Posted on 08/29/2003 3:09:56 PM PDT by Pro-Bush
Girls get extra school help while boys get Ritalin
At last June's graduation at Franklin High School just outside of Milwaukee, three of the four students who tied for valedictorian were girls. Among the National Honor Society members, 76% were girls. And girls comprised 85% of the students on Franklin's 4.0 honor roll.
The superintendent of schools for this upper-middle-class suburb, Gerald Freitag, investigated those numbers after the parents of a boy filed a complaint. He found that the skewed performances by gender at Franklin pretty much mirror the imbalances across the state and the nation.
This week, teachers at the middle school feeding into Franklin received training on how to reach out to boys. And high school teachers will continue the gender-sensitivity classes they began last school year.
But reversing the trend will not be easy. In classrooms nationwide, girls are pulling ahead of boys academically. Recent federal testing data show that what starts out as a modest gap in elementary-level reading scores turns into a yawning divide by high school. In 12th grade, 44% of girls rate as proficient readers on federal tests, compared with 28% of boys. And while boys still score slightly higher on federal math and science exams, their advantage is slipping.
Most startling is that little is being done to correct the imbalances. All of the major players schools, education colleges and researchers largely ignore the gender gap. Instead of pursuing sound solutions, many educators merely advocate prescribing more attention-focusing Ritalin (news - web sites) for the boys, who receive the drug at four to eight times the rate of girls, according to different estimates. "Too often the first reaction to an attention problem is 'Let's medicate,' " says Rockville, Md., child psychologist Neil Hoffman. "Some schools are quick to recommend solutions before they've fully evaluated the problem."
Playing to girls' strengths
One reason boys are losing academic ground to girls appears linked to a shift by schools to more word-based learning for which girls' brains are believed to have an advantage. Over the years, even math problems have become more word oriented, according to education researchers. But because schools are doing little to help boys adjust, males risk becoming second-class academic citizens. Already the academic success girls enjoy in high school translates into more college acceptances 56% of the students on campuses are female.
The full impact from this shift is something society has yet to discover. But a drop in earnings for males is one likely result. Workers with only a high school diploma earn $20,000 a year less than those with a bachelor's degree.
One fact explains why educators are ignoring boys' needs: You can't address a problem that you don't admit exists. The U.S. Department of Education (news - web sites) concedes that no serious research is available comparing different instructional methods that might help boys. In fact, many education researchers are hostile toward research aimed at exploring gender differences in learning.
Last April, when Kenneth Dragseth, superintendent of schools in Edina, Minn., presented a paper describing his district's gender gap at the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting in Chicago, he says the reception ranged from chilly to hostile. Female education researchers in the audience questioned whether helping boys would mean hurting girls.
Their attitude follows years of lobbying by groups such as the American Association of University Women, which alerted educators to the fact that girls were being shortchanged academically in the fields of math and science. The extra attention helped focus schools on girls' difficulties, but it has made it too easy for educators to overlook the problems of boys. Among them:
Boys and girls learn differently. The best research on boy-girl learning differences is produced more by accident than by design. The lack of data in this field can hurt girls as much as boys. For instance, as part of an ongoing 20-year dyslexia study focusing on Connecticut schools, Yale neuroscientist and pediatrician Sally Shaywitz discovered that schools were identifying four times as many dyslexic boys as girls. Yet when her team entered schools to screen children, it diagnosed just as many dyslexic girls as boys. Shaywitz found that the mostly female teaching staff was quicker to identify rambunctious boys than quiet girls.
The results are just one example of what might be learned about the role gender plays in education, especially in elementary school, where 85% of teachers are women.
Future teachers aren't trained to deal with learning differences. Therapist Michael Gurian, author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently!, has visited more than 100 education colleges. But he has not found one that offers courses on male-female brain differences. His discovery explains why many new teachers arrive in classrooms clueless about what teaching techniques might work best for boys' learning styles.
Boys lack advocates. The special efforts made by schools to steer more girls into advanced math and science classes came after powerful advocacy groups embraced the problem. But Gurian and other advocates for boys say they run into resistance from educators who point to males' success in the workforce as proof that advocacy for boys is unnecessary.
