23 ms·

Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

325 points by tokenadult 13y ago

beachstartup 13y ago
i remember i always got shitty 'citizenship' grades because i wanted to talk to my classmates all the time. talking - what a terrible thing for a child to do.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  Talking to your classmates "all the time" has very clear potential to be highly disruptive to the teacher and other students' ability to learn. Significantly different from just fidgeting.
  - embolism 13y ago
    But yet it may have been what he needed at that stage in his cognitive and social development. It's only disruptive to a disciplinarian, industrial age approach to education.
    - ceejayoz 13y ago
      And what of the needs of the other kids in the room, who might need to be able to hear what the teacher is saying? A whispered request for clarification on something the teacher just said is one thing. 15 separate conversations about the latest Call of Duty and who made out with whom while the teacher tries to explain material is disruptive.
      - embolism 13y ago
        Teaching doesn't have to be organized as a lecture from the front. For how many of those other kids is it optimal? Alternative styles have been around for decades. It doesn't take much to learn about them if you just Google a bit.
      - freehunter 13y ago
        What's also a good thing is social time with your peers. We separate kids based on age, based on which random class they're thrown in, and in bigger schools, which random lunch time they are assigned. None of these may match up with their friends outside of class time. Perhaps there would be less classroom disruption if friends could have time together outside of the one class they took together knowing that would be the only time they could be together?
        ceejayoz 13y ago
        > Perhaps there would be less classroom disruption if friends could have time together outside of the one class they took together knowing that would be the only time they could be together? There is. School ends at 2:30, upon which point they can enlist in formal or informal shared after-school activities. Turning classes into a free-for-all where no one needs to afford the teacher and other students any respect for their time and attention isn't a great option. Plus, most classes I took in high school had plenty of group projects, small discussion groups, etc. that allowed for social interaction with friends in a non-lecture context.
        freehunter 13y ago
        Problem is, there are no buses that take the kids home from their after-school activities. I don't know where you live, but there are many school districts in the US where kids can't walk home or expect their parents to drive them to and from school or a friend's house. When I was in school, my house was an hour and a half bus ride from school. My parents worked in the other direction. Outside of being at school, there was no hope for social interaction unless we were in town for a festival. I'm also not arguing for turning classes into a free for all. I pretty explicitly said there should be room for social interaction outside of class. In districts with split lunch hours, there's literally no free-form social interaction unless you're on one of the last buses to leave at the end of the day.
        jff 13y ago
        We had buses to do exactly that. The "sports bus" departed at 6 p.m. every day; there weren't a lot of the buses, because not everyone did afterschool activities, but everyone who needed a ride got on the appropriate bus (east or west, as I recall) which dropped them to their home. It was free, too. This was a rural school district, about 60 students in my class, and the district extended something like 20 miles in each direction from the town.
camus 13y ago
Yeah , stop trying to teach kids discipline, especially when there is none at home ...
- DanBC 13y ago
  Some people with Asperger's have to fidget to be able to concentrate on what is being said. These people are not undisciplined, they are misunderstood. Some people just aren't very good at sitting still for an hour, and repeating that for however many hours they are in school. We can either chose to spend time punishing them, which harms them but also everyone else in the class, or we can learn techniques to help those people cope. We can encourage non-distracting fidgeting. These are quite seperate from discipline.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  Sitting still is not a virtue. It literally accomplishes nothing. It's a secondary detail - whether or not the kid is sitting still does not tell you whether they're actually paying attention to the lecture and whether they're going to remember it.
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    You're taking a narrow perspective. Fidgeting is distracting, to everyone else. Whatever your ideals of a perfect world may be, 20 dump trucks of kids needs to be educated at one facility every day. Whatever you may think one kid is doing to help him focus, that kid is disrupting the focus of his 8 neighbors. Something needs to change, but it's more than just perspectives.
    - VLM 13y ago
      "that kid is disrupting the focus of his 8 neighbors" Whatever else Catholic churches may get wrong, apparently all of the "modern" ones I've ever been inside figured out the "crying room" technology a long time ago. Setting up a "sound diode" isn't all that difficult with modern technology. If whats really important is forcing future factory workers to line up in alphabetical order in row/column format, then flexibility might not work.
dllthomas 13y ago
As a youth, I was only able to sit still by focusing on sitting still. If I was paying attention to the teacher, I was fidgeting, and would be told to pay attention...
- ImprovedSilence 13y ago
  They gave me silly putty to harness my fidgeting. I soon discovered silly putty can be made into a bouncy ball, that I could use to distract everyone.
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    My son's classroom has employed smaller versions of exercise balls to keep some of the kids focused (including my own). It's interesting to observe. The kids are fidgety and restless while sitting, but when you sit them on one of these the subconscious motor control going on seems to quell the foreground restlessness.
    - sp332 13y ago
      Maybe it's a metabolism thing? If they're used to burning calories a a certain rate, homeostasis will cause their bodies to seek to maintain that rate. Fidgeting burns a lot of calories. Maybe tensing up core muscles for balance fills that need?
      - wes-exp 13y ago
        I seem to recall studies in controlled environments where people were not allowed to exercise, and there was a significant difference in calorie burn attributable to small movements. So the homeostasis argument seems totally plausible to me.
        joezydeco 13y ago
        But if you sit that same twitchy kid in front of a video game or stimulating TV show, the fidgeting doesn't happen. Interesting...
jasallen 13y ago
I really like this article. It looks at a severe problem (that traditional education is only reaching a small fraction of the students 'smart' enough to excel) and it suggests both a new way at looking at the problem (at least one I hadn't considered), and an approach to improvement that can be taken iteratively, without a sweeping change or expensive program.
smokeyj 13y ago
Public school is essentially an obedience camp. Is it any wonder boys are lagging?
- jacalata 13y ago
  Are you arguing that boys are intrinsically badly suited to a highly regulated environment that expects them to do exactly as they are told as soon as they are told? You should tell the army.
  - chris_mahan 13y ago
    why do you think the armies around the world have to threaten recruits with corporal punishment, prison, and even execution when they don't follow orders?
    - squozzer 13y ago
      Don't forget the constant drill-and-ceremony, both in training and once stationed to a permanent post. For those who don't "habla", drill-and-ceremony (D&C) is the "attention, left face, forward march" stuff that fills a good portion of footage about military life, not to mention certain films such as Full Metal Jacket. Oh, and don't forget the role played by PT (Physical Training) in producing human drone-killers.
    - OvidNaso 13y ago
      Do American football programs have to do the same thing?
      - rdouble 13y ago
        At the elementary and high school level, yes.
      - jdminhbg 13y ago
        Is this rhetorical? Of course they do. They're legendary and/or infamous for imposing extreme physical hardship as hazing to get kids to fall in line.
joelhooks 13y ago
At least one of my three boys would have an incredibly hard time with this. He's definitely "aspie" in a lot of respects. The decision to home educate our 4 children is hands down the best decision we've ever made. Highly recommend it, if you are able to pull it off logistically. Very rewarding experience so far.
- tocomment 13y ago
  Any tips on getting started? It sounds interesting but I wouldn't know where to start.
  - altcognito 13y ago
    Google homeschooling resources, and begin talking to the homeschooling groups in your local area. Homeschooling has a network of families that support each other generally. It's the easiest and best way to get started. Plus, you'll get a lot of guidance on what resources are good and which are a waste of time.
    - Groxx 13y ago
      Having been homeschooled, this is a great suggestion. It's pretty easy to get too isolated, and homeschooling groups help a lot. Also check with your local schools - I was able to take 2 classes while still being classified as 'homeschooled', for free (since it's part of taxes already), which can give access to tools that are otherwise way too expensive.
      - zaphoyd 13y ago
        Seconding this. I was also allowed to take two classes at the local high school free while being homeschooled. Useful for classes that benefit from in classroom interactions (foreign language) or expensive equipment (science labs).
      - archon 13y ago
        > Having been homeschooled, this is a great suggestion. Agreed. I was homeschooled as well, and homeschool groups were absolutely vital to making the experience a success for me. I did great teaching myself at home, but especially in high school, I needed outside classes and outside social activities. The city I grew up in had a huge homeschool community, so it was easy to find classes on a wide variety of subjects.
jvreeland 13y ago
I felt like they were describing me that whole time. I was diagnosed with learning disabilities and told to sit still countless times. Thankfully some teachers realized keeping me in extra circular activities would offset my energy but when I moved from that school the situation changed. The frustrating part for teachers was that I typically scored higher on exams than my peers, including standardized tests. They then saw my scores and consistently lectured me about how if I just _applied_ myself I'd be doing so much better. I always treated exams as a challenge I sit here for 1, 2 hours at a time and try and score as high as possible.
