Real Boys

by William Pollack

  “It sounds like it’s been somewhat tough for you,” I suggested.

  “Well, I had one boy last year that I couldn’t deal with at all. He could never keep up with the rest of the class. Every time I looked up, he was pulling some girl’s hair or punching some kid. I recommended that he be put into the special ed class. After he left, I felt terrible. He wasn’t one of the brightest kids, but he probably could have made it on the regular track if I just had more help or more patience or something. My decision to send him to special ed may affect him forever. I don’t feel so great about it.”

  But if Julia laments the difficulties she has in addressing the needs of some boys, some educators actually target boys as the source of all our problems and blame them for the difficulties girls are currently having. For instance, I recently received a copy of a newsletter for parents from a sophisticated coed middle school that ran an article entitled “Girls Speak Out/Boys Share Star Wars.” The newsletter explained that the issue would include two subjects because the boys and girls couldn’t agree on just one—the boys wanted to focus on Star Wars while the girls wanted to write about women’s rights. Accordingly, one half of the newsletter would be about Star Wars, the other half about what it means to be young women.

  “The girls of this school,” the newsletter read, “are the good part of the future.” The inescapable implication, of course, was that boys are the bad part of the future, as represented by their obsession with silly movies like Star Wars. One of the articles in the section on girls was headlined WHY IT’S FANTASTIC TO BE A FEMALE. Nothing wrong with that, if it had simply cataloged girls’ positive traits. But this article stated girls’ attributes in contrast to those of boys. Here they are:

  • Females are superior at nonverbal communication.

  • Males appear to be more active and athletic . . . but females are actually more active athletes.

  • Except for muscles and skeleton the female body is stronger than the male’s in every way.

  And on it went. Harmless fun, you might say. But if boys were degrading girls in this way, would we be laughing? Would we ever tolerate a school newsletter that pronounced that “the boys are the good part of our school’s future”?

  The reality is that in our thoughtful efforts to help girls find their voice in the classroom, we’ve unintentionally allowed potent anti-boy sentiment to creep into our schools. As a result, many of our educational institutions have been frightfully slow to respond to the genuine emotional and academic needs of our sons.

  A DIFFERENT DRUMMER: BOYS’ CHARACTERISTIC LEARNING STYLES

  And if many of our schools do not embrace boys in an empathic way and inadequately address boys’ unique emotional issues as students, I believe that many also fail to recognize that many boys may actually learn differently than girls do and thus need to be taught differently too. Research confirms these differences.

  For example, Richard Hawley of the University School in Cleveland has posited that there are differential “tempos” in learning between the genders. Former chair of the International Coalition of Boys Schools, Hawley has cautioned his fellow educators that boys and girls learn at different paces and with different styles. “Gender-based variations in tempo and pattern of learning can be identified from the pre-kindergarten through the high school years. Primary school girls generally demonstrate reading and writing proficiency earlier than boys do. . . . Females reach the peak of their pubertal growth spurt a year or two sooner than boys. Each gender-based physiological difference is accompanied by distinctive psychological and social adjustments. Boys develop language skills . . . large and small scale muscle proficiencies at a developmentally different tempo from girls.”

  Hawley’s observations are important because they suggest that if a school is to provide a successful instructional environment for boys, that school must stay in touch with the unique “tempo” and learning style of each boy. Teachers and administrators need to be cognizant of the developmental level of the boys at their schools, making sure that the activities selected for boys are appropriate given the level. If the tempo is off, boys can be led to academic failure and low self-esteem.

  The specific learning style of a boy may also require a teacher’s careful attention. For instance, I’ve observed some boys who are so resistant to reading books in class that they’ll literally toss them aside to pursue more hands-on activities. Yet some of these same boys have been appropriately motivated to read by letting them use a computer, which allows them to have fun scrolling through the pages using the keyboard or mouse.

  I’ve also seen boys who, though they were known to be “lazy readers,” became very active, proficient readers when given reading matter on subjects (such as sports, adventure stories, murder mysteries) that actually interested them. In a fascinating study, Donald Portoff, a professor of reading at the State University in Allendale, Michigan, recently found a correlation between boys’ low reading skills and their association of reading with “feminine” skills. There’s little question that introducing texts with boy-specific interests would help boys to develop stronger reading skills.

  Many classes simply aren’t taught in a way that boys find captivating. As one high school teacher stressed, “If boys aren’t really engaged, they’re discipline problems—the key is keeping them engaged.”

  Maryland psychologist Gloria Van Derhorst explains a similar concept, stressing that schools often don’t sufficiently embrace what she calls “high-energy kids.” According to Van Derhorst: “Traditionally classrooms are not organized to suit high-energy learners. . . . In most classrooms, students are discouraged from getting out of their seats and are forced to learn by listening. This frustrates students who can learn better when they visualize concepts and physically move around.” Though Van Derhorst is not referring to students of just one gender, clearly many of the squirming scholars she’s talking about are boys.

