean outstripping the inflation rate year after year, might attract enough males back into teaching but it may be too late.
Of course we also need to make it much harder to get into teachers college, A averages, 2 masters degrees only, 2 year program, After that I would set the benchmank teacher wage about $150 000 per year.
Yes I am very serious.
It is obvious Doug, that you did not read any of the Clackmannanshire results at all.
The Clackmannanshire study is very suggestive. It is unfortunate, however, that it has not been replicated elsewhere, and that the published accounts give very little information on what else was done beyond the initial synthetic phonics program (of 16 weeks’ duration) in Primary 1. It is well-established in educational research that the effects of early initiatives tend to fade over time, so the question of what else was done to ensure students in the Clackmannanshire study not only maintained their early gains but continued to improve upon them is an essential (but missing) element in the equation. Lacking those data, it is not surprising that the response to the study from outside the UK has been underwhelming. Someone on this side of the pond needs to attempt a replication.
The “boy problem” is not new, but its components vary. Female teachers have always predominated in elementary school, so the lack of male teachers cannot be a critical variable. Girls are doing much better, particularly in STEM fields, and this may make the underachievement of boys look more severe than it actually is in absolute terms. Also, cultural factors do play a large role. In a previous school I worked in, we noted that almost all the high achieving students were boys, and an overwhelming number of the “remedial” students were girls — the opposite of what we would have expected. Many students came from cultural backgrounds where the achievement of a son was more important than the academic achievement of daughters, who had less freedom, more housework and child care responsibilities, and little pressure to excel in school. Of course we did have some high-achieving girls, but few boys in the IEP or remedial categories.
Some pedagogical factors undoubtedly play a role: the emphasis on co-operative learning and group work rarely allows boys to compete –something that engages and motivates many. There could be a better balance between co-operative and competitive learning activities. Language activities, reading and writing tasks could provide more opportunities for boys to write and research areas of interest instead of concentrating on feelings and “connections.” More literacy skills could be taught through science and history topics of interest, and less through novels and personal writing. Giving students more choices in these areas as to ways of meeting expectations would benefit many girls as well as boys, for gender stereotypes are just that — generalizations. There are girls with more interest in non-fiction topics than sensitive novels about politically-correct themes; there are boys who love reading chapter books and get very involved in particular series or authors. Flexibility and a range of approaches may be key here.
The Public Debate on the “Feminization of Education” is absolutely fascinating. It’s also at the centre of the whole debate in the Netherlands over the so-called “Educational Crisis.”
Yesterday, Greetje Timmerman (University of Groningen) was kind enough to send me her 2010 academic paper entitled” ‘Tough’ or ‘soft’: the invention of feminine pedagogy as a cause for educational crisis: the Dutch case.”
Her Introduction provides a valuable backgrounder:
“With a certain regularity, the feminization of teaching is put forth as a cause for educational problems. The most recent educational crisis in the Netherlands is the failure of the so-called ‘studiehuis’ [study house], a pedagogy designed to encourage secondary school students’ autonomy and selfstudy and a parliamentary enquiry was initiated on the failure of this pedagogical concept.
Why did this pedagogical concept fail? In the public discussions it was asserted that the feminization of teaching was one of the causes of this current educational crisis. The ‘studiehuis’ was described as a ‘feminine pedagogy’ innovation, developed by a small group of female schoolleaders and politicians:
‘Following on from a feminine primary school environment, secondary school is another feast of work tasks, projects and working in groups – precisely the things that boys are bad at. It is no coincidence that the studiehuis concept was instigated by two women: Clan Visser ‘t Hooft and Tineke Netelenbos… There is a gap in the market for a “male” curriculum’,
(Source: a critic wrote in one of the national newspapers (Truijens, De Volkskrant, 17 November 2007).
And several years ago, the well-known Dutch educational sociologist Paul Jungbluth already thought he could discern a what he called: a ‘feminine pedagogy’:
‘soft values such as modesty, cooperation, caring for others and conflict-avoidance behaviour are highly valued. These values are so dominant that bad grades are too easily ignored. This is facilitated by the large number of female teachers’ (Vink, NRC, 3 and 4 May 2003).
For educational historians, the recent debate in the Netherlands about a feminine pedagogy and its assumed bad effects, especially on boys, is nothing new.” (Timmerman 2010)
The whole controversy, according to Greetje, found its origins back in the late 1970’s in the United States. The publication of Motherteacher (R. Sugg, Charlottesville,VA: University of Virginia Press, 1979) stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy. It went so far as to blame “feminization” for “the failure of the entire U.S. educational system.”
Dr. Timmerman’s recent paper tests the validity of such contentious claims in the Netherlands. She analyzes the relationship between “increasing numbers of women teachers and the rise of a ‘feminine’ pedagogy in Dutch secondary education. Her study focuses on one subject area, the modern languages (i.e. French, German, English and Dutch).
