Being a normal boy is a serious liability in today's classroom. Boys tend to be disorganized
and restless. Some have even been known to be noisy and hard to manage.
Sound like any boy you know?
But increasingly, our schools have little patience for what only a couple decades ago
would have been described as "boyishness." As psychologist Michael Thompson has aptly observed:
"Girl behavior is the gold standard in schools. Boys are treated like defective girls."
As a result, these "defective girls" are not faring well academically. Compared with girls,
boys earn lower grades, win fewer honors and are far less likely to go to college.
Boys are languishing academically, while girls are prospering. In an ever more knowledge
based economy, this is not a recipe for a successful society.
We need to start thinking about how we can make our grade school classrooms more boy-friendly.
Here are four reforms that would make a very good start.
1. Turn boys into readers. In all age groups, across all ethnic lines,
boys score lower than girls on national reading tests. Good reading skills are -- need I say?
-- are critical to academic and workplace success. A major study in the UK discovered, not surprisingly,
that girls prefer fiction, magazines, and poetry while boys prefer comics and non-fiction.
Boys whose eyes glaze over if forced to read Little House on the Prairie may be riveted
by the Guinness Book of Records. Boys will read if given materials that interest them.
If you're looking for suggestions for books that have proved irresistible to boys go to
guysread.com
2. Inspire the Male Imagination. Celebrated writing instructor Ralph Fletcher
contends that too many teachers take what is called "the confessional poet" as the classroom ideal.
Personal narratives full of emotion and self-disclosure -- stories girls commonly write --
are prized; whereas action stories describing, say, a skateboard competition
or a monster devouring a city are not. I recently read about a third-grader in Southern California
named Justin who loved science fiction, pirates, and battles.
An alarmed teacher summoned his parents to school to discuss a picture the 8-year-old
had drawn of a sword fight -- which included several decapitated heads. The teacher expressed
grave "concern" about Justin's "values." The boy's father was astonished, not by his son's
drawing which to him was typical boy stuff, but the teacher's overwrought -- and female-centered
-- reaction.
If boys are constantly subject to disapproval for their interests and enthusiasms they are
likely to become disengaged and lag further behind. Our schools need to work with, not against,
the kinetic imaginations of boys.
3. Zero Out Zero Tolerance. Boys are nearly five times more likely to
be expelled from preschool than girls. In grades K-12, boys account for nearly 70% of suspensions,
often for minor acts of insubordination and sometimes for entirely innocent behavior.
Hardly a week goes by without a news story about a young boy running afoul of a school's
zero-tolerance policy.
Josh Welch, age 7, was recently sent home from his Maryland school for nibbling off
the corners of a strawberry Pop-Tart to shape it into a gun.
Josh -- like many other boys punished for violating zero-tolerance policies -- was guilty
of nothing more than being a typical 7-year old boy.
4. Bring back recess. Believe it or not, recess may soon be a thing of the past.
According to a research summary by Science Daily, since the 1970s, schoolchildren
have lost close to 50% of their unstructured outdoor playtime. Much-loved games have
vanished from school playgrounds. In schools throughout the country, games like dodge ball, red rover
and even tag have all but disappeared; too damaging to self-esteem or too "violent"
being the usual excuses. One popular classroom guide suggests tug of war be replaced with "tug of peace."
Boys need to work off their energy. They need to be free to play games they enjoy.
And keeping them cooped up inside all day will not help them learn.
As our schools become more feelings centered, more competition-free and more sedentary,
they move further away from the needs of boys. We need to reverse the boy-averse trends.
Male underachievement is everyone's concern. These are our sons. These are the young men
with whom our daughters will build a future. If boys are in trouble, so are we all.
I'm Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute for Prager University.