William A. Draves President of the Learning Resources Network (LERN), an international education association with 4,000 members in 16 countries. makes a compelling argument that boys are being punished by educational systems inability to address new technology and the real world of work. He can be found at http://www.lern.org.
Teen crime is down to a 30 year record low. Teen pregnancy is down. School violence is at an all time low. Teen drunken driving is down. Teen employment is up. Teen driving fatalities are down. Television viewing is down. Reading is up. Yet everyone knows boys are behaving poorly.
The primary battleground is in the nation’s schools. Boys win hands-down on demerits and detention. Worse, boys are now subject to more verbal punishment than ever before. "Today the girls all were well behaved, and will get suckers," a middle school teacher announced in class recently. "The boys will get the broken suckers." "Everyone knows boys don’t behave," she reported at another time, reflecting a widely held view among educators and adults in general.
Our schools are failing to help boys learn, and blaming the boys.
The reason there is a war on against boys is that boys are into the Internet and technology. The Internet terrifies most teachers, and some boys know more about the Internet than do many educators. Boys also exhibit those accompanying attributes which go with a future dominated by the Internet, like taking risks, being entrepreneurial, and being individualistic.
On the other hand, what is bad behavior for boys in school is good behavior for young men in the workplace. The very same behaviors for which they are punished in school, boys are rewarded for when they enter the workforce. This is because taking risks, being entrepreneurial, being individualistic are all behaviors that lead to success in the workforce today.
Today’s schools, in contrast, were meant to prepare youth for the factory and the office, where conformity, teamwork and ‘being normal’ are valued. So today’s schools are bent on conformity, discipline, and other behavior totally unrelated to learning and academic achievement. The Wisconsin Public Schools, arguably one of the best in the nation, currently has a statewide advertising campaign where it proudly boasts of its ban on hats in school.(10) Wearing a hat, they claim, deters learning. By contrast, young men are often allowed to wear hats in the work setting, particularly in technology companies. A recent New Yorker cartoon, for example, has a young worker with a T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backwards telling an older worker dressed in a suit that he will need to change his dress code in order to remain at the company.
Schools and teachers fear technology, do not have a sufficient understanding of the Internet, and do not employ the web in their teaching. A recent National Center for Education Statistics report on what teachers feel most trained for is discipline (80% report feel adequately prepared). At the bottom of the list is the employment of technology, where only about 20% of teachers feel adequately prepared.
Indeed, teachers and schools are usually far behind their own male students in terms of technology.
And the situation is further complicated by the fact that schools and teachers often refuse to learn from their technically skilled students, thus furthering the rift and suggesting to boys that school is no longer relevant for their present and future.
Both boys and girls perceive teachers as favoring girls over boys, according to The Metropolitan Life Survey of The American Teacher, 1997 (11).
- Both girls (57%) and boys (64%) say the teacher pays more attention to girls.
-Girls who raise their hands see themselves as getting called on "often," by greater margins (72% vs. 66%), than boys.
- More boys than girls (31% vs. 19%) feel that it is "mostly true" that teachers do not listen to what they have to say.
- Boys demand more attention in class than girls, according to the majority (61%) of teachers.
- And teachers (47%) say that girls asked for more help after class.
Chart of Teachers' feelings of preparedness
A study by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that teachers themselves report being most prepared for discipline, and least prepared for using technology in the classroom
When given a computer, however, so-called bad boys immediately turn into good behavior role models. On a recent school day, a LERN staff member observed boys in the computer lab so well behaved that there was no teacher in the room, nor one needed.
Boys are leading the technology revolution, the new economy, the Internet Age, and the workforce of the 21st century. But before they get there, they are being roundly punished.
Until our educational system is redesigned for the needs of the 21st century, the war against boys will continue. to read the whole article click here
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