Anybody who are ever witnessed a teacher gathering her kindergarten class around in a circle for a lesson has seen first hand the difference between boys and girls. The boys pay attention for a second or two and then begin poking their neighbor on the circle mat. The girls are the first to raise their hands and gaze on their teacher with adoring eyes. Of course, this is a gross generalization. There are plenty of boys who can sit still and plenty of girls who are poking their neighbors, but IN GENERAL, that’s what happens.
In recent decades, as other forms of sexism have fallen away, girls have taken this behavioral advantage and have kicked academic ass. Go, girls!
But what about the boys? Should we care? Girls become women who drop out of the workforce to have kids, and men dominate all areas of power. As I look at the masthead of my favorite journals and magazines, men outnumber women by huge numbers. Academia, government, business, medicine, law are still male-dominated fields. So, should we care that schools don’t seem particularly accommodating to the wiggles and short attention span of boys?
Dave Leonhardt in the New York Times says we should care, because in the past, the most wiggly of boys had a safety net of working class jobs. You could bomb out in school, but still have a nice job when you graduated. Those jobs do not exist anymore. To survive in the new economy, boys need to survive school. So, schools will have to figure out how to educate boys or the culture of boys will have to change.
Apt. 11d 
Anybody who are ever witnessed a teacher gathering her kindergarten class around in a circle for a lesson has seen first hand the difference between boys and girls.
I haven’t!
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As the mother of a boy and a girl, me neither! I have seen a lot of adults attributing large gender-based differences to behavior that looks pretty similar to me, though.
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Bratty answer aside, these kinds of generalizations drive me insane. Everybody considered boys to be able to sit still until, oh, the 1980’s when all of a sudden everyone just KNEW that boys were incapable of sitting still for like two seconds. Bullshit. Boys can sit still and pay attention just fine. For whatever reason, it became convenient to think boys incapable of sitting still and that message was conveyed to boys and then, what do you know, boys don’t sit still because we don’t expect them to.
I’m not saying there are no differences between the sexes in terms of attention, I am saying that those differences are pretty small and that we collectively bear a lot of the responsibility for creating this “problem.”
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Why do we assume working class jobs did not require the ability to concentrate, to focus, and to perform skills associated with success in school? Machinists, electricians, and plumbers all need a good math background and the ability to concentrate or safety is compromised. The kids who bombed worked the low skilled jobs that often did not pay that well.
My father is a good example. His HS education was subpar due to poverty. When I was a child he told us he was a machinist but after his death we learned he was only a machine operator (and earned significantly less than a machinist). In addition, he found the work unsatisfying and pretty much endured it till his plant closed in the early 80s.
Now it is true a machinist did not need to attend college. But they did need certain skills that required mastery of high school material.
Also, let’s not forget that these jobs were totally inflexible, you could not take off for school events (even vacation had to be taken during summer shut down) nor was there a lot of understanding around sick days. It was common in my community to be told to stay away from daddy when we were sick so as not to give it to him.
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Exactly. I’d like to know just what those ‘nice’ jobs were. I don’t think they existed, unless you consider ditch digging ‘nice’.
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Isn’t that similar to the argument that women are just naturally bad at math? We didn’t reformulate math teaching in America, and it turned out that in fact women weren’t naturally bad at math, it’s just that they had been fed a lot of messages that resulted in lower expectations for girls regarding the doing of math. How might we ramp up expectations for boys that they should learn to sit down and be quiet and work hard?
My daughter is in high school and she says the boys are just lazy — and this is from a kid with ADD who was also challenged in terms of organization and planning. I wonder to what degree parents kind of enable their sons in particular by keeping track of things for them rather than teaching them how to keep track of deadlines, schedules, etc. themselves. (And this is why we end up with all those guys standing in the dairy section at the grocery store phoning home to ask their wives “Do we need milk?” As though somehow or other being female meant that you had a meter specially installed in your brain to keep track of grocery supplies in your home).
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“My daughter is in high school and she says the boys are just lazy”
I think this would be my kiddos evaluation, too. She does think that girls, now in middle school, are leaning out (and, sometimes, in ways that she attributes to not wanting to seem too smart), too, though.
“For whatever reason, it became convenient to think boys incapable of sitting still and that message was conveyed to boys and then, what do you know, boys don’t sit still because we don’t expect them to.”
Yes. Last year, the otherwise great teacher, who is very accommodating of differences, told the kids in the class that “boys didn’t have as good fine motor skills”, and so, it was OK for parents to help them with rolling their newspaper to make tubes for their structures. My kiddo, who has no problems with his fine motor skills (in fact, they are probably as good as mine) came home and suggested I roll newspapers for him (and, actually, not out of laziness, ’cause he’s not lazy either, but because, he’d been told, by an authority that he wasn’t good at rolling). I had to point out that though I do not know if the generalization is true, or if it is true in his particular class, it is not true for him, and he was rolling his own newspapers.