  Some research suggests that, whereas many girls may prefer to learn by watching or listening, boys generally prefer to learn by doing, by engaging in some action-oriented task. In learning environments biased against their strengths, boys may get turned off or begin to become frustrated, attempting now to get their needs met by seeking negative attention—or, we might say, through unwitting protest against this educational gender straitjacket that hems them in. This last-ditch rebellion completes the circle of failure, for now these boys are labeled as “conduct disordered” or “troublemakers” or diagnosed with “hyperactivity.” Once again, boys’ needs—and their protests against being negatively stereotyped—are misunderstood.

  Sometimes the straitjacket can take the form of the school’s physical surroundings. Five-year-old Eric, for example, had attended a coed pre-school before enrolling in a progressive kindergarten. The teachers at his new school had observed Eric at his preschool and found him to be an appealing boy, willing to engage in any task set before him. But they also noticed a worryingly “numb” manner about him, especially when he was required to join in group activities that involved small-muscle activities—he had been so uninterested in a puppet show at his preschool that he seemed entirely disengaged and almost frightened. At his new school the teachers encouraged Eric to take part in far more active pursuits, such as working in the class garden, shoveling soil and mulch and pushing around a junior-sized wheelbarrow. His teacher remarks that “being able to move so freely and so often in the course of the school day has seemed to liberate Eric from his former still and tentative condition.”

  As well documented as the characteristics of boys’ learning styles may be, many educators seem not to take them into account in their attitudes toward boys in the classroom. This was impressed upon me when I conducted my seminar on “Understanding Boys” at a well-respected graduate school of education. I asked the group of master public school teachers to describe boys’ learning styles to me. I implored them to put aside “political correctness,” external expectations, and worries about gender equity, and to speak
only from their hearts and their educational experience in talking about boys in the classroom. Here are some of the comments they made:

  “Younger boys are more literal and concrete than girls.”

  “Younger boys engage in more open rebellion than girls.”

  “Boys are often poor auditory [listening] learners and better kinesthetic [action-oriented] ones.”

  “Boys engage in much more physical stimulation for persuasion, may get into more open conflicts and tend ‘to punch’ their way out.”

  “Boys may show their affection through action or bumping into you.”

  “In order to assimilate new ideas, boys may need the freedom to play them out with games and self-imposed rules.”

  “Boys put forward a storm of ‘intellectual bravado,’ behind which they seem very unsure, but need the bluster to prove their points.”

  What I find interesting about these comments is that they were quite perceptive and accurate; these teachers had a pretty clear picture of boys. But it’s how they talked about the differences—as positives or negatives—that made all the difference. When considered with empathy, these characteristics can be seen as the positive attributes of boys. If described less lovingly and with less empathy, however, they might sound rather like this: learning difficulties, conduct disturbance, physical aggressiveness, inattention syndrome and hyperactivity, perhaps even the code words “attention deficit disorder.”

  What I find tragic is that by failing to understand and appreciate each boy’s unique tempo and characteristic learning style in an empathic way, we make it hard for him to feel confident about himself and flourish as a student. Moreover, when he subsequently withdraws from classroom activities or begins to rebel or act out, we often deal him a second blow by interpreting his natural response as the sign of a “learning disability” or so-called hyperactivity when in reality it’s shame, boredom, or restlessness.

  Fortunately, some educators “get it.” Some educators understand that boys may learn differently than girls and that if boys’ unique needs are properly addressed, boys will be able to catch up in areas like reading and writing and rediscover their confidence as learners. Lest we doubt this, here’s a story from a school in England where two teachers recently got together and changed things for boys.

  DEAD POETS’ SOCIETY: TURNING THINGS AROUND FOR BOYS

  “People think that boys like you won’t be able to understand writers such as the Romantic poets. Well, you’re going to prove them wrong. Do you understand?” Mr. Jeckells, a teacher at Kings’ School in Winchester, England, addresses a classroom full of boys.

  Just two years earlier the head teacher at the school, Ray Bradbury, had analyzed the results of his students’ scores on the GCSE, a standardized test that rates students from A to F in various subject matters: 78 percent of girls at the school gained five or more A-C, but the boys trailed behind with only 56 percent. Boys scored particularly poorly in English—in that subject, 27 percent fewer boys than girls gained grades A-C. Mr. Bradbury was unhappy about the enormous disparity between girls’ and boys’ academic performance. While he understood that some boys were doing well, he realized—as we’ve discussed above—that the largest portion of the kids at the bottom of the class were boys. And he decided to do something about it.

  Since he recognized that some boys were already doing relatively well, he decided against segregating these boys from girls at the same academic level. But he decided to place the boys who were doing significantly less well in an all-boys class of their own.

  “The most vital ingredient in the scheme’s success was finding the right teacher for this group,” says Bradbury. “So I chose Rob Jeckells . . . who is involved with sport, and someone to whom the boys relate very easily. We consciously planned the teaching methodology. The class is didactic and teacher-fronted. It involves sharp questions and answers and constantly checking understanding. Discipline is clear-cut—if homework isn’t presented, it is completed in a detention. There is no discussion.”

