The Boy Problem:
Many Boys Think School is Stupid and Reading Stinks Leonard Sax
Have you ever attended a Pentecostal service? I have… just once. I found it absolutely terrifying. People standing, waving their arms in the air, shouting unintelligible streams of words. I felt as though I had been locked in an asylum where I couldn’t understand the language the inmates were speaking.
Afterward, my friend Luis, who had invited me, asked me how I liked the service. “It was different,” I said, truthfully enough. “It’s not what I’m used to. How would you like to come to my church sometime?”
Luis shook his head. “I went to one of those services once, at a Methodist church,” he said. “When everybody started singing a hymn, I sang too. Then I raised my hands up in the air as I was singing. You would have thought I had just taken off all my clothes. People looked so embarrassed. They were trying not to look at me. Two teenage girls whispered and giggled and pointed at me. I put my hands back down, and I never went back."
Single-gender classes K.K. Neilsen Cleland SHS Current Parent& Trustee
Chicago -- Thank you for your insightful and well-balanced story on efforts being made to incorporate single-gender classrooms into Illinois public schools ("Boys in one class, girls in the other," Page 1, Nov. 5). It was largely for the reasons that you point out in your article that my husband and I chose Sacred Heart in Chicago for our sons' elementary school experience.
At the time our oldest son was ready for school, we sensed something very special about how Sacred Heart approached education and the benefits of single-gender classrooms within a co-educational campus environment (boys attend Hardey Preparatory and girls attend the Academy of the Sacred Heart). This unique design allows teachers to really hone in on the different learning styles of boys and girls and to develop approaches that best benefit each gender.
With single-gender classrooms as a primary layer to the Sacred Heart learning experience, there is the co-educational dimension that also provides opportunities for boys and girls to work together in many positive and enriching ways.
They interact formally and informally every day--in the lunchroom, at recess, in extracurricular activities, through community service and even in special co-curricular class projects.
Sacred Heart often refers to this approach as "the best of both worlds," and, after experiencing it firsthand, my husband and I concur.
I would agree that stereotyping could be a potential danger of single-gender education, but this doesn't have to be the case.
At Sacred Heart, children are seen as individuals first. My sons have very different learning styles and interests, yet both benefit from being in an all-boys classroom where boys can be artists and athletes if they so choose, and don't feel confined to fulfilling some predetermined role.
Three years ago, administrators at Woodward Avenue Elementary School in DeLand, Fla., noticed that the boys were lagging behind the girls on academic achievement tests. Hoping to stop the slide, Woodward gave parents the choice of enrolling their youngsters in single-gender classrooms. The school became one of the first in the country to do so.
Woodward's decision was based on research that suggests the brains of girls and boys develop differently. Girls tend to learn better in environments that are more quiet and orderly. Boys tend to learn better when they're freer to roam about. Test results from the first year of Woodward's experiment showed significant gains for pupils in the single-gender classes. In some grades, those pupils continue to outperform their counterparts in traditional classrooms.
Federal education officials recently announced a plan to give public schools greater latitude in developing single-gender education programs. Woodward, considered a model for such programs, offers a solid example of how school districts can create these programs without running afoul of Title IX, the law that banned sex discrimination in schools.
BOYS IN ONE CLASS
GIRLS IN THE OTHER Stephanie Banchero
Chicago teacher Jason Carter darts back and forth in front of his all-boys 3rd-grade class tossing a plush, orange-and-white soccer ball into the air.
"Aaric," he calls out, pitching the ball into the boy's hands. "Biography. Is it non-fiction or fiction?"
"It's non-fiction, because it's real, not make-believe," says Aaric Napoleon. The 9-year-old throws the ball back while a little boy sitting next to him mimics a break dance maneuver in his seat.
Carter knows his kinetic energy can be effective for boys, who are more likely to squirm in their seats, talk out of turn and prefer assignments that require them to use their hands as well as their minds.
A few days later, a group of Wilmette 6th-grade girls sit poised at their desks, calmly discussing the mystery novel "Wolf Rider." As teacher Jodi Macauley perches quietly nearby, the girls share, in hushed voices, their feelings about the book.
"When I was reading it, I really started to feel scared," says 11-year-old Mary Grant.
Macauley knows girls are more inclined to articulate their emotions, especially when surrounded by other girls, concentrate for longer stretches of time and prefer working in groups.
DeLAND, FLA., is a diverse community about halfway between Daytona Beach and Orlando.