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Yes. I think what has happened is that among children with true attention disorders, there is a preponderance of boys and that has trickled down to thinking that all boys are less attentive than girls.
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I’ve heard hair-raising stories of bachelors on their own. Really individual answers to questions such as, “how likely is a dirty bathroom to kill me?” “How long can I survive on a diet of pizza and beer?”
I often call home to ask my husband or children if we need milk, or garlic, or apples.
Our sons have attended both a coed public school, and an all-boys school. The teachers in the all-boys school are not disturbed by fidgeting, as long as the boys are paying attention. They spend a great deal of time teaching the boys the classroom social skills teachers expect. Lots of effort in explicitly pointing out the need to let teachers know if you don’t understand something. Let teachers know if your sister broke your computer, so you couldn’t complete the homework. Many of these social things girls are better at managing. (And yes, there are boys who have no problems with it, and girls who would also do well to have a course in Soft Academic Skills.)
I am most disturbed by the points at which schools write off students on the basis of earlier performance, even though the students are growing up, and thus their self-control may be improving. If your middle school teacher thinks you have “executive function issues,” she won’t recommend you for the appropriate track in our local high school. I have seen my children’s peers make huge leaps between 7th and 9th grades. To deny boys opportunities to access more interesting academic work, because they were basket cases in middle school, makes no sense to me. We know children’s frontal lobes are maturing through adolescence.
We should have more tolerance for learning, which involves not being perfect, in high school. So what if a bright kid won’t make As first semester freshman year? Give him a chance. Middle school is not that important.
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“I’ve heard hair-raising stories of bachelors on their own. Really individual answers to questions such as, “how likely is a dirty bathroom to kill me?” “How long can I survive on a diet of pizza and beer?””
The best one I’ve heard was of the stand-off between two male college roommates. They were both determined that they wouldn’t be the one to go get toilet paper. So, they both managed without toilet paper in their bathroom until the end of term.
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I had that in a co-ed house once (although it was more group laziness than a stand-off). We went several days. You can use newspaper.
In fact, anyone who had lived in that house, or the apartment my sister had in college, would have been quickly disabused of the notion that girls are cleaner than boys.
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My suspicion is that there are outlier effects on all of these things (math, effort, sitting still, fine motor skills, . . . .) and that some of those effects might differ across gender (might, very difficult to prove, especially if it’s what I’m calling an outlier effect). So, it could be that fine motor skills or sitting still or math will come harder for a group of kids, and that there will be a gender difference among that outlier group that differs from the average. Which of those kids truly can’t accommodate to learn the skill (potentially with significant extra effort) is difficult to determine, and when there’s a gender difference, it’s too easy to just say boys aren’t as good at rolling newspapers or that girls aren’t as good at math.
One of the things I like to cite about math is that girls do not underperform boys in math in some other countries — I think, in countries where effort is expected, and thus, the fact that the math might be “harder” for some subgroup of the girls (i.e.. they have to work at it, because they don’t magically understand it) does not prevent them from learning math.
Thus, though I think we have to have plans for real outliers, who are significantly affected by their difficulty complying, I think we shouldn’t make stereotypic generalizations and change entire schemes of education.
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” To deny boys opportunities to access more interesting academic work, because they were basket cases in middle school, makes no sense to me. We know children’s frontal lobes are maturing through adolescence.”
yes, and the same is true of fine motor skills. The developmental time course differences in maturation (and, we know girls mature physically before boys — it’s not illogical to assume, that on average, they also mature mentally before boys) shouldn’t track people permanently.
There’s an article on how early differences (attributed to luck in this instance, but tracking is a form of early differences, as are sports leagues birthday cutoffs) can result in significantly different outcomes: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/on-privilege-and-luck-or-why-success-breeds-success/. That’s a reason to keep fighting for renewed entry points as children grow up (and, for adults, as well).
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(and, we know girls mature physically before boys — it’s not illogical to assume, that on average, they also mature mentally before boys)
It’s not so much that it’s illogical to guess that they might, but it’s not compelling to assume that it’s true that they do. My fourteen-year-old daughter has looked like a grown woman since she was twelve. Her male friends looked kind of ridiculously juvenile hanging around with her. But there really didn’t seem to be anything like the same sort of difference between them mentally as there was physically. Similarly, my son, at twelve, looks like a kid where at the same age his sister looked like a woman. Emotionally, intellectually, and responsibility-wise, he’s right along with where she was at that age. (Actually, he’s more responsible than she is now, on a lot of fronts, but I’m going to attribute that to second-child-ness rather than gender.)
