The needs and interests of boys.

Why investigate a new approach to cater for boys?

Even when leaving the proven developmental and biological differences between males and females aside, there is an obvious difference in the way boys and girls think and learn which can be clearly seen in the classroom. Examining the average classroom the difference between the boys and girls engagement and attitude towards school are obvious. Boys, in general, are disinterested and disengaged from the classroom experience compared to their female peers, this difference in engagement is particularly pertinent from the age of 9 before the boys have even reached high school.

This disengagement of many boys has been evident from the data collected in the thirteen schools in the Boys Education Project in the Diocese of Broken Bay.
A Queensland Government Report states that,

“….As a group, boys are at higher risk of failing to achieve at school than girls as a group. Boys on the whole are less likely to complete high school and more likely to be suspended or excluded. Community concerns about boys' engagement and performance at school link with broader social issues for some young men. These include a worrying suicide rate, significant violence and harassment, and alienation from wider society. ..”.

www.ep.liu.se/ecp/021/vol1/010/ecp2107010.pdf - 24/3/2009.

As educators of the future generation of men, it is vital that we focus on adapting the curriculum to cater for boys, to thereby change their attitudes and engagement toward learning and school in order to best prepare and educate
them for their future. We have come to point where the classroom just is not developmentally appropriate for young boys particularly below the age of 7.



What do boys need?


We know that learning is strongest when certain conditions are met:

* Critical tasks are practised at an appropriate frequency and intensity.
* Practice takes place at the right skill level for the individual student—a skill level that continuously adapts to keep the student challenged, but not frustrated.
* Multiple skills are “cross-trained” at the same time for lasting improvement.
* Rewards build as a student progresses, maximizing motivation.
* The learning environment feels “safe,” so students are encouraged to take risks.
* The content is age appropriate and engaging.

It is widely recognised in the educational community that in general, boys below the age of 7 have not yet developed the fine motor skills essential for writing. Additionally, the language centres in their brains mature up to 6 years later than their female counter-parts. With so much societal pressure on achieving literacy over the last 30 years we have seen a pushing down of the curriculum to younger and younger children. Before this time, the nursery curriculum was primarily focused on socialisation and getting the child ready for school, not trying to get a jump start on academics. Literacy and numeracy exposure was in the form of being read a story, chanting rhymes or singing songs only. Now children are expected before entering school to recognise and write the numbers 1-10 and most of the letters of the alphabet. Failing to achieve this standard leads to extra focus groups in school. These children quickly realise that they are in the 'dumb' group. Consequently, their already diminished perception of school drops through the floor. Consequently, the cycle of poor academic achievement continues. The politicians will shout to further increase the focus on literacy at this early age. The fatal flaw in this thinking is that they are failing to see that for most boys literacy before the age of 7 is simply inappropriate the male brain just does not have the language centres to cope with it. Their attempt at a solution only serves to further frustrate and alienate boys especially as it tends to be gym or break time that is sacrificed in favour of extra literacy time.


How do boys relate to each other?

A good source of the needs and interests of boys is to simply watch how they interact with each other. They are quite physical, always pushing and shoving each other

Table of p84 - WGM...sax



The difference may be characterised this way: boys' friendships are shoulder-to-shoulder, a group of boys looking out at some common interest. Girls on the other hand are face-to-face, two or three talking with each other.
[Tannan, Deborah. You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, rev ed. New York: HarperCollins, 2001]

The implications of this are that when working with a boy, sit next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder and spread out the materials in front of you so you are both focusing on the materials. Holding eye contact face-to-face is almost certain to make them uncomfortable.


Status.

For most boys, being friends with a teacher is a sign of being a geek. They recoil at the idea of being the 'Teachers Pet' and will do almost anything to prove that this is not the case. Professor Bishop at Cornell University writes:

"In the eyes of most students, the nerd exemplifies the 'I trust my teachers to help me learn' attitude that prevails in most elementary school classrooms. The dominant middle school crowd is telling them that trusting teachers is baby stuff. It is 'us' [the boys] versus 'them' [the teachers]. Friendship with teachers make you a target for harassment by peers....Boys are not supposed to suck up to teachers. You avoid being perceived as a suck-up by avoiding eye contact with teachers, not raising one's hand in class too frequently, and [by] talking or passing notes to friends during class (this demonstrates that you value relationships with friends more than your reputation with the teacher).
[Bishop, John H. Bishop, Matthew. Gelbwasser, Lara. Green, Shanna. Zuckerman, Andrew. Nerds and Freaks: A Theory of Student Culture and Norms
Brookings Papers on Education Policy - 2003, pp. 141-199]


Different sequence of maturation.

Researchers at Virginia Tech. examined brain activity in 508 'normal' children - 284 boys and 224 girls - ranging in age from 2 months to 16 years. This study demonstrated that various regions of the brain develop in a different sequence in boys compared with girls. It is incorrect to claim "Boys develop along the same lines as girls, only slower". The truth is invariably more complex, for example, the researchers found that the areas of the brain involved with language and fine motor skills matured around 6 years earlier in girls while the areas involved in targeting and spacial memory mature about 4 years earlier in boys. They concluded that:

"In the areas of the brain involved in language, in spatial memory, in motor coordination, and in getting along with other people develop in a different order, time and rate in girls compared with boys."


Literature.

In my initial investigation I referenced the research done at Harvard University into the brain image of children experiencing emotion. It revealed that boys process those feeling in the primitive nucleus of their brain which has few direct connections to the areas of the brain responsible for language whereas girls emotional centres are located in the same area as those responsible for language. Consequently, females are more able to discuss their feelings whereas when a boy experiences intense emotion, they talk less. Those feelings are locked away never to be spoken about. That is why it is futile to ask a young boy "How would you feel if ...." It is asking the brain to do two unrelated tasks.

We can see how this translates in the appeal of literature for boys. Touchy feely books just aren't appropriate for young boys. They will not enjoy it and again it risks turning them off reading altogether. One of the most consistent findings in education research is that most girls prefer fiction: short stories and novels, where they can be analytical about the character's motives and behaviours. Boys on the other hand prefer non-fiction: descriptions of real events (generally, battles or adventure) or illustrated accounts of the way things work. Stories have to involve action and a strong male protagonist. Hence the attraction of superhero comics to the young male population. [Simpson, A. Facts and Fiction: An investigation of the Reading Practices of Girls and Boys, English Education 1991]

Some educators have found assigning articles from the daily newspaper is a good motivator for boys. Edward DeRoche, a director at the University of San Diego, has reviewed many studies of the effectiveness of newspapers for motivating below-average readers, particularly boys. The studies show that "students in such classes score significantly higher in spelling, vocabulary development, and comprehension than comparable students who did not use the newspapers" [DeRoche, Edward. READ ALL ABOUT IT: THE CASE FOR NEWSPAPERS IN THE CLASSROOM, Education Week,29/1/2003]