A WTF school case

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Here's the URL to the article at Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/01/26/schoolboys_bias_suit/?page=1

WTF #1 If rules are set, should students be rewarded for breaking them and punished fro obeying? Good grief...

WTF #2 How are you going to pass a course without listening? If you don't respect the discipline of the place, you're out. Simple as that is. Are men inherently unable to behave or something? Is the army girly because they follow orders there? However, grades should be for knowledge rather than courses per se. From the point of view of a university or an employer knowledge matters. Some teachers and schools in general tend to lower kids' grades in maths or literature for behaviour and that's frigging bad.

WTF #3 Students often get suspended for being violent. Girls are much less likely to be violent. Should therefore violence be allowed in schools just because boys like it?

WTF #4 They don't need someone to beg them please to start doing ****ing homework. They need someone to show them some ****ing discipline. It's good to put money in helping underachieving students but how long do they intend to push kids through the academics if they aren't really suited? This money shouldn't be spent on fixing parent's mistakes, either.

WTF #5 Compensational discrimination or what?

WTF #6 Can't kids obey simple rules anymore? Show that to my elementary school teachers in this country...

Okay... I've seen some of the most teachers female, most honours students female etc trend, so I won't be too picky...

WTF #7 On the one hand, some class profiles (which includes languages) make room for extreme situations (in my own school, I remember humanistically intense classes with one or two guys). On the other hand, it's not like 22 out of 23 smart kids are female. Even if we're talking about linguistics.

Someone really seems to think along the "girls are good, boys are bad" lines...

WTF #8 What does that have to do with learning? Sticking pink paper on notebooks? Are teachers clinically retarded or are kids exaggerating? By the way, it's a native speaker kid and a student body president... she should really know better than "a boy" and "their". "You can't expect a boy to buy pink pink paper and frills to decorate his notebooks." Or, "You can't expect boys to buy pink paper and frills to decorate their notebooks." Is this really so freaking hard? Grammar no good for children?

WTF #9 Motivation... The best motivation is that with each day that passes you're closer to the end. Failing a year means spending one additional year there. Does anyone need better motivation?

WTF #10 Don't know about there, but here females aren't smarter than males. It's actually pretty much even everywhere. In my late school, science classes tend to be male, while humane arts classes tend to be female. But it's choice of subjects, not smarts.

WTF #11 Let's not confuse academics and athletics. Not everyone has to be athletic and not everyone has to be academic. BTW, I hated P.E. Always. First thing I did at uni was making sure I won't have to do it. Don't force sports enthusiasts into academics and don't make the geeks tear their joints apart. It was so freaking frustrating... Community service? Someone needs a fan in the office. Erm. Except for bullies and other rebels. Yeah. Community service for kids who
won't play by the rules. I'm all for. However, what sort of a moron it takes to skip some half-assed community service, knowing it will complicate graduating? Come on... That's as moronic as mugging someone in front of the camera fixed on a police station's wall.

WTF #12 Remove the grades and make it pass/fail, and most kids won't do more than required for a pass.

WTF #13 I could even pay for the fan...

WTF #14 Yeah, sorry I'm white. Sorry I'm male. Okay...

WTF #15 For disobeying rules or a literature/maths boost for playing sports?

WTF #16 Promotion for being a victim of discrimination? WTF? Money, I understand. But promotion? Because you're black and someone called you a nigger? Or because you're gay and someone called you a fag? Do I get to be the CEO if I'm a half-Asian half-African male lesbian?

 

Don't ever underestimate PC trend. Look at Condoleeza Rice.
Hey Chev, I wanted to comment on the article and on what you wrote, but why do you always need to make it so long?

 

I assume that you're reacting this strongly (especially over a few minor details) because there's there's absolutely nothing validating in other views or because this school system stands in stark and disturbing contrast to most other schools in the world.

 

If the males at that particular school put childish antics above study then its their problem, but its hardly a representation for males in general.

Lets hope the males at that school never have children.

 

According to a recent cover article in Newsweek, this school is seeing problems that are chronic to primary education. In a nutshell, boy-brains and girl-brains work differently, and the school systems are geared to reward the behaviors and learning processes exhibited by girl-brains. Note that I'm making no conjecture as to why this came to pass, just that it IS.

If rules have been established that are likely to cause failure in one segment of the affected population but not the other, isn't that the definition of discrimination? Why should we not take advantage of the huge leaps that have occurred in understanding the workings of the brain and devise educational settings and systems that encourage success for all participants? Yes, all students have to put in thier share of effort - no handouts - and yes parents have to be actively involved in a child's education, but they should be able to start from reasonably-level ground.

