wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

is sexism a one way street? i'm totally in accord with the need of society to embrace a more maternal open feminine paradighm. however,it seems that every time someone has the temerity to engage a dialogue tnat suggest's that boys/and or men may have challenges that are specific to them,you get freakout backlash from women. men won't talk about this. they want to go along to get along,lest they jepardize their insular arrangement with their wife/girlfriend. society,relationships;go on with toxic junk that is always lurking just beneath the surface etc. etc. many liberals[i am one] seem to be as adept as many conservatives at playing "zero sum insanity". if it benefits the boys it must of necessity be a'gin the girls. and on it goes,the promulgation of this mindset;to the detriment of everyone-boys,girls,women,men,LBGHT-it's sadening,it's disgusting.

If mere shadings of educational focus can make fully half the species appear laggardly, then how can we not similarly attribute failure with regard to smaller and much less carefully-accommodated segments that have also appeared to lag, academically (poor kids, African Americans, Latinos, etc)?

More: http://jimleff.blogspot.com/2010/02/skewed-education-yields-skewed.html

I wonder if the author considered the academic success of boys in different cultural communities. For example, Asian Americans of both sexes seem to be very well represented in our elite colleges. Perhaps discipline and expectation have a lot to do with success...

Continuation:
This is worse in kindergarten for tha boys as, especially for the first 6 most, there is a real time lag as academic demand increase but physical development has not yet causht up.. Worse, due to budget cuts, etc., some schools have no real gym activity.

Having spent 5 years as a pre-k social worker, I think it is worse that the guest states as trickle down pressure from standardized tests reaches even pre-k and creates practices that are developmentally inappropriate. There is already a difference of a year between those who turn 4 Dec 31 and those who turn 5 Jan 1 and already a differnece of a year between the average boy and the average girl - in verbal skills, yes but especially coordination/ manual dexterity (think writing) and need for physical activity (think sit still). Boys born Sept Oct Nov Dec can be especially stressed and made to feel a failure, that school is not for them. I have seen this in boys I know to be bright! Academics can wait until 2 grade. Pre-k - 1 grade should focus on focus on foundational skills.

The guest has mentioned a few times that girls "adapted" to the change in curriculum better than boys did. This is not to say that girls are doing well, just that they are doing better than boys. Is it possible that the new curriculum is not good for girls or boys but that the girls have adapted to it better?

I am 55 and the mother of a 14-year old son, so I went through elementary school long ago. In my day, the assumption seemed to be that educational achievement was a nice option for girls, but vital for boys as they would be the ones supporting families. As a girl, you felt like some lesser version of humanity. Now the situation seems reversed. The vast majority of grammar schools are extremely female environments, and unless some effort is made to overcome natural tendencies, girls end up being favored and rewarded for things many boys can't do as well at the same age. Teachers prize organization, neat papers, good handwriting etc. Yet they won't (or aren't allowed to) use classroom time teaching these skills -- as teachers did in the old days. Anyway, my son is now a happy freshman at an all-boy school where he can improve his skills among teachers who don't consider him some failed version of a girl.

I have informally observed these traits in most boys and girls I have known over the span of 25 years while raising two sets of boys.

I have come to realize that the earlier boys are introduced to group interaction the easier it is for them to develop socialization skills. I wonder if this will not have a greater impact on minimizing the reading / communication gap between boys and girls. Is there any data that follows and compares the performance of boys which were introduced to early learning vs boys that had no pre-K experience?

BTW - we have raised these boys without a TV in the house, the older boy can take it or leave it when he is in a house where there is a TV, the younger boy is immediately captured by the moving image. My take on this difference is that the older boy cannot interact / communicate with a TV while his younger sibling is probably more hard wired to the "hunter's" search for movement in the landscape which the moving image stimulates.

I am inclined to think the reading / writing gap between boys and girls is related to the socialization skills.

With communication being the basis of social interaction closely tied to reading and writing it is no wonder that girls do better than boys in these areas. With natural selection having equipped girls with more socialization skills since the female of the species had to maintain the family interaction and the social interaction with the rest of the group it is easily observed that girls socialize easier and are more likely to have an easier time communicating.

I have two boys with very different personalities, the older child is more gregarious very communicative, chatty by comparison to other boys his age and is very at ease talking with adults in a more mature manner than average. His preference for playmates in school runs to the girls - all the above from a very young age.