Last year, the administration of a local elementary school in DeLand randomly assigned every 4th-grader either to a coed classroom or to a single-sex one. The classrooms were all the same size, 24 students plus or minus one, and all used the same curriculum.
In the coed classrooms, 57 percent of the girls scored proficient on the state writing test, compared to just 37 percent of the boys.
That's not surprising. Similar gender gaps in writing, with the boys trailing the girls, are now common throughout the U.S. The declining performance of boys was the subject of a Newsweek cover story several weeks ago, with various pundits suggesting that maybe boys nowadays just don't learn as well as girls.
But in the single-sex classrooms, an astonishing 86 percent of the boys scored proficient. Some of those boys had previously been labeled learning-disabled. In the high-energy, high-decibel environment of the all-boys classrooms, they became enthusiastic learners.
In the all-girls classes, 75 percent of the girls scored proficient. The single-sex format improved the performance of both the girls and the boys.
DeLand is not unique. Similar stories can be told about other public schools, such as Thurgood Marshall Elementary in Seattle. In the year before Marshall adopted the single-sex format, not even one girl scored proficient on the state's math test. But each year since the school has switched to the single-sex format, the majority of the girls have scored proficient in math.
Boys on the side ALYSON WARD
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
The bell rings - a polite tone, not a noisy clang - and dozens of girls are suddenly, instantly in the hallway. They wear uniforms - plaid skirts and red sweaters - even knee socks. They chatter and giggle and slam locker doors; they lug oversize backpacks filled with books and laptop computers. And as they hurry off to their afternoon classes, the girls are probably unaware that they're on the cutting edge of what might be the next new thing in education.
A magnet for girls
The Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School, a public school in the Dallas Independent School District, is housed in a historic building in the city's Oak Lawn district, but the concept behind it - a single-sex public school for girls - is a brand-new experiment for the district.
The school, which started as a seventh- and eighth-grade center in 2004, will add a class each year and graduate its first group of seniors in 2009. For now, its whitewashed halls and spacious classrooms contain 214 girls who applied to attend the new magnet school. More than half of them are Hispanic; 30 percent are African-American. They are bused here from all over Dallas, and most don't come from wealthy areas; the majority live in south and southeast Dallas, in the Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove neighborhoods.
The Trouble With Boys
They're kinetic, maddening and failing at school.
Now educators are trying new ways to help them succeed. Peg Tyre
Jan. 30, 2006 issue - Spend a few minutes on the phone with Danny Frankhuizen and you come away thinking, "What a nice boy." He's thoughtful, articulate, bright. He has a good relationship with his mom, goes to church every Sunday, loves the rock band Phish and spends hours each day practicing his guitar. But once he's inside his large public Salt Lake City high school, everything seems to go wrong. He's 16, but he can't stay organized. He finishes his homework and then can't find it in his backpack. He loses focus in class, and his teachers, with 40 kids to wrangle, aren't much help. "If I miss a concept, they tell me, 'Figure it out yourself'," says Danny. Last year Danny's grades dropped from B's to D's and F's. The sophomore, who once dreamed of Stanford, is pulling his grades up but worries that "I won't even get accepted at community college."
His mother, Susie Malcom, a math teacher who is divorced, says it's been wrenching to watch Danny stumble. "I tell myself he's going to make something good out of himself," she says. "But it's hard to see doors close and opportunities fall away."
Making learning a guy thing
Researchers seek ways to better engage boys in the classroom By Sheena McFarland
CENTERVILLE - Talon Harker has always disliked homework, but the situation worsened in third grade.
He went from being able to spell most words on his level and read phonetically in kindergarten and first grade to struggling in second grade. His mother, Jennifer, became concerned and tried to get help, but by the end of third grade, he had stopped reading.
When Talon entered fourth grade this year, his mother insisted that he be tested. Her son had no learning disabilities, but he was several grade levels behind his peers.
Now the Centerville boy sees a reading specialist at Jennie P. Stewart Elementary and is "just squeaking by," reading Junie B. Jones books to his mother at night.
"Not reading well was affecting everything. He couldn't even do math because he couldn't read the instructions," Jennifer Harker said.
She doesn't know what changed between first and second grade, and she's frustrated.
"I just wish they could figure out how my son learns so I could help him more," she said.
Researchers are trying to do just that.
