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The Forum > Article Comments > What's going wrong for boys? > Comments

What's going wrong for boys? : Comments

By Peter West, published 10/5/2005

Peter West argues for positive programs to lift the educational performance of boys.

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If boys are not achieving as well as girls at schools then this then may be a case of sex discrimination of boys.

I think that there are only a few people in society who believe that males are only physically different to females, and not mentally or emotionally different also. If there is a necessity to teach boys differently to girls then the right environment has to be created, and a reluctance to create this environment becomes sex discrimination.

However an environment that is beneficial for boys is not going to work very well in a mixed class environment, and I think it is becoming more evident in time that boys and girls are best taught in separate schools or classes. This can help both boys and girls, as it allows greater flexibility in teaching methods.

But just having boys only schools or classes will not necessarily help boys as the type of teaching that occurs still becomes important.

The NZ education report “The Achievement of Boys” http://www.ero.govt.nz/Publications/eers1999/Boys/boys1.htm#Contents
seems to indicate that boys only schools are generally better (IE “Boys in single sex schools tend to achieve higher examination results than boys in co-educational schools. ERO analysis carried out for this report indicates that this is true for schools in all socio-economic status (SES) deciles.” ). However this only occurred if these schools were well resourced and also had the right teaching environment.(IE “The evidence in this report suggests that boys achieve particularly well where there is a supportive school environment that provides positive role models and in which students are encouraged to set goals and take responsibility for their own actions.”)

Any suppression of reports and findings into boys education in Australia, or putting boy’s education into the “too hard basket” is also sex discrimination, and the more it is done the worse the problems will become for those involved.
Posted by Timkins, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 11:52:39 AM
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Its so obvious Timkins, its feminists who are conspiring to discriminate against boys, including all those feminist mothers who want to see their own sons fail.
Posted by grace pettigrew, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 12:06:52 PM
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The demise of boys' performance has coincided with changes in education over the last 15 years.

The most significant change has been the introduction of Outcomes Based Education in Western Countries. This has seen the decline of the Syllabus based approach to learning.

OBE takes away the focus on set pieces of knowledge and the associated skills and understandings that most mature adults experienced. The replacement is a collection of wordy, difficult to comprehend "Outcomes" as a starting point and against which performance is measured. Teachers decide on the knowledge through which learning programmes are developed. Different students are exposed to different knowledge bases depending on teacher choice. Assessment on a comparable standards basis is impossible to develop.

Teachers are told to facilitate rather than teach. There has been a move away from students sitting in rows with the teacher up front. Students sit in groups discussing, formulating solutions, etc. This slows down the learning process, has led to a decline in standards overall and has been particularly damaging to boys who are far more inclined to "much around" given the chance.

Students need clear direction, formal teaching and disclipine if they are to make good progress. But boys need directing far more "diligently" than girls. This has been the central factor in determining their greater decline in performance.

Moreover, the shift to Outcomes Based Education has given liberal academics a field day in influencing where the emphasis is placed. Rather than focus on Knowledge, facts, right and wrong, basic skills, drilling, competition etc, that most of us grew up on, the emphasis is on social justice, challenges to authority, no concept of pass and fail, a non competative environment, etc. Little wonder education is in trouble.

Think back 15 years or so. Boys were doing very well. They have not suddenly become "Dumb. So, what has been happening in our schools must have had a serious negative impact on the performance of boys. What is it? It is the shift to Outcomes Based Education that has had a serious negative impact overall, and a devistating impact on boys education.
Posted by Sniggid, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 3:53:43 PM
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Grace Pettigrew is spot on. Those feminasty ideologies about patriarchal dominination during the 70's and 80's are starting to take hold! The majority of school teachers are women, and the proportion of female teachers increased steadily over the 20 years to 2002. In full-time equivalent terms, there were 2.1 female teachers for every male teacher in 2002, up from 1.4 in 1982.
They are taking over our education system!

[Forget the fact that many boys are growing up without any male role modelling at all and/or with lousy role models or that school curriculums have opened up to female students over the last 20 years. Female engineers and scientists?? unheard of 20 years ago]
Posted by Rainier, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 4:26:11 PM
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It is tempting to try to lay the blame at the feet of feminists and the feminizing of the curriculum. That may be a part of the problem but the whole sorry decline in Boys results has been made possible by the shift to Outcomes Based Education.

Yes, more male teachers will be a help. But we have got to move forward away from OBE and return to a Syllabus approach with plenty of up front teaching.
Posted by Sniggid, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 5:11:27 PM
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Peter,

As you work in one of those bastions of feminism, a university, I can understand why you're reluctant to criticise feminists. But I think we owe it to half our population to be honest about their influence on boys' education.

You quote a teacher who says 'there's a feeling that boys have had it too good for too long'. This reveals a lot about the anti-male mindset in Bridge Street and should really provoke disgust.

The argument seems to be that boys do better later in life than girls. But how does doing better later in life justify discriminating against them today? Perhaps there are more male CEOs because most women don't want to be CEOs? Perhaps more men define themselves in terms of work achievements while more women are happy to define themselves in other ways?

Men and boys also do much better than girls when it comes to statistics on violent death, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness (among others). Why don't our feminist friends mention that when they're talking about boys doing better later in life?

When I was studying to be a teacher I did an honors level seminar on literacy education. It was run by a literacy education coordinator for a Sydney region. Somewhere during the semester she mentioned (with a sigh) that nearly all children receiving special help for literacy problems were boys. But of course, there was no mention of boys' education strategies or learning style during the entire course (ie. reading with technology or factual texts).

With such unprofessional people at the helm it's no wonder there's a correlation between the feminisation of education and falling community perceptions of teaching as a profession.
Posted by Josh, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 5:34:49 PM
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