Spooky23 13y ago
One of the guiding objectives of the current cohort of education thought leaders is to focus on girls. So, we're focusing on girls. Boys, time for your pills. My personal goal is to figure out how to make enough money to keep my children out of the insanity of public schools.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  My personal goal is to figure out how to make enough money to keep my children out of the insanity of public schools. It doesn't necessarily take a lot of money to homeschool children. (Been there, still doing that.) It does take agreement among the parents about what lifestyle adjustments each parent is willing to make so that children have flexibility in their learning. My oldest son, now a programmer working for a startup, sent me a very touching email for Father's Day in which he attributed some of his success so far in the business world to having been homeschooled rather than being put in public school. "That has made it very easy for me to step into a leadership position and feel very comfortable in positions of responsibility" is part of what he wrote. Finding truly excellent third-party educational materials and programs can be inexpensive http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm or expensive, http://ohs.stanford.edu/ http://ohs.stanford.edu/ depending on what your selection criteria are for "excellent" programs, and what your child's specific needs are, but some of the expensive third-party programs have significant financial aid that reaches up into the middle class, and some of the commercial materials and programs are available in a thriving used-materials or group-purchase market for homeschooling families. So shop around, and see what fits your family's needs. There is a lot of information about how to get started in homeschooling http://learninfreedom.org/sidlifgetstarted.html http://learninfreedom.org/sidlifgetstarted.html on the World Wide Web, and my goal for next few years is to update my personal website (the link here) with more been-there, done-thats as I launch my younger three children into adulthood to joint their older brother in the big world.
  - pekk 13y ago
    I find it peculiar that you regularly cite scientific studies of this and that, and yet you are using this terribly misleading, n-of-1 implication that home schooling is why your oldest son has the success he has. Do you really think that children cannot do exactly the same thing coming out of a public school, and if so, why?
tlogan 13y ago
And we wonder why smart kids are all introverts...
- overgryphon 13y ago
  This is not true.
dccoolgai 13y ago
Reading this article, for me, is just a reminder of what an awesome effect a really good teacher can have... In this teacher's writing I see a lot of positive qualities reflected from some of the teachers that made a huge impact on my life and disposition. In the end I suspect that - just having a teacher that is even willing to think or write about this - has much more of an impact than any rote following of procedural formula about "how to teach boys".
learc83 13y ago
School is half education and half babysitting. The problem is that schools aren't aware of that, and they try to cram too much learning/work into a day at school. Kids just don't have the attention span. College isn't taught this way. Colleges realize that even young adults can't handle 40 hours a week of continual instruction, why do we do this kids can? I think the reason, is that we're always behind other countries trying to "catch up"--50 years ago it was the Soviets, 20 years ago the Japanese, now it's the "global workforce". In our frantic rush to compete with everyone else we end up forcing an overambitious curriculum on kids. How much time can kids really spend learning everyday? A few hours at the most? I have a friend who teaches 1st grade, she knows kids at that age can't spend time on focused learning for more than 20 or 30 minutes, but the school districts forces here to teach in 1 to 2 hour blocks and spend almost 6 hours out of the day instructing (they get 15 minutes, no more, of recess; 30 minutes lunch, many times in silence because the lunchroom gets too loud; and on some days 45 minutes of focused PE). What 6 or 7 year old can possibly sit still and study for 5 or 6 hours each day?
- pekk 13y ago
  Historically many, many children have sat still at school and behaved themselves. That doesn't mean that others should be stigmatized, but it's not like this is impossible and unprecedented.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Also historically, many, many children have been thrown out of school or deemed ineducable because they couldn't sit still in school and behave themselves.
    - derleth 13y ago
      Or they never went to school in the first place. Similarly, the average high schooler was better back then because the average person stopped their education at the eighth grade, if not sooner. (Note to non-Americans: In the US, high school runs from ninth to twelfth grade, usually named freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years.)
speeder 13y ago
Although I was a generally calm student (I am introverted and not into causing mayhem or attracting attention), I never copied from the blackboard, don't did my homework, slept during classes, or instead kept drawing, or later writing ASM code or toying with physics formulas, or I just outright spent my time chatting about video games with whoever was nearby. Every time I had a new teacher, my parents were called into the school, and warned that I had some sort of problem (and my parents went into full denial hell not of course my child is not crazy... later I found out I DO probably have Aspergers, seemly inherited from the father of my mother), my parents reply were: "Alright, wait until the tests, and if he fails, THEN you can call us." Unfortunately to those teachers, and me, I did not failed... Meaning I had to endure them, and they had to endure me. Specially because I completely ignored their lessons, and in the time of the tests I answered correctly but in my own way, this was specially bad related to hard sciences because I would use formulas I invented on the spot, and I wrote in totally random patterns, forcing teachers to spend LOOOOOONG time to figure what I did, also my calligraphy is horrible, thus all my teachers hated reading my tests, yet they could not just zero them, because I always passed, so if they did that, they knew I would send the test to their superior and would get them punished. So yes, I can totally relate to the article. Also I STILL don't sit still, right now as I type I am vibrating one of my legs. (I guess this is a way to keep energy burning considering I stay sitting the entire day).
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Ah, to have grown up in an education system where homework and in-class participation aren't counted as some huge part of the grade!
  - speeder 13y ago
    class participation and whatnot counted, and I had not a problem with that, when a teacher asked a direct question and I was not sleeping deeply enough (if I was half-sleeping and heard the question I woke up) I would usually be the first to reply. Only later I figured this was bad idea (here in Brazil at least, the norm is to noone ever try to reply to the teacher, as a kind of weird social convention, and since I always replied, even while half-asleep, I quickly attracted negative attention, I was frequently involved in fights I did not started with the less performing boys... also girls sometimes pulled some horrible stuff, like spreading rumors or attempt to frame me)
joonix 13y ago
Are there any private all-boys[1] schools that embrace this side of childhood? Look at tiger cubs and what not: they play, they bounce around, they fight, they figure out the world around them through investigation and exploration. I spent so much of my time outside as a kid, but I also spent a lot of time inside on the computer. Both were amazing worlds where your imagination could run wild; especially in the early days of computers and the internet... being a part of a "wild west" frontier at the age of 10 was a special privilege. My point is that learning and running around in the mud are both very valuable and can be balanced to create well-rounded people who have confidence with technology and the outdoors. Has any institution figured out how to balance these two in a formal curriculum? Spend half the day exploring the woods and classifying wildflowers, the other half back inside working with math formulae and reading lessons. Some might say there's not enough time in the day to spend half of it outside, but I disagree. The kids will be more efficient in their inside learning time if they've spent half the day learning outside. [1] I'm not saying that girls wouldn't appreciate the same type of learning. I suspect that in an environment that harvests the physical energy (horseplay, outdoors activities) of boys to improve learning, even in a positive and productive manner, might alienate some young girls who might feel uncomfortable, so perhaps it's better to separate the genders in this sort of environment?
- cafard 13y ago
  A friend reported that The German School outside Washington, DC, (private, predominately but not exclusively male) has the kids in some of the lowest grades spend most of their time running around. Now, I don't remember whether this applied as high up as 1st grade.
- VLM 13y ago
  "Look at tiger cubs" LOL I read that the first time as a Cub Scouts reference and agreed completely. You might be surprised just how much of your "thought experiment" vaguely resembles the many Cub Scout pack meetings I've attended, other than the pack meetings only being about 2 hours every other week rather than 8 hours every weekday. Like most organizations, the Scouts get many things right and a couple things wrong, and it improves the level of discourse to stay on track. So bringing up their very peculiar unamerican ideas about religion or sex is not terribly relevant to the discussion of "educating boys", which is kind of the point of the controversy about them, but I digress... On the other hand, from what I've seen of my daughters girl scout troop meetings, its mostly craft time and snack/gossip time. There's a heck of a big difference between the two scout orgs beyond one group's parents sell cookies (just tellin' it like it is...).
Houshalter 13y ago
I got in trouble a lot for fidgeting at school all the time. I got diagnosed with ADHD and had to take medicine for it, mostly because of the fidgeting. One teacher made me put a giant a big inflatable cushion on my seat everyday and it was humiliating and didn't help at all.
tenpoundhammer 13y ago
Kids should spend have instruction for a while and then pushed out to play for a while. Alternating back and forth, maybe an hour each way. Then we wouldn't have as many fat kids and we wouldn't have so many kids disrupting classrooms. Our children aren't automatons, they need plenty of time to be kids. There is a lot of value in play.
parennoob 13y ago