Maryland educators opened their latest test results recently and discovered their 10th-grade boys lagging far behind girls in literacy skills. The same thing happened in Kentucky, Vermont and Washington.
Teachers and parents can tell you that in elementary school, girls are more facile learners. But gender differences are assumed to level out over the years and clear up by high school.
That's not happening. Between fourth- and fifth-grades, the literacy gender gap doubles, and girls are ending up a year and a half ahead of boys, on average.
It gets worse. Boys are twice as likely to land in special education and far more likely to be held back a grade and drop out. At many public universities and some private colleges, barely 40% of the students are male.
Oddly, educators, researchers and philanthropists agree there's no serious effort to figure out why this is happening and what can be done. Other priorities prevail.
Dividing the Sexes, for the Tough Years JANE GROSS
DOBBS FERRY, N.Y., May 30 - The eighth graders at the Masters School have been reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" and discussing why a 13-year-old cooped up in a crowded hideout would bare her soul in a journal.
In a typical coeducational classroom, said Everett J. Wilson, head of the middle school here, girls on the cusp of adolescence would identify with Anne and freely share their feelings about the book. Boys, by contrast, would snicker, swagger or snooze. Anything to avoid making an unguarded comment.
But this is no normal eighth-grade classroom. At the Masters School, and a small number of other private schools in the United States and England, coeducation and single-sex education mix in an original way: Boys and girls learn together in elementary and high school but are taught in separate classrooms for the three tumultuous years in between. It is a new compromise in an age-old debate, plus a recognition that Mars and Venus are never as far apart as they are in middle school.
Separated by sex, the boys' and girls' observations about Anne's diary were equally thoughtful. Anne was a moody teenager, fighting with her mother and attracted to a boy for the first time, the girls said. Anne was having an identity crisis, the boys agreed, sitting at the same seminar table an hour later; she needed a safe, private place to express herself.
Masters, formerly an all girls' school, chose this configuration when it went coed in 1996. The Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis and the Collegiate School in Richmond, Va., did the same during mergers of girls' and boys' schools in the 1990's. And in England, a similar arrangement is gaining popularity, with three prestigious schools about to join a half-dozen others that already teach children in single-sex classes between the ages of 11 and 16.
This island of sex segregation takes into account the different learning styles of boys and girls; the uneven pace of their physical, emotional and cognitive development; the hormonal assault at puberty when the part of the brain that governs judgment is still forming; and the effect of a sexualized culture that has made 13 the new 17. It also assumes that if girls gained confidence learning in single-sex math and science classes, popular for the last decade, boys might get a comparable boost in the humanities.
"This is the single most critical time in a child's life, and we are asking them to grow up way too fast," Dr. Wilson said. "This way, the girls get the opportunity to find their voice and the boys get the opportunity to find their voice in an appropriate way. The conventional wisdom is that girls benefit and for boys it's a wash. But we don't buy that here."
Both groups welcomed the separation for now, with the girls unembarrassed to squeal at a spider in their midst and the boys free to bang their fists into baseball mitts during class. "We're too different at this age," said Lauren Bernstein, an eighth grader who nevertheless has a boyfriend who sends her off with a hug before a science test. "When we're like forming ourselves, this makes it easier to be open."
The effectiveness of separating boys and girls is in the eye of the beholder.
The American Association of University Women, which popularized separate math and science classes with a 1992 report that said girls were being shortchanged in schools, reviewed the existing research on single-sex education in primary and secondary schools and reported in 1998 that the data was inconclusive. There were positive results for some students in some settings, the association found. But there was no way of telling if gender segregation was the key variable or if boys and girls were simply getting better teaching in the smaller classes found in private schools, which offer a majority of the single-sex classes. Developmental psychologists and others who study gender differences in adolescents say that traditional markers of academic achievement are the wrong measuring sticks. This isn't about how boys and girls do; it's about how they feel.
Michael Thompson, co-author of "Raising Cain" (Ballantine, 2000) and a psychologist at a boys' school in New England, said that boys become "angry, resentful and fight back" in middle school because they feel "defective" when compared to girls, who are "literally out-thinking them." Dr. Thompson, a consultant to the Masters School, endorses the model as a "fascinating, interesting, wonderful experiment" that potentially has more to offer boys than girls.
Carol Gilligan, a professor at New York University and author of "In a Different Voice" (Harvard University Press, 1993), said she is certain that girls who are "confident at 11 and confused at 16" will more likely be creative thinkers and risk-takers as adults if educated apart from boys in middle school. "It is the most effective moment to stop something from happening that has both personal and cultural costs," she said, referring to the loss of confidence.