What are her conclusions? It’s largely an overblown myth, based upon her analysis of the Modern Languages teaching field.
In her own words:
“Feminine pedagogy is usually taken to mean ‘soft’ pedagogy, a pedagogy that pays attention to cognitive skills as well as the creative, socio-emotional and moral competence of children. ‘Soft’ pedagogy is contrasted to ‘hard’ pedagogy which is geared towards the desired levels of attainment and learning outcomes (Dronkers, 2007). In this perspective, communicative pedagogy could be interpreted as ‘soft’ pedagogy and as such as feminine pedagogy.
However, this ‘feminine’ pedagogy has no relationship to the feminization of teaching: female teachers and other female educationalist took no part in the discussions and contributions on communicative pedagogy in the professional journal Levende Talen, nor was there any evidence of ‘feminine’ pedagogy in other contributions. The development of thinking and theory on pedagogy– in this case communicative pedagogy – was apparently an exclusively male domain.
Our content analysis demonstrates that the notion of a feminine pedagogy as put forth in recent debates on educational problems is a social construction, a reinvention of the past with the power of a myth.”
(See McCulloch & McCraig, 2002; Timmerman & Van Essen, 2004; Timmerman & Van Essen, 2006).
Key References:
Vink, A. (2003). Die lieve meisjes toch. Het Nederlandse onderwijs lijdt onder ‘vrouwelijke cultuur’, NRC Handelsblad, 3 en 4 mei 2003, p.41.
Dronkers, J. (2007). Ruggegraat van ongelijkheid. Beperkingen en mogelijkheden om ongelijke onderwijskansen te veranderen. Amsterdam: Wiardi Beckman Stichting.
McCulloch, G. & McCaig, C. (2002). Reinventing the Past: the Case of the English Tradition of Education. British journal of educational studies 50, 238-258.
Timmerman G, & Essen M. van. (2004). De mythe van het ‘vrouwengevaar’. Een historiserende inventarisatie van (inter)nationaal onderzoek naar de relatie tussen feminisering van en ‘jongensproblemen’ in het onderwijs. Pedagogiek 24, 1, 57-72.
Timmerman, M.C. & Essen, H.W. van. (2006). Feminisering en didactisering van het lerarenberoep in het vhmo, 1950-1975. Pedagogische studiën 83, 4-18 / 2006.
Harry Smaller at York University did a study that when asked why they did not teach in elementary school, male teacher candidates or males who left teaching said “the pay is too low and the status is too low”
I was at a meeting in the former North York board where male teachers were asked by the board, why they were unhappy and contemplated leaving. One guy stunned the crowd when he said, “I only ever wanted to teach grade 4-5 but it came to me later that if you are still a classroom teacher (not the principal) in elementary school and male when your hair turns grey, everyone begins to think you are some kind of loser. Either they assume you are gay or a social misfit or some kind of inadequate personality that cannot relate to adults.” Who wants that status?
Today’s Halifax Chronicle Herald (Nov. 10) has a fine column written by Patricia Donnelly and Bob Marchand making a compelling case for “co-ordinate education.” It’s solidly based upon Boys Coalition research and adds significantly to the public debate.
It’s worth considering in its entirety:
Education: raising the bar for boys
By PATRICIA DONNELLY and ROBERT MARCHAND
Wed, Nov 10, 2010
The Chronicle Herald
“It seems that the media are awash in concerns about the underperformance of boys in our school systems. For instance, the Globe and Mail recently ran a series on the education of boys, and the Oct. 25 issue of Maclean’s magazine explained “Why our boys are growing up to be underachieving men.”
These voices of alarm have been sounding for quite some time. They are just getting louder, and they were one of the reasons that Sacred Heart School began to take notice. After reading the research, and hearing from our parents, we decided six years ago to open a single-sex division of our school to educate young men.
Since then, we have graduated our first class and we continue to educate young men and women in a single-sex environment on a co-ed campus. It’s an unusual choice for a school with a 160-year history of educating young women, but it is indicative of the seriousness of our mission.
Parents of boys in our own school and in the wider community were seeking what parents of boys everywhere are seeking: the best possible education for their sons delivered by teachers who not only enjoy teaching boys, but who have a genuine understanding of and appreciation for the way in which boys learn and grow.
Boys’ schools tend to conjure up images of Oliver Twist or Lord of the Flies, with wild-eyed boys hanging from the rafters and getting into untold mischief, and it would be inaccurate to deny that there is certainly some of that mischief to be found in any group of boys. But it would be equally misleading if we didn’t acknowledge the essence of our teaching experiences, which are so far removed from that common misperception about the nature of adolescent boys.
Boys, as a group, are different from girls, a simple fact that seems to be ignored by many schools but which is rarely lost on parents. There are certain characteristics that seem to stand out when teaching a group of boys.
