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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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The last time I looked feminist studies in universities was no where near the level of influence that many have accorded it.
If anything the liberal arts education in universities (for which we can include feminist studies) has been greatly diminished in university curricula across the nation. Feminist academics, along with historians, anthropologists and those that teaching the classics have all found themselves on the scrap heap. Why? Well they are usually Leftists aren’t they and we can't have these elites controlling public debate. If our boys are finding it difficult in competing in a schooling system too focused on scores etcetera then they won't find any solace in knowing that the university education that awaits them is fast becoming just as meaningless. In other words we underestimate the intellectual and emotional needs of our boys. Not all of them want to read technology or factual texts.
So let’s also examine this phenomenon as a kind of silent protest movement about the often ridiculous career destinies that are laid out before them too early – rather than a learning disability
Posted by Rainier, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 7:32:23 PM
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If the education system was an industrial environment where an area of operation had gone backwards and remained that way for many years, then heads would roll, and that is a fact of life within industry.

But we are seeing boys education standards gradually going backwards, but nothing much has been done, and many education feminists in particular seem to have a “ I couldn’t care less” attitude. That attitude would not be good enough in industry, and anyone who had such an attitude regards anything wouldn’t last more than one year.

I think separate classes for boys and girls so new styles of educating boys and girls can be developed, and any teacher with a lazy attitude towards anything is quickly shifted out the door.
Posted by Timkins, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 10:34:07 PM
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Wandii,

I wasn't suggesting all boys want to read factual texts. What I was suggesting is that if most children struggling with literacy acquisition are boys, then you would think the 'specialists' would be able to identify why it is mostly boys are failing in literacy and develop strategies to help them.

Factual texts and technology do play a role. Girls tend to read because they enjoy reading (and a good story) while boys tend to read because it has some information they're interested in.

Boys also tend to enjoy technology. Lots of boys say they don't like reading but if you put them on a PC they'll be reading all day without even knowing it. On average you'd get more girls who say they enjoy reading and less who say they enjoy computers.

As for university - I did first year English at UNSW. On one occasion we studied Macbeth. We had a one hour tutorial and all our tutor could think about was the line "Get thee to a nunnery". At the end of the tutorial, after denouncing Shakespeare for all sorts of crimes against feminist ideology, the ten women in the class turned to me and the other MM in the room, as if to say, what have you got to say for yourselves. Of course, we didn't say anything; or continue on to second year. So for any boys thinking of entering uni I'd suggest staying well away from politically correct courses like English. (unless of course, you're the type that likes to take out a birch branch every now and then and give yourself a good beating....)

May those courses rest in peace.
Posted by Josh, Tuesday, 10 May 2005 10:42:31 PM
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Its all about our level of understanding and connection with our children and what is the final aim intended.

If the 'boys' or more accurately 'our sons' are deteriorating educationally without a definite address in a Education system (which means to find effective ways to educate i.e. impart knowledge) then its the system that is failing and if its mostly female teachers that are trying to impart this knowledge then they are a failure to our sons, unless someone else can make a more accurate general deduction and any emotive attackers who want to see the current situation continue please feel free to rant.

As any common man should know that first find out why then what to do then do what it takes And any common good man wants is to see our sons smile with the knowledge they have learned and look forward to going back to where they are learning it.

If this is not happening and they don't want to go to school then they are telling us something very important and amiss about schools thats failing our sons and anyone blaming our sons for this range from reasons that could be hiding their failure to gender based intended acts.

So if the current 'schools' are failing then it is just a matter of natural progression that private institutions are going to develop to cater for our sons and I expect that they will have to fight severe government resistance to succeed but if thats is what needs to be done then that is what we will have to do.

Sam
Posted by Sam said, Wednesday, 11 May 2005 8:36:14 AM
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Chistina Sommers book "The War Against Boys" should be read by all. Although it is set in the US the same Femanist ideologies are evidently at work in Australian schools. Boys are failing because of gender discrimination. This has come about as a result of social engineering policies pursued by ideologues within all social services. especially education.

Of course there is research into what boys really think -and they tell all about their feelings of discrimination.

Howard was correct when he stated that hordes of parents are opting for private schooling, or better still - home schooling, to engage their children with education based on traditional values.