High school students at the Masters School offer testimonials. Alyssa Bernstein and Noel Capozzalo, now sophomores, recall a film about drunken driving that they saw in their separate eighth-grade history classes. In the girls' class, Alyssa said, someone started crying and set off a chain reaction that left the whole room in tears. The boys were unmoved, Noel said, until they heard about the girls' reaction.
"Then we broke up laughing," he said. "We thought it was ridiculous they got so upset. At that age, you're not mature enough to respect the reaction of the other sex."
The Bush administration is encouraging single-sex classes and schools in the public sector, where civil rights laws have sometimes halted such experiments. There are currently at least 24 states with single-sex public schools, including the Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem.
Public schools were given the flexibility to experiment with single-sex education in the No Child Left Behind act, the initiative pushed by President Bush. Now, the Department of Education is proposing amendments to Title IX, the landmark legislation that made sex discrimination illegal at educational institutions receiving federal money.
The amendments are opposed by the American Association of University Women and, more vehemently, by the National Organization for Women, on the ground that the administration would be better off investing in smaller classes, better teacher training and new curriculum. "This is a quick fix being used to hide all the other problems in public education," said Lisa Maatz, director of public policy and government relations at the A.A.U.W.
Leaders of the associations of all-girls' schools, both here and in England, have mixed feelings about the configuration at places like the Masters School since it potentially cuts into their business. But there is no doubt, said Meg Milne Moulton, executive director of the National Coalition of Girls' Schools, that "it's good to have a menu of options" for this age group. In fact, Ms. Moulton said, five of the organization's nine newest members are free-standing girls' middle schools, the first of their kind.
Dr. Thompson said that the Masters School is the perfect laboratory because classes are small, the population relatively homogenous and the same faculty member teaches each subject to both boys and girls, adjusting to meet their needs. This is the case in Pam Borowiec's two sections of eighth-grade algebra, a high school-level class open only to the best math students.
The girls are in a tizzy because there is a test the next day on trinomials and quadratic equations. The boys don't even mention it. The girls quietly work out problems at their desks and go to the board only when they are sure they know the answer. The boys race to the front of the room, grab a marker and push one another aside to be the first with a solution.
"The energy is different; the worry is different," Ms. Borowiec said. "The girls want to be sure they're doing what I want them to do. The boys want to be active. Their goal is to be done, not to get it right. What I love about teaching this way is I can let the boys be boys and interact with me one way, and the girls be girls and interact with me another way. Both of them are happy. And both of them learn the material."
Copyright 2004 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted with permission.
Single-sex classrooms address individual needs Susan Maxwell, rscj, Director of Schools and Daniel Flaherty, former Head of the Middle School
The prospect of single-sex classrooms in public schools, as proposed by Secretary of Education Rod Paige, has provided us with the opportunity to re-examine not only the structure but also the philosophy behind the educational choices we make for our children.
In our entirely reasonable and well-intentioned desire to provide our students with the best possible experiences, we may, unfortunately, overlook the fundamental differences they possess as individuals.
While taking great care to avoid gender stereotyping and narrow-minded assumptions about the strengths and weaknesses of the two sexes, we must also acknowledge that, as a general rule, there are fundamental differences between boys and girls.
Brain research of the last few years demonstrates quite convincingly that the internal structures of the brain “come on line” in a different order and are utilized in different ways by the respective genders.
Girls, on average, are much more verbal that boys.
Boys, on the main, are more spatially oriented and much more kinesthetic in their learning style.
If you adopt the philosophy that you need to educate each child as an individual, as we have at Sacred Heart, you must, by necessity, put in place the programs and structures that best facilitate their individual development. A classroom of like-minded, similarly oriented learners provides the best opportunity possible for children to realize their potential and develop a love of learning in a safe, secure and supportive environment.
At Sacred Heart Schools, we are blessed to have more than 200 years of experience in providing a single-sex education to young men and women. And this experience demonstrates over and over again that a curriculum directed specifically at the strengths of the child is at the foundation of an excellent education.
At the same time, opportunities for boys and girls to share some educational experiences provide what we call the best of both worlds in our schools’ environment.
We find Paige’s proposals to be a strong endorsement of how we conduct our educational program. We applaud his desire to see all students afforded the possibility of being educated in an environment that recognizes them as individuals and calls them to their fullest potential.
