Posted on 11/18/2006 4:20:51 AM PST by NewHampshireDuo
LEWISTON - School-age boys, whose classroom struggles have recently been the cause of much concern in education circles, are being hurt by an unwritten set of social rules that discourage them from showing their emotions, a Harvard psychologist told a group of teachers Friday.
William Pollack, the author of "Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood," used a mix of anecdotes and statistics to argue that stereotypical images of manhood are detrimental to boys.
"If a boy puts on a football helmet and cleats, then he's a real boy," said Pollack, co-director of the Center for Men at Harvard Medical School. "If he puts on a ballet outfit and tutu, then we say we hope he'll grow out of it."
Pollack's remarks came during a daylong conference at Bates College on how to support the academic success of boys. About 100 people attended, most of them teachers from schools around Maine.
Nationally, a conversation is under way about the academic struggles of boys, their causes and what can be done about them. In Maine, statistics show that boys consistently lag behind their female peers, scoring lower on standardized tests, graduating from high school at lower rates and earning just 38 percent of all bachelor's degrees conferred by the state's public universities.
But even among researchers convinced that those statistics underscore a serious problem, there are differing views about what is to blame. Some researchers are focusing on the biological differences between girls and boys. Some call for more competition in the classroom. Pollack, on the other hand, emphasizes the social messages that boys absorb from their parents, teachers and peers. Pollack calls these lessons the "boy code." He told teachers Friday that the code includes the following messages: Don't show weakness, be independent, and don't show any emotion unless it's anger. He also gave tips on how teachers can connect with male students. Pollack's speech struck a chord with Colleen Madden, an English teacher at Morse High School in Bath. "He's just giving some formal scientific words for what we've been observing for years," Madden said. "He's just giving it a vocabulary."
Jimmy Joe Danala, a science teacher at Mt. Abram High School in rural Franklin County, said he sees male students whose academic success is stifled by social concerns.
As a male teacher, Danala said that he may have an easier time relating to boys than some of his female colleagues, but there are still limits. "If I challenge them too far, they will shut down and they'll go back to the boy code," he said.
The conference was sponsored by Boys To Men, a Portland-based nonprofit organization that brings fathers and sons together with the aim of reinforcing positive images of masculinity.
Executive Director Layne Gregory told attendees that Boys To Men has held focus groups in which it has asked Maine boys what it means to be a man. She said the responses have consistently included the following nine adjectives: athletic, big, cool, daring, hard-drinking, strong, tough, unemotional and violent.
sounds like leftist B***S*** to me...
Was he one of the ones clamoring to ride Summers out of Harvard on a rail?
"Let's overcome human nature and turn boys into girls."
BLECH!
In both cases, the boys are almost identical--stunted academic and social skills.
I've done some volunteer work with offenders and one of the observations I have is that drugs, alcohol and prisons stop the maturation process. These 30- 40 year old men are like 12 year olds.
Well, Duh
I couldn't agree more. Most of the teachers are women, and they want the boys to act as if they were good little girls. Anyone who deviates from this is in need of fixing with probably medicine and/or therapy. Many boys are seriously damaged by these interventions and so much time and money is spent trying to turn boys into something they can never and should never be.
You'd be charged with depriving your girlfriend of showing she was "equal" to a man./sarc
Worst thing that ever happened to boys was stopping them from settling playground disputes with their fists. Now, they are repressed enough to simmer for ages until they let loose with firearms.
Why did we ever allow educators to stop boys from being boys?
Note to Pollack:
Stop the craziness of trying to now make 'men more like women' as we tried to make 'women more like men' the past 30 odd years.
Men and Women are equal BUT they ARE different [emotionally and physically] and that's OK!
The problem is the over feminization of education. Want to help boys learn? Do these simple things.
Bring back recess or increase recess time for elementary grades.
Give boys choices in reading assignments that will interest them. Most school literature is so boring to boys they rapidly lose any love they had for reading.
Remember boys may have a different learning style from girls. They are more likely to be hands on rather than passive learners. Teachers should tailor school and any homework to take advantage of this.
And give them lost of strong male role models to emulate(sp). Lots of boys these days lack that in their lives.
He leaves out the fact that it is only a very recent occurrence that boys are underperforming girls. And, as Christina Hoff Summers has so thoroughly researched, much of this is due to teachers and school systems increasing bias towards girls and against boys in the classroom, along with side issues such as punishing trivial actions as perceived "early harassment" of girls by boys. Boys are being hurt by their own teachers and schools, and in frustration are underperforming as they have never done before. Sticking tutus on them and making them act like girls is not the answer. Ending the war against boys in our school is.
How about:
strong, hard-working, achieving, unwilling to let emotions rule him, firm but gentle,
responsible, mentoring, risk-taking.
Well, the tutu part. Nothing wrong with dancing. It's usually very athletic, much like gymnastics, but requiring a sense of rhythm that men's gymnastics does not. (Womens' floor routines are set to music).
Still if I had boys, or grandsons, I'd rather they take up gymnastics, baseball, basketball and shooting, not necessarily in that order. (In fact I'd put shooting at the top. My girls do that, some anyway, as do their husbands. ).
Or least a leftist. He thinks strength, independence and righteous anger are all Bad Things.
LOL! Good one.
I guess that's a form of matriarchy, but not the essence of it. Many American Indian tribes, the Cherokees for example, were matriarchal, yet you would hardly have called their male warriors, Girly-Men.
Actually I think that there are proportionally more male teachers, in the younger grades, than their were 40-50 years ago. There are more female teachers at the higher grade levels though. Forty or more years ago, teaching, usually at the elementary level, was on of the few intellectual /professional areas open to women. Thus many of them were quite bright. Now women are computer programmers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, and everything else. Thus the women who still make up the bulk of teachers at the lower grade levels, are no longer the cream of the crop so to speak.
Since my wife and my younger daughter are both teachers and my wife is a teacher of teachers, I have to be careful about saying stuff like that... but while it doesn't much apply to the kids she teaches, because of the high standards of her college, it can very well apply to bulk of the teaching graduates of public institutions of "higher" learning. This is particularly true with regards to the math and science abilities of new elementary teachers. That my wife, as the teaching math specialist in her department, would heartily agree with, even at the somewhat elite school she teaches at. (Over 50% of each class goes on to professional schools such as law, medicine, or to graduate school in the sciences, where their success rate is very high)
It sounds like Pollack has put on a few tutus in his time. Another attempt to wussify all males. But as the saying goes you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. Fortunately all attempts at sissifying males will fail. But they will keep trying.
You're absolutely right. Boy are getting the wrong message. The message should include the following;
Responsible, principled, courageous, civil, charitable, diligent, etc, etc, exactly what is not advocated in society anymore.
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