One of the things they used to do for this at my school (in another country) was to have 50 minutes of compulsory physical activity or drills in the morning, at least three out of five days. (This was excluding separate gym/physical training classes.) I feel like this could go a long way into giving boys an outlet for their physical energy. I definitely know that even as one of the most talkative and fidgety kids in class, I used to fidget a lot less if I had returned from a bout of running or whatever. Also, I am somewhat acquainted with some of the teachers in the US school system, and have found their knowledge about the subjects they are supposed to be teaching (specially science) to be severely subpar. Kids can often perceive this very accurately, and will respect a teacher less if he or she seems to be unsure or vague regarding what they are teaching.
cafard 13y ago
During the baby boom there appeared to be an odd dynamic at work: in the primary grades, the neater, more docile girls were the teachers' favorites and got the better grades. Somewhere around or after puberty, they started to fall back behind the boys. Some of this was certainly socially motivated; a cousin said that boys didn't like to date girls they thought smarter. Some of it may have come from the teachers. Just my two cents..
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  One of the most impressive girls I went to school with was kinda intimidating in her ferocious intelligence and confidence, but if I didn't dare to approach her, it was simply because it was painfully obvious she was out of my league, not because I didn't like her. She never sucked up, not to teachers and not to peers, she never failed to say what she thought, she played the piano and the violin and aced every single test anyone handed to her. And one time she passed some sweets on to me during class, and then laughed her ass off, because she had them in the mouth before wrapping them up again. If I utterly adored one girl in that time, it was her; so much I never dared to even fall in love with her. In contrast, I never considered "neat and docile" pupils smart, just lame. That wasn't even my two cents, just shamelessly indulging in nostalgia haha.
Alex3917 13y ago
"While Reichert and Hawley's research was conducted in all-boys schools, these lessons can be used in all classrooms, with both boys and girls." Not true, research shows that girls do worse when their performance is evaluated in relation to others (competitively), as opposed to when their performance is evaluated against an objective standard.
- gthrowaway 13y ago
  Sad that I need a throwaway account to talk about this, but such is life. Spend some time doing searches on terms like "gender grading gap" and reading the recent research. What you find may surprise you, is consistent across multiple Western democracies, and can be summarized thusly: * When assessment is left to teachers, there is a grading gap in favor of girls; girls receive grades that are inflated relative to their performance on non-teacher assessments. This seems to be partly due to teachers including factors like "engagement" or "focus" in the classroom, which is known to favor girls, and partly due to bias by teachers in favor of students of their own gender (and many teachers are women, meaning the effect is most pronounced for girls). * By surprisingly young ages, girls in public school systems internalize "we're better than boys" and boys internalize "we're worse than girls" (one UK study estimated boys internalize this by age eight), producing a performance/effort gap similar to that associated with racial stereotypes. * This has ramifications all the way up the system, including an achievement gap which starts early and only grows with each milestone. Boys and young men are increasingly more likely to be held back and/or disciplined/medicated in early school years, increasingly less likely to get into advanced courses in later years, less likely to graduate local equivalent of "high school" and less likely to enter college/university or earn a degree.
  - Alex3917 13y ago
    Cool. Any good books on this you'd recommend?
    - gthrowaway 13y ago
      Books are tricky since the required funding/publicity tends to mean that only people with reactionary/highly-conservative viewpoints can break into that, and come with their own views on why we have this gap and how to address it. Mostly this is something you'll find in academic articles and published statistics. The US Department of Education's June 2012 report on gender equity is a decent starting point: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equity-in-education.pdf http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equity... What you'll find there is that the conventionally-assumed narratives don't hold; there's a lot more parity in enrollment for higher-level courses including sciences and many maths courses (and sometimes even a gap in the unexpected direction, as with girls outnumbering boys in AP science courses), for example. Girls are also more likely (and have been more likely for nearly 40 years) to be enrolled into programs for gifted/talented students, while boys are nearly 1.5 times more likely to be held back and forced to repeat a grade. Judith Kleinfeld (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) has written a few articles -- though fully-cited and sourced versions are hard to find free -- arguing that a major component of perceived gaps in performance may also be from greater variability in boys; focusing only on achieving parity at the highest levels of achievement has meant that boys' original overrepresentation at the lowest levels has not only persisted but grown, and remains unaddressed. A study at the University of Georgia published this year looked into why girls receive higher grades and lower standardized-test scores. Summary: http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-school-010212/ http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-... Full article (subscription required): http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-school-010212/ http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-... Their findings indicated a persistent grading gap in favor of girls, based on behavioral rather than academic factors. In the UK, research pointed to expectations and stereotypes as a source for the gap: http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/stories/girls-believe/2010 http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/stories/girls-believe/2010 Girls and boys both persistently believe that girls "are cleverer, better-behaved and try harder than boys at school". And that's really just the tip of the iceberg. But like I said, spend some time searching on relevant terms and you'll turn up a lot of research that may make you question what "everybody knows" about gender and education.
DamnYuppie 13y ago
I am surprised to see that none of the comments really comment or reflect upon the issue this article brings up, which is that for boys to thrive they need to be taught differently. If we can actually create ciriculum that allows them to excel why would we not do this? I know that the main point against it would be that young girls perhaps would not thrive in such a system. Yet I think we have to find a balance between them if we want true equality and what is best for all of our children. Mayhaps it is time to reaccess if we should not have separate classes for boys and girls..food for thought...
- derleth 13y ago
  'Separate but equal' is never actually equal.
- dgabriel 13y ago
  I bet girls would do just fine, and a sane combination of approaches works best. The biggest issue with schools is that everybody thinks they know how to fix stuff, but the research is spotty at best. Standardized tests and core curriculums? Differentiated learning or academic tiers? We all have opinions, and there are many in this thread, but not all of these opinions can be simultaneously right.
easy_rider 13y ago
I got this problem in elementary, still got almost the highest possible mark on our CITO test (which is an indication of your education level here in the Netherlands), went to one of the best Gymnasiums, and essentially got kicked out of 80% of all my classes because of my ADD disorder, and refusal of treatment (i.e. not wanting to take Ritalin). It also ended up me being easier to calm the class by making an example out of me. I had to drop out of this school to a lower grade, which I passed without pretty much doing fuck all, cause it was too easy. People should learn that distracted kids crave stimulation, and the stuff you teach them is probably not stimulating (i.e. boring, easy)
thezilch 13y ago
I had a H.S. teacher admit to my mother that she was grading me on a scale that included how "distracted" I was by my girlfriend in the class. Little did she know that we had broken up months prior, and every guy in the class was probably distracted by her at some point. I had a second teacher that was giving myself and my friends lower grades in computer class, because we were "goofing off" -- making websites, chat portals, playing with VB, etc. After completing our weekly assignments in the first day of the week, we were applying ourselves to higher levels of computing, which she equated to us not doing our work; in reality, she had no idea what we were actually doing or what a computer could be made to do that wasn't outlined in her spiral-bound curriculum. Let's take it out on these meddling kids!
- xxpor 13y ago
  That reminds me of the time my History teacher called up my mom when I was in 9th grade. Teacher: Yes, hi. Your son isn't taking notes in class, even though he is required to. Mom: Well, what did he get on his midterm? Teacher: 100 Mom: :| Goodbye.
  - thezilch 13y ago
    My parents were rather "amused" that I could almost be failing a class that taught you how to Open a document, bold text, and save, while at the same time as having self-made business cards and brochures and revenue from teaching Office '97 to professional folk and another service of building corporate web-portals. My HS was really progressive, as the other 5 in town barely offered a typing class, and it's only gotten better for my school -- a Charter school.
yason 13y ago
I was one of the calm and orderly boys in school. However, this was because merely being at school where I didn't want to be made me mostly lethargic. I didn't have any energy left to make a scene as I was busy counting hours until the day ended. To be precise, since the first week of the first grade I practically counted days till the end of high school when I knew this suffering would end. I did get good grades not because I was interested but because school was way too easy. I never even studied for exams except the last evening before, and that was mostly glancing at the books, yet I was always among the handful of best in the classroom. That is, until teenage when I realize I don't need all this bullshit and deliberately began to focus only on the few interesting subjects the school had to offer, and defocus on everything else. Didn't do too bad even after that. I still think it was such a waste of years, and I'm trying to imagine a better way to waste it. I can come up with lots of ideas but very few of them would fit all people. I would've enjoyed a more fast-paced and in-depth classes of my favorite topic at the expense of the subjects I wasn't interested. I think different people ultimately need different kind of environment to be taught in, and I think that the current homogeneous standard schooling is likely to kill more of natural curiosity than sow it. I don't think any standard schooling works for all, unless it's so reduced down to the very, very basics (reading, writing, basic arithmetics) that everyone absolutely needs and which they can build on top of.
