Friday, June 16, 2006

Ann Althouse has an interesting post about what schools would be like if they favored boys in the same way that schools now favor girls. Take a look.

14 Comments:

Blogger Mercurior said...

a lot of education now isnt, teaching critical thought, or having opinions, its more a case of parrot fashion repeating facts. facts are good, but without the intelligence to work out the reality with the facts, then what good is education.

more kids are going out of school not able to read or write, how is that better for anyone.

i went to an all boys catholic school in the 80's, so i experienced it, there was more sports because sports are a way to get rid of aggressions, but thats not all they did, they taught thinking, education was worth something then, now its more a feel good, follow your feelings rather than critical thought.

i had a well rounded education, i can build stuff woodwork, i can program computers, i can understand french and german roughly, i can do high end maths, i can write stories, now the education is not like that, its social studies, its fit in, become a yay sayer, theres no thoughts in education now, and no respect for themselves or others.

i astound kids of today because i can do so much more, this is the UK, and i have astounded some of the people in america (my fiance lives there) because i can argue and put together a point of view regardless of my personal beleif.

6:00 AM, June 17, 2006  
Blogger David Foster said...

"the education is not like that, its social studies"...the whole idea of "social studies" has done immense harm. Traditional academic disciplines respected one anothers right to exist..the English professor might not have been interested in quantum physics, but he understood that some people could be. The Structural Engineering professor might not have been a Shakespeare maven, but it didn't offend him that some people chose to be. But "social studies" (which goes by various names at the college level) attempts to turn every other discipline into a clone of itself.

9:39 AM, June 17, 2006  
Blogger Mercurior said...

i know sometimes i type with bad grammar, but i generally type how i speak, its a dialect, if you heard my voice i would say exactly what i am typing the way i am typing. but i have noticed that more and more people are becoming paranoid with english, it has to have the right grammar, you can't use shorthand like coz, thats part of the symptom of bad teaching, not realising that english is an ever changing language, most of the people who actually tell a british person off for speakin english however in dialect i speak, are americans.

social studies, are ok if they are used in conjunction with english, mathematics etc.. but they seem to be focusing more on those particular topics, yes david i agree it has ruined an entire generation of young adults, by making them focus on social studies rather than chemistry, physics the physical sciences, but instead on the feel good courses (fluff courses i call them)

3:21 PM, June 17, 2006  
Blogger David Foster said...

mercurior...my point, which may not have been clear, was that "social studies" types are not content to teach their own "discipline" and leave the other ones alone. Rather, things like chemistry must now have a heavy social studies overlay.

3:48 PM, June 17, 2006  
Blogger Mercurior said...

i know david, i saw that as implicit in your comment, and i agree totally (i like in a different country and i see it here too)

4:10 PM, June 17, 2006  
Blogger Bob's Blog said...

I believe it was Christina Hoff Summers who recently wrote a piece somewhere asking that we not create a whole new class of victims: boys in school. I think she is right.

10:36 PM, June 17, 2006  
Blogger Bob's Blog said...

JW: Of course, individual boys get victimized, and should be protected from abuse. But let's not assume all boys are victimized by schools. Let's do a better job of helping each individual child without regard to gender. I don't want my sons to have any excuses for not trying hard!

That having been said, it does seem to be more difficult for boys to sit still. A more kinesthetic, experiential learning approach would probably be more in the best interest of boys.

2:44 PM, June 18, 2006  
Blogger Mercurior said...

and they wonder why more boys are diagnosed with adhd, if the educational needs of boys are not being met, in regards to keeping their interest, rather than the emotional content of most courses now. which most boys are less able to deal with, so they get called as being disruptive by being boys, so medicate them.

3:56 PM, June 18, 2006  
Blogger Bruce Hayden said...

Part of the original article, I will suggest, was a reaction to the fact that females in K-12, esp. in public schools, is increasingly becoming defined as the norm. All that male drive to run around like crazy? Must be ADHD. It may appear that way to the women running such a system, but the reality is that, esp. before puberty, a lot of guys are that way. It is just the way that a lot of boys are. That is how many/most boys are wired. Sure, in another 1,000,000 years, the male part of the species may evolve differently. Drugging the boys to act like girls will just end up with even more drug addicted boys.

4:01 PM, June 19, 2006  
Blogger Bruce Hayden said...

Mercurior

I don't think that it is precisely that the boys aren't dealing with the emotional content of these courses, but rather, the opposite, that the boys' emotional needs are not being me by treating them like girls. On average, boys, esp. pre-puberty, are a lot more active than girls are. This isn't ADHD - rather, it is normal.

Yes, I also think that the cooperative, feeling, homework oriented style of most K-12 schools today is also anti-male, or, at least pro-female. After all, why is it more important that you turn in your homework routinely than that you master the material? Only schools run by women for girls would think that - but that is the reality today in much K-12 education.

4:06 PM, June 19, 2006  
Blogger Bob's Blog said...

There still has to be a way to know if the material is mastered.

10:29 PM, June 19, 2006  
Blogger Mercurior said...

thats what i meant, as soon as these educators realise that boys have different emotional needs, the predominant form is a feminised form of emotion thats being taught in schools, boys emotions are different and focused differently, like on the playground rather than in the classroom. when i was growing up we had a lot of jockeying for position in the playground, classes were an aside.

they were suggesting stopping the fail word and change it to deferred success, you cant use red pen to mark as it has bad feelings linked to it. (if you dont beleive me check it out)
i live in a different country, with different teaching styles in general, but i can see it, all boys school was made to fit the boys needs, run by the dela salle brothers, the girls school was run by nuns, they merged them a few years back, and the girls are getting to be in charge, the boys are effectively being punished for being and acting like boys should.

4:24 AM, June 20, 2006  
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