By Carolyn Abraham, Globe and Mail, October 15, 2010
It’s no mystery that talk of males in need can become a powder keg of sexual politics, said Paul Cappon, president and CEO of the Canadian Council on Learning. “We don’t like to talk about it, because we think it’s denigrating the achievements of females, but that’s not the case,” he said. “You have to ask what is happening, and you have to ask why. It’s a head in-the-sand, politically correct view to say there’s no problem with boys."
Whether parents, with lower expectations of their sons graduating from university than their daughters (60%-70%), or video games as distractions, or the old nugget that 'boys develop more slowly than girls, or the perennial "boredom" with school on the part of boys, or some other background factors influencing the facts, there is a problem with the achievement of males in Canadian education. And it is not necessary to complicate the facts or the politics of those facts by equating them with the denigration of women.
While there is no denying that, according to one source, 32% of boys are achieving A averages, (compared with 46% of girls), and that the presence of every boy in a post-secondary institution is an investment in Canada's future, as is the presence of every girl, there is also no denying that there is considerable loss of both talent and development.
One male education professor, Jay Bradley, at McGill, told the Globe reporter that he felt embarrassed whenever he mentions this deficit in male academic achievment.
Gender politics is still a very hot political topic in North America, and that certainly includes Canada.
There is not a day that goes by that we cannot find another male behaving badly in terms of notice to the law enforcement community, or to the school authorities, and thereby to the "news media" which thrives on "bad news."
There is no doubt that whenever an average person thinks about a simple concept like "bully" or "robber" or "thief" or "abuser" or "derelict" or "no-good" or "fighter" or "troubled" or "sick" or "dangerous" or "pervert" or "deviant" or "bum" or "drunk" or "unemployed" or "swindler" or "cheater" or "sicko" ....that average person is picturing a "male" in the frame of the concept. And the trouble is that such pictures prevail in the minds of both men and women.
They are cultural stereotypes, even cultural archetypes. These are words we apply to "men" and not to "women."
There is also clinical evidence, especially from adolescence, that the male mind is far more fragile and vulnerable than the image those same males project in their interractions. And so adept are they in their capacity to "act" out their cover-up, that they have convinced many of their parents, teachers and people in positions of authority that the mask trumps the reality.
All of us need to stop buying the "macho" image which every adolescent male born in the last century has either mastered, or at least attempted to foist onto the belief system of some adult(s), in an attempt to cover his fear, his vulnerability, his confusion, his detachment, his superiority, his awkwardness and his hatred of school and all of the implications of that mask.
He does not want to do homework; he certainly does not want to be the teacher's pet with all the right answers, because that would bring the avalanche of contempt from his male peers; he does not want to imagine himself in an academic role, because to do so would include all those pictures of "the student" and the "goody-two-shoes" that conflict with his needs to rebel. He does not want to be seen as another of those do-gooders who volunteer for Doctors without Borders, not at sixteen or seventeen. He does not want to aspire to be a courtroom lawyer, unless his father or mother are coaching him in that direction. He certainly does not want to be an actor, artist, dancer, pianist, or sculptor because to go in that direction risks the bullying of being called a "fag" by his peers which is one of the most hated epithets a young male can have hurled at him. You see he actually believes, wrongly, that the only route to self-discovery is through the hamlet, village, town, city, province and state called "What-the-Hell!"
Rebellion is the self-imposed medication for all the pains of weakness, for the adolescent male. And because all males take the dose, it is not only an individual thing; it is cultural.
And school does not fit with the prescription, and certainly neither does post-secondary school.
Of course, these comments are something of an exaggeration; nevertheless, they merit some careful consideration when we are considering the plight of males, and we need not be wasting our time or energy in false conflicts with the worthy and laudable achievements of females in school.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Individuals differ more than genders
By Suzanne Nadeau, Grand Forks Hearld, found on MenTeach website. She interviewed
Marcus Weaver-Hightower, the author of the new book "The Politics in Boys' Education: Getting Boys 'Right." Weaver-Hightower spent a year in Australia looking at their approach to the education of male students. He is currently an assisstant professor at the University of North Dakota.
Why Australia?
A. Australia had really gone farther than any other country in addressing boys’ issues, doing practice-oriented research to see what was actually going on.
I wanted to see if they are so far ahead in these issues, what can we in the United States do to follow them? The focus of the book is the Australian policy directed toward boys’ education, but there is a concerted effort to compare it to what is in the United States.
We share a pretty firm idea about masculinity and gender: They’ve got the Crocodile Dundee image. We’ve got the John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone images. Both countries have this idea of hyper-masculinity. Both are trying to look backward to define masculinity, and my own take is that’s the wrong direction and we really need to redirect masculinity, especially in culture and an economy that has shifted and made hyper-masculinity more of a burden than it is an asset.
Q. You were a high school teacher and coach, can you tell us if boys learn differently than girls?
A. I think it depends. If we really wanted to generalize, I think there are differences between boys and girls. There are some biological differences, obviously, but we’ve trained boys and girls to be different.