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I also have a teen who looks nearly grown up, but she is also mentally mature, and seems years older than boys her age. But, I shouldn’t generalize from my individual experience, and though I know there’s good data on girls reaching puberty/full height earlier than boys, I don’t have good evidence on the development of executive function by age & gender.
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Actually, not unsurprisingly, she seems years older than *children* her age (though maybe that’s marginally more noticeable with boys).
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Click on the Leonhardt link. He provides to links and excerpts from all the reseach that shows girls have better behavior skills in kindergarten than boys. Those early differences in behavior between the genders is very well backed up with research.
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em>Those early differences in behavior between the genders is very well backed up with research.
Those studies show an observed difference between genders but that absolutely does not mean that there is an innate difference. Once again, what happened in the last few decades that all of a sudden we know boys lack attention, whereas, prior to that, that wasn’t an accepted truth?
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Crap. Pretend not to see that failed html.
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Teachers’ grade books reflect observed differences. School systems do not pause for objective testing of possible innate differences. In the schoolroom, perception is reality.
Over the last few decades, academic grading models have been rejiggered to favor girls. Grading homework leads the way. Many boys can do well on tests, but end up with depressed GPAs because they aren’t homework perfectionists.
You should check out the blog “Out in Left Field” by Katharine Beals, for her opinion on the changes in the classroom over the last 30 years. She also wrote a book, “Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World.” In short, she theorizes that the current emphasis on group work and social skills favors students with those skills over others.
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I think the phenomenon is probably the same, but we are conceptualizing it differently and using different language.
“Boys will be boys” is essentially the same idea.
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Whether one can attribute certain learning styles/challenges to a particular gender or not, there is an “and” here – each child should be reasonably accommodated through a variety of teaching styles AND that same child should learn a degree of self-management commensurate with his/her age in order to live in the world.
I would argue that it’s even MORE important to teach the more active/kinesthetic/[insert adjective] kids strategies that will allow them to flourish in spite of school/work/life situations that will not always “fit”.
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As the parent of two boys, I do not want them to absorb the message that boys are inattentive and, therefore, they are inattentive and that what is expected of them is less than what is expected of girls. No way. They are pretty average kids–not any more or less attentive than their male and female peers–but I continue to have high expectations for their behavior and will not put up with what I see as bad behavior just because they are boys.
My older son’s K teacher is in her mid 50’s and has been teaching for three decades, well before the boys-are-inattentive malarkey took root, and does not accept that girls’ executive function skills exceed boys and that we should expect less of boys because of it. While there are some things I would change about her teaching style, I really appreciate that about her.
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The graph in the article shows an average — and the problem is applying the average selectively based on gender. It could be a real problem, if in fact the average reflects the averaging of an outlier population into the average (presuming say, some atypical neurologies that are actually unequally distributed among the genders, like, maybe, ADHD and autism). In this scenario, there’s a group, say 10% of kids, who are atypical, and that 10% is unequally distributed among girls and boys (let’s say 90% of them are boys). That makes a graph like the one shown in NY times article, but the in this case, it doesn’t mean the typical boy is different from the typical girl, just that there are more atypical boys. Addressing the needs of boys by attributing the atypical needs on all of them would not be, I think, an appropriate solution, if this scenario was accurate.
Addressing the needs of the atypical learners is appropriate, but that should be based on identifying those learners, not attributing the need based on gender (like my son’s teacher did).
My atypical learner (with a preponderance of boys) is one way the numbers could work out, but even if that wasn’t the explanation, attributing needs/requirements based on the average of the group you belong to is still wrong, and likely to create as much harm as good (when you apply it to all the people who are different from the average).
(and this analysis doesn’t considering the innateness of the characteristic, or it’s developmental and learning malleability).
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“attributing needs/requirements based on the average of the group you belong to is still wrong, and likely to create as much harm as good (when you apply it to all the people who are different from the average)” — because of the false positive problem.
(Sorry for the less than clear writing. I hope it still made sense).
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Yes, there is.
At least, in Germany there is. Or, even more specific, in Bavaria. I’ve watched all my three boys struggle though elementary school with its countless worksheets that need to be colored, and precise cutting, and the need to draw little images to the words over and over and over again. My girl (age 5) rocks this and has been from an early age on. My boys? Not so much. Fine motor skills are highly valued and prized in the Bavarian elementary system and those typically develop later in boys. At that point, they’ve already accepted that the girls are simply “better”. Past age 10, at the secondary school level, the best students in class are typically girls, not the boys. This continues right on into university and then there is a sudden crash in the girl leadership. An interesting problem, eh?
