School Boys

[astra_nomer]

So, apparently, a student at a New England high school is claiming gender discrimination. The interesting thing is, the student is a boy. A white, middle-class male, suing for discrimination.

Certainly it's true that more women are entering college these days than men. But shouldn't we be saying, "You Go Girl!" instead of "ZOMG!! Save the boys!!!"

I cannot believe that education has changed so dramatically in this country over the last 10 or even 20 years that it's suddenly become biased toward girls. The educational system in this country was originally just for white males. Just 40 years ago, Harvard University did not allow women in some of its libraries. At the same time, the majority of elementary school teachers over the last century or more have been women, and while I won't rant about that issue now, it didn't seem to have hurt the legions of boys who were educated by them and went on to become successful men within the patriarchy.

Yes, it's true that boys have more behavioral issues than girls, and that will affect their educational opportunities. But is this really more of an issue today than in the past? Has boyhood really changed that much?

I recall being one of just a handful of girls in my high school science and math classes. I recall that when my calculus teacher handed out M&Ms to highest achievers in her class, that my candy was sometimes stolen when I turned my back, and at least one student complained that the girls always got the awards, even though we were vastly outnumbered by the boys.

Now I'm the mother of two boys myself. But I expect them to exert self-discipline in school. I expect them to do their best with their studies. I will help find opportunities within the educational system for them to get ahead. I will not tolerate them making excuses for themselves by saying they were discriminated against. If I've managed to succeed against the odds, they can too.

Comments

[ilai]

Not directly to the point, but the complaint is filed against the public Milton High School, rather than the preparatory school Milton Academy. That said, the article seems to be focused only on Milton High, and does not provide any useful data on the situation in the rest of the country, which is kind of disappointing.

I recall that a while back, there was a controversial article in the Atlantic Monthly by Christina Hoff Sommers called "The War Against Boys" aimed at refuting Carol Gilligan's research into girls getting shortchanged in schools. It was apparently the subject of much heated debate, but I don't know if any useful (or real) research came out of it--that would be interesting to find out.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

the complaint is filed against the public Milton High School, rather than the preparatory school Milton Academy

Oops! My mistake. I've edited things accordingly.

So I haven't read that article. But I have heard that since boys have higher energy levels, they raise their hands in class more, get called on more, and so benefit more from participating in class. I have also heard that since boys have higher energy levels, they get diagnosed with ADD more often, get disciplined more, and miss out on participating in class more. There's some truth in each story, I think.

(remcat pointed me - and others - this way :)

[mijven.livejournal.com]

Well assuming he's right, that particular boy has a point. Two of his three bones of contention are "verified" by a girl later in the article (that girls wander the hallway without passes whereas boys are stopped and that "one teacher expects students to type up class notes and decorate their notebooks with glitter and feathers" which would drive me crazy - actually did drive me crazy back in high school, and I'm a girl!) His third argument, that girls are naturally more orderly whereas boys are rambunctious is also something that I (generically, not specifically) believe and I think schools need to address, but isn't quite worthy of a suit. (In fact I think Newsweek is doing an article on this topic right now.) Another valid point he makes is the lack of male role models for the younger crowd. (I've actuallyl gone out of my way to try and make sure my guys see male instructors, although mostly this is done via music classes.)

Re: (remcat pointed me - and others - this way :)

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

The first point is valid -- nobody should be allowed to wander hallways without passes, but how does that limit academic achievement?

I agree that the notebook decoration is totally out of line. But that sounds like one specific teacher who ought to be reprimanded, not necessarily the entire school.

And the argument about girls=orderly and boys=rambunctious, well, doesn't that justify the first point then, that perhaps boys do need to be stopped in the hall more often than girls? And just because boys have more energy to get rid of doesn't mean you have to lower your academic standards to accomodate them, by letting them take classes pass/fail or eliminating the community service requirement like this kid is suggesting. And being orderly and toeing the line is an important life skill that schools ought to be helping the boys address, not giving them slack on.

Perhaps it would be good to have more male instructors, but then you have to convince more men to become teachers in the first place. Which is a whole other can of worms...

Re: (remcat pointed me - and others - this way :)

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

And the argument about girls=orderly and boys=rambunctious, well, doesn't that justify the first point then, that perhaps boys do need to be stopped in the hall more often than girls?

That's actually the one that would worry me; it seems to me to be the school conveying an expectation that girls will behave themselves and boys will not. Even if tactically accurate, it seems a bad message to send (especially if it is conveyed more subtly elsewhere) - I would strongly agree that such things ought to be consistent.

I don't mean to say that the optimal rules for an all-girls' school would be the same as for an all-boys' school; very likely they would not. But having two different sets of rules in the same school seems likely to reinforce gender stereotypes in general.

Re: (remcat pointed me - and others - this way :)

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Sure, there should be just one set of rules that all students have to follow, and they shouldn't be discriminatory. It's just that the kid in the article on the one hand complains about differing expectations for boys and girls, but at the same time invokes gender stereotypes to make excuses for boys not being able to follow the rules.

Re: (remcat pointed me - and others - this way :)

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

Sure, I have no argument with you there - I think the point made further down about this suit itself all being about gaming the system is dead-on.

I do think though, if boys' performance is lagging, it's worth paying attention to even anecdotal evidence about setting negative expectations for them and failing to support their learning styles. Actually, it would be nice to get non-anecdotal evidence, but not much chance of that, it would seem...