Kids are different. But, I think there’s far more difference between boys and boys than between boys and girls.
There’s more variability between boys and between girls than there is between the two groups.
I think teachers, and really parents, know this at an intrinsic level. For example, parents might have two sons that are vastly different; then they might have a son and a daughter who are very similar.
Canada may not have either Crocodile Dundee or John Wayne as models of hypermasculinity. However, we certainly have models of "macho" masculinity that may be in conflict with academic achievement. These could include NHL "fighters" like Colton Orr, Tie Domi, Sean Avery...and then there are the 'high-scoring' recruits like Sidney Crosby, Taylor Hall, Alex Ovechkin, Mike Camelleri, and Phil Kessel.
And we look also to more complicated role models like Dr. David Suzuki, and our new Governor General, David Lloyd Johnston. And then, on the political level, compare Stephen Harper with both Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton, and you might get a glimpse of the tension between such different examples of masculinity, irrespective of policy.
If the learning of this professor, from year of study in Australia is "one size does not fit all" in terms of educational policy and practice, perhaps that is instructive for our approach to learning in Canada.
Individual differences actually trumping gender sterrotypes in the perceptions, attitudes and interactions of educators with their students could go a long way to enhanced achievement of all students.
Marcus Weaver-Hightower, the author of the new book "The Politics in Boys' Education: Getting Boys 'Right." Weaver-Hightower spent a year in Australia looking at their approach to the education of male students. He is currently an assisstant professor at the University of North Dakota.
Why Australia?
A. Australia had really gone farther than any other country in addressing boys’ issues, doing practice-oriented research to see what was actually going on.
I wanted to see if they are so far ahead in these issues, what can we in the United States do to follow them? The focus of the book is the Australian policy directed toward boys’ education, but there is a concerted effort to compare it to what is in the United States.
We share a pretty firm idea about masculinity and gender: They’ve got the Crocodile Dundee image. We’ve got the John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone images. Both countries have this idea of hyper-masculinity. Both are trying to look backward to define masculinity, and my own take is that’s the wrong direction and we really need to redirect masculinity, especially in culture and an economy that has shifted and made hyper-masculinity more of a burden than it is an asset.
Q. You were a high school teacher and coach, can you tell us if boys learn differently than girls?
A. I think it depends. If we really wanted to generalize, I think there are differences between boys and girls. There are some biological differences, obviously, but we’ve trained boys and girls to be different.
Kids are different. But, I think there’s far more difference between boys and boys than between boys and girls.
There’s more variability between boys and between girls than there is between the two groups.
I think teachers, and really parents, know this at an intrinsic level. For example, parents might have two sons that are vastly different; then they might have a son and a daughter who are very similar.
Canada may not have either Crocodile Dundee or John Wayne as models of hypermasculinity. However, we certainly have models of "macho" masculinity that may be in conflict with academic achievement. These could include NHL "fighters" like Colton Orr, Tie Domi, Sean Avery...and then there are the 'high-scoring' recruits like Sidney Crosby, Taylor Hall, Alex Ovechkin, Mike Camelleri, and Phil Kessel.
And we look also to more complicated role models like Dr. David Suzuki, and our new Governor General, David Lloyd Johnston. And then, on the political level, compare Stephen Harper with both Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton, and you might get a glimpse of the tension between such different examples of masculinity, irrespective of policy.
If the learning of this professor, from year of study in Australia is "one size does not fit all" in terms of educational policy and practice, perhaps that is instructive for our approach to learning in Canada.
Individual differences actually trumping gender sterrotypes in the perceptions, attitudes and interactions of educators with their students could go a long way to enhanced achievement of all students.
Young Men: "Canary in National Coal Mine"
Br Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star, October 18, 2010
But the unheard subtext to all this hand wringing is that boys are in trouble. As one participant in a College Board study of American education noted, “Our young men are the canary in the national coal mine.”
As vice president of the D.C.-based College Board Advocacy and Policy Center, Ronald Williams attends many a college graduation ceremony. He notes the clickety-clack of high heels across the stage floor as graduate after graduate crosses to accept her diploma. Increasingly, Williams is aware of the dearth of men.
Researchers are starting to look into the ways our schools are failing certain students more than others. There are a lot of factors at play: race, class, and poverty both urban and rural. And, of course, there is the impact of broken families and single-parent households. Academics and administrators are trying to understand the way all these things affect the attitudes and expectations of the young, especially young men.
In the most troubled school districts, however, reflecting on these issues is a luxury they can’t afford. Here is how one former K-12 superintendent framed the issue to Williams: If you have 30-some schools and 16 are being threatened with being taken over by the state, you don’t have time to figure out which part of the population is messing up.
Still, some points of consensus are emerging about the difficulties boys face in school.