cjdrake 13y ago
I definitely recommend clicking on the "related story" link to "The War Against Boys", written by Christina Sommers in 2000. American education has been failing boys for quite some time now. All parents have a responsibility to educate themselves on this topic.
codereflection 13y ago
As a father of two boys, I cannot agree enough with this article. I just wonder how I can send this article to the teachers at my boys schools without offending them.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Perhaps they need offending.
  - codereflection 13y ago
    Perhaps. I just worry about it being like insulting the person serving your food. Tack needs to be used.
    - gohrt 13y ago
      Indeed, you might need to try a different tact.
      - codereflection 13y ago
        :)
gatekeepr 13y ago
Every time I read an article about schooling I think about the best piece I ever read on the subject. The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher (1992) by John Taylor Gatto http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
ryanmarsh 13y ago
This is why I will homeschool my son.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 13y ago
I don't see why we still have co-ed education in the early grades. It does boys no good to be told they're behaving badly for not being able to sit still in class, and it does girls no good to have boys disrupting class while they're trying to learn.
anigbrowl 13y ago
I grew up (in Ireland) with single-sex schooling until age 12-3 (primary) and mixed secondary. That has its own potential pitfalls (eg bullying, more playground fights) but I think there are benefits too. Also, in primary school it's the same teacher all day for a full year (or two) at a time, which makes it a lot easier for the teacher to know each pupil and manage the classroom appropriately. I'm unsure why American schools are so tied to the lementary/ middle/ high model. It doesn't confer any particular benefit that I can see.
- cafard 13y ago
  It varies considerably. Most public schools break have either a middle school or junior high school (grades 6-8 or 7-9) between primary and secondary grades. But most Catholic parochial schools run to 8th grade. A lot of private schools run from 6th to 12th grade on the same campus, some 3rd to 12th. I suspect that the break is because in the middle years it becomes harder to find a teacher who can do everything--reading, history, math--adequately. A lot of what is called "science" in American primary schools I would call "environmental civics"--recycling is good; don't litter. Then in 7th or 8th grades one can actually encounter chemistry labs. (On the other hand, in my 7th (8th?) grade science class a big chunk of time was given up to the evils of drugs; I didn't particularly disagree, but bilged the class because I found it tedious to cull clippings about overdoses or LSD flashback. And I have no idea what I might have learned in the "science" lessons of the earlier grades--how many planets, maybe.)
StacyC 13y ago
It’s unnatural for most any human to be expected to sit and focus on tedious crap for hours on end, especially children. We live in one of the top school districts in Texas, and three years ago took our two boys out to homeschool them. No religious motivations, just got fed up with the bullshit custom we continue to call “education” in this culture. They are learning, thriving, curious, creative and happier than ever.
nether 13y ago
Stop pandering to the internet crowd of "misunderstood" nerds, Atlantic [0]. You clearly know your audience and you've got your litany of "I was really smart but teachers kept me down" testimonials here on HN and Reddit, but this really adds nothing new to the discussion. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic....
cynoclast 13y ago
As a boy who still cannot sit still at 30, the only way I survived being forced to sit still at school was by programming my enormously overpriced graphing calculator.
JulianMorrison 13y ago
Or girls.
fierycatnet 13y ago
Overseas I used to go to school from 8am to 1pm with 40min classes(and I received much better education). In US I had to sit for over an hour per classs and until 4-5pm. Is this any wonder that kids can't sit from 8 to 4 with very small brakes in between? I didnt learn much in American HS, it was torture most of the day. All I wanted to do was to get my work done and gtfo /go home, but that system made it very difficult to do. In fact, I didnt care much for school as a result.
swamp40 13y ago
I have a 6 year old daughter in a Montessori school. After a class observation I noticed the teacher spent a significant portion of her time just dealing with a few rambunctious boys, while all the girls in the class worked quietly. Afterwards, I asked the teacher why they just didn't separate the boys from the girls, since they were obviously two different species at that age (at all ages?) It seemed to me that a class with only girls in it could learn faster w/o all the silly distractions. The teacher got quite serious and told me that girls and boys are a form of yin and yang. The classroom dynamic was an absolute necessity to the healthy social upbringing of each.
- artsrc 13y ago
  > a few rambunctious boys As the parent of a less rambunctious boy, I believe that discrimination should be on the basis of behavior, not gender. > The classroom dynamic was an absolute necessity to the healthy social upbringing of each. I think that it is great to have everyone learn to work together, but I don't think it has to be all the time.
ameister14 13y ago
I had a horrible middle school experience which led me to the opinion that primary and secondary school is a much better system. It's not just punishing students for not sitting still, though a friend was almost flunking because he couldn't sit through a class. It's teachers eating separately from students, no time for recess, and no adult to talk to without social ostracism. Then I went to a New England Prep school; 3 sports a year, teachers eat with and openly question students, everyone feels like members of the community and people have a stake in things, and the Headmaster knows everyone's name. I can't thank that school enough; I went from failing with almost perfect test scores to really good grades and a sense of belonging. I don't understand why at least rural schools can't follow the same model. The teachers are paid less but get better results; the students are cared for and more disciplined, and the academics and athletics are generally better. It's not about the student body, either; we had tons of kids on scholarship that outperformed everyone.
kenster07 13y ago
-This article strikes a chord with me. I remember I was placed a year ahead in math, in Algebra I Honors, and the class was so easy that I would bring little toys into class and play with them while still getting A's. The teacher, a female, sent me back to Pre-algebra as a result. In hindsight, that reaction was so patently absurd. If anything, she should have tested whether I should have advanced to Geometry Honors. -I don't think anyone is surprised that the article claims that boys perform better under conditions which simulate actual adult workplace conditions. -A bigger issue is really the education system targeting the median student. That means those students with the highest potential have to fight against the system to reach it -- if they ever reach it at all. And holding back the brightest people, when the economy is advanced by that small percent of bright people, sounds horribly ineffective. This educational system is an artificial structure imposed on people with disparate learning capabilities, trying to fit every peg under the sun into a square hole, and I think we've missed out on a lot of value because of that. Hopefully, as automation increases, this is something we'll be able to improve upon.
xiaoma 13y ago
As a long-time teacher in multiple countries, I've also had this concern. I realize it's a fairly heretical belief to hold on this site but I think boys are systematically discriminated against in most western societies. As a child that teachers (nearly all women) tended to be biased against boys and downright dismissive of male dominated interests such as science fiction, video games or arm-wrestling. Talking with students in recent years, I get the impression that my teachers were actually more tolerant of boys than most current K12 teachers are. Invariably boys get punished more severely for similar infractions, boys are more likely to be forced onto medication and more likely to receive "tough love" in the face of academic difficulties. Compounding this is that even in this day and age when there's nearly a 3-2 ratio of females to males in college, it's the boys who get fewer grants, fewer sex-specific support organizations and less support in general. This chasm continues, even for mid-career adults. Many organizations provide women with free training in various fields, including tech (see Railsbridge, Women Who Code, etc) and allow men only as guests of women at all. In fact the amazingly good hacker school I went to charges men $2000 more than women. Things probably still seem okay at this point due to the fact that the trends have gradually been getting more extreme and the educational imbalances weren't so bad 15-30 years ago, when much of the workforce was in formal schooling. But the swelling ranks of disenfranchised young men is a demographic that isn't going to be good news for anyone, including women.
- Camillo 13y ago
  > In fact the amazingly good hacker school I went to charges men $2000 more than women. Is that even legal?
  - xiaoma 13y ago
    It's de-facto legal at the very least. AFIK all the schools do that. Actually, it looks like mine just gives $1k off for women and certain minorities. There were several students I talked to who paid 2k less than me, but I'm not sure what the reason was. The tuition price doesn't appear to have been consistent in the beginning.
SmokyBorbon 13y ago
60 years ago boys had no problem paying attention in class. The problem is too many teachers today have degrees in education instead of the subject they are supposed to be teaching. They've turned schools into daycare centers. They rely on "projects", worksheets, videos, and busywork that have little to do with what the kids should be learning. When children are bored and resentful that their time is being wasted, they act out. We can fix this by making it easier to fire bad teachers, require math, science, and English teachers to have degrees in math, science, and English, and prevent school funds from being used on new textbooks, televisions, videos, workbooks, or other wasteful materials.

