How to Make School Better for Boys | Hacker News Reader

How to Make School Better for Boys

theatlantic.com

52 pointsjseliger58 comments

To me, one of the easiest ways to boost male achievement in education is really simple.

Have male teachers.

An incredible 84% of teachers are female. [1] This has led to a dearth of male role models in schol for all the guys there.

I have 1 male teacher. (I'm in high school) And he's the computer teacher, a stereotypical male field.

[1] http://www.edweek.org/media/pot2011final-blog.pdf

There is actually quite a bit of prejudice against hiring male teachers in the lower grades (k-6) and an almost unbreakable wall in the daycare / pre-k settings. The schools are very worried about lawsuits. Plus, many parent in daycare don't want males changing their daughters, but are fine with females changing their sons.

// yes, I worked in the area and had a buddy who ran a center

The problem isn't so much about finding them than it is about retaining them. Male teachers tend to leave the profession before the end of their 20 s. Some start in their semi-retirement days, but that's quite rare.

I had a differing high school experience where I had more male teachers than female and all of those male teachers were over 40 save 1 new teacher. It was a public school but perhaps some other bias caused this at the school.

Surprisingly I had 2 science teachers and 1 math teacher that were Engineers in previous careers but decided to move into teaching (far before retirement age).

Maybe with programs like http://www.teachforamerica.org/ we'll start seeing more professionals change careers into teaching.

Anecdote: I had a family friend move into teaching from engineering but he found it hard to find a job not teaching in the ghetto or for schools catering to troubled teens and after a few years moved back into engineering.

First, isn't the article about higher education, most professors are male.

Second, is that really a problem? Honestly so much of the world is becoming if you can't physically see someone similar to you doing something you are disadvantaged. Do you really need to see a male teaching a subject for you to press yourself to do your best?

I had primarily women teachers too, probably everyone did. It didn't do anything positive or negative to me. If you can not drive yourself, you are going to be at a significant disadvantage when you move on to the working world.

No, the article is not about Higher Education. It's about higher education enrollment and its correlation with boys' poor performance in grade school.

First off, the article is partially about high school with 14 mentions in the article.

I also think that with the rise of single parent homes, male role models in education are the only likely older male role models they will be able to have ready access to. They are some studies [1], but those seem to be focused on primary school as opposed to older children, but I think the same would hold true.

Basically, I think that the role of male teachers, isn't limited to just teaching the curriculum but also providing a role of a functioning male role model to kids that may not have that around.

[1]http://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/sep/30/primaryscho...

"It didn't do anything positive or negative to me."

Understanding that nurture is a force in developmental psychology, this statement is unfortunately false. The people around you have an affect on your epistemology and Super-Ego (if you care for that approach).

Only you can say what that effect was, of course. But it is disingenuous to suggest that the people who you possibly spent more waking hours with than your parents had no effect on you whatsoever.

Effects are not necessarily positive/negative. I would say that most effects are of the sideways sort.

Just no. If you are so influenced by seeing the gender of someone doing something that it sets your ability to do it you have problems well beyond whom you see doing it.

This is just further down the road of of giving up personal responsibility. "I never saw another man/woman doing it so I never tried. It's not my fault it's society not giving me role models to emulate."

You're talking about children. You're saying children should be self-aware enough to take that kind of personal responsibility for their own growth?

Do you feel the same way about male over representation among surgeons, CEOs, law firm partners? Are you indifferent to gender balance or indifferent to gender balance when women are in the majority?

I do not put weight on gender as an indicator of anything.

I did not think I would have a better chance at becoming a Lawyer because many men are lawyers or that I would have a worse chance at becoming a Teacher because most of my teachers were Women.

I don't believe there need to be more women in tech, or more male teachers. There needs to be the best at what they do doing it. Gender is not a measure of merit.

I generally attempt to stay out of these discussions, but I believe the thinking is "If genders are equal and can do things as well as one another in any field, any large discrepancies in gender distribution can often signify some level of sexism".