What's wrong with acknowledging that the system can be improved? Just because it was good enough for you doesn't mean it shouldn't evelove to embrace new understandings.

 

What I mean is that there should be no capitulating before rule-breaking boys on the part of the teacher. Breaking the rules must meet firm opposition or we're going to have a generation of males with the willpower of a pizzeria leaflet.

And yes, there are too many girly things for boys to do or boyish for girls. They could fix that. But I don't like the notion of males being unable to play by the rules or by females being painted as having no problem blindly listening to others.

 

I don't see anything in that story that shows that males were discriminated at, apart from the hall pass issue. There is much worse discrimination in the world to worry about a tiny thing like that.

The only thing holding the males back at that school, are the males themselves.

 

@Chev: Yes, discipline is a hugely important thing of what kids learn in school - along with personal interactions and socializing and time management and self-control and myriad other life-skills. It's far more important that just the academic subjects that are covered.

While being able to follow rules *is* crucial for getting along in life, maybe it's time for the specific rules that are being obeyed to be re-examined, and possible revised, to make sure that the right lessons are being learned.

 

Yes, that's true and I believe that teachers need to show discipline if they demand it. I remember teachers calling their unilateral decisions mutual agreements and treating us students like people breaking a word in such cases, but at the same time backing off of any sort of promise or agreement just because they felt like it. That's bad. Plus, I believe in those schools where students are expected to change shoes, it should apply to teachers, as well. Same for eating or drinking during the class or leaving the classroom.

But violence I believe they are too light on. Any case of theft or assault resulting in injury or sexual assault should be reported to the police. Perhaps in some cases a police psychologist would be better than regular cops with rubber staves and handcuffs.

I've seen some real discrimination achievement-wise here. No special classes for overachievers like you have in the States and elsewhere. No skipping grades. Still having to write dumb tests because that's on the curriculum, even if the teacher knows you'll get 100% anyway, so he sometimes just signs it off with an A without checking (and if you let someone copy it, he may as well end up with a C while you get an A if you screw up). You were also expected to stay humble and pretend not to know more than the curriculum expected or the other students did.

Some teachers developed custom expectations, so overachievers had to do more, but the effect was that people got better grades for worse effects than yours and the explanation was they put more effort in it. That's how it was in my case. In turn, in P.E. I had reduced requirements because of asthma and got better grades for objectively worse results than some people, too.

And, of course, conduct marks. Apart from the normal conduct mark, they also gave you conduct marks in the normal bracket for grades in a given subject. Then they worked hard on giving you the impression they believed people knew more than you because they had a better final grade because of not having the grade average screwed by penal F's for talking or something.

Besides, some teachers were less smart than some students and couldn't handle that.

[ January 30, 2006, 16:04: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

The thing that seems strange is that if anything, it seems that males are represented in higher percentages than we would expect based on the first sentence of the article.

It says that females outnumber males in the school 2 to 1. That to me says that the school is about 67% female, and 33% male. What did the honor society look like? According to the article, 58% female, and 42% male. What about the advanced placement courses? They were 64% female, and 36% male. Now given that we were already told that there were twice as many females as males in the school, does it not logically follow that we would expect ALL classes - regardless of whether we are talking advance placement or not to have more females than males? Wouldn't we expect that there would be more females than males in honor society? In fact, does it not appear that males are slightly more represented in these groups than we would expect based on the starting percentages?

I also don't see what the female-male ratio of teachers has to do with anything. That was listed as 64% female to 36% male - also about a 2 to 1 ratio. To my knowledge this has been commonplace in the U.S. for as long as I can remember. There are ALWAYS more female teachers than male teachers. In fact, if you look at elemetary schools, the percentage would be even more heavily tilted toward female teachers. My wife is an elementary school teacher. There are about 40 teachers at the school she works at. There are TWO male teachers.

The only parts of that entire article I had a problem with was 1.) Girls not being asked for hall passes while boys were and 2.) Getting higher grades for decorating assignments, notebooks etc. The only way artwork should be graded is if it is art class.

 

The thing is that if a student does not follow the rules (as in "sit down, shut up and complete this assignment by the end of class") by default they tend to blow it academically (if they don;t complete the assignment by the end of class, they get a zero.) Then some idiot says "he failed me for not being quiet." The real reason you failed was that you were not doing work.

For years they were saying that girls were getting the shaft in schools and that teachers ignored them, particularily in the maths and sciences. Now the trend has flipped. It would seem that no one is willing to step up to the plate and take responsibility for their own screw-ups and instead wants to find SOME way to cast themselves as the victims.