One is that schools are punishing “boy behavior” harshly and ineffectively. From a young age, boys tend to have excessive energy and more trouble settling down. Speaking loudly, not being able to focus and follow instructions, and the like tend to get a kid in trouble in school. Research has shown that boys are twice as likely as girls to be suspended, labeled learning disabled or diagnosed with attention deficit or attention deficit hyperactivity.
Others studies seek to unravel how particularly for African American and Latino teenagers, school becomes a “pipeline to prison” rather than to college. Disciplinary measures often cast boys to the street (out-of-school suspension) rather than imposing penalties in school, which can lead to delinquency and juvenile detention. It’s a pretty well-worn path that has helped the U.S. achieve some of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
President Barack Obama targeted 2020 as the date by which the U.S. should regain its marker as the nation with the highest percentage of postsecondary degrees. But it should be blatantly obvious that a nation only educating half of its population to its potential can’t advance, much less reclaim, past global prominence in academic standards.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/18/2327281/add-this-to-the-list-boys-are.html#ixzz12sxAmMxr
While Canadian norms are different from U.S. norms, and the data disclose different patterns (for example, our prison intake is significantly smaller than the U.S.), the fact that this story is emerging in the heartland of the U.S. suggests that it is a broadly recognized societal trend, looking for answers in that country too.
Perhaps it can also legitimately be said that "young men are the canary in the national coal mine in Canada, also."
But the unheard subtext to all this hand wringing is that boys are in trouble. As one participant in a College Board study of American education noted, “Our young men are the canary in the national coal mine.”
As vice president of the D.C.-based College Board Advocacy and Policy Center, Ronald Williams attends many a college graduation ceremony. He notes the clickety-clack of high heels across the stage floor as graduate after graduate crosses to accept her diploma. Increasingly, Williams is aware of the dearth of men.
Researchers are starting to look into the ways our schools are failing certain students more than others. There are a lot of factors at play: race, class, and poverty both urban and rural. And, of course, there is the impact of broken families and single-parent households. Academics and administrators are trying to understand the way all these things affect the attitudes and expectations of the young, especially young men.
In the most troubled school districts, however, reflecting on these issues is a luxury they can’t afford. Here is how one former K-12 superintendent framed the issue to Williams: If you have 30-some schools and 16 are being threatened with being taken over by the state, you don’t have time to figure out which part of the population is messing up.
Still, some points of consensus are emerging about the difficulties boys face in school.
One is that schools are punishing “boy behavior” harshly and ineffectively. From a young age, boys tend to have excessive energy and more trouble settling down. Speaking loudly, not being able to focus and follow instructions, and the like tend to get a kid in trouble in school. Research has shown that boys are twice as likely as girls to be suspended, labeled learning disabled or diagnosed with attention deficit or attention deficit hyperactivity.
Others studies seek to unravel how particularly for African American and Latino teenagers, school becomes a “pipeline to prison” rather than to college. Disciplinary measures often cast boys to the street (out-of-school suspension) rather than imposing penalties in school, which can lead to delinquency and juvenile detention. It’s a pretty well-worn path that has helped the U.S. achieve some of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
President Barack Obama targeted 2020 as the date by which the U.S. should regain its marker as the nation with the highest percentage of postsecondary degrees. But it should be blatantly obvious that a nation only educating half of its population to its potential can’t advance, much less reclaim, past global prominence in academic standards.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/18/2327281/add-this-to-the-list-boys-are.html#ixzz12sxAmMxr
While Canadian norms are different from U.S. norms, and the data disclose different patterns (for example, our prison intake is significantly smaller than the U.S.), the fact that this story is emerging in the heartland of the U.S. suggests that it is a broadly recognized societal trend, looking for answers in that country too.
Perhaps it can also legitimately be said that "young men are the canary in the national coal mine in Canada, also."
Drugs for Boys...is this an outrage?
By Carolyn Abraham, Globe and Mail, October 18, 2010
Figures compiled for The Globe and Mail by IMS Health, an independent firm that tracks pharmaceutical sales, show prescriptions for Ritalin and other amphetamine-like drugs for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder shot up to 2.9 million in 2009, a jump of more than 55 per cent in four years.
More than two million were written specifically for children under 17 – a leap of 43 per cent since 2005 – and at least 75 per cent of them were for young males – a ratio some see as evidence that society is making a malady of boyhood itself.
“What if we were drugging girls at the same rate?” asks Jon Bradley, education professor at McGill University. “What if [the majority] of these prescriptions were being written for girls? There'd be a march.”
If you want a benchmark for the culture of schools, this is one good place to start.
Prescribing drugs mainly to boys continues unabated and with little push back from a public seeking to have their child "conform" to the norms of the school authorities.
Concentration and conformity may not be mutually supportive goals. In fact, as John Steinbeck once wrote, man is most creative and most loyal to his nature in rebellion.
While we are damping down the nervous energies of many boys, we are also, perhaps, creating a compliant client for teachers to control more easily. And one has to wonder if that is a more accurate description of the agenda.