Boys mature at a slower rate, both physically and socially, but they have seemingly limitless energy. They are frequently disorganized and just as frequently creative. They like to lead the pack, but their friendships seem able to weather any storm. And they love to laugh and get laughs.
There is certainly debate about the nature and extent of the differences between the social and intellectual development of boys and girls, but the evidence of differences is so overwhelming, both in the research and in the experiences of parents, that it seems absurd to contend that boys and girls are essentially the same. While it’s true that our course in life is not dictated by our gender, we ignore its influence at our peril.
Teaching boys and girls separately allows both genders to be who they are at a time when they themselves are defining that identity. It allows them to explore non-stereotypical options in an environment that validates their own feelings and preferences.
What our boys division, Fountain Academy of the Sacred Heart, does for our boys is to give them the challenge of developing their own character and exploring what it means to be male in a modern world. Having them learn this in the context of a co-ed campus means that we can educate boys who are also gender bilingual.
We want boys who understand that being masculine can take many forms. We want boys who understand the value of compassion and the true nature of courage. We want boys who appreciate that differences — whether they be one’s gender, religion or race — can only enrich us all.
That is one of the reasons why a campus that embraces both boys and girls, giving them ample opportunity for interaction but which also protects them from the pressure to fulfil the stereotypical roles they see reflected in the media, represents the best of both worlds.
Sadly, some of the discussion around the issue of male underachievement centres on short-term fixes for the problem. The Globe and Mail asks, “Is affirmative action for men the answer to enrolment woes?” thereby suggesting that we lower the expectations we have for boys so that we achieve gender equality in university programs such as medicine. This is shortsighted thinking at its worst and ignores the real issues, the causes of these trends, the societal costs of ignoring the issue, and the solutions that will see boys reach their true potential.
The real answer is to raise, not lower, expectations for boys, but that can only be accomplished through good teaching in an atmosphere which supports the boys in their identity and in their aspirations.
Allowing more poorly educated boys into medical school will contribute little to the quality of medicine in the years ahead, and ignoring the differences in the learning styles of boys and girls will do little to improve the quality of their lives.” (Reprinted from The Halifax Chronicle Herald)
“Failing Boys” has become a hot button topic in education across North America. Yesterday, Daily Beast columnist Lisa Wolfe tackled the problem in a feature story mimicking the recent Toronto Globe and Mail series.
Consider this excerpt:
BOYS’ SELF-ESTEEM PROBLEMS
Lisa Wolfe, The Daily Beast
November 11, 2010
“As girls surge past boys in academics, and teachers preach the gospel of girl power, male adolescents are suffering a loss of self-worth. Lisa Wolfe talks to boys, teachers, and parents.
It’s parent-teacher night at a private middle school in New Jersey. Students have been asked to sit in as teachers inform their parents of their progress. A sixth-grade boy, whose mother asks he be identified as Dan, squirms as his teacher tells his parents he’s not trying hard enough in school. He looks away as the teacher directs his parents to a table of projects the class has done on ancient Greek civilization. Some projects are meticulous works of art, with edges burned to resemble old parchment.
Dan’s title page is plain and unillustrated, and he’s left an “e” out of “Greek.”
“You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t try,” says Dan’s father as they leave the classroom. “I don’t understand,” says Dan’s mother, whose two older daughters got straight As in school without her intervention.
For a few minutes, Dan acts like he doesn’t hear or care. But when he gets to the car he starts kicking the tires. “I’m sorry!” he says. “I’m sorry I’m not perfect like a girl!”
As girls catch up to—and surge past—boys in many educational realms, scenarios like this are playing out in homes and classrooms across the country. “Boys have stayed at the same level in school,” said Michael Thompson, a psychologist and the co-author of Raising Cain. “But girls have zoomed by them. Because of the anxious attention we pay to education, this can be demoralizing.”
The rise of girls in academia, from elementary school to college, has been well-documented. Girls are outperforming boys in all subjects except math and science, and even there, they’re closing the gap. There has been a steady 25-year decline in boys’ participation in extracurricular activities as girls take over clubs, newspapers, and yearbooks. For every 100 girls with learning disabilities there are 276 boys. For every 100 women graduating college, there are 77 men.
But how this shift is affecting boys psychologically is less well-known, perhaps partly because parents and teachers are reluctant to raise the question for fear it will be perceived as taking attention away from girls. But talk to them privately, and many teachers and parents say they worry that the sea change occurring in America’s classrooms is leaving boys feeling helpless and sapping them of their motivation.” (End of Excerpt)
For the full story, see http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-11/boys-self-esteem-problems/
Boy problem?