The public school system is a gender separatist war zone.
Posted by silversurfer, Thursday, 12 May 2005 10:08:42 AM
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Feminists are the reasons boys are failing at school? Bit of a buck pass, if you ask me. As I understand it, most girls have always out-performed most boys, ever since we decided to allow girls to get an education, boys tend to be more extreme, disproportionally represented at the very top and at the very bottom. Until the second wave of feminism we didn't bother about girls outperforming boys, because we didn't take their education or career prospects seriously. I can't tell you the number of girls I went to school with (including my now sister-in-law) who were forced to leave school after School Certificate while their less academically inclined brothers were forced to stay. Feminists changed that and a damn good thing to. Feminists are concerned primarily with the position of women, they don't claim to be anything else. It's like asking black activists to worry about what their positive programs are doing to white kids, not the point. If you (male or female) are worried about boys and their position in society, take a leaf out of Peter West's book, get out and change it, don't stand around saying it ain't fair, feminists favour girls. What they hell do you expect? That's why they're called feminists.
Posted by enaj, Thursday, 12 May 2005 11:49:06 AM
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Whilst I tend to agree with the views of others in laying the blame at the foot of feminists, this can be construed as claiming that most female teachers in the system our feminists. As a teacher for over 40 years, I believe that only some female teachers are feminists, most are simply dedicated to getting good results equally for both girls and boys. It is a worry that teaching has become predominately a female occupation, because students are equally represented by boys and girls. It is mostly in the bureaucracy and in the universities where feminists have had this sad influence.

I invite all contributors to dig a little deeper and focus on the vehicle that the feminists and others have used to create the situation that has resulted in an overall decline, a decline that has been particularly damaging and severe for boys. This vehicle is Outcomes Based Education. It has driven education in schools for over 15 years. It has been embraced by academics and bureaucrats and thrust onto schools and teachers who find it impossible to understand and implement. It depresses learning of facts and set pieces of knowledge and encourages group discussions, challenges to accepted norms, and any notion of pass and fail.

To see boys perform to their true potential, and for boys and girls to get more out of their school experiences, we need to remove the vehicle that has been used to cause the problems. Outcomes Based Education needs to be axed and replaced by a syllabus approach which has been traditionally used and through which most readers of the forum gained their education.

If there is to be improvements in the future for boys and, I might say, for girls also, it will come from abolishing OBE in schools. Though I would like to damn feminists, it will be far more effective to remove the vehicle that they and others have used to cause the malaise of boys performance and that is the curse that is called Outcomes Based Education.

Should you wish to know more about OBE, go to http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=95
Posted by Sniggid, Thursday, 12 May 2005 4:00:47 PM
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enaj,

At least you're honest. We all knew for feminists like yourself the 'struggle' had nothing to do with 'equality' or 'equity' or even more spuriously 'equal opportunity'.

It was all about achieving power and like all ideologues you wanted to achieve power 'by whatever means necessary'. Hence the crazy claims over the years that 99% of women have been raped, that all men perpetrate domestic violence and so on.

At least we know.
Posted by Josh, Thursday, 12 May 2005 7:25:40 PM
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"The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."

--From The Merchant of Venice (V, i, 83-85
Posted by Rainier, Friday, 13 May 2005 3:07:04 PM
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Well the feminists have achieved their goal,to subjugate the male ego,and guess what,many don't like what they have achieved.They have been left with loneliness and males who won't communicate; and everyone is the worse off for the exercise.

Who would be a male teacher in todays environment?Our present system is full of lonely ,leftist ,feminists that are still too busy destroying male/female relationships.

Both male and female actually seek common goals of love and understandering,and it takes the co-operation of both sexes to achieve that goal.
Posted by Arjay, Friday, 13 May 2005 10:33:24 PM
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A limited view so far on the problems facing students in schools. Blaming feminists is not the answer anymore than any other single cause.

Why not talk about the conversion of education to commodity status and the political drain of funds away from where they are most needed? Is that the fault of feminists?

There are many factors, below is one more. Unfortunately,this one helps feed the 'boys are bad' syndrome....'look, there they are with their shirts hanging out...it's not nice'.

I have found over the years that my children and their friends learn to resent those teachers who are least able to act reasonably, which is more than a few.

It seems that professional development in teaching is a dirty word.

I live in Qld. Here the QTUs most pressing problem is to be allowed to suspend students, or give them detentions, for wearing the wrong coloured socks. 'Big deal' you may think, but to teachers it is a big deal.

Instead of focusing on their classroom responsibilities to deliver a well planned and interesting lesson they prefer to stalk the playgrounds and corridors and pounce on students wearing the wrong gear.

Ed Qld surveyed their teaching staff in 2001. Many of them said 'fix the behaviour management system and the problem will be solved'. Sadly not, according to EQ itself. Fix the literacy problems, or at least begin to recognise them, fix the classroom standards of teachers, and the behaviour alters, said EQ.

It's time for teachers to examine their own behaviour, their reluctance to self-develop, to start treating students as humans, to recognise that the system we have now is a passive education system where 'things' fall onto students, who are not encouraged to take any responsibility for what goes on in schools, and the system of management has barely changed in the last 50 years.