One October, I conducted a workshop for teachers in a small village in which a young boy (12) had died under the wheels of a flatbed during a hayride on Civic Holiday weekend. Some forty plus kids and adults, including his siblings were also on the ride and witnessed the tragedy. Of course we talked about grief, and the implications of such an event. We also talked about empathy and compassion and the rubbing up against each other of the emotions in the community/school and the teaching agenda of the faculty.
At the first break, one teacher approached me seeking a time to talk privately.
When the morning session ended we met in an office in the well-appointed school.
"I teach his ten-year-old brother, and I told him yesterday, the honeymoon is over!" came the words rushing from her lips.
"Let me get this straight; I think I just heard you say that you told this boy's brother, who had witnessed his brother's death a few weeks ago, under the wheels of the flatbed, that 'the honeymoon is over'," I responded. "Is that about right?"
"Well, he is not concentrating and he is not doing his work," she continued.
"And just what honeymoon are you referring to?" I inquired. "His?"
"Oh, my God!" she blurted. "I never actually realized what I was saying when I told him the honeymoon was over. I just wanted and needed control so badly that I stamped on his grief."
"I think you've got a better picture now of the situation," I suggested. "Do you think you have?"
"This might take a little while for him to get over, eh?" she tried.
"Perhaps," I agreed.
The story is certainly not emblematic of or typical background to these prescriptions. There may be many other situations in the lives of their students about which the school administration and the teachers are unaware. However, the attitude of this teacher, focused and driven and conscientious as it was, was precisely not the approach that was going to work.
In fact, focused and driven and conscientious are all adjectives that walk through the classroom door with many teachers. And, while some of these qualities are certainly laudable, there is an optimum level of "drive"mixed with empathy, and just simple "checking in" that brings the current reality of the students' "day" to the awareness of the teacher.
And such "radar" (it has been called intuition, and connection and empathy and vision) is essential to the effective relationship between teacher and student. I can only hope and trust that the teacher in the story above returned to her classroom in a different spirit and attitude from the one in which she began our private conversation.
We now know that research indicates young people prefer texting to phone calls, and one reason is that they control the message, and do not have to engage in a more complicated conversation then they seek.
I remain convinced that the conversation related above would be very different in either phone or texting mode, and perhaps schools will have to take up the challenge of nurturing healthy relationships as a core part of their "unwritten" curriculum.
And such relationships cannot be engendered if the starting point is that one of the two genders in the classroom starts from a problematic posture, in the eyes of the professionals.
Figures compiled for The Globe and Mail by IMS Health, an independent firm that tracks pharmaceutical sales, show prescriptions for Ritalin and other amphetamine-like drugs for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder shot up to 2.9 million in 2009, a jump of more than 55 per cent in four years.
More than two million were written specifically for children under 17 – a leap of 43 per cent since 2005 – and at least 75 per cent of them were for young males – a ratio some see as evidence that society is making a malady of boyhood itself.
“What if we were drugging girls at the same rate?” asks Jon Bradley, education professor at McGill University. “What if [the majority] of these prescriptions were being written for girls? There'd be a march.”
If you want a benchmark for the culture of schools, this is one good place to start.
Prescribing drugs mainly to boys continues unabated and with little push back from a public seeking to have their child "conform" to the norms of the school authorities.
Concentration and conformity may not be mutually supportive goals. In fact, as John Steinbeck once wrote, man is most creative and most loyal to his nature in rebellion.
While we are damping down the nervous energies of many boys, we are also, perhaps, creating a compliant client for teachers to control more easily. And one has to wonder if that is a more accurate description of the agenda.
One October, I conducted a workshop for teachers in a small village in which a young boy (12) had died under the wheels of a flatbed during a hayride on Civic Holiday weekend. Some forty plus kids and adults, including his siblings were also on the ride and witnessed the tragedy. Of course we talked about grief, and the implications of such an event. We also talked about empathy and compassion and the rubbing up against each other of the emotions in the community/school and the teaching agenda of the faculty.
At the first break, one teacher approached me seeking a time to talk privately.
When the morning session ended we met in an office in the well-appointed school.
"I teach his ten-year-old brother, and I told him yesterday, the honeymoon is over!" came the words rushing from her lips.
"Let me get this straight; I think I just heard you say that you told this boy's brother, who had witnessed his brother's death a few weeks ago, under the wheels of the flatbed, that 'the honeymoon is over'," I responded. "Is that about right?"
"Well, he is not concentrating and he is not doing his work," she continued.
"And just what honeymoon are you referring to?" I inquired. "His?"
"Oh, my God!" she blurted. "I never actually realized what I was saying when I told him the honeymoon was over. I just wanted and needed control so badly that I stamped on his grief."
"I think you've got a better picture now of the situation," I suggested. "Do you think you have?"
"This might take a little while for him to get over, eh?" she tried.
"Perhaps," I agreed.
