I am the mother of four boys, now all adults. If I think back to their childhoods and adolescence, it’s a whirlwind of movement and physicality, adventure and injury, rough and tumble play, of fart jokes and stinky sports shoes, short and to-the-point communication, and lots and lots of food and Milo. (Actually, it’s not so different when we all get together now.)
This description of life with boys won’t surprise most people – and yet why is it that the one place where children spend most of their time, school, is so stacked against meeting boys’ needs?
A recent survey in WA found that girls are starting to outperform boys in maths and science, which hasn’t been the case previously. Fantastic news for our girls – these fields badly need some gender balance, but it’s a shame if it’s at boys’ expense. We are also seeing disturbing numbers of boys in remedial classes and in behaviour management units in our schools across the country.
Boys are also more likely statistically (75% more likely than girls in fact) to die or be injured in an accident, to commit a crime, to be injured playing sport, to get cancer, to die at work, to go to prison, to be admitted to hospital and to fail school … well, boys will be boys right? But what does that mean for parents and teachers?
It’s long been acknowledged that the low number of male primary teachers is an issue and unless your son’s female teacher has brothers, how can we expect her to understand the boys in the class unless we actually talk about the differences between boys and girls, politically incorrect as that might be?
Neil Farmer in his book, Getting it Right for Boys, explains some key differences in how most boys’ and girls’ brains function and some of these are that girls have better ability for “cross talk” between their right and left hemispheres, better memory storage and are more verbal and better listeners.
These differences explain a lot of the angst that happens in our homes and schools where boys are mainly misunderstood by the opposite gender.
One of the most noticeable major differences (and yes there are always exceptions) between girls and boys in the classroom is that boys are more likely to learn through movement. Passivity numbs them to a degree.
Boys have been shown to develop their right brain before their left brain, whereas girls develop both at the same time and this partially explains why boys are often up to 18 months behind girls when they start school and why girls are more emotionally and verbally savvy.
The right brain is more about ‘doing’, creativity and intuitive processing (rather than logical) and spatial growth and awareness. This may be why most boys prefer the sandpit to drawing and painting. It may also explain why men are better at reverse parking, but hey you didn’t hear it from me.
Classrooms, especially those trying to get everyone up to scratch for the NAPLAN, aren’t really conducive to this.
The second major difference is that the amygdala is actually bigger in boys than girls so they are biologically driven to want to be warriors and superheroes and to take risks – often perceived as naughtiness.
The brain difference also explains why boys get confused around emotions. Many boys will take any emotional state – even sadness, confusion, frustration and hurt – and turn it into an anger response. So much aggression is often masking other emotional vulnerabilities.
Combine this with their extra testosterone and we have a situation where if we don’t provide our boys with plenty of opportunity to diffuse pent-up energy, it will manifest itself in disruptive, aggressive and even bullying behaviours.
It worries me that Australia’s “education revolution” is eroding critical playtime and the opportunity for physicality in our schools and the cost is high for all children but even more so for our boys – and perhaps their teachers who end up devoting more and more time to behaviour management. Boys have shorter attention spans and often need more stimulation to become engaged in activities that they perceive as ‘boring’ with little fun and lightness.
Most girls do not have the same huge need to discharge energy and can sit at desks much longer than boys without becoming restless and disruptive.
Another challenge is that boys only hear 70-75% of what girls do and that’s with eye contact. If a boy is absorbed in a play activity, or is facing away from his parent or teacher, he will generally not hear a thing being said. He also struggles with information overload – so making too many requests in one communication can create a glazed look as he fails to understand what is required of him.
We need to factor in these gender differences when we’re communicating with boys. They need all the help they can get to ensure they can thrive in our schools and in life, and reverse those scary statistics. They need boy champions to do this.
Maggie Dent is a parenting author, educator, speaker and mother of four sons. www.maggiedent.com
The description of your own boys ‘won’t surprise most people’, yet it surprises me that you chose to present them so one dimensionally. Like you, I have four sons and I could go on and on about their complex characters and behaviours. Our children deserve to be celebrated as unique people, not as simply drawn cliches.
The Essentialist Gender Theory tone of this blog sets up binary opposites of boys or girls. The ‘poor boys syndrome’ demonizes girls and female teachers for taking what is considered to be the birthright of boys, and it pre-scribes the role of male teachers. Hand wringing about boys and their problem with education is a lame disguise by the cultural hegemony to reassert their privileged place that has boys and girls boxed into stereotyped and dangerously confining lives.
As educators, if a deficit model must be applied then we need to look at the data more closely – at which particular individual children are failing and why. It is time we retired this old, chauvinist agenda of ‘the boys’ and ‘the girls’. Instead, we need to get to know our children as individuals, and concentrate our energy on personalize their learning accordingly.
For the sake of all the girls and boys who don’t fit into the ‘normal’ category…. Be very careful what you do with this information…. Value difference and diversity.
Brilliant; just a brilliant article that should be emailed to all school principals and school teachers across Australia. I am deadly serious!
This issue is a priority that needs to be dealt with as a compulsory PD for all teachers, and a principle subject in all teaching and Dip Ed degrees. Only then, we may have a small minority that actually “get it” and teach accordingly.
I am a casual relief teacher who witnesses the wrath of schools and teachers daily on very misunderstood boys (and girls) and their needs.
I also have a gorgeous son, now in year 9, who has been perpetually bullied and misunderstood by his teachers at both primary and secondary school, who now sees life as too difficult; emotionally, socially, physically and academically; at 15!!!!!!!!!
And, he is not alone.
Maggie Dent has highlighted a massive deficiency in our education system, but how is it going to be resolved?
Now men might begin to understand the effect of disadvantage. The difference is that over the hundreds of generations of female of disadvantage it has not usually been the result of choice.
Boys have just the same choices as girls do to apply themselves to their studies. But heaven forbid that girls do better, especially in “male subjects”. We are doing a good job though in ensuring that they are punished in causing them to feel guilty for not knowing their place. How dare they!
As an ex-teacher (female, primary), I noticed differences between the capacities of boys and girls to tolerate female authority. Perhaps part of the reason some boys struggle in school is that we are still raising them to assume an unequal level of power and entitlement based on their gender . This is no where more evident than in the playground where girls are still taunted that they can’t do stuff because they’re ‘girls’. Until we teach our boys from an early age the politics of equality we do children of both sexes such a diservice.
Boys will always be less able to tolerate situations requiring compliance, co operation and respect for female authority (like primary school), if we don’t specifically teach these essential social skills. Just a thought…
There is nothing new here, only our responses to the issues.There are gender differences in the brain and we have known that without question for over 20 years now. . I am happy that the educational success of our girls (at least collectively) continues to grow. Good teachers do undertand the needs of all students and the special needs of boys. If we fail as a society to make learning and schooling succesful and rewarding for all our kids then we risk a social failure of massive proportions in the future. If we continue to be happy with a high “failure” rate amongst our boys then we face just such a future.