At the moment, my kids go to an international school with a US curriculum (in Kosovo) where this is not quite as pronounced. Truth, it’s a private school which means the teachers put a lot more effort in than in public schools. But I’ve seen my boys struggle where my girl breezes through. And she’s not a dainty flower – she’s a girl with zest and energy to burn. She’s still doing so much better than her brothers b/c she enjoys all that intricate stuff that her brothers hated.
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Well that settles it, I guess!
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One anecdote cancels out another anecdote. That’s why there’s research… (see Leonhardt’s article again.)
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I did read the Leonhardt article. The research he cites is based heavily on teacher observations. Knowing that an observed difference exists does tell us anything about why it exists.
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…does NOT tell us…
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I also question this stuff as a woman who was a very tomboyish girl growing up. If you asked my parents, of course I was girly, I mean, I played Barbies and everything! If by played they mean they gave them to me as presents and I took off their heads and painted their hair green, then yes, I played with Barbies.
Parents see what they want to see and ignore what doesn’t fit into their worldview.
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And I question this stuff even though I was a calm girl, who didn’t climb trees, was really bad at sports, and enjoyed crafting and clothes, liked to read, do drama and pretend games. I was also good at math, fiercely competitive and intellectually and academically ambitious. People don’t fit into boxes by gender.
Address individual needs, but it isn’t easier to do by reinforcing stereotypes. If coloring worksheets are bad, their bad for anyone who has trouble with them, not just the boys. If they have value, they have value for the people who struggle with them, too, even if they are boys.
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yerk, clearly my mind is racing past my fingers. I hate this gender learning stuff applied to public policy.
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I have an 8 year old daughter in grade 3 and from observation alone, there is a HUGE range of “wriggliness” within the boys and girls in her grade. That stereotype of the tidy, quiet girl sitting at her desk accurately filling out worksheets is just that, a stereotype. I suppose there are a few boys and girls who are like that in her grade but most are much more active.
Like bj noted, you need to take into account the range of learning styles when teaching. And each child needs to become aware of what works best for them in order to begin to take ownership of their own learning.
Keep performance expectations high but ensure that kids’ learning styles are treated with equal respect.
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My boys sat still plenty long putting together Legos and, later on, playing video games (Gameboy). Also reading, when it was something they wanted to read. And drawing-my older son used to sit for hours drawing Pokemons. And they’re not less athletic either-both played rollerblade hockey and t-ball and soccer, the younger one is playing Ultimate Frisbee with a team of his friends.
If I were to generalize I would suggest that we (society) communicate to girls that we expect them to be compliant, and so they apply their “sit still and pay calm attention” to anything we tell them to, while we communicate to boys that it’s okay to only pay attention to things they’re actually interested in. As evidence I point to how girls take in and act on the many negative messages society sends them about appearance and behavior, while boys take in and act on the message that they will be rewarded for being different and following their own path, especially if they videotape it and put it on YouTube. 🙂
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“playing video games (Gameboy)”
From my understanding of how ADHD works, it’s actually very common for the kids to be able to lock onto video games and stay absorbed for hours. I believe it’s common for parents to complain about the contrast between their distractibility while doing homework and their total focus when playing video games.
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Is there a crisis? The boys do better on SATs, and once they get to college they are more likely to sign up for the high-paying (i.e., STEM) majors.
Of course, I am a bad person to ask about this: my wife, my siblings, my daughter, and I all attended single sex schools; my daughter was really into sports and is now a math major (although she is in no sense a tomboy); I don’t have any sons; and when I was young, I kind of wanted to be a girl. So I have no understanding of normal Americans.
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I’m really surprised that 2 points didn’t show up in the comment section. 1. Leonhardt pointed that boys in wealthier towns were performing equally well to girls. Why? Is it because the boys are medicated and tutored? Is it because middle class boys get the message that “school is important,” and less wealthier boys aren’t getting that message. 2. A number of studies show that boys aren’t falling behind. It’s that girls are doing much better than they did in the past.
Anyhow, I really don’t have much skin in this game, I just enjoy the discussion.
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I think it’s just girls catching up in some ways. And maybe falling behind in others. I grew up in India, and had never heard the girls-are-poor-at-math hypothesis (plenty of other anti-girl stuff but not this) – it surprised me to hear that when my kids started school at a public school. They went to a Montessori for pre-school and K, so no gender differences to speak of. Now we live in an Asian-heavy neighborhood and the advanced math and science classes are about equally divided by gender in middle and high school. I do note that from only anecdotal data (friends’ kids), more boys than girls picked STEM majors in college.
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