325 points by tokenadult 13y ago

i remember i always got shitty 'citizenship' grades because i wanted to talk to my classmates all the time. talking - what a terrible thing for a child to do.

ceejayoz 13y ago
Talking to your classmates "all the time" has very clear potential to be highly disruptive to the teacher and other students' ability to learn. Significantly different from just fidgeting.
- embolism 13y ago
  But yet it may have been what he needed at that stage in his cognitive and social development. It's only disruptive to a disciplinarian, industrial age approach to education.
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    And what of the needs of the other kids in the room, who might need to be able to hear what the teacher is saying? A whispered request for clarification on something the teacher just said is one thing. 15 separate conversations about the latest Call of Duty and who made out with whom while the teacher tries to explain material is disruptive.
    - embolism 13y ago
      Teaching doesn't have to be organized as a lecture from the front. For how many of those other kids is it optimal? Alternative styles have been around for decades. It doesn't take much to learn about them if you just Google a bit.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      What's also a good thing is social time with your peers. We separate kids based on age, based on which random class they're thrown in, and in bigger schools, which random lunch time they are assigned. None of these may match up with their friends outside of class time. Perhaps there would be less classroom disruption if friends could have time together outside of the one class they took together knowing that would be the only time they could be together?
      - ceejayoz 13y ago
        > Perhaps there would be less classroom disruption if friends could have time together outside of the one class they took together knowing that would be the only time they could be together? There is. School ends at 2:30, upon which point they can enlist in formal or informal shared after-school activities. Turning classes into a free-for-all where no one needs to afford the teacher and other students any respect for their time and attention isn't a great option. Plus, most classes I took in high school had plenty of group projects, small discussion groups, etc. that allowed for social interaction with friends in a non-lecture context.
        freehunter 13y ago
        Problem is, there are no buses that take the kids home from their after-school activities. I don't know where you live, but there are many school districts in the US where kids can't walk home or expect their parents to drive them to and from school or a friend's house. When I was in school, my house was an hour and a half bus ride from school. My parents worked in the other direction. Outside of being at school, there was no hope for social interaction unless we were in town for a festival. I'm also not arguing for turning classes into a free for all. I pretty explicitly said there should be room for social interaction outside of class. In districts with split lunch hours, there's literally no free-form social interaction unless you're on one of the last buses to leave at the end of the day.
        jff 13y ago
        We had buses to do exactly that. The "sports bus" departed at 6 p.m. every day; there weren't a lot of the buses, because not everyone did afterschool activities, but everyone who needed a ride got on the appropriate bus (east or west, as I recall) which dropped them to their home. It was free, too. This was a rural school district, about 60 students in my class, and the district extended something like 20 miles in each direction from the town.

camus 13y ago

Yeah , stop trying to teach kids discipline, especially when there is none at home ...

DanBC 13y ago
Some people with Asperger's have to fidget to be able to concentrate on what is being said. These people are not undisciplined, they are misunderstood. Some people just aren't very good at sitting still for an hour, and repeating that for however many hours they are in school. We can either chose to spend time punishing them, which harms them but also everyone else in the class, or we can learn techniques to help those people cope. We can encourage non-distracting fidgeting. These are quite seperate from discipline.
kevingadd 13y ago
Sitting still is not a virtue. It literally accomplishes nothing. It's a secondary detail - whether or not the kid is sitting still does not tell you whether they're actually paying attention to the lecture and whether they're going to remember it.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  You're taking a narrow perspective. Fidgeting is distracting, to everyone else. Whatever your ideals of a perfect world may be, 20 dump trucks of kids needs to be educated at one facility every day. Whatever you may think one kid is doing to help him focus, that kid is disrupting the focus of his 8 neighbors. Something needs to change, but it's more than just perspectives.
  - VLM 13y ago
    "that kid is disrupting the focus of his 8 neighbors" Whatever else Catholic churches may get wrong, apparently all of the "modern" ones I've ever been inside figured out the "crying room" technology a long time ago. Setting up a "sound diode" isn't all that difficult with modern technology. If whats really important is forcing future factory workers to line up in alphabetical order in row/column format, then flexibility might not work.

dllthomas 13y ago

As a youth, I was only able to sit still by focusing on sitting still. If I was paying attention to the teacher, I was fidgeting, and would be told to pay attention...

ImprovedSilence 13y ago
They gave me silly putty to harness my fidgeting. I soon discovered silly putty can be made into a bouncy ball, that I could use to distract everyone.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  My son's classroom has employed smaller versions of exercise balls to keep some of the kids focused (including my own). It's interesting to observe. The kids are fidgety and restless while sitting, but when you sit them on one of these the subconscious motor control going on seems to quell the foreground restlessness.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Maybe it's a metabolism thing? If they're used to burning calories a a certain rate, homeostasis will cause their bodies to seek to maintain that rate. Fidgeting burns a lot of calories. Maybe tensing up core muscles for balance fills that need?
    - wes-exp 13y ago
      I seem to recall studies in controlled environments where people were not allowed to exercise, and there was a significant difference in calorie burn attributable to small movements. So the homeostasis argument seems totally plausible to me.
      - joezydeco 13y ago
        But if you sit that same twitchy kid in front of a video game or stimulating TV show, the fidgeting doesn't happen. Interesting...

jasallen 13y ago

I really like this article. It looks at a severe problem (that traditional education is only reaching a small fraction of the students 'smart' enough to excel) and it suggests both a new way at looking at the problem (at least one I hadn't considered), and an approach to improvement that can be taken iteratively, without a sweeping change or expensive program.

smokeyj 13y ago

Public school is essentially an obedience camp. Is it any wonder boys are lagging?

jacalata 13y ago
Are you arguing that boys are intrinsically badly suited to a highly regulated environment that expects them to do exactly as they are told as soon as they are told? You should tell the army.
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  why do you think the armies around the world have to threaten recruits with corporal punishment, prison, and even execution when they don't follow orders?
  - squozzer 13y ago
    Don't forget the constant drill-and-ceremony, both in training and once stationed to a permanent post. For those who don't "habla", drill-and-ceremony (D&C) is the "attention, left face, forward march" stuff that fills a good portion of footage about military life, not to mention certain films such as Full Metal Jacket. Oh, and don't forget the role played by PT (Physical Training) in producing human drone-killers.
  - OvidNaso 13y ago
    Do American football programs have to do the same thing?
    - rdouble 13y ago
      At the elementary and high school level, yes.
    - jdminhbg 13y ago
      Is this rhetorical? Of course they do. They're legendary and/or infamous for imposing extreme physical hardship as hazing to get kids to fall in line.

joelhooks 13y ago

At least one of my three boys would have an incredibly hard time with this. He's definitely "aspie" in a lot of respects. The decision to home educate our 4 children is hands down the best decision we've ever made. Highly recommend it, if you are able to pull it off logistically. Very rewarding experience so far.

tocomment 13y ago
Any tips on getting started? It sounds interesting but I wouldn't know where to start.
- altcognito 13y ago
  Google homeschooling resources, and begin talking to the homeschooling groups in your local area. Homeschooling has a network of families that support each other generally. It's the easiest and best way to get started. Plus, you'll get a lot of guidance on what resources are good and which are a waste of time.
  - Groxx 13y ago
    Having been homeschooled, this is a great suggestion. It's pretty easy to get too isolated, and homeschooling groups help a lot. Also check with your local schools - I was able to take 2 classes while still being classified as 'homeschooled', for free (since it's part of taxes already), which can give access to tools that are otherwise way too expensive.
    - zaphoyd 13y ago
      Seconding this. I was also allowed to take two classes at the local high school free while being homeschooled. Useful for classes that benefit from in classroom interactions (foreign language) or expensive equipment (science labs).
    - archon 13y ago
      > Having been homeschooled, this is a great suggestion. Agreed. I was homeschooled as well, and homeschool groups were absolutely vital to making the experience a success for me. I did great teaching myself at home, but especially in high school, I needed outside classes and outside social activities. The city I grew up in had a huge homeschool community, so it was easy to find classes on a wide variety of subjects.

jvreeland 13y ago

I felt like they were describing me that whole time. I was diagnosed with learning disabilities and told to sit still countless times. Thankfully some teachers realized keeping me in extra circular activities would offset my energy but when I moved from that school the situation changed. The frustrating part for teachers was that I typically scored higher on exams than my peers, including standardized tests. They then saw my scores and consistently lectured me about how if I just _applied_ myself I'd be doing so much better. I always treated exams as a challenge I sit here for 1, 2 hours at a time and try and score as high as possible.

