are our sons and brothers being unfairly treated by the school system? i would say "ABSOLUTELY." my baby bro has be so horribly manhandled by the GGUSD for so many years, and i've watched the same sort of torturous treatement of 2 old brothers and two very good friends, as well as at least 3 boys in every class i've ever had. i especially like the quote ''The system is designed to the disadvantage of males," Anglin said. ''From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this." and while this could also apply to a good number of female students, it still applies to a disproportionate number of boys who are more prone to being incapable of sitting still for so damned long. either way, it's a system that requires adjustment, and i think a healthy and high profile lawsuit is theonly way to get this taken seriously. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/01/26/schoolboys_bias_suit/
"Among Anglin's allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys' more rebellious ways are punished." This reminds me of a certain teacher that always let the girls go to the bathroom in groups and take half an hour while the boys could only go individually and not take long. Its not really helping the girls success, but it is an example of how some teachers are easier on girls. I'd agree that the system favors girls because they are more organized and on every damn assignment I got in elementary school you could get a better grade if you decorated it. I have done like a million assignments where I tried to decorate mine, but it looked like garbage compared to any of the girl's assignments in the class. Almost everything you learn and do in middle and elementary school is completely worthless, and you wont use and will forget most of the stuff you learn in Highschool. As long as you get a foundation for Highschool then in highschool you get a foundation for college. I mean reading, writing (actually they didn't do shit for me, I was saved by my 9th grade English teacher) and math. You ever heard a girl say "My handwriting looks like a boys." ? What does it imply? It implies that its sloppy and hard to read, which equals less points. Most teachers are women, especially in elementary schools, less in middle schools, and there are actually male teachers in the high schools. I never had a male teacher in elementary, they had like 1 old man and he retired. I had a couple male teachers in middle school, but they were mostly women. I've had lots of male teachers in High school. They don't let males near yougner kids. It just hit me that all my honors classes are mostly girls. In my honors English Class we have like 6 guys and 15 girls. My school is not as bad as the things the article talks about, and at my school you can get credit for sports, and that includes a cheerleading class. My school doesn't have a community service requirement. My school isn't as bad as that school, but it can relate.
hmm... in my high school math classes (well, all but three of them), the girls did tend to do better. I did better based on math skills, because I refused to flirt with the dirty old perverted teacher we had. Thank god I already knew most of what we were doing, and what I didn't know my mom did. He was an awful teacher and managed to make unfairly even with something like math, that shouldn't be so easily skewed
i always had a soft spot for those poor rebellious boys. the ones who were smart but really bored. the teachers were always so intollerant. it always broke my heart.
I can definitely see the point here. It's often boys who are more hyper, needing to let out more energy during the day instead of just sitting still to learn. My own little brother was quite hyperactive, which led his teachers to urge my parents to pump him full of speed. It was really sad the way they all just treated it as an easy answer for something so simple - all he needed was to get a little more excercise and be told that he already WAS smart enough and good enough to get the grades on his own. Even as he intered college and the stuff gave him palpitations, he was convinced that his pills, and not he himself, were responsible for his academic success. On a related note, a dear friend of mine just told me that her 8-year-old brother is in an elementary class with a bunch of rowdy little boys. This kid is a little genius (no kidding, when he was 3 he was reading chapter books) but his grades are in the dumps. Turns out his teacher has been punishing the more hyperactive students (all boys) by TAKING AWAY their recess time. How is that gonna help?
''From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. " How is this different from the way boys have been educated for centuries? "Men naturally rebel against this." Men? in elementary school? as students?
well, i don't think men have been constructively educated in this manner "for centuries." most haven't been formally educated at all. as for "men" well, it's just a word that we both know means "male of the species."
In the past boys were more active, expecially the Spartans (actually, the Spartans were kinda insane IMO).
There was actually a report on PBS on this subject a few weeks ago, and I definitely agree that young boys have a difficult time in the school system, especially in elementary grades. All my honors classes are overwhelmingly filled with females, and I don't think this is due to some sort of fictional superior female intelligence. The fact that boys face prejudice early on sets them up for higher failure rates as they move into young adulthood. A lot of these boys are just stereotyped as "troublemakers" early on, and I think that's really unfair. I can even agree with the hall pass business that was mentioned in the article, although it's not an exclusively male issue. Things like that happen to anyone who is stereotyped as a "bad kid" or a "troublemaker" or whatever words you care to use, and although this happens to males more often, it happens to females like me as well. I don't really see this kid's solutions as realistic though...
And most of those boys who are fast, fidgety, rebellious and smart get the label ADHD or ADD, and so we drug them. You know, "if the kids don't fit the old system, god.... we have to figure out some way to slow them down! Otherwise we got the teacher's union on our hands." So now they're on drugs, 20 years later they ditch the drugs, and start getting extremely dizzy, and their doctor tells them, "oh.. sorry you're dependant now" And so... they're dependant and stuck with the label. And labels go way further than most people guess. Look at hummblebee's little bro. This is a violation of childrens' rights. Right, I think I'm preaching to the choir. Time for all of you to read The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn. Especially those of you who have young kids in school.