The younger child has always been less sociable. not as communicative and does not like to play with girls, rather leaning to more physically agressive play with the other boys.

The reading / writing differences are also marked - the older boy loves to read, devouring chapter books as fast as one per day, likes to put down his ideas and projects on paper, while his younger sibling approaches reading and writing in a very tortured manner. Two boys raised in the same environment, same schools, some of the same teachers, same home learning and study methods.

continued on subsequent post.

As a school Speech Pathologist, I serve a ratio of 7:3 boys:girls. The number 1 reason why boys are receiving speech therapy is language comprehension. So they may be able to read, but they lack the comprehension to understand what they've read. Since 1994 I have worked with all grade levels K-12 including special education and pre-schoolers (4 years and under). But the majority of the students who continue receiving speech therapy after 4th grade are boys. After 3 years of empirical observation, I concluded that boys just do not learn the same way girls do. Our society has changed very much from the days when parents and teachers had unchallenged authority over children, in those days boys where disciplined and held accountable for learning. That isn't the way things are done any more, and boys lack the self-discipline that comes with maturity that is required for learning in our current school system. Boys learn differently, they require much more external pressure to be disciplined and they find themselves lost with the lack of boundaries and limits that were once set by adults. This environment is great for girls. And as a women, I am glad that it is great for girls. I also know it's not great for boys. Coupled with the lack of male-role models in schools and in homes boys are certainly lacking behind. I am fortunate that my curriculum is not subject to the bureaucracy that classroom curricula are. And so I have been able to adjust the way I teach boys vs the way I teach girls. Something as simple as giving girls more autonomy and giving boys more boundaries works wonders.

This is another example of promoting divisiveness among the genders. If 50% of boys have trouble learning to read in 1st grade, what about the other 50%? As a parent of a boy who is a year ahead in math, and another boy who is a year ahead in school *and* in the gifted math program (two years ahead in math essentially) - both of whom read at a 3rd grade level in 1st grade (as does my daughter), I find this pandering to sexist discrimination.

Gender doesn't matter, it is how we treat our boys and girls. I agree with Lauren from Brooklyn, that girls are much more likely to obey orders, plus be pushed towards indoor activities like reading rather than sports.

My girl and two boys all love math, science, and sports. And so do both their parents. This is more the idea that boys are not supported at home and in schools by parents and teachers - don't punish my kids because you can't raise your own.

As for the single sex issue, THE USA IS SUPPOSED TO BE A GENDER-NEUTRAL COUNTRY! How can you keep half the population away from the other half, without good reason? There are a lot of things boys and girls can learn from each other, and when you get to the workplace, it WILL be gender integrated. Forcing single sex education in this case seems to be a shortcut for differentiated education based on the CHILD not what he or she happens to have downstairs. What is upstairs is not different - and I'm saying that as a female Ph.D. who teaches science and math.

PS my three children play video games, play organized sports, and play musical instruments. It is the parents who let video games take over a child's life, try some discipline and teach restraint for goodness sake.

Just to mention that the incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorders is on the rise... what was once present in 1 in 150 children, is now as high as 1 in 66 in some areas. Most of these affected children are Male.

A Child with an Autism Spectrum disorder may attempt college... but may not make it through to Graduation. This fact would impact the graduation ratios as well.

I have two sons ages 11 and 14. When my 14 year old was in first grade it was suggested by his teacher that he should be held back. He was starting to struggle in reading and it was filtering into his behavior. I held him and his brother back even though their birthdays are in May. It was the best thing I did. Both are excelling in school in every subject. My 14 year old who had struggled in reading is now an avid reader. My younger son who is in 4th grade is reading at an 8th grade level but is at grade level in math. They are both well adjusted and enjoy school with the exception of giving their mother grief for being the oldest in their class.

So I ask you, what about starting boys later than girls?

Wonderful program. Have ordered the book and look forward to reading it. Read "Why Gender Matters" by Leonard Sax for some additional perspective on learning differences between boys and girls.

My son goes to a well-regarded and progressive public school in Brooklyn. I recently noticed that at least HALF of the boys from his kindergarten class have been identified as having reading problems now that they are in 1st grade. At his school, they didn't start teaching reading in kindergarten the way many nyc public schools do. But clearly something is going on here ... Among those receiving reading intervention (whom I have seen), it's at least 3/4s boys.

Wow,

If the gender gap is that great at colleges. Maybe I need to go and get another Masters degree. ;-)

So basically there is no reason why a college male student shouldn't have a lot of girlfriends.