Susan Maxwell, rscj
Director of Schools Daniel Flaherty
Head of the Middle School
Sacred Heart Schools
Single-Sex Education at Sacred Heart by Daniel Flaherty former Middle School Head
Occasionally, I meet a person for the first time, and in the course of our introductory conversation, he or she learns that I work at Sacred Heart Schools. Almost invariably, the subject of single-sex education and the unique status of Hardey and the Academy enter into our discussion.
“How did you end up with two single-sex grammar schools in the same building?” is the way the question is usually framed. I typically give a brief answer that references the history of the Religious of the Sacred Heart, while also drawing on the latest educational research that supports our structure, and it sounds something like this...
Over 200 years ago, at the dawning of the 19th century, Madeleine Sophie Barat founded a religious order dedicated to the education of young women. She was a young Frenchwoman who recognized the need to provide the opportunity for a more academic education to women at a time when only men were granted that privilege. In her own words, “Women and children must have some knowledge of current events and form their own judgments in light of Christianity, in order to conform intelligently to the enlightened teaching of the Church. The hour has come when we must give reason for our faith.”
St. Madeleine saw education as a route to a more deeply developed and better-formed faith. She operated from the very basic principle that in order to love God more fully, we need to exercise and energize our intellectual capabilities.
From its very beginnings in Europe and throughout its spread to Asia, Africa and the Americas, the Society was primarily interested in the education of females. Schools from primary age up into post-graduate studies have been directed, staffed and sponsored by the Religious all over the world. By the beginning of the 20th century, the excellence of the education they provided to their daughters had parents clamoring for a comparable educational opportunity for their sons.
In 1935, Hardey Preparatory opened in Chicago in response to just such a desire. As a companion school to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Hardey shared facilities and much of the same curriculum with the girls’ school. But even then, the Religious of the Sacred Heart recognized that fundamental differences exist between boys and girls, and thus differences in the lessons taught and the strategies utilized were in place. While the basics of a superior education remained identical, subject matter and teaching techniques that appeal to each gender respectively have always been utilized.
Which brings us to the present and recent studies in the world of brain research that confirm what has always seemed so common-sensical to the Schools of the Sacred Heart. While allowing for exceptions to the rule, the female brain tends to mature at a different rate than the male brain. Due to the presence of specific hormones, different areas of the brain itself are used more often in one gender as compared to another, and thus, different strengths and weaknesses in the learning process are realized.
For example, there is a fundamental difference in the auditory development of males and females that contributes to females possessing a more refined capability in listening. Their ability to distinguish sound differences more readily and their sensitivity to volume and pitch manifests themselves in a quieter classroom. Boys on the other hand, benefit from louder, more direct instruction that overcomes any deficit in auditory processing.
Another example can be found in the different rates at which the sexes decode language and even in the way language is ordered in the brain. Generally, females develop their vocabulary sooner and use it more readily to problem-solve, to convey emotion and to interact socially. Males appear to be much more reliant on using spatial areas of the brain to problem-solve and have difficulty at times in connecting emotion and vocabulary. And as anyone who has watched a group of little boys play can tell you, their social interactions are much more physical than verbal.
As with all generalities, these observations do not apply to each and every individual child. In fact, you can extrapolate on that point and say that a Sacred Heart education is not always the appropriate avenue for each and every child.
On the whole, however, it is quite reassuring to have the latest educational research confirm what we have known all along: children benefit from learning environments tailored to their particular strengths and weaknesses.
If and when I am asked for empirical proof as to the utility of our approach, I could direct people to studies supportive of single-sex education, but most often, I would simply point the person asking the question in one direction. I would tell them to “Ask our graduates.”
Time and time again, our alums come back to us and regale us with stories about their success in high school, in college and beyond. And they always make reference to the foundation they were provided by attending Hardey and the Academy. They talk about first grade boys in little blue blazers and sixth grade girls acting out The Odyssey, and they talk about the leadership and self confidence and intellectual values that were nurtured in the protective environment of a single-sex classroom.
In Sacred Heart classrooms, not only are potentially distracting social issues minimized, but also the unique gifts of the respective genders are highlighted and encouraged.
...and after this response, the person is usually slightly overwhelmed by the amount of information I have bouncing around in my head. In essence, it all comes down to this: Sacred Heart education is dedicated to meeting the needs of the individual child.