In spite of the lack of research, anecdotal evidence shows that far more effective strategies are available for teaching boys than plying them with Ritalin. Patricia Henley runs a boy-friendly charter school in Kansas that hires many male teachers. It also recognizes boys' natural tendency to favor active learning by conducting more class work on the chalkboard and allowing more student movement within the classroom. And the school trains teachers to deal with boys' particular styles. For instance, because boys volunteer answers more slowly than girls do, teachers are told to count to 10 before calling on a student.
Beginning in the early 1990s, groups such as the American Association of University Women performed an important service by alerting the public to an educational failing. Their persistence helped convince educators that schools were ignoring important problems plaguing girls, such as the loss of self-esteem among middle school girls who had been successful students throughout elementary school.
Today's education system fails many boys. They deserve the same kind of attention to address why they are losing ground.
My son, who had never been a problem started acting up in 5th grade. Come to find out his punishment for any infraction was loss of recess and I just told the teacher he better think of a different punishment or live with the results.
What area? I'm from Midland but just moved to San Angelo.
Where's the quota system now! How is this fair?
What's going to happen to the young men in this country who are denied college educations because some young girl gets a full scholarship to play lacrosse and study 19th century lesbian literature?
Greqt way to put it!
In 6th grade my son who is very smart had a math teacher who taught to the "top" of the class. As she gradually lost his attention, she became increasingly embittered toward him. We helped him at home and he had no great problem grasping the concepts.
The following year during the first teachers conference, the new teacher said,"He does okay considering his disability." (Pained expression from parents)
"Well you DO realize he has ADD don't you?"
I went immediately to the office and signed out his records, finding no mention of the illusive "disease." Found only a very glowing narrative from one teacher who took the time to say how smart, funny and personable he was and what a privelage it was that she had him in her class.
The %#@*^&%# math teacher had told the new teacher all about our son and believe it or not this crap followed him into high school.
We went on the psycologist, counselor, Ritalin, Dexadrine, Prozac merry-go round and thankfully the kid realized that the drugs were inhibiting him too much. We didn't force him to continue as many parents would have.
He's 21 now and after very extensive testing, (which we could never have afforded) the doctor said that there isn't a hint of evidence to support the ADD thing which we knew all along.
I can believe that this garbage has ruined countless childrens lives and the power of Lilly and other drug companies to find "patients & customers" for their newly found chemicals continues.
It's sorta like reverse engineering!
I note with incredulity the new add telling people that they have ADULT ADD and to go to their web site for further info.
Where are the men in teaching ?
Conservative, traditional men ?
They'll probably get jobs as plumbers or electricians, make a pile of money, and won't have to worry about their jobs being outsourced.
Having a college degree has been more essential for a woman to support herself than it has been for a man to make a well-renumerated living.
All in all, I sypathized with the concerns on this thread, but think that men here are too quick to blame the "feminists".
What is the role of male administrators and decision- makers, and the role of men in society at large ? They still have considerable power if they choose to use it and apply it to the problems of children, instead of making sniping comments (not you, but others) about it "being for the children."
Some of us still believe that, when it is "for the children" it is a good and noble thing, as opposed to the mindless fascination with sports on television.
To the men on this thread and forum I would say, take some responsibility and get active in redressing the harm done to boys.
It has been done on YOUR watch.
Well that is the most sexist statment I have read all day.
LOL. Actually the college admission situation is working to the advantage of young men. There is such a high percentage of women applying to college that the admission offices have different standards depending on the sex of the applicant. Boys with less than stellar scores and GPAs are accepted whereas a girl would not be. Admissions offices really want male applicants. It's a marketing advantage these days to have a gender balance.
Your reasoning implies there's a smaller applicant pool for males than females. But they're equal.
A 60/40 college enrollment split in favor of girls exists today -- they're admitting 20% more girls than boys from an equal number of applicants. Period.
Even when a student requests a "recheck" of the hand-written, subjective essay test (for $30), the only information required is name, address and gender!
Some enterprising investigative reporter has a great story here, exposing the blatant gender bias of the College Board SATs.
Last quarter at a major, well-known state university, four out of five of our son's teachers were avowed lesbians.
Lesbians have increasingly sought the shelter of academia. They now control the admissions office.
And not everyone who thinks boys are getting short-changed is male. You have no idea of my or anyone's feminist credentials.
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