As for the hall passes, be realistic -- if some kid with a history of being a jackass is in the hall, of course you're going to ask him to justify his presence there as his track record is such that he has lost all his slack. However, if a kid who has never caused a problem is out there, you're going to give that kid slack, as his / her track record justifies it. All this crap about "equal treatment no matter what" without regard for the previous behaviour of the student is absolutely ludicrous.

 

I'm the father of a soon to be 10 year old boy. In my opinion the sooner society and educators realize that boys/girls and men/women are different in areas besides genitalia the better off we will be.

If I was in charge I would segregate classes between the sexes. I think it would make devising a lesson plan that keys to the class's strenghs much easier.

 

The problem with that TGS is the same as the one that eventually brought an end to racial segregation.
It is far harder to make sure everyone has the same opportunity and try to keep the systems separate, one might almost say that it is impossible.
In any event, I do not believe that, what you are some ways suggesting will never happen due to the fears that such a discriminatory system would start up again.

 

So how are they different? If you intend to produce schooling suited to each gender's strengths and weaknesses, what are those strengths and weaknesses?

 

@LKD: Failing academically if you fail to hand it in at your own fault is right. But I don't think mixing conduct marks with academic marks is good (like A for achievement + "penal" E for talking, C total). I'd rather see a normal A with a special note attached, in such cases.

@TGS: Segregating classes between the genders sounds like a good idea on so many levels. It should reduce the effect of raging hormones, as well as help teachers get over their strange random pairing inclinations (putting a boy with a girl at random for some strange aesthetic reasons or whatever whenever they can... why the heck they do that is beyond me). Besides, Romeo and Juliet or Sleeping Beauty type of stage plays seems to be my pet peeve school-morality-wise. Some literature teachers are such idiots that they will make a randomly chosen female and male lead kiss. An adult professional actor would deal with that but imagine a kid who is being forced (the teacher's authority plus control of grades) and probably has a crush on someone else. It's a matter for public prosecution IMHO, along with kids who molest other kids.

@AMaster:

As I see it, there are different patterns of thinking and senses work in somewhat different ways (perception). I don't think any gender has a complete monopoly on any single trait (especially if it's psychological rather than related with the senses), but you could have a more male or more female profile.

 

Yes, let's turn back the clock to 1640, New England. And while we are at it we can dress the girls in pink and the boys in blue. Sorry everyone, but there are some rules which just beg to be broken.

 

Simple solution: no more co-ed schools.

Schools are better geared towards females these days but I think it's the parents fault. Parents need to teach their kids discipline and respect for their elders. Simple lesson of teaching children to do as they're damn well told would go a long way to fixing this so called bias in schools.

 

Especially boys. Boys are stronger than girls and eventually become as strong as their own fathers and stronger, strongest people in the house. If they aren't taught discipline, it's begging for disaster. Quite a lot of agression and bullying stems from such a long and loose leash as boys tends to have nowadays. They expect the whole world to revolve around their angst instead of being taught to shove it and start working for the respect, attention and position they want.

 

I have to say that I think that this is more of an attitude/culture that has developed in the geographic area in question and not an indication that boys are disadvantaged in a normal school environment.

It is funny, I don't seem to recall the boys at my schools ever having any particular problem with paying attention to lectures, getting their work done, etc. There were always some boys with discipline problems that hurt their grades but that was true for the girls too.

As far as the decorating the homework issues goes - I am willing to bet that this is a blatant exaggeration and that a decently typed assignment that was neatly presented in a binder with a neat looking cover page would get the boys the marks for presentation. The boys I went to school with certainly seemed capable of doing that.

During high school I would say that the proportion of high academic performing students was relatively even between males and females with the males having a slight edge.

For my year, another guy and I pretty much split just about every academic award between the two of us. The third highest student in my year was female. The top student the year before me was male and the top student in the year following mine was female.

The split was pretty even in terms of the honour roll and the percentage of guys in the OAC classes (the final set of classes for the top students which were used for University admission decisions).

I may be getting a bit old to use my school years as evidence but my brother is nine years younger than I am. He just finished high school and I can say that in his graduation ceremony the honour roll students and the academic award winners did not show any evidence of one gender outperforming the other.

 

Okay, but saying there are different patterns of thinking and perception isn't good enough. If we can't define how the thinking and perceptions differ, we can't cater to the different strengths.

Anyone know if there have been any respectable studies on the alleged differences?