A recent study found exactly the opposite of what you believe[1].

"What we found is that in communities that had a higher percentage of women in the labor force who are working in science, technology, engineering and math, that in those schools, girls were as likely as boys to take physics, or even more likely."

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/08/09/210251...

May there be more like you.

I think it is.

Backing up a little, kids from good homes can go to basically any primary & secondary school and be fine. Kids from marginal or dangerous homes aren't really the same- and a lot of the boys have no respect for women.

That's clearly not the ideal outcome for schooling, but you have to start from somewhere, and very few women teachers can break that barrier.

> It didn't do anything positive or negative to me

How can you know how your school experience would have shaped you differently if you had had more males teachers?

The article is about the entire spectrum of education.

Boys are born tinkerers,” she said. “They have a deep-seated need to rip things apart, decode their inner workings, create stuff.”

Fortunately it was a woman who made that statement, it would have been sexist otherwise, right?

No, because she immediately points to scientific studies backing up her statements. Facts can't really be sexist, so if there is a problem with the statement, then we need to determine why the study is invalid.

Evolutionary psychology is always fraught with controversies.

I don't know if someone could read the paper referenced [1] and give some insights on the methodology used.

I ask because studying the innate differences between men and women is extremely hard, cultural bias is huge.

After reading many papers (on both sides of the "women and men are different" fence) I've come to the personal conclusion that you can't really treat evolutionary psychology as a hard science. It's just too controversial as it is, everybody seems to be pushing a personal agenda. Just read the studies if you can access them and make up your own opinion.

Maybe in a few decades when the dust has settled we might be able to reach a consensus. As it is, I really wouldn't treat those papers as "facts".

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140

I would like to cite more sources but the only ones that come to my mind right now are in french. Maybe this would be a good starting point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psyc...

Please google "hatefacts". Alternatively go to the criticism section of Stephen J. Gould's Wikipedia article or read the article on the Bellcurve followed by the American Psychological Association's statement on same. For a third possible example read the Full Text of the speech that got Larry Summers fired from the presidency of Harvard.

Being right and having the evidence on your side will not protect you if the mood of the times is against you. "The truth will set you free" is as true as "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door."

The studies are generally very careful to frame their conclusions narrowly, as pointing out empirically measured differences in particular populations, not showing that something is a "deep-seated need" of boys or that they are "born tinkerers". People doing those studies are usually agnostic on whether the cause is biological, due to parenting, due to other aspects of social environment, etc.

The stronger interpretations, like in this article, tend to come from pop-science commentators.

Plus she makes it very clear that it's a generalization that doesn't necessarily apply to individuals: "Of course, there are female tinkerers who like to work with things and gladly enter occupations such as pipefitting and metallurgy. But the number of men eager to enter these fields is substantially greater."

It appears anything that is pro-boys is immediately seen as "anti-girls" which shouldn't be the case. If we want true equality we need to have equal opportunities but be aware that gender has different methods, motivations, and desires.

"Young men in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada have also fallen behind. But in stark contrast to the United States, these countries are energetically, even desperately, looking for ways to help boys improve. Why? They view widespread male underachievement as a national threat: A country with too many languishing males risks losing its economic edge."

As an American, I may be unplugged from many of these happenings, but I feel like this is a stark difference between America and other countries. We seem to have a laissez-faire attitude that "If there's a problem, and a deadline for the problem, someone will just magically figure it out at the last second." And we often attribute that someone to the free market. On a broader note, as with any issue people seem to have significant worries about, what is a good way to actually begin solving it, assuming this general American attitude? I honestly don't know.

I'm not certain we attribute "that someone" with the free market in many cases. Education is quite solidly considered the purview of the federal and state governments these days, which I think contributes to that last second feeling.

When an opportunity for work appears in the free market, there is quite often a surge of responses. I hope it doesn't come across as cynical, but, I think often when there's an opportunity for work in the public market, there's quite often a surge of analysis and discussion and waiting until a response has to be given.