Re: (remcat pointed me - and others - this way :)

[mijven.livejournal.com]

how does that limit academic achievement?

For the goof suing, I don't know. He seems driven enough (or at least motivated by the need for continuing education) that it really shouldn't be a problem. For Random Kid whose parents don't push him at home to do well, I could see how it would alienate him from the entire school experience. (Isn't this the basic definition of harassment?) If you're always in an atmosphere where you're wrong (even if you're doing the same as others) then why go to the effort to be right? And this will translate into a pitiful work effort later on in life, which really breaks a society. So I think it needs fixing... and not only because following rules and sitting still is inadequate training (IMO) for the real world.

And as for a specific teacher - it's hard to deal with them like that. Tenure is annoying for one (there's a certain kindergarten teacher I know of who Ought To Go and yet hasn't...) and back in high school I think it took the combined efforts of the parents in my class to get our "touchy-feely" guy off the teaching roster.

As for lowering academic standards - well, I'm not the guy in question and I'm hardly arguing that he's right in everything. Yes, the atmosphere needs to be improved for the greater good. But no - pass/fail seems extreme and community service needs to stay. But if you're getting credit for putting on a school play (outside a class) then I accept the argument that participating in school sports (outside of P.E.) should also count.

Oh, and below you asked for specific things that have changed: if I recall the Newsweek article correctly, a teacher admitted that perhaps they needed to expand their assigned reading. According to her, boys just didn't seem to like "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "The Secret Lives of Bees." And I don't blame them - I, who had no trouble reading multiple works of Dostoyevsky, could barely hack those specific books when my book club choose them.

Re: (remcat pointed me - and others - this way :)

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

I have to concede your first point, since I've made that same argument applied to women in science... but I also have to admit that some small, petty part of me is saying "haha, see how YOU like it!" But no, really, a discriminatory environment is not a good thing for anyone.

But this kid's suit is asking for all boys' GPA to be raised retroactively! That's completely ludicrous! Seems to me he's just jumping on the bandwagon of all the recent hype about boys falling behind academically, and using it to try to make up for his own failures in school.

And at least in my high school, no one got credit for putting on a school play. You could get credit for taking a drama class, though. And sports players got exempted from taking PE, which was required for everyone else.

And as for the reading, I do think there's a good point to be made for exposing boys to a feminine point of view, and vice versa. But everything in moderation, right? If all they're reading is selections from Oprah's book club, that doesn't seem right to me.

Re: (remcat pointed me - and others - this way :)

[mijven.livejournal.com]

Is the kid's suit actually asking for retroactive grade inflation? I'm unclear on that point - I see that the father (who also happens to be the lawyer that wrote his son's complaint) has said the school system should so compensate the boys - but because that line was at the end and not included early on with the description of the suit, I'd gathered that he was just sounding off. I could very easily be mistaken about that, however.

Don't get me wrong (and apologies if I gave this impression!) I'm not arguing that he should win the suit. For one I don't know enough details (see above. ;) I'm just saying he's not alone in noticing that boys have trouble fitting into the latest incarnation of school and I appreciate people challenging the system. (I just hope that a good system can survive such challenges.)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Yes, boys get diagnosed with AD(H)D radically more often than girls do. I think, though I cannot remember or cite statistics to this effect, that boys are actually more prone to it than girls are. I definitely remember from somewhere that boys are more prone to the ADHD version and girls to the AD-notH-D version, so boys are much more likely to be diagnosed (on the one hand possibly stigmatizing them, but on the other hand making boys more likely than girls to get help they need).

I've heard that about boys but I think individual variations swamp it. Certainly the boys I teach vary enormously in how much they want to raise their hand, and sometimes it has nothing to do with how energetic they are in the halls (even the really hyper ones can be subdued in class if they don't understand). When I was teaching coed SAT prep, girls participated a lot more -- again, because I think they tend to be more conformist, authority-oriented, and desirous to please.

Really I think you can find examples to support almost any gender-based hypothesis in education, which is why Very Large Studies are important, but they're pretty rare; the quality of most educational research is execrable.

[desireearmfeldt]

I could rant about why it's hard to do decent educational research, but I don't have the energy. :) :)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in hearing the rant someday when you do.

[desireearmfeldt]

I mean, I'm not actually an expert, but from my little corner of the universe, the short form is a) it's logistically difficult and resource-intensive, and b) it's therefore hard to get the amount of funding that would pay for a Big Research Study.

And c) it's hard to figure out how to really do *good* social science type research, I think. But I also have the impression some people do know what they're doing and have techniques that work at least somewhat. But then you come down to the fundamental choice between things that are true/accurate, and things that are easily summarizable. I presume hard science has this problem as well, but there's lots more things in hard science where you can isolate some one little thing and poke at it and say "yup, that's how it works." Can't so much do that when you're studying human behavior, or if you can, it's not clear how much you've actually learned, because you've decontextualized it so much.

Also, I think for a lot of these things people want research to tell them the One Right Answer, and there probably isn't one.

[desireearmfeldt]

Er, so on point a), in order to collect and analyze data from a great big statistically significant sample, the data's going to have to be simple to the point of near-meaninglessness, because otherwise you'll never have the time and manpower to process it.

Also, there's no lab. Any time you want to do research, you need to find districts/schools/teachers to sign onto it, get various sorts of permissions, and get them to take time out of their ridiculously busy work lives to deal with you. This makes it really hard to get enough sites for your research, let alone geograpically/demographically/etc distributed the way you'd like.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

Same here!