Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Ruf's latest blog - boys and troubles in school

I would have to add a sixth - less interaction with their fathers and other male role models. The pivotal event in my intellectual development was meeting a computer scientist in a bookstore when I was 12. That contact is like food and growth - you need it when you need it and if its not there then the growth will not occur.

And society in general places more value on compliance over independence or expertise and equates compliance with "learning" when in fact that is not the case.

You nailed that one nicely.

Though to be fair (ahem), our society puts a high value independence in two cases:

1. After the independent person is shown to be right (never before, rare support provided for that person)

2. In ads for SUVs, as in "rugged independence," whatever that means

!

Val

Austin, I think he might have included the loss of role model in the fifth factor.

I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that I have two sons-- one of whom is PG and about to flunk first grade-- but when I look around, I see this everywhere. In my niece and nephews-- nephews all struggling, niece doing great. In my teenage stepchildren-- 16 yo stepson, who took the SAT in 7th grade and got a DYS-qualifying score but is going to barely graduate from high school and hopes to become a tattoo artist; while his 14yo sister, not as "naturally bright," is absolutely thriving and dreaming of big things. In my younger first cousins, now in their 20's-- boys all barely graduated from high school and, not knowing what to do with themselves, joined the military-- girls professionally achieving great things, their only problem (according to them) that they can't find a decent, solvent, independent guy.

In my son's classroom, only the boys are struggling, and half of them are medicated.

Totally unscientific sample, obviously, but it does make me wonder what is happening...

Not to take away from the difficulties of girls... I was one... still am... and a feminist too. As a gifted girl, school was a haven for me... the real world was another matter!

Ha, I think those SUV ads are going to go bye-bye!

Boys do not want to read Charlotte's Web. They want Old Yeller. That may be the biggest problem. I look at the all-male PS here with an all male faculty and the kids are thriving. But the reading list is heavily male oriented as are the foreign language texts and the day's activities with lots of sports.

One of my nephews loves backetball. He is short and will never play after HS, but I buy him any book he wants on basketball. Now he is reading the bios of the great players and coaches and learning a lot about real life and now wants to learn more about historical events that trickle into those bascketball books such as the 1980 Olympic Games and the end of the Cold War.

I got two very useful parenting tips from this book (Boys adrift)

--The first was that boys tend (generalization, obviously) to not be motivated by the desire to please their parents and/or teachers. Just not a motivator for them.

I vividly remember the strong desire I had to make my mother happy as a young child, and so I was repeatedly frustrated by my son's apparent immunity to my feelings. I kept trying to manipulate him-- don't you care how I feel?-- but once I realized my approval didn't motivate him, it became easier for both of us.

--The second is that boys often thrive on competition-- competition IS a motivator. Competition has been removed from much of children's experience, especially in school, in favor of an "everybody wins" mentality. Many successful boys' schools divide the class into two meaningless "teams"--red and white-- at the beginning of the year, and frame almost everything into a meaningless competition between the teams-- to keep the boys engaged.

Now when I want my son to do something, I often present it as a competition-- for example if I want him to take pictures at the zoo, I will present it as a photography content-- and this works like a charm.

Ummm....Go to http://educationaloptions.wordpress.com/ and scroll down to the preceding blog if you are worried that Ruf is saying that girls are doing it right...

Does Ruf Overgeneralise? She never says 'all' she says 'most.' That matches my experience. Of course the girls who step into the 'boy behavior line' get triple the flack for it.
Here's my take on it. If you are the person saying, "The Emperor has No Clothes" as Ruf has chosen to be for the 'tracking/anti-tracking' debate, then one had better be prepared to talk in sound bites and repeat oneselve quite a bit.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

The top 20 students of graduating 2009 class (over 600) appeared in our paper today - 11 girls (55%) and 9 boys (45%). Those aren't as bad as the stats presented in the book "The Trouble with Boys" where in some schools only 1 boy is in the top.

My DS2 is way ahead of his peers because he can't stand the fact that his older sister can do something that he can't. He will even run to load the washing machine if I ask his sister to do it.

My son�s all boys� school has a house system (multi-grade, like Hogwarts). The boys compete against other houses for everything from G.P.A. to cans collected for a food drive.

I wasn�t sure about the idea previously, but since my kids began this year, I have become a big fan of single gender education.