Links on Boys and School

[selenite0]

The New Republic has an article on boys falling behind in school. (Link to part 2)

Recommended solutions? Keeping on the boys to make them turn homework in on time, and giving them comics to read. Sounds good to me.

A teacher writes about the book Raising Cain and muses on how competitive behavoir in boys can produce good results.

Comments

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I presume it's unnecessary for me to toss of the obvious "Gender Warrior" observation? (I.e., when girls lag behind boys it's a Huge Crisis which gets lots of attention and money, but when boys lag behind girls the silence is deafening. Likewise, when large public institutions are deemed boy/man-centric and incompatible with girls'/women's learning/working/etc styles, the hue and cry is for the institutions to change in such a way as to become more female-friendly; but when those selfsame institutions exhibit the reverse inequity, the most-frequently-proposed solution is to change the boys.)

Well, necessary or not, there it is.

Though I will also point out that not so long ago, boys-en-masse were apparently better at sitting still, paying attention, etc. than they are now. So ISTM that it's not ALL the fault of "feminizing" our schools/workplaces/etc.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I was particularly struck by the line about (paraphrasing due to laziness) "...liberal parents, who vowed never to give their children violent toys, only to see their sons sculpt lumps of modeling clay into submachine guns."

My dad was one of those parents, and I was one of those kids. I became one of those parents, and damn but both my boys were also those kids.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Another take:
http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003870.html

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

The absence of masculine role models also leaves boys more susceptible to the popular culture's portrayal of masculinity, which, frankly, is crap

Too true. I wish I could remember where I read it: An author pointed out that whereever parents will not (or cannot) influence their children, the lowest-common-social denominator will.

Have you seen Jon "Our Hero" Sczieska's Guys READ" project?