Right wing junk science destroyed by Heather Mallick.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/891829–mallick-trustees-strike-a-blow-against-junk-science
Are you implying that the ‘boy problem’ doesn’t exist, or that single sex ed is junk science. The former is well documented, real and measurable. The latter very likely is just a fad, but that article you cite is as full of junk as the junk science it tackles. I’d guess she spent all of three minutes putting together.
“The [American] boy crisis is largely confined to poor and minority communities. Rich white boys are not falling behind rich white girls.”
If daddy tosses enough money around, the boys get into Harvard or Yale. I doubt they have the GPAs to match their sisters. I don’t have numbers for the US, from what’s been published in the UK, the gap persists even for high income households.
I agree with you Gupta, single sex schools are no solution.
Girls are doing better than boys WITHIN each social class but not when total class conditions are considered.
In other words, poor girls do better than poor boys. Interesting but poor girls do not do better than middle class boys, and so on.
Attempts to make GENDER the issue is an attempt to take the heat off social class, the REAL issue in the achievement gap.
The Achievement Gap is the result of the polarization of class which is getting worse.
I think we will have to differ on the magnitude of the problem. In the UK, among non-FSM students, 65% of girls and 50% of boys got five good GCSEs. Among FSM students the number was 43% and 24% respectively. Notice the gender gap is worse than the class gap. It is not inconceivable that a girl living in poverty will on average outstrip a middle class boy in the near future.
My larger objection is to the reaction I see whenever this is brought up. For conservatives it is all about feminism, absence of marriage, not being Christian enough and welfare queens. By liberals it is mocked as being “false”, “greatly exaggerated”, “affecting only minority boys”, “affecting only poor boys” , “trying to roll back the clock”, “the second worst thing” and best of all, “no reason for concern”. Maybe everything just looks like a nail to me and I’m being needlessly repetitive, but this issue needs to get the respect it deserves. I’m sure we can work on the worst and the second worst issue at the same time.
Society needs to be told that under the expectations they set for their boys, they WILL under perform. Middle class, college educated parents need to be told that THEIR sons will not be competitive if they do not set the right priorities. That THEIR boys need to go to college, or they won’t be able to feed themselves. THEIR dads need to get the homework done. If boys are behind because they mature later, parents will have to push them that little bit harder during those vulnerable years and teachers will need to tweak their classes to help where they can. They need to know that THEIR sons are not immune because of their parent’s income, race, or education. This needs to be discussed openly, so that THEY can get it through their skulls.
We also need to have this conversation with poor parents, minority parents, and any other group that’s lagging but second classing the gender issue is not going to make the class issue any easier to solve.
I say we solve the Achievement Gap in SES. If a gender gap remains, we can solve it after.
I do agree that boys can waste an incredible amount of time on sports, video games cars, etc while girls have the ability to get down to work and get the job done. All of our ethnic societies have spoiled boys rotten and counted on gender barriers to keep them in first place.
As these barriers come down, boys are being exposed as lazy and self indulgent.
I suggested that physicians eliminate obesity first. If heart disease remained, they could cure it after.
For some reason they didn’t think that was very bright.
The gender gap in primary grades can be reduced with proper instruction. In the UK, Clackmannanshire study showed how simple interventions can have long range, sustainable results. Maybe by doing something quite simple and effective you just might help the SES gap.
When boys can read, they can learn. Period.
http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog
“While most educrats wring their hands over why boys don’t like to read, Pearson writes, ‘Point out to your critics there is nothing that puts a child off reading quite as much as the inability to read.’ She concludes, ‘At long last, the writing is on the wall. The tragedy is that so many cannot read it.'”
Well, girls are doing better within a system as set, but I still question how this system is comparatively female-friendly in a decidedly male-dominated world (and it is very, very much male dominated.)
So what’s the plan, or is there one? I think feminist conspiracies are definitely a blind alley – and it’s just too temptingly silly to court pop culture as the culprit.
Studying economic history over the past three decades, we discover that women are doing better than men overall (except of course, at the very top) – and one has to wonder how much of this is sliding back down the slope into the educatinal forum. Will we arrive one day at a future scenario where women are expected to support men?
Historically, when the backbone of the North American economy ran on blue collar brains and muscle, women didn’t work. Now that’s all gone – and they do work. Could it be that our newly designed service economy is more women-friendly (and if so, why is that?)
The factories of the world that produce all that stuff we North Americans consume are filled with women…and they do this work because they more compliant.
Could this have anything to do with the changes in our educational approach?
I’m asking questions here…not providing answers. But I think the answers to some of those questions could be most illuminating.
Brief Update:
The feminization of teaching continues to be a taboo subject in Canadian education. Not so in the United Kingdom where M.C. Timmerman’s courageous 2011 paper was not only published but chosen as the best article published that year.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14681366.2011.607837#.UhJQKD9ZaUZ
Yes, that article is the same paper that she delivered at the CHEA Conference (October 21-24, 2010) in Toronto.
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