The story is certainly not emblematic of or typical background to these prescriptions. There may be many other situations in the lives of their students about which the school administration and the teachers are unaware. However, the attitude of this teacher, focused and driven and conscientious as it was, was precisely not the approach that was going to work.
In fact, focused and driven and conscientious are all adjectives that walk through the classroom door with many teachers. And, while some of these qualities are certainly laudable, there is an optimum level of "drive"mixed with empathy, and just simple "checking in" that brings the current reality of the students' "day" to the awareness of the teacher.
And such "radar" (it has been called intuition, and connection and empathy and vision) is essential to the effective relationship between teacher and student. I can only hope and trust that the teacher in the story above returned to her classroom in a different spirit and attitude from the one in which she began our private conversation.
We now know that research indicates young people prefer texting to phone calls, and one reason is that they control the message, and do not have to engage in a more complicated conversation then they seek.
I remain convinced that the conversation related above would be very different in either phone or texting mode, and perhaps schools will have to take up the challenge of nurturing healthy relationships as a core part of their "unwritten" curriculum.
And such relationships cannot be engendered if the starting point is that one of the two genders in the classroom starts from a problematic posture, in the eyes of the professionals.
Monday, October 18, 2010
See UPDATE Toronto School Board considers specific school for underachieving male students
Update:
By Heather Mallick, Toronto Star, November 17, 2010
Toronto District School Board trustees have told Education Director Chris Spence, a man well-versed in the crisis in American schools that doesn’t match our own difficulties, that they first want to know if such schools will work before they start quizzing parents about whether they’ll send their children there. Good for them.
Single-sex schools are based on junk science — actually it’s not science, it was a 2005 Newsweek cover story titled “Boy Brains, Girl Brains”— and a lazy notion, fuelled by the U.S. Christian right, that became a theory.
Now many parents think boys and girls have different learning styles and that classrooms are becoming excessively “feminized.” The theory is now a conspiracy. In fact, it was all nonsense to begin with.
Boys do learn differently from girls at some stages — they have to be told to sit down and be quiet more, for one thing — but these differences hardly overshadow the similarities between male and female children who all have to learn to read, write, add, and talk intelligently. Turning schools topsy-turvy to accommodate an entirely unscientific schema about which gender has more oxytocin flowing in their brains in reading class is absurd.
According to the CBC, as revealed on their crawl, October 17, 2010, The Toronto District School Board is giving active consideration to the establishment of a specific secondary school for underachieving male students.
In the national media, and in the large scheme of national issues, this may seem like very small potatoes.
However, with the director being as committed to the successful education of all students, including male students as their director is, and with the size of the problem of underachieving male students, there much be considerable pressure from a variety of directions, to make such a historic decision.
For one thing, the principals and the teachers' federations, if not the parents and the school councils, must be looking at the non-development of many male students, who face the rather high risk of dropping out, and the often inevitable ensuing drama of unemployment, 'negative influences' and potential risk of crossing the line into legal infractions...and demanding "something be done."
The bottom 10% of the student achievement scores belong mostly to male students, and some, if not all of these would become elegible for the new experiment. That would take a large load off the shoulders of principals and teachers who now have these students in their classrooms, halls, cafeterias and buses every day. The achievement records of each school relieved of the burden of these students would immediately rise. The working conditions of the faculty and staff in each of these schools would improve significantly, and fairly quickly.
Furthermore, the parents and guardians of these students would know that the likelihood of their son, foster son, adopted son.. getting a high school diploma would rise. And that fact in itself would give hope to these custodial guardians.
There is also something known by social researchers for several decades called the Hawthorne effect. This involves the level of participation and achievement of those involved in what they know to be an experiment. The very fact of the experiment apparently engenders enhanced enthusiasm for the participants, whose performances improve, whose attitudes improve and the documenting of these results can be attributed, in part, to the experimental conditions themselves.
While there are and will continue to be many adjustments in scheduling, busing, staffing and a reallocation of resources in such a monumental change to the system, it could well prove to be more than worthy of the effort of all participants.
At the end of the day, if such an experiment were to prove to have positive results, measured in all the appropriate ways, including scholastic testing, attitude and behaviour records, relationship building both between students and between students and the school authorities, enhanced parental participation in the daily school life of the students, and in a significant drop in the numbers of "drop-outs" from the cohort of initial enrollees...imagine how that single experiment might impact other boards of education across the country, and the story of the next decade could prove quite different from the one unfolding under the current strategies and tactics.
The Journal of Male Education will continue to watch this pending development, and others dedicated to similar results.
By Heather Mallick, Toronto Star, November 17, 2010
Toronto District School Board trustees have told Education Director Chris Spence, a man well-versed in the crisis in American schools that doesn’t match our own difficulties, that they first want to know if such schools will work before they start quizzing parents about whether they’ll send their children there. Good for them.
Single-sex schools are based on junk science — actually it’s not science, it was a 2005 Newsweek cover story titled “Boy Brains, Girl Brains”— and a lazy notion, fuelled by the U.S. Christian right, that became a theory.
