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A recent Chicago Board of Education report showed
that girls enjoy a 63-37% advantage over boys in gaining admittance to Chicago's
eight selective-enrollment college prep high schools. In response, Chicago
Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan and top administrators at Jones, Whitney Young
and Brooks prep schools are advocating that schools consider “gender
weighting." Yet to balance the scales by employing admissions preferences is
misguided. What’s needed instead is a rethinking of the way we educate,
beginning at the earliest levels.
Many healthy, energetic, intelligent boys are
branded as behavior problems as soon as they begin school, and are punished and
put on Ritalin or other drugs so they will sit still. Little thought is given to
two obvious questions: how could a six or seven year-old be “bad”? And how could
so many boys need drugs to function in school? Because schools and classrooms do
not fit their educational needs, many boys disengage from school long before
they ever reach the prep school level.
Many modern educational practices are
counterproductive for boys. Success in school is tightly correlated with the
ability to sit still, be quiet and complete paperwork and assignments which are
sometimes of questionable value. A “get tough” mentality—under which teachers
give excessive homework lest they appear uncommitted or weak—has become a
substitute for educators actually having a sound reason for assigning all the
work they assign.
Many young boys are bodily kinesthetic learners who
respond to hands-on lessons. The educational establishment finds this
inconvenient, and thus largely ignores it.
The trend against competition and the promotion of cooperative learning
strategies run counter to boys' natural competitiveness and individual
initiative. Lessons in which there are no right or wrong answers, and from which
solid conclusions cannot be drawn, tend to frustrate boys, who often view them
as pointless.
Efforts to make schools gentler and to promote women's writing, while
understandable, have pushed aside the action and adventure literature which boys
have treasured for generations. In their place are subtle, reflective works
which often hold little interest for boys.
The dearth of male teachers--particularly at the
elementary level, where female teachers outnumber male teachers six to one--is a
problem for boys. The average teacher is a well-meaning and dedicated woman who
always did well in school and can’t quite understand why the boys won't sit
still, be quiet and do their work like the girls do. Instead, boys need strong,
charismatic teachers who mix firm discipline with an understanding and
good-natured acceptance of boyish energy. And though it’s rarely mentioned, most
teachers are weighed down by paperwork and secretarial labor, which limits the
time they can spend planning creative, hands-on, boy-friendly lessons.
Recess and physical education time allotted during
the day are insufficient for boys' needs, and the trend has been to reduce this
time rather than to increase it. Pervasive fear of lawsuits has turned educators
into guards vigilant to prevent any manifestation of natural boyishness outside
the classroom from becoming the school district’s latest legal settlement
payout.
The deterioration of vocational education also
hurts boys. US Department of Education data show that these programs suffered a
sharp decline from 1982 to 1992 and never recovered. Vocational classes once
started low and middle achieving boys on the path to careers as skilled
tradesmen. They have now often been replaced by an asinine yet pervasive mantra
that defines as successful only those who go to college and become doctors or
lawyers. This mantra often disrespects boys’ blue collar fathers, who also
happen to be their primary role models. In fact, to suggest that a boy pursue a
career working with his hands leaves a teacher open to charges of harming
students by encouraging low expectations.
The boy crisis in our schools is more than an
educational crisis—it is also a significant public health issue. Nearly nine
million prescriptions of Ritalin are written for American children each year,
most of them for boys between the ages of six and 12. According to a federal
expert advisory panel, 10% of 10 year-old American boys are on Ritalin or
similar drugs. In February the panel, which reviewed several dozen reports of
deaths, heart problems, and toxic reactions associated with these
drugs, recommended they carry a prominent 'black box' warning, the strongest
warning for prescription drugs.
The gender weighting currently being pondered by
Chicago’s educational establishment wouldn’t begin to solve these problems. Nor
would it address the wide gender disparities that exist among low and middle
achieving students. Boys don’t need admissions preferences—they need a system
which meets their educational needs.
This article first appeared in the
Chicago Sun-Times (5/7/06).
Jeffery M. Leving
is one of America's most prominent family law attorneys.
He is the author of the book Fathers' Rights:
Hard-hitting and Fair Advice for Every Father Involved
in a Custody Dispute. His website is
www.dadsrights.com.
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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