I have four children in 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th grades. Two of my children learned to read like breathing air. Two of them needed a structured reading program to become fluent readers. The two who learned to read easily are boys. My two children who needed a structured reading program are a boy and a girl. I think there is a deeper issue here which is that there is simply a percentage of the population who need a structured reading program in order to read fluently. Be careful not to loose the girls who need extra help reading when you are focusing on the compelling fact that many more boys seem to need a structured program. We need more careful screening in the lower grades for reading issues without getting sidetracked by a child's age and gender.

It's funny that the guest should mention women having to marry down and/or accept being the breadwinner as a result of this problem. Black women have been dealing with these challenges for a while now (for different reasons, I think). So this is really just a spread of the phenomenon.

When it was found girls had problems with Math we bent over backward for them and now boys are having problems with reading..I cant want to see if they do the same.
PS Im dyslexic and read and wright at a 8th grade leave (if that)

My son attended a boys school in Montreal until recent and is currently in a NY Public school. I think it's obvious that what's making boys lag behind is that young boys do need to be taught differently to encourage them to push themselves. They need more attention at an earlier age, despite individual abilities, they need to have confidence and curiosity built through academia and atheletic team participation far more than girls to feel good about themselves and raise their level of curiosity and desire for achievement, something I see obviously missing in the NYC public schools.

i don't think boys are failing. boys are just reaching their full capacity while girls are surpassing them. it wasn't easy to see it before when women were not encouraged to go to college. men are now scared and feel insecure because they're not in a dominating position.

Do these findings differ when looking at single sex classes, starting in elementary school? I know that even some NYC public schools are starting to have single sex classes, as they find a need for this.

Each child learns differently. Why does this have to be depicted as a "hierarchy of oppressions" or the fault of paying attention to "girls"? As with any generalization of such a large group, these generalizations are about what we are choosing to see. Just because some boys are not doing well does not mean that everything is just fine with all girls. And how much of this is about race and class?

Are boys poor readers worldwide?

My son's birthday is in October. NY state forced him to go to kindergarten when he was only 4. I work in education, and work with summer school programs nationwide. Overwhelming majorities of mandated summer school students are boys...I wonder if there is data about middle school failing boys who were born between August and January (the younger half of their class)? It seems to me that holding boys back a year would be incredibly valuable. I plan to! I just need a school that will support my decision.

Literacy skills vs. video game usage - can your guest comment on this? I'd imagine that boys play video games at far greater rates than girls. How might this affect reading and literacy? There are only so many hours in the day.

Oh, I love this caller - yes, what is up with the excessive homework and NO recess? How can that possibly be good for kids?

Could this be an argument for single-sex education?

Total hypothesis: Girls do well in school because doing well in secondary school is about being good at following instructions. Girls are socialized to do as their told, and boys are socialized to experiment and tinker. I've sort of thought that as college becomes more like secondary school (college is the new high school), girls do better and go farther in school. But then they still become president, CEO, etc., because an entrpreneurial culture still rewards experiment and tinkering, regardless of education (Franklin, Emerson, Alger, etc.)

Oh dear, as the mother of a six-year-old boy, this is really feeding my angst. My son's first grade teacher has a rule that every child must read at least 15 minutes every night and record it on a log. My son is a good reader, and I have been nudging him towards more challenging books. Would your guest address the issue of "forced" reading? I'm afraid that turning reading into a chore will turn him off. By the way, he LOVES math!

Is it that they are being taught to read too early or that they are made to sit still for too long? Recent studies indicate that sitting (even for 1/2 hour without getting up and doing vigorous exercise) is bad for development and everyone's overall health. Let then run! Let them read! Girls should be running about too.

boys may be failing because they are being educated by a system that expects them to behave and learn the same way as girls. it's an oversimplification to say the obvious, that they are very different, but, please also read "the trouble with boys" by peg tyre to learn more about this perspective.an investigative reporter for newsweek who covered the education system for years as well as women's issues.

As a custodial single-father of two children, when my son was entering elementary school, one teacher told me that all teachers will admit that boys shouldn't be taught to read until third grade. Up until that time it usually is a very painful effort. However, parental pressure upon the educational process puts boys in reading jeopardy.

Was there a time when girls failed? Was there an industry of concern on this topic with articles and books built around that failure at that time? Are boys failing because girls are achieving?