Spooky23 13y ago

One of the guiding objectives of the current cohort of education thought leaders is to focus on girls. So, we're focusing on girls. Boys, time for your pills. My personal goal is to figure out how to make enough money to keep my children out of the insanity of public schools.

tokenadult 13y ago
My personal goal is to figure out how to make enough money to keep my children out of the insanity of public schools. It doesn't necessarily take a lot of money to homeschool children. (Been there, still doing that.) It does take agreement among the parents about what lifestyle adjustments each parent is willing to make so that children have flexibility in their learning. My oldest son, now a programmer working for a startup, sent me a very touching email for Father's Day in which he attributed some of his success so far in the business world to having been homeschooled rather than being put in public school. "That has made it very easy for me to step into a leadership position and feel very comfortable in positions of responsibility" is part of what he wrote. Finding truly excellent third-party educational materials and programs can be inexpensive http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm or expensive, http://ohs.stanford.edu/ http://ohs.stanford.edu/ depending on what your selection criteria are for "excellent" programs, and what your child's specific needs are, but some of the expensive third-party programs have significant financial aid that reaches up into the middle class, and some of the commercial materials and programs are available in a thriving used-materials or group-purchase market for homeschooling families. So shop around, and see what fits your family's needs. There is a lot of information about how to get started in homeschooling http://learninfreedom.org/sidlifgetstarted.html http://learninfreedom.org/sidlifgetstarted.html on the World Wide Web, and my goal for next few years is to update my personal website (the link here) with more been-there, done-thats as I launch my younger three children into adulthood to joint their older brother in the big world.
- pekk 13y ago
  I find it peculiar that you regularly cite scientific studies of this and that, and yet you are using this terribly misleading, n-of-1 implication that home schooling is why your oldest son has the success he has. Do you really think that children cannot do exactly the same thing coming out of a public school, and if so, why?

tlogan 13y ago

And we wonder why smart kids are all introverts...

overgryphon 13y ago
This is not true.

dccoolgai 13y ago

Reading this article, for me, is just a reminder of what an awesome effect a really good teacher can have... In this teacher's writing I see a lot of positive qualities reflected from some of the teachers that made a huge impact on my life and disposition. In the end I suspect that - just having a teacher that is even willing to think or write about this - has much more of an impact than any rote following of procedural formula about "how to teach boys".

learc83 13y ago

School is half education and half babysitting. The problem is that schools aren't aware of that, and they try to cram too much learning/work into a day at school. Kids just don't have the attention span. College isn't taught this way. Colleges realize that even young adults can't handle 40 hours a week of continual instruction, why do we do this kids can? I think the reason, is that we're always behind other countries trying to "catch up"--50 years ago it was the Soviets, 20 years ago the Japanese, now it's the "global workforce". In our frantic rush to compete with everyone else we end up forcing an overambitious curriculum on kids. How much time can kids really spend learning everyday? A few hours at the most? I have a friend who teaches 1st grade, she knows kids at that age can't spend time on focused learning for more than 20 or 30 minutes, but the school districts forces here to teach in 1 to 2 hour blocks and spend almost 6 hours out of the day instructing (they get 15 minutes, no more, of recess; 30 minutes lunch, many times in silence because the lunchroom gets too loud; and on some days 45 minutes of focused PE). What 6 or 7 year old can possibly sit still and study for 5 or 6 hours each day?

pekk 13y ago
Historically many, many children have sat still at school and behaved themselves. That doesn't mean that others should be stigmatized, but it's not like this is impossible and unprecedented.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Also historically, many, many children have been thrown out of school or deemed ineducable because they couldn't sit still in school and behave themselves.
  - derleth 13y ago
    Or they never went to school in the first place. Similarly, the average high schooler was better back then because the average person stopped their education at the eighth grade, if not sooner. (Note to non-Americans: In the US, high school runs from ninth to twelfth grade, usually named freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years.)

speeder 13y ago

Although I was a generally calm student (I am introverted and not into causing mayhem or attracting attention), I never copied from the blackboard, don't did my homework, slept during classes, or instead kept drawing, or later writing ASM code or toying with physics formulas, or I just outright spent my time chatting about video games with whoever was nearby. Every time I had a new teacher, my parents were called into the school, and warned that I had some sort of problem (and my parents went into full denial hell not of course my child is not crazy... later I found out I DO probably have Aspergers, seemly inherited from the father of my mother), my parents reply were: "Alright, wait until the tests, and if he fails, THEN you can call us." Unfortunately to those teachers, and me, I did not failed... Meaning I had to endure them, and they had to endure me. Specially because I completely ignored their lessons, and in the time of the tests I answered correctly but in my own way, this was specially bad related to hard sciences because I would use formulas I invented on the spot, and I wrote in totally random patterns, forcing teachers to spend LOOOOOONG time to figure what I did, also my calligraphy is horrible, thus all my teachers hated reading my tests, yet they could not just zero them, because I always passed, so if they did that, they knew I would send the test to their superior and would get them punished. So yes, I can totally relate to the article. Also I STILL don't sit still, right now as I type I am vibrating one of my legs. (I guess this is a way to keep energy burning considering I stay sitting the entire day).

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Ah, to have grown up in an education system where homework and in-class participation aren't counted as some huge part of the grade!
- speeder 13y ago
  class participation and whatnot counted, and I had not a problem with that, when a teacher asked a direct question and I was not sleeping deeply enough (if I was half-sleeping and heard the question I woke up) I would usually be the first to reply. Only later I figured this was bad idea (here in Brazil at least, the norm is to noone ever try to reply to the teacher, as a kind of weird social convention, and since I always replied, even while half-asleep, I quickly attracted negative attention, I was frequently involved in fights I did not started with the less performing boys... also girls sometimes pulled some horrible stuff, like spreading rumors or attempt to frame me)

joonix 13y ago

Are there any private all-boys[1] schools that embrace this side of childhood? Look at tiger cubs and what not: they play, they bounce around, they fight, they figure out the world around them through investigation and exploration. I spent so much of my time outside as a kid, but I also spent a lot of time inside on the computer. Both were amazing worlds where your imagination could run wild; especially in the early days of computers and the internet... being a part of a "wild west" frontier at the age of 10 was a special privilege. My point is that learning and running around in the mud are both very valuable and can be balanced to create well-rounded people who have confidence with technology and the outdoors. Has any institution figured out how to balance these two in a formal curriculum? Spend half the day exploring the woods and classifying wildflowers, the other half back inside working with math formulae and reading lessons. Some might say there's not enough time in the day to spend half of it outside, but I disagree. The kids will be more efficient in their inside learning time if they've spent half the day learning outside. [1] I'm not saying that girls wouldn't appreciate the same type of learning. I suspect that in an environment that harvests the physical energy (horseplay, outdoors activities) of boys to improve learning, even in a positive and productive manner, might alienate some young girls who might feel uncomfortable, so perhaps it's better to separate the genders in this sort of environment?

cafard 13y ago
A friend reported that The German School outside Washington, DC, (private, predominately but not exclusively male) has the kids in some of the lowest grades spend most of their time running around. Now, I don't remember whether this applied as high up as 1st grade.
VLM 13y ago
"Look at tiger cubs" LOL I read that the first time as a Cub Scouts reference and agreed completely. You might be surprised just how much of your "thought experiment" vaguely resembles the many Cub Scout pack meetings I've attended, other than the pack meetings only being about 2 hours every other week rather than 8 hours every weekday. Like most organizations, the Scouts get many things right and a couple things wrong, and it improves the level of discourse to stay on track. So bringing up their very peculiar unamerican ideas about religion or sex is not terribly relevant to the discussion of "educating boys", which is kind of the point of the controversy about them, but I digress... On the other hand, from what I've seen of my daughters girl scout troop meetings, its mostly craft time and snack/gossip time. There's a heck of a big difference between the two scout orgs beyond one group's parents sell cookies (just tellin' it like it is...).

