Why Do So Many Boys Not Care About School?

Are you serious? You're blaming female teachers for why your kid is falling behind? Teachers are trained to incorporate how children learn in a multitude of different ways. Boys aren't that different from how girls learn so I'd try another excuse if I were you. Just because you are a female doesn't mean that you can only teach girls in the classroom. These types of stereotypes that are not supported by any evidence what so ever are what create ignorant attitudes like yours.

Lauren -

If you read my comment carefully you'd see my child is NOT falling behind. He's above grade level in both Math and Reading. I can only describe what I am seeing in my son's school and, yes, there are female teachers at his school who clearly can't or won't relate to certain students' strengths and weeknesses, including boys. You can't speak to the training, talent or skills of the teachers at my son's school. You are ignorant to our reality and to what we see every day.

No one is blaming anyone or making excuses - just trying to raise awareness on this important issue. I absolutely don't think just because you are female means you can't teach a boy, and conversely male teachers are capable of teaching girls effectively. I'm female and I can relate to both boys and girls, and so can many excellent teachers (like my son's 2nd grade teacher who was phenomenal).

Your statement that boys aren't that different from girls has been shown to be untrue by researchers, science, educators, and many qualified pediatricians (including our own pediatrician who graduated from Georgetown University Medical School, who has seen hundreds of children, AND is a mother of 2 - a boy and a girl). You are ignorant to all of this evidence and I would suggest you educate yourself.

ALL children are deserving of our concern and attention, and we shouldn't overlook this important issue at the expense of one gender. No one should stick their heads in the sand, certainly not educators if they care about the future of ALL children.

With all of this "enlightening" evidence of yours why do you still sounds so ignorant in your first comment? No duh there is plenty of evidence to support that men and women can achieve exactly the same standards and that certain aspects or learning are different, but not so different that you have to claim that female teachers are to blame. So nice try, but you're still the ignorant parent that would probably demand that your son be taught by male instructors instead.

All you have to do is read Why Gender Matters by Dr. Leonard Sax. I have 4 year old twins a boy and a girl. One finding that Dr. Sax's research showed is how differntly boys and girls learn. Young boys are not prone to sitting still, while young girls have no problems sitting and paying attention. I observed this with my kids while they are watching their favorite show The Wizard of Oz. My daughter will sit quietly and watch intently. My son will be all over the room and it would appear that he is not paying attention until you stand in front of the tv and he asks you to move out of the way. He is totally engaged yet he can not sit still. Dr. Sax is an MD as well as a PHD. he states in his book that 95% of all the cases of ADD or ADHD that are referred to him are cured with taking the boy who sits in the back of the room to the front of the room. It is a scientific fact that girls hearing develops much faster than boys and is significanly more acute. So if you have an average class room with most of the boys who are fidgety and sitting in the back combined with the fact that their hearing is not as acute and now add to that equation most of the teachers are women who generally speak with a softer voice then men and you have a recipe for disaster. It is a great read and makes total sense. I was that kid he describes, and I would have been put on drugs in todays world. After you read this book go and get his next one Boys Adrift.

It sounds to me like your child is smarter than average, and is bored because his intellect isn't being challenged. Does the school have a program for gifted students? If so, he might beneft from it.

I agree female teachers who don't have boys do not understand a boy and are usually mean. I have had that experience. If they had boys themselves they were more understanding.

Heather - Great point - where are the recruitment efforts for this? I have suggested to several boys (including mine) and young men (such as our college age babysitter) that they should seriously consider elementary ed because they'd be great at it - they are smart, interesting, children adore them,...and you get the summers off.

Agreed and this writer has an anti-boy bias. Read between the lines. Let's see: Struggling boy--just plain dumb. Learning Disabled boy--mental defective. Cruising boy--the kid just doesn't give a d___ or is a party animal. Otherwise engaged boy--tunnel vision kid. Allergic to school boy--needs psychiatric help. Feminists would be screaming if girls were labeled this way but boys are fair game. The schools haven't been boy-friendly for years, too busy being PC.