Schools remain largely coercive sausage factories attempting to churn out obedient poodles who have been 'taught' to all think the same, the same as a rather dreary bunch of teachers...but at least they all look smart, or should that be NICE?
Posted by benedict, Monday, 16 May 2005 9:33:12 PM
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It is nonsense to suggest that members of some abstract category feel better about themselves because other members of that category are doing well. A woman who is dying of kidney failure gets no comfort from the statistic that says that women live longer than men. A man who can't pay the rent gets no comfort from noting that most billionaires are men.

By the same token, boys may well be more likely to become CEOs than girls, but that is no consolation at all for boys who feel like failures at school. Girls may, on average, get better school results than boys, but that is no help for the girls who are not learning what they need.

Education must be about helping all individuals to learn, not trying to get the statistics to come out right. We should all celebrate the improvements in girls' education over the last generation - and work for it to continue -, and we should all work for improvements in boys' education now. These silly battle lines between the sexes don't help anyone to learn.
Posted by Ian, Tuesday, 17 May 2005 5:47:04 AM
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Am I missing something in the debate but hasn't the very type of educational programs Peter West argues for, boys only classes etc, been instumental in developing the very culture where male suicides, violence and so on are at apparently high levels. Also the arguments for more male involvement is rendered difficult by the very long hours required for them to work in todays economic climate and the lack of male role models in families is caused by this, as well as the large number of men who do not live up to their responsibilities and leave mothers to raise children on their own without paying child support. These problems, at a school level can be adressed by the very programs belittled by Peter. Group work, mixed classes, a currirulum that takes into account the world where citizens accept responsibility for their actions and not fob them off to partners and schools.
Posted by Mitt, Tuesday, 17 May 2005 8:42:12 AM
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Academic folk are too academic. i went to a boy's primary school. I fought my way through girl/boy high school - I was into other students, teachers (especially the hardline authoritarian ones) i was naughty but nasty. I hold the record for the number of cuts with the cane (we had a class contest). I was loathed by the good girls and hated by the nasty ones. I was a social retard in mixed company but comfortable at the local (spent many a time standing on the dunny seats to avoid Constable Care). During my thirteen years on a meatworks factory floor, I often wished that I had had a little more female influence in my formative years. I especially wished I had had more social interaction with girls during the my early years of marriage and courtship. Thank goodness my wife is a feminist and understands the conditioning that can happen to most young men in a male-dominated society.

Most feminists are good folk - one, a huge Greek love, used to lift a bin of beef entrails that, because of my small frame, I couldn't manage. Saved me back and me job. That despite the possibility of her getting the sack for lifting over the female limit, or falling from favor with her sexist co-workers. What a great role model for a young man was she. We live and work together, so lets get the young ones used to it early on in life and reconsider sexist and gendered notions like "male role models". Women can do anything -thus it follows that the girls can teach children anything.
Posted by rancitas, Tuesday, 17 May 2005 3:14:41 PM
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mitt, any backing for your comment

"as well as the large number of men who do not live up to their responsibilities and leave mothers to raise children on their own without paying child support."

There are certainly some fathers like this. I have yet to see any serious research into the proportion who have abandoned their responsibilities vs the ones who have been forced out though.

I'm one of the ones who is being squeezed out of my kids life by a mum focussed on pursuing her own lifestyle interests and agenda's.

I pay child support although I resent having to do so when I would prefer to be doing more parenting of my son. There are a lot of guys out there crying out for a fair go in the residency stakes (the push for a starting point of 50/50). We want our kids, for a variety of reasons some mothers choose to use the system to have most of the residency.

I started with shared parenting from seperation, I bought a house close to my kids school specifically to make that work better and now I find myself living about 150km from where my child will be going to school. Mum's right to move away is protected, my right to be an involved parent is not.

In the end the harm to my child from the ongoing conflict (and the mothers choice to involve the child in the conflict) has forced me to give into demands for changes in residency which are tearing me apart.
Posted by R0bert, Tuesday, 17 May 2005 4:08:15 PM
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I thought this article relevant in the discussion of children’s education, and the notion or myth that there is something intrinsically “wrong with boys”

From “New teaching technique goes to top of the class” at http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=162492005

“The results, published yesterday, revealed that, by primary seven, pupils were more than three years ahead of their peers in reading and almost two years ahead in spelling. The study also found that boys outperformed girls in reading and spelling…Dr Watson and Prof Johnston plan to conduct a further study to find out why boys seem to benefit more than girls. “

Now the next sentence probably provides the answer:- “The synthetic phonics method involves learning by interaction, with the pupils being able to touch individual letters to form words. “

So there was nothing origionally wrong with boys and their ability to learn reading or spelling, there was originally a problem with the way they were being taught, with boys responding much better to a “hands on” or more “dynamic” type of teaching
Posted by Timkins, Wednesday, 8 June 2005 7:11:05 PM
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The failure of boys in schools can be blamed on a number of things. Yes, education is part of the answer. And lay off the feminists - aren't men strong enough to not blame their problems on women?