Now many parents think boys and girls have different learning styles and that classrooms are becoming excessively “feminized.” The theory is now a conspiracy. In fact, it was all nonsense to begin with.
Boys do learn differently from girls at some stages — they have to be told to sit down and be quiet more, for one thing — but these differences hardly overshadow the similarities between male and female children who all have to learn to read, write, add, and talk intelligently. Turning schools topsy-turvy to accommodate an entirely unscientific schema about which gender has more oxytocin flowing in their brains in reading class is absurd.
According to the CBC, as revealed on their crawl, October 17, 2010, The Toronto District School Board is giving active consideration to the establishment of a specific secondary school for underachieving male students.
In the national media, and in the large scheme of national issues, this may seem like very small potatoes.
However, with the director being as committed to the successful education of all students, including male students as their director is, and with the size of the problem of underachieving male students, there much be considerable pressure from a variety of directions, to make such a historic decision.
For one thing, the principals and the teachers' federations, if not the parents and the school councils, must be looking at the non-development of many male students, who face the rather high risk of dropping out, and the often inevitable ensuing drama of unemployment, 'negative influences' and potential risk of crossing the line into legal infractions...and demanding "something be done."
The bottom 10% of the student achievement scores belong mostly to male students, and some, if not all of these would become elegible for the new experiment. That would take a large load off the shoulders of principals and teachers who now have these students in their classrooms, halls, cafeterias and buses every day. The achievement records of each school relieved of the burden of these students would immediately rise. The working conditions of the faculty and staff in each of these schools would improve significantly, and fairly quickly.
Furthermore, the parents and guardians of these students would know that the likelihood of their son, foster son, adopted son.. getting a high school diploma would rise. And that fact in itself would give hope to these custodial guardians.
There is also something known by social researchers for several decades called the Hawthorne effect. This involves the level of participation and achievement of those involved in what they know to be an experiment. The very fact of the experiment apparently engenders enhanced enthusiasm for the participants, whose performances improve, whose attitudes improve and the documenting of these results can be attributed, in part, to the experimental conditions themselves.
While there are and will continue to be many adjustments in scheduling, busing, staffing and a reallocation of resources in such a monumental change to the system, it could well prove to be more than worthy of the effort of all participants.
At the end of the day, if such an experiment were to prove to have positive results, measured in all the appropriate ways, including scholastic testing, attitude and behaviour records, relationship building both between students and between students and the school authorities, enhanced parental participation in the daily school life of the students, and in a significant drop in the numbers of "drop-outs" from the cohort of initial enrollees...imagine how that single experiment might impact other boards of education across the country, and the story of the next decade could prove quite different from the one unfolding under the current strategies and tactics.
The Journal of Male Education will continue to watch this pending development, and others dedicated to similar results.
McGill Professor proposes affirmative action to attract male teachers
By Carolyn Abraham, Globe and Mail, October 18, 2010
Having trained elementary teachers at McGill for 25 years, and seeing “the vast majority” of former male graduates eventually leave teaching, Prof. Bradley (Associate Professor of Education at McGill) believes it's time to move beyond billboards.
“We need to get fairly draconian,” he says, and use affirmative action to ensure that 20 per cent of teachers at every school are male.
When most of the teachers, elementary school principals, and support staff are women and “the token male on staff tends to teach phys ed,” he says, the entire system has an intrinsic bias against boys.
“Females are making the decisions, they're choosing the books, and setting up the class.” Which is why he believes that the early grades focus too heavily on sitting still, and stress co-operation over competition.
While there is no evidence that male teachers will improve the scores of boys in the classrooms, there is indisputable evidence that schools are staffed primarily by female teachers. It is clearly not only possible but even likely that students can pass from elementary through secondary school without having experienced a male teacher at the front of the classroom.
Professor Bradley's proposal of affirmative action "to ensure that 20% of teachers at every school are male," while laudable, may be hollow in the implementation. It may not be possible to attract that many males to the teaching profession where the 'odds' of normalcy appear very low. That means that male teachers report working in a constant state of anxiety about their 'potential' for perceptions among their peers of inappropriate behaviour to the students.
Some will argue that the classroom is the only place where the interaction of students and teachers matters. However, the culture, the tone and the everyday practices and policies of the school establish an expectation among both students and teachers, and if there is no "legitimate" room for male teachers then a billboard on every corner attempting to recruit males into the profession will not work, and might even be counter-productive.
There is a "stigma" to being a male teacher, and it stems from the fear that males who like to work with children must be so different as to be either gay or perverted. It is this stigma that needs to be addressed.
It is a form of unstated, yet obvious, prejudice against a single group of potential educators.
Having trained elementary teachers at McGill for 25 years, and seeing “the vast majority” of former male graduates eventually leave teaching, Prof. Bradley (Associate Professor of Education at McGill) believes it's time to move beyond billboards.