Houshalter 13y ago

I got in trouble a lot for fidgeting at school all the time. I got diagnosed with ADHD and had to take medicine for it, mostly because of the fidgeting. One teacher made me put a giant a big inflatable cushion on my seat everyday and it was humiliating and didn't help at all.

tenpoundhammer 13y ago

Kids should spend have instruction for a while and then pushed out to play for a while. Alternating back and forth, maybe an hour each way. Then we wouldn't have as many fat kids and we wouldn't have so many kids disrupting classrooms. Our children aren't automatons, they need plenty of time to be kids. There is a lot of value in play.

parennoob 13y ago

One of the things they used to do for this at my school (in another country) was to have 50 minutes of compulsory physical activity or drills in the morning, at least three out of five days. (This was excluding separate gym/physical training classes.) I feel like this could go a long way into giving boys an outlet for their physical energy. I definitely know that even as one of the most talkative and fidgety kids in class, I used to fidget a lot less if I had returned from a bout of running or whatever. Also, I am somewhat acquainted with some of the teachers in the US school system, and have found their knowledge about the subjects they are supposed to be teaching (specially science) to be severely subpar. Kids can often perceive this very accurately, and will respect a teacher less if he or she seems to be unsure or vague regarding what they are teaching.

cafard 13y ago

During the baby boom there appeared to be an odd dynamic at work: in the primary grades, the neater, more docile girls were the teachers' favorites and got the better grades. Somewhere around or after puberty, they started to fall back behind the boys. Some of this was certainly socially motivated; a cousin said that boys didn't like to date girls they thought smarter. Some of it may have come from the teachers. Just my two cents..

PavlovsCat 13y ago
One of the most impressive girls I went to school with was kinda intimidating in her ferocious intelligence and confidence, but if I didn't dare to approach her, it was simply because it was painfully obvious she was out of my league, not because I didn't like her. She never sucked up, not to teachers and not to peers, she never failed to say what she thought, she played the piano and the violin and aced every single test anyone handed to her. And one time she passed some sweets on to me during class, and then laughed her ass off, because she had them in the mouth before wrapping them up again. If I utterly adored one girl in that time, it was her; so much I never dared to even fall in love with her. In contrast, I never considered "neat and docile" pupils smart, just lame. That wasn't even my two cents, just shamelessly indulging in nostalgia haha.

Alex3917 13y ago

"While Reichert and Hawley's research was conducted in all-boys schools, these lessons can be used in all classrooms, with both boys and girls." Not true, research shows that girls do worse when their performance is evaluated in relation to others (competitively), as opposed to when their performance is evaluated against an objective standard.

gthrowaway 13y ago
Sad that I need a throwaway account to talk about this, but such is life. Spend some time doing searches on terms like "gender grading gap" and reading the recent research. What you find may surprise you, is consistent across multiple Western democracies, and can be summarized thusly: * When assessment is left to teachers, there is a grading gap in favor of girls; girls receive grades that are inflated relative to their performance on non-teacher assessments. This seems to be partly due to teachers including factors like "engagement" or "focus" in the classroom, which is known to favor girls, and partly due to bias by teachers in favor of students of their own gender (and many teachers are women, meaning the effect is most pronounced for girls). * By surprisingly young ages, girls in public school systems internalize "we're better than boys" and boys internalize "we're worse than girls" (one UK study estimated boys internalize this by age eight), producing a performance/effort gap similar to that associated with racial stereotypes. * This has ramifications all the way up the system, including an achievement gap which starts early and only grows with each milestone. Boys and young men are increasingly more likely to be held back and/or disciplined/medicated in early school years, increasingly less likely to get into advanced courses in later years, less likely to graduate local equivalent of "high school" and less likely to enter college/university or earn a degree.
- Alex3917 13y ago
  Cool. Any good books on this you'd recommend?
  - gthrowaway 13y ago
    Books are tricky since the required funding/publicity tends to mean that only people with reactionary/highly-conservative viewpoints can break into that, and come with their own views on why we have this gap and how to address it. Mostly this is something you'll find in academic articles and published statistics. The US Department of Education's June 2012 report on gender equity is a decent starting point: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equity-in-education.pdf http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equity... What you'll find there is that the conventionally-assumed narratives don't hold; there's a lot more parity in enrollment for higher-level courses including sciences and many maths courses (and sometimes even a gap in the unexpected direction, as with girls outnumbering boys in AP science courses), for example. Girls are also more likely (and have been more likely for nearly 40 years) to be enrolled into programs for gifted/talented students, while boys are nearly 1.5 times more likely to be held back and forced to repeat a grade. Judith Kleinfeld (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) has written a few articles -- though fully-cited and sourced versions are hard to find free -- arguing that a major component of perceived gaps in performance may also be from greater variability in boys; focusing only on achieving parity at the highest levels of achievement has meant that boys' original overrepresentation at the lowest levels has not only persisted but grown, and remains unaddressed. A study at the University of Georgia published this year looked into why girls receive higher grades and lower standardized-test scores. Summary: http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-school-010212/ http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-... Full article (subscription required): http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-school-010212/ http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-... Their findings indicated a persistent grading gap in favor of girls, based on behavioral rather than academic factors. In the UK, research pointed to expectations and stereotypes as a source for the gap: http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/stories/girls-believe/2010 http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/stories/girls-believe/2010 Girls and boys both persistently believe that girls "are cleverer, better-behaved and try harder than boys at school". And that's really just the tip of the iceberg. But like I said, spend some time searching on relevant terms and you'll turn up a lot of research that may make you question what "everybody knows" about gender and education.

DamnYuppie 13y ago

I am surprised to see that none of the comments really comment or reflect upon the issue this article brings up, which is that for boys to thrive they need to be taught differently. If we can actually create ciriculum that allows them to excel why would we not do this? I know that the main point against it would be that young girls perhaps would not thrive in such a system. Yet I think we have to find a balance between them if we want true equality and what is best for all of our children. Mayhaps it is time to reaccess if we should not have separate classes for boys and girls..food for thought...

derleth 13y ago
'Separate but equal' is never actually equal.
dgabriel 13y ago
I bet girls would do just fine, and a sane combination of approaches works best. The biggest issue with schools is that everybody thinks they know how to fix stuff, but the research is spotty at best. Standardized tests and core curriculums? Differentiated learning or academic tiers? We all have opinions, and there are many in this thread, but not all of these opinions can be simultaneously right.

easy_rider 13y ago

I got this problem in elementary, still got almost the highest possible mark on our CITO test (which is an indication of your education level here in the Netherlands), went to one of the best Gymnasiums, and essentially got kicked out of 80% of all my classes because of my ADD disorder, and refusal of treatment (i.e. not wanting to take Ritalin). It also ended up me being easier to calm the class by making an example out of me. I had to drop out of this school to a lower grade, which I passed without pretty much doing fuck all, cause it was too easy. People should learn that distracted kids crave stimulation, and the stuff you teach them is probably not stimulating (i.e. boring, easy)

thezilch 13y ago

I had a H.S. teacher admit to my mother that she was grading me on a scale that included how "distracted" I was by my girlfriend in the class. Little did she know that we had broken up months prior, and every guy in the class was probably distracted by her at some point. I had a second teacher that was giving myself and my friends lower grades in computer class, because we were "goofing off" -- making websites, chat portals, playing with VB, etc. After completing our weekly assignments in the first day of the week, we were applying ourselves to higher levels of computing, which she equated to us not doing our work; in reality, she had no idea what we were actually doing or what a computer could be made to do that wasn't outlined in her spiral-bound curriculum. Let's take it out on these meddling kids!

xxpor 13y ago
That reminds me of the time my History teacher called up my mom when I was in 9th grade. Teacher: Yes, hi. Your son isn't taking notes in class, even though he is required to. Mom: Well, what did he get on his midterm? Teacher: 100 Mom: :| Goodbye.
- thezilch 13y ago
  My parents were rather "amused" that I could almost be failing a class that taught you how to Open a document, bold text, and save, while at the same time as having self-made business cards and brochures and revenue from teaching Office '97 to professional folk and another service of building corporate web-portals. My HS was really progressive, as the other 5 in town barely offered a typing class, and it's only gotten better for my school -- a Charter school.

yason 13y ago

I was one of the calm and orderly boys in school. However, this was because merely being at school where I didn't want to be made me mostly lethargic. I didn't have any energy left to make a scene as I was busy counting hours until the day ended. To be precise, since the first week of the first grade I practically counted days till the end of high school when I knew this suffering would end. I did get good grades not because I was interested but because school was way too easy. I never even studied for exams except the last evening before, and that was mostly glancing at the books, yet I was always among the handful of best in the classroom. That is, until teenage when I realize I don't need all this bullshit and deliberately began to focus only on the few interesting subjects the school had to offer, and defocus on everything else. Didn't do too bad even after that. I still think it was such a waste of years, and I'm trying to imagine a better way to waste it. I can come up with lots of ideas but very few of them would fit all people. I would've enjoyed a more fast-paced and in-depth classes of my favorite topic at the expense of the subjects I wasn't interested. I think different people ultimately need different kind of environment to be taught in, and I think that the current homogeneous standard schooling is likely to kill more of natural curiosity than sow it. I don't think any standard schooling works for all, unless it's so reduced down to the very, very basics (reading, writing, basic arithmetics) that everyone absolutely needs and which they can build on top of.