My son was bored to death in school, didn't buy the PC garbage he was being fed and managed to graduate because I didn't make a big deal about his grades and let him do summer school where he got A's and B's in courses he'd failed in regular school because he didn't buy the agenda. He went into the military out of high school and qualified for the highest positions based on his tests scores. He flew through a year of specialty school with flying colors, obviously wasn't assigned to be a grunt and quickly attained rank. He was very successful but then the military doesn't have a liberal, feminist or PC agenda like our public schools and institutions of higher learning. It's not that boys come to college with baggage as this writer suggests but the fact that as they mature into young adults, they say enough of this garbage and choose to walk away. It's not boys who need changing, it's the schools that need to change back to where the emphasis was on actual learning. Girls aren't more geared to success in college than boys. They've been catered to throughout school to the disadvantage of boys who the minute they stray from the "party" line are given labels as misfits.

" I'd like to know why it was called "discrimination" when 58% of college grads were men in 1970, but now its ok that 60% of graduates are girls? "

Because there actually was DISCRIMINATION back in 1970, and that discrimination was against women. As in, women being discriminated against getting advanced degrees and then actually using them. Do you want to really argue that there wasn't? It wasn't until the '80s or so that females were truly intergrained into the whole college/professional process. Compared to now, where the majority of women in college is not the result of "discrimination" but choices that males are making, rightly or wrongly. If you want to pretend, have some have, that the current environment, just as it is, is as discriminatory as one where women are sheparded to home economic courses and rebuffed from working as lawyers and doctors, then you have a long way to go. And while I know I'm a guy I doubt you're really a woman.

As a current 43 y.o. college student studying Education and Exceptional Student Ed I can tell you that there are many, many, many learning aids available out there to make the classroom much more interesting and fun, however, . . . . . IT COSTS MONEY!!! Public schools just do not have the funding to hand out money to teachers to allow them the opportunity to buy this and buy that for their classrooms. Many of these 'extra' learning aids are paid for by the teachers themselves out of pocket. Granted, they can claim those expenses on their tax return, but as most of America is well aware, teachers don't teach because of the pay and how rich they think they're going to get - they teach because they have a passion for teaching and helping ALL children learn. Teachers just can't afford to spend their own money on learning tools that the public school system should be paying for. I personally believe that teachers are tremendously underpaid but that doesn't stop me from wanting to teach. I hope that as a teacher I can come up with some cheap, creative, alternatives to making learning fun and one of my goals is to get to know each student's learning personalities so that I can give them the best of me as their teacher.

"Could the problem possibly be that the Liberal Agenda and women control the educational system and favor girls and minorities over white males ... YA THINK?"

I can see your problem is that your anti-liberal mindset causes you to fail in environments with advanced education, as it should, and you're being a whiny victim about it.

The problem is the feminization of schools today. Everything that is uniquely male behavior is banned. These days the kids don't get recess as years ago. The boys aren't allowed to play games as years ago because we are too worried someone will scrap a knee. If boys years ago got into a fight, it was broken up, they were made to shake hands and that was the end of it. Now they kick them out of school. If little John pulls Suzie's pigtail, he is arrested and branded a sex offender. They are forcing boys to become feminized PC zombies and boys don't buy into it even though they try to stay out of trouble. Courses in school are set up to teach to the female mind, more verbal than physical, which most boys unless gay, become disenchanted and become bored. Those that remain in school are just social promoted along so they can get rid of the kid to the next level without learning a thing. My one sons was an honor student throughout school because we stayed on him and when he got to college, was pissed that he needed remedial courses. He finally understood what we told him for years about the schools and felt cheated that he was PC'd and told how great he was when he was he was social promoted through. College was a real eye opener for him. My older son was passed through the MD school system to the eigth grade before he lived with me, we had him tested because he was having a hard time in his new school. It turns out MD, passed him along even though he was only reading on an third grade level. We spent thousands of bucks on special tutors to do the job the school system didn't. The sad thing was he was in the best school system in MD! My younger son has a friend that graduated with him and is so illiterate, he failed the military entrance exam TWICE! The test is written on a sixth grade level! So much for standards of learn testing!