Five-Minute Time Out: The Boy Crisis
Trouble With Boys author Peg Tyre on why our sons are lagging behind.
by Kara Jesella
October 10, 2008
Why have schools changed so much?
It's partly a product of No Child Left Behind. The other thing that has changed is that we want all kids to go to college, which is really different. To make it in life without a college degree is hard and there's a national mandate that all kids go to college. That's really new.
In your book, a lot of experts note that teachers today — particularly female teachers, which most are — can't deal with the way "normal" boys act in class, i.e. roughhousing, being loud, asking a lot of questions, not always paying attention, etc. But is this really true? I find it hard to believe that teachers in the past were any more tolerant of this kind of behavior.
School has changed a great deal. Our academic expectations are higher. Our curriculum is narrower. Our tolerance for boisterous play — post-Columbine — has evaporated. We have less recess. These are big factors that I argue are affecting our sons.
You talk about the myths our culture perpetuates about boys and how they are roadblocks to boys doing well in school. What are the messages that boys get about school and where do they get them from? How did school become something that girls are supposed to do well at but boys aren't?
In the wake of Columbine, we're uncomfortable with fantasy violence and play violence so we have zero-tolerance policies. But in many schools, zero-tolerance is taken way too far, and when a kid stretches his forefinger and goes "pew pew" we suddenly look at him like he is a potential Columbine. Many boys, whose natural fantasy life revolves around action and violence, start to feel like school is not for them. I think the increasing, grinding emphasis on seatwork and circle time and structured instruction is developmentally inappropriate for a lot of kids, many of them boys. They start to dread school. They don't want to sit that long. Negative ideas about learning begin to take root.
Some of those anti-school ideas are validated in our homes. You have fathers who say, "I've never missed a soccer game" and you want to say, "Have you ever been to a PTA meeting?" Because the truth is that by and large the majority is women at the PTA. Who reads the bedtime stories? Who reads novels at home? I meet men at parties who say, "I don't read. Talk to my wife." That's considered okay for men. What are we communicating to our sons?
You talk quite a bit about how many boys report that they don't like to read and that part of the problem is that they get bored reading "girl books." But has the reading curriculum really changed that much, or is it more, as you also note, that boys who are struggling with reading decide that it's a girl thing, which makes it easier for them to give up on it?
"When a kid stretches his forefinger and goes "pew pew" we suddenly look at him like he is a potential Columbine."
You need to make sure that kids have all kinds of books available. Boys don't. One boy told me he had to read Bee Season in his sophomore year of high school. That's a hard book for a guy. I'm not saying boys should only read books about Nascar and girls should slog through Moby Dick. But knowing that boys are a grade-and-a-half behind girls in reading — even in affluent school districts, boys are behind girls — do you really want to assign Bee Season? The question is worth asking.
It seems like a lot of schools are actually making efforts to make things easier for boys: changing the qualifications for awards so boys will win more of them, lowering the admissions requirements for boys (but not girls). Won't this hurt girls in the end?
The examples I cite in the book are the rare exceptions where schools are trying to re-engage boys in school. But I do think that the underachievement of boys will hurt girls and here's how: girls grow up to be women and women want to marry guys with equal education and earning power. With 2.5 million more women than men in college this year — a gap which grows by 100,000 each year, I clearly see the way the underachievement of boys will hurt girls.
Why can't boys who do badly in elementary school catch up in high school? And why can't boys who do badly in high school catch up in college?
Reading. Once you fall behind in reading . . . I don't want to alarm all the parents who have two-year-olds and want to whip out flashcards. Some kids learn to read early, some read late, some spontaneously, some not. Do not panic. But if your child is in fourth or fifth grade and more than a grade-and-a-half behind, the outcomes are not good. Most of the kids in the slow reading group, in whatever school you look at, are going to be boys.
What do you think parents who are worried about their sons' progress in school should do?
Choose preschool carefully. Make sure it is not overly academic and that there is plenty of time for unstructured play. Make sure there is enough movement in the classroom and hands-on activities, like blocks and things to build with. Listen to your son. If he expresses fear, frustration, boredom or resentment towards school, it's time to talk to the teacher. But before you go in for your conference, get some information. It's not the teachers' fault — they are probably doing the best they can. Ditto for parents. Know that there are larger cultural forces at work that are making it hard to be a schoolboy right now.
©2008 Kara Jesella and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kara Jesella is a co-author of How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love
Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time and a frequent
contributor to The New York Times.
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