cjdrake 13y ago

I definitely recommend clicking on the "related story" link to "The War Against Boys", written by Christina Sommers in 2000. American education has been failing boys for quite some time now. All parents have a responsibility to educate themselves on this topic.

codereflection 13y ago

As a father of two boys, I cannot agree enough with this article. I just wonder how I can send this article to the teachers at my boys schools without offending them.

pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Perhaps they need offending.
- codereflection 13y ago
  Perhaps. I just worry about it being like insulting the person serving your food. Tack needs to be used.
  - gohrt 13y ago
    Indeed, you might need to try a different tact.
    - codereflection 13y ago
      :)

gatekeepr 13y ago

Every time I read an article about schooling I think about the best piece I ever read on the subject. The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher (1992) by John Taylor Gatto http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

ryanmarsh 13y ago

This is why I will homeschool my son.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 13y ago

I don't see why we still have co-ed education in the early grades. It does boys no good to be told they're behaving badly for not being able to sit still in class, and it does girls no good to have boys disrupting class while they're trying to learn.

anigbrowl 13y ago

I grew up (in Ireland) with single-sex schooling until age 12-3 (primary) and mixed secondary. That has its own potential pitfalls (eg bullying, more playground fights) but I think there are benefits too. Also, in primary school it's the same teacher all day for a full year (or two) at a time, which makes it a lot easier for the teacher to know each pupil and manage the classroom appropriately. I'm unsure why American schools are so tied to the lementary/ middle/ high model. It doesn't confer any particular benefit that I can see.

cafard 13y ago
It varies considerably. Most public schools break have either a middle school or junior high school (grades 6-8 or 7-9) between primary and secondary grades. But most Catholic parochial schools run to 8th grade. A lot of private schools run from 6th to 12th grade on the same campus, some 3rd to 12th. I suspect that the break is because in the middle years it becomes harder to find a teacher who can do everything--reading, history, math--adequately. A lot of what is called "science" in American primary schools I would call "environmental civics"--recycling is good; don't litter. Then in 7th or 8th grades one can actually encounter chemistry labs. (On the other hand, in my 7th (8th?) grade science class a big chunk of time was given up to the evils of drugs; I didn't particularly disagree, but bilged the class because I found it tedious to cull clippings about overdoses or LSD flashback. And I have no idea what I might have learned in the "science" lessons of the earlier grades--how many planets, maybe.)

StacyC 13y ago

It’s unnatural for most any human to be expected to sit and focus on tedious crap for hours on end, especially children. We live in one of the top school districts in Texas, and three years ago took our two boys out to homeschool them. No religious motivations, just got fed up with the bullshit custom we continue to call “education” in this culture. They are learning, thriving, curious, creative and happier than ever.

nether 13y ago

Stop pandering to the internet crowd of "misunderstood" nerds, Atlantic [0]. You clearly know your audience and you've got your litany of "I was really smart but teachers kept me down" testimonials here on HN and Reddit, but this really adds nothing new to the discussion. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic....

cynoclast 13y ago

As a boy who still cannot sit still at 30, the only way I survived being forced to sit still at school was by programming my enormously overpriced graphing calculator.

JulianMorrison 13y ago

Or girls.

fierycatnet 13y ago

Overseas I used to go to school from 8am to 1pm with 40min classes(and I received much better education). In US I had to sit for over an hour per classs and until 4-5pm. Is this any wonder that kids can't sit from 8 to 4 with very small brakes in between? I didnt learn much in American HS, it was torture most of the day. All I wanted to do was to get my work done and gtfo /go home, but that system made it very difficult to do. In fact, I didnt care much for school as a result.

swamp40 13y ago

I have a 6 year old daughter in a Montessori school. After a class observation I noticed the teacher spent a significant portion of her time just dealing with a few rambunctious boys, while all the girls in the class worked quietly. Afterwards, I asked the teacher why they just didn't separate the boys from the girls, since they were obviously two different species at that age (at all ages?) It seemed to me that a class with only girls in it could learn faster w/o all the silly distractions. The teacher got quite serious and told me that girls and boys are a form of yin and yang. The classroom dynamic was an absolute necessity to the healthy social upbringing of each.

artsrc 13y ago
> a few rambunctious boys As the parent of a less rambunctious boy, I believe that discrimination should be on the basis of behavior, not gender. > The classroom dynamic was an absolute necessity to the healthy social upbringing of each. I think that it is great to have everyone learn to work together, but I don't think it has to be all the time.

ameister14 13y ago

I had a horrible middle school experience which led me to the opinion that primary and secondary school is a much better system. It's not just punishing students for not sitting still, though a friend was almost flunking because he couldn't sit through a class. It's teachers eating separately from students, no time for recess, and no adult to talk to without social ostracism. Then I went to a New England Prep school; 3 sports a year, teachers eat with and openly question students, everyone feels like members of the community and people have a stake in things, and the Headmaster knows everyone's name. I can't thank that school enough; I went from failing with almost perfect test scores to really good grades and a sense of belonging. I don't understand why at least rural schools can't follow the same model. The teachers are paid less but get better results; the students are cared for and more disciplined, and the academics and athletics are generally better. It's not about the student body, either; we had tons of kids on scholarship that outperformed everyone.

kenster07 13y ago

-This article strikes a chord with me. I remember I was placed a year ahead in math, in Algebra I Honors, and the class was so easy that I would bring little toys into class and play with them while still getting A's. The teacher, a female, sent me back to Pre-algebra as a result. In hindsight, that reaction was so patently absurd. If anything, she should have tested whether I should have advanced to Geometry Honors. -I don't think anyone is surprised that the article claims that boys perform better under conditions which simulate actual adult workplace conditions. -A bigger issue is really the education system targeting the median student. That means those students with the highest potential have to fight against the system to reach it -- if they ever reach it at all. And holding back the brightest people, when the economy is advanced by that small percent of bright people, sounds horribly ineffective. This educational system is an artificial structure imposed on people with disparate learning capabilities, trying to fit every peg under the sun into a square hole, and I think we've missed out on a lot of value because of that. Hopefully, as automation increases, this is something we'll be able to improve upon.

xiaoma 13y ago

As a long-time teacher in multiple countries, I've also had this concern. I realize it's a fairly heretical belief to hold on this site but I think boys are systematically discriminated against in most western societies. As a child that teachers (nearly all women) tended to be biased against boys and downright dismissive of male dominated interests such as science fiction, video games or arm-wrestling. Talking with students in recent years, I get the impression that my teachers were actually more tolerant of boys than most current K12 teachers are. Invariably boys get punished more severely for similar infractions, boys are more likely to be forced onto medication and more likely to receive "tough love" in the face of academic difficulties. Compounding this is that even in this day and age when there's nearly a 3-2 ratio of females to males in college, it's the boys who get fewer grants, fewer sex-specific support organizations and less support in general. This chasm continues, even for mid-career adults. Many organizations provide women with free training in various fields, including tech (see Railsbridge, Women Who Code, etc) and allow men only as guests of women at all. In fact the amazingly good hacker school I went to charges men $2000 more than women. Things probably still seem okay at this point due to the fact that the trends have gradually been getting more extreme and the educational imbalances weren't so bad 15-30 years ago, when much of the workforce was in formal schooling. But the swelling ranks of disenfranchised young men is a demographic that isn't going to be good news for anyone, including women.

Camillo 13y ago
> In fact the amazingly good hacker school I went to charges men $2000 more than women. Is that even legal?
- xiaoma 13y ago
  It's de-facto legal at the very least. AFIK all the schools do that. Actually, it looks like mine just gives $1k off for women and certain minorities. There were several students I talked to who paid 2k less than me, but I'm not sure what the reason was. The tuition price doesn't appear to have been consistent in the beginning.

SmokyBorbon 13y ago

60 years ago boys had no problem paying attention in class. The problem is too many teachers today have degrees in education instead of the subject they are supposed to be teaching. They've turned schools into daycare centers. They rely on "projects", worksheets, videos, and busywork that have little to do with what the kids should be learning. When children are bored and resentful that their time is being wasted, they act out. We can fix this by making it easier to fire bad teachers, require math, science, and English teachers to have degrees in math, science, and English, and prevent school funds from being used on new textbooks, televisions, videos, workbooks, or other wasteful materials.