“We need to get fairly draconian,” he says, and use affirmative action to ensure that 20 per cent of teachers at every school are male.
When most of the teachers, elementary school principals, and support staff are women and “the token male on staff tends to teach phys ed,” he says, the entire system has an intrinsic bias against boys.
“Females are making the decisions, they're choosing the books, and setting up the class.” Which is why he believes that the early grades focus too heavily on sitting still, and stress co-operation over competition.
While there is no evidence that male teachers will improve the scores of boys in the classrooms, there is indisputable evidence that schools are staffed primarily by female teachers. It is clearly not only possible but even likely that students can pass from elementary through secondary school without having experienced a male teacher at the front of the classroom.
Professor Bradley's proposal of affirmative action "to ensure that 20% of teachers at every school are male," while laudable, may be hollow in the implementation. It may not be possible to attract that many males to the teaching profession where the 'odds' of normalcy appear very low. That means that male teachers report working in a constant state of anxiety about their 'potential' for perceptions among their peers of inappropriate behaviour to the students.
Some will argue that the classroom is the only place where the interaction of students and teachers matters. However, the culture, the tone and the everyday practices and policies of the school establish an expectation among both students and teachers, and if there is no "legitimate" room for male teachers then a billboard on every corner attempting to recruit males into the profession will not work, and might even be counter-productive.
There is a "stigma" to being a male teacher, and it stems from the fear that males who like to work with children must be so different as to be either gay or perverted. It is this stigma that needs to be addressed.
It is a form of unstated, yet obvious, prejudice against a single group of potential educators.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Globe and Mail opens debate:" Are we failing boys?" Oct. 16, 2010
From the Globe and Mail, in their new section entitled "8 Discussions Canada needs to have
October 4, 2010
For the last few decades in Canada, as in most western countries, statistics have piled up suggesting that boys are falling behind girls in most measures of academic achievement.
In the early years, evidence shows boys are more likely to fail a grade, more likely to repeat a grade, and more likely to land the lowest scores in standardized literacy tests. In high school, they are more likely to drop out, more likely to report a sense of disengagement with school, less likely to spend time studying and less likely to pursue post-secondary education. At Canadian campuses, once a male-dominated domain, females now significantly outnumber males.
The Globe and Mail, to its outstanding credit, is inviting all Canadians to contribute to their debate, discussion and their platform on the question, "Are we failing boys?" starting October 16, 2010.
The "Journal" welcomes this important development in the debate and discussion of the issues, numbers, opinions and prospects from all Canadians.
We will be watching, along with everyone else.
October 4, 2010
For the last few decades in Canada, as in most western countries, statistics have piled up suggesting that boys are falling behind girls in most measures of academic achievement.
In the early years, evidence shows boys are more likely to fail a grade, more likely to repeat a grade, and more likely to land the lowest scores in standardized literacy tests. In high school, they are more likely to drop out, more likely to report a sense of disengagement with school, less likely to spend time studying and less likely to pursue post-secondary education. At Canadian campuses, once a male-dominated domain, females now significantly outnumber males.
The Globe and Mail, to its outstanding credit, is inviting all Canadians to contribute to their debate, discussion and their platform on the question, "Are we failing boys?" starting October 16, 2010.
The "Journal" welcomes this important development in the debate and discussion of the issues, numbers, opinions and prospects from all Canadians.
We will be watching, along with everyone else.
"Nobody cares about men...or boys" says Concordia Sociologist
By Sean Gordon, Globe and Mail, September 10, 2010
But what of less tangible effects on things like identity and ambition?
Part of the problem in answering the question is a lack of scholarship on the specific effects the situation is having on Quebec's boys and the men they become.
“What's going on? I'm not sure. And I hate to say it, but nobody cares very much about men, and nobody cares very much about boys. Nowhere is that more true than Quebec,” said Anthony Synnott, a Concordia University sociologist and expert on gender issues and masculinity.
The risk, he continued, is the creation of “a permanent low-income population,” and he noted that, despite the considerable political impact of feminism on Quebec's social development since the Quiet Revolution, “men continue to dominate at the top – and also at the bottom” of the income ladder.
At least one academic, Anthony Synnott at Concordia, "gets it" in all of its ugly dimensions. Thank you, Sir.
And once the discussion begins to have the interest and cache and the cover of the academic community, in general, and that will take some time, the applications for research grants will begin.
And as one professor at RMC, Dr. W.A.D. Allan, told me in a conversation, "It is often the education departments themselves that are part of the problem, and the study needs to begin with the sociologists."
Only when we can all see the real data of unemployment, and increased social costs like the costs of childrens' services, the courts, and lost productivity will the whole society begin to take notice, perhaps.
In one Ontario city, a program director in alternative measures for legal referrals indicates that although funding for boys and girls in the program is on a 50-50 basis, the numbers in the program are roughly 70-30, with males holding the higher number. That is only one of the discrepancies that will be unearthed as we move through this swamp.
