Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Chapter 20, page 280 - The Future
"Educational researchers need to find schools that are teaching boys well and to come up with some real-life, well-tested classroom techniques that will work for boys and won't hurt girls - practices that all teachers can learn about and adapt to their own classrooms."
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I agree that educators do need more than simply graphs showing how
ReplyDeletepoorly boys are doing in school; we need strategies to improve our
instruction and better plan our class layout and routines to support
boys. I expected some recommendations and plans for action, submitted
by such educational experts, to be included by the end of this book.
The author interviewed so many people about *how* boys are performing,
but could have spent some time interviewing other experts on what we
can *do* about it. I was surprised that the final chapter simply
repeated the author's opinions and some general information gathered
from data without giving us suggestions for action. I know she wants
to mobilize parents to find out more about boys' needs, and encourage
them to demand that boys' needs are met in school. But I was left with
the feeling that the author thinks that there are very few educational
experts out there already working on it, since she didn't bother
sharing their advice with the readers.
If I were a parent of a boy I think I would feel validated, and no
longer alone in my experience. But I would still not know what to do
for my son nor would I feel confident that many experts knew what do
do either. Doesn't someone know, and can't they toss some practical
ideas our way?
Clara, you raise a very fair point. I would also really appreciate seeing a practical guide to addressing the gender gap. However, I think the purpose of this book is mainly to provoke discussion and raise important questions about the nature of the disparity in achievement between girls and boys. Now that the questions are being asked it's up to us to find solutions that will work in our school.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think Ms. Tyre does offer some practical suggestions (in broad strokes) throughout the book. See Stephanie's post above. After a bulleted list of practices that were implemented in a successful all-boys school in the UK, she summarizes by saying, "... the classroom techniques that they used to get boys to achieve turned out to look more familiar - yet be more elusive - than anyone could have anticipated. Good teaching for boys turned out to look a lot like good teaching."
Perhaps we should start by making our own list of strategies, routines and practices that will work for our boys and us.