Let's have a look instead at the culture Australia promotes. Who are our children's heroes? Nine times out of ten, boys look to sporting heroes to model themselves on. As an ex-high school teacher the biggest problem I could see for boys was the simple fact that if you are a boy, it is not cool to be clever. Intelligent boys would purposefully mask their intelligence and fudge their grades to achieve average results in order to cease drawing antagonism from their peers. Boys need better role models, and Australia really needs to decide on if it wants to be a smart country, or if it's happy to disappear into mediocrity. We need to promote someone more inspirational for our boys to model themselves on.
Posted by siouxj73, Thursday, 9 June 2005 1:52:25 PM
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Siouxj73,
I would agree that the education techniques for boys and girls definitely need to be reviewed, as available evidence now points to the fact that males and females tend to think differently, with boys being more spatially orientated. This is probably the reason why the “hands on” reading and spelling technique used in Scotland worked so well for boys (and incidentally dispelled the myth that boys can't read)

However positive male role models for boys would also be important, but there is a problem. How can boys get satisfactory male role models in primary school when 4 out of 5 teachers are female, and that type of ratio seems to be occurring in high schools also. The media of course doesn’t help much in providing positive role models for boys, as it normally advertises or portrays males as being dumb, incompetent, foolish etc, or only being suitable as entertainers or football players.

Various feminists have also done their best to denigrate males as much as possible, and being a feminist means that you are pro-female, but not necessarily pro-male.

So what do you recommend to actually
1.get an education system that is conducive for boys and they way of thinking,
2.provide positive male role models for boys
3.remove any pro-female teachers, that are not pro-male also.
Posted by Timkins, Friday, 10 June 2005 9:56:26 AM
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Haven't you heard...

BOYS ARE STUPID... THROW ROCKS AT THEM.
Posted by trade215, Wednesday, 15 June 2005 5:32:07 PM
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Perhaps someone could address the issue of teacher's wages?? Next year I will be taking a $5 000 a year pay-cut to leave my office job and teach. The level of responsibility, stress and hard work I will have next year far outweighs what I'm doing now. I'm choosing the pay-cut because I want to improve the lives of all children, regardless of ethnicity or gender. But how many men can, or would, make the same choice? If we want more male teachers, I suspect we'd have to raise teachers' salaries.

Teachers do a lot of Professional Development throughout the year, many are dedicated to improving and changing the way they teach and many are concerned about how to engage boys. Some of the people posting vitriole on this site about teachers should remember that there are good and bad examples in every aspect of life - yes there are bad teachers, but there are very good ones too. Yes there are some ridiculous teachers who worry more about enforcing uniform than what their kids are learning, but there are good teachers that open up kids' eyes to the world, too.

Perhaps if teachers were more highly respected and valued in this society, and adequately remunerated for the hours they work (far more than 9am to 3pm), males would be attracted to the role, and parents and communities would respect and support the schools & teachers they send their kids to, making it far more likely that kids themselves will have a better attitude to school.
Posted by Cara, Monday, 12 December 2005 1:24:20 PM
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Ok, y not ask us. I am a 16 year old guy, going through what people consider the boy crisis.

Over the last couple years I have seen less and less boys in my class [until now i have not complained], when i realised i made up 1 of the 8 guys in a 32 kid classroom i wondered how could this be. I asked around, it never hit me that it was because I was in advanced courses. Ever since then everyday I am seeing more favorism towards girls. Now I am not going to go on about boys should get more or w/e. But I am going to say this, I blame society as a whole not just school. Look around, i see on tv men getting sued by women for alleged crimes, i see girls being picked over boys cause appartently we have more opprotunities. So ask yourselves, why is it i see even in my friends house my friend being scolded more and harder then i have ever seen or heard his sister, and his sister is older and is frankly a bad apple, while my friend works all day at my oncles restaurant then comes home to work more.

And i c women conforted in more ways then men. Yes we are different, but i see girls in all boy teams but when i asked if i could join jess [another friend of mine] for theater arts i was told they where full [there was 5 open slots and my friends has asked ahead of time for me]. So is it a surprise that women now are doing better then us generally speaking across the board? we are giving girls all the opprotunities, men once had over them. But not welcoming men into a womans role, and while i help all my friends with schooling, i find i need to change the way i explain things dependant on wether it is a he or she, i see none of this in the classroom.
Posted by Alexandre, Wednesday, 2 August 2006 12:50:26 PM
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