But what of less tangible effects on things like identity and ambition?
Part of the problem in answering the question is a lack of scholarship on the specific effects the situation is having on Quebec's boys and the men they become.
“What's going on? I'm not sure. And I hate to say it, but nobody cares very much about men, and nobody cares very much about boys. Nowhere is that more true than Quebec,” said Anthony Synnott, a Concordia University sociologist and expert on gender issues and masculinity.
The risk, he continued, is the creation of “a permanent low-income population,” and he noted that, despite the considerable political impact of feminism on Quebec's social development since the Quiet Revolution, “men continue to dominate at the top – and also at the bottom” of the income ladder.
At least one academic, Anthony Synnott at Concordia, "gets it" in all of its ugly dimensions. Thank you, Sir.
And once the discussion begins to have the interest and cache and the cover of the academic community, in general, and that will take some time, the applications for research grants will begin.
And as one professor at RMC, Dr. W.A.D. Allan, told me in a conversation, "It is often the education departments themselves that are part of the problem, and the study needs to begin with the sociologists."
Only when we can all see the real data of unemployment, and increased social costs like the costs of childrens' services, the courts, and lost productivity will the whole society begin to take notice, perhaps.
In one Ontario city, a program director in alternative measures for legal referrals indicates that although funding for boys and girls in the program is on a 50-50 basis, the numbers in the program are roughly 70-30, with males holding the higher number. That is only one of the discrepancies that will be unearthed as we move through this swamp.
40% male drop-out rate, up to 80% in one school in Quebec
By Sean Gordon, Globe and Mail, September 10, 2010
A shade under 40 per cent of boys in Quebec drop out of high school in their teens, a rate that is among the highest in the Western world, according to statistics compiled by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
No one is entirely sure what it all means.
Some experts hint darkly at a lost generation of boys, others brush aside such dire talk as myth and alarmism. Whatever slant is applied, it's a harrowing reality.
Among the 500 or so students at Pierre-Dupuy, the overall dropout rate is close to 80 per cent, the highest in the province.
“You have to understand that those are pretty crude numbers, we have a very mixed clientele, people with developmental delays, children with autism, kids who study trades, and the regular academic high-school stream,” said Ginette Rioux, the school's principal. “We never say, ‘We're not going to take this or that student.' … Some unfortunately leave us, but we're working hard at keeping them.”
Link these figures with the current debate about the role of neuroscience, that is the "brain differences" between males and females, which is gathering heat, especially in the design of educational opportunities for male students and female students, versus the sociological influences based in male and female archetypes and you have a very complex "stew."
Focussing on only one school, in one extremely complex neighbourhood, in one province, is also merely a song from the canary in the corner of a vast coalmine of male education. A snap-shot, if you will, in a very lengthy movie.
Nevertheless, the movie is starting a) to be filmed deliberately, and b) to be watched and listened to by a growing number of concerned individuals.
While the feminists may certainly have unlocked the lock on the vault of sexual differences, expectations, roles as well as political and cultural histories and futures, and they have, for the most part, done a superb job in their own academic disciplined development, it is long past time for men to begin to look closely at who we are in a new era, who we have been in our many past editions, and who we are likely to become, depending on our cultural expectations.
And education is one of the core stages from which to gather important data.
A shade under 40 per cent of boys in Quebec drop out of high school in their teens, a rate that is among the highest in the Western world, according to statistics compiled by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
No one is entirely sure what it all means.
Some experts hint darkly at a lost generation of boys, others brush aside such dire talk as myth and alarmism. Whatever slant is applied, it's a harrowing reality.
Among the 500 or so students at Pierre-Dupuy, the overall dropout rate is close to 80 per cent, the highest in the province.
“You have to understand that those are pretty crude numbers, we have a very mixed clientele, people with developmental delays, children with autism, kids who study trades, and the regular academic high-school stream,” said Ginette Rioux, the school's principal. “We never say, ‘We're not going to take this or that student.' … Some unfortunately leave us, but we're working hard at keeping them.”
Link these figures with the current debate about the role of neuroscience, that is the "brain differences" between males and females, which is gathering heat, especially in the design of educational opportunities for male students and female students, versus the sociological influences based in male and female archetypes and you have a very complex "stew."
Focussing on only one school, in one extremely complex neighbourhood, in one province, is also merely a song from the canary in the corner of a vast coalmine of male education. A snap-shot, if you will, in a very lengthy movie.
Nevertheless, the movie is starting a) to be filmed deliberately, and b) to be watched and listened to by a growing number of concerned individuals.
While the feminists may certainly have unlocked the lock on the vault of sexual differences, expectations, roles as well as political and cultural histories and futures, and they have, for the most part, done a superb job in their own academic disciplined development, it is long past time for men to begin to look closely at who we are in a new era, who we have been in our many past editions, and who we are likely to become, depending on our cultural expectations.
And education is one of the core stages from which to gather important data.
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