  While some of the boys (and their parents) resisted the approach at first, Mr. Jeckells seemed to know that speaking the truth would disarm them:

  “I presented the boys with the statistical evidence, which showed they were in danger of underachieving, and made clear what I expected of them. When they saw themselves as being part of a pilot scheme which was meeting their educational needs, their attitudes changed and their motivation doubled. Also, the head has dropped in on the group frequently, sometimes with visiting advisers. Now, the boys have a sense of pride. They feel they are special.”

  Mr. Jeckells quickly developed a keen understanding of why his all-boys class was working well:

  “In a single-sex class, you can create a team atmosphere where the boys support one another. But when girls are present, boys are loath to express opinions for fear of appearing sissy—their instinct is to stay aloof and macho. If it’s all boys together, then it’s much easier to break down inhibitions. . . . Also, I can choose course material that appeals to boys. Members of my group are football-mad. . . . In the mixed groups, they would be turned off by Jane Eyre, whereas I can pick texts such as Silas Marner and The War Poets, which they feel are more relevant to them.”

  One of the boys in his class seems to agree:

  “I like English now,” the boy explains, “because there is less pressure in the classroom. Previously, if you made a comment, the other boys would make fun of you just to make you look silly in front of the girls. Now, we support each other. We are all working hard to show that we can be just as successful as the other groups.”

  According to the school, after just two years, Mr. Jeckells’s all-boys approach already seems to be successful. Among those boys at the same academic level last year, only 7 out of 25 gained a C or better in English literature. Yet based on recent mock examinations, Mr. Jeckells believes 25 of the 34 in his all-boys group will gain a C grade or better. Perhaps even more impressive, while two years ago the school had had a 22 percent disparity between boys and girls gaining five or more A-C grades, last year there was just a 1 percent difference.

  Colleagues of Mr. Jeckells are so encouraged by these results that apparently similar all-boys classes are now being set up for mathematics and science.

  FINDING THE RIGHT FIT FOR BOYS: HOW TO GUY-IFY A SCHOOL

  Indeed, boys will thrive at school if there is a pervasive sense that they are welcome, that they are liked, and that who they really are—and how they really enjoy learning—will be embraced in a genuine way by their teachers. In the national longitudinal study on adolescent health, Protecting Adolescents from Harm 1997, researchers demonstrated that the largest major factor protecting young people from emotional distress, drug abuse, and violence—other than the closeness they were able to achieve within their families—was “perceived school connectedness.”

  The more a boy feels warmly toward his school, connected, understood, and treated fairly, the less likely he is to become suicidal, abuse drugs and alcohol, become addicted to nicotine, or engage in impulsive sexual activities. A boy does best when he feels cared for and understood by his teachers and when he senses that they have high hopes for him academically. By designing an inviting educational experience for boys, schools can help them boost not only their academic performance and self-esteem but also their hopefulness about the opportunities ahead of them.

  Just as we’ve implemented specific measures to help girls benefit maximally from their school experiences, there’s a lot we can do to create school connectedness and help boys succeed at school. Most critically, I believe we must make absolutely sure that for every boy there is a “good fit” between what makes him thrive as an individual and what his school actually provides for him. For instance, if a boy learns best by reading quietly by himself for a certain length of time—say, half an hour—and then taking breaks in which he engages in vigorous physical activity, such as running or playing a sport, ideally his school will not require him to attend four
hours of classes in which he is given no time to read by himself and no time for motor activities. If another boy learns best by working in small groups in which the students teach one another through shared lessons and activities and where no one student is ever put on the spot to come up with the right answers, ideally the boy is not placed in classrooms with huge numbers of students and then grilled by a teacher using the Socratic method.

  So many of us have memories of teachers or classroom experiences that left us feeling understimulated or shortchanged. When I asked Barry Rosenman, thirty-five, about his elementary educational experience, he immediately recalled Mrs. Ramedi, his first-grade teacher.

  “Mrs. Ramedi hated me!” Barry exclaimed. “And I hated her!”

  I asked him why.

  “I grew up in a supportive environment,” Barry continued. “My mother stayed at home full-time, and she was devoted to all three of us kids. On nice days she encouraged me and my brother and sister to play energetic games outside, or go explore the brook near our house for tad-poles. When I came home covered in mud, my mother shook her head a little, but she wasn’t disapproving. She wanted me to be adventurous.

  “On rainy days, she’d set up her college microscope in the kitchen so we could discover what salt and sugar and pond water looked like. She had a recipe for cookies where you could make a figure and fill it in with candy that melted in the oven to look like stained glass. By the time I started going to school all day for first grade, I was used to trying things out, running around whenever I needed to, and everything being hands-on.

  “That definitely wasn’t Mrs. Ramedi’s style,” Barry continued. “I guess it couldn’t be with twenty-five or thirty first-graders. She had us sitting quietly in rows, filling out those dittos they used to have before Xerox machines came in. I’d finish a ditto in ten seconds, then be expected to sit there in silence for it seemed like hours. I was bored to death.”