The author seems to call for a very American solution: lobbying... but I think all it takes is for teachers to be willing to test new practices. See for instance this TEDx talk on reengaging boys in learning through gaming: http://www.ted.com/talks/ali_carr_chellman_gaming_to_re_enga...

Why aren't they being implemented?

Because votes can be won in the US on girls education but not on boys education. For now. Agree there will be a tipping point.

Outside of politics, all US education needs to be addressed, independent of any segmentation.

"Officials at schools at or near the tipping point are helplessly watching as their campuses become like boy clubs, with a surfeit of men competing for a handful of surviving women. Henry Broaddus, dean of admissions at William and Mary, explains the new anxiety: “[M]en who enroll … expect to see women on campus. It’s not the College of William and William; it’s the College of William and Mary.”

Just me who feel that it is slightly offensive and paint a picture of women as sex objects? I wonder how they were allowed to print it without massive outcry.

One response is to get offended. Another response is to realize that college is as much a social exercise as it is an academic one. Men expect there to be women on campus, women expect there to be men on campus (even at an all women's college, as I found out by dating one at Wellesley).

Ultimately students are customers of a service. The service that universities provide is part academic, part social.

Yes. The point I tried to surreptitiously make was to hint that while campus is known as the place where people find their life partners, the bluntness of how we express it differ when talking about men and when talking about women.

The way to go forward in a equality way, might be to bring the language we use for women to men, or bring both to a more middle point. The "It’s not the College of Mary and Mary; it’s the College of William and Mary." might have been a bit over the top in my taste, but everything else in a perfect world should have no emotional difference if it's women meet man, or man meet woman.

Wow you actually quoted it and changed it around but didn't say explicitly what you were doing and didn't make it clear where you made changes. I think you were trying to make a point, but the way you did it is wrong. The original text I had no problem with.

That's the point. He's pointing out how they're allowed to talk about women wanting to see men on campus, but if they were to talk about men looking for women on campus, a feminist would label it as turning women into sex objects.

I don't think just a feminist would. The way it was switched around produces an entirely different set of emotions. Read my direct response to him for my suggestion why.

I know I blew right by those sentences in their original form, and was quite alert to them in your comment.

I wonder if the decades of girls being encouraged to go to college and get their "MRS Degree" still plays into how readers reacted to the original text.

Or if a lifetime of education with a feminism critique viewpoint encourages sensitivity to statements colored with male chauvinism but not with female chauvinism.

Thanks for that.

It's interesting how flipping the gender provides a different emotional reaction. It reminds me entirely of the rapid sorting test in Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. You are given two categories, such as (White or Good) and (Black or Bad) and sort things on the two axes (face color and goodness). Apparently, people (all colors alike) do far better with the categories as I outlined than if you flipped good and bad, and put white with bad and black with good. Essentially, these stereotypes (white is good, men compete for women as if they are prizes, etc), become a part of everyone. Innately.

I'm curious, if you wanted to make a similar point as the article, but imply that coeducational studies are more productive, how would you do so?

I don't know how much "(White or Good) and (Black or Bad)" being psychologically-ingrained categories has to do with race, though.

Some things early homo sapiens knew about, that are white: rice, fatty tissue, soap, and safe sunny environments.

Some things they knew about that are black: mold spots, dried blood, charred flesh, and dangerous moonlit environments.

(Same for red with "sweet berries, fresh blood, flushed skin, and fire"; green with "medicinal plants, unsafe still water, vomit"; etc.)

I bet there wouldn't be nearly as clear an association if the colors were "vaguely dark beige" and "vaguely light brown".

Interesting point. Just to clarify, in the original study you were to sort actual images of faces. So when I say white and black, I don't mean they were sorting things such as "rice" to the "white" bin.

My point (as describe in a above comment) was to illustrate the language used when people describe men and female in their goals. Some concept has become so glued together, than we barely can recognize them outside of their decided roles.

I personally think that coeducational studies are more productive, but describing why is hard because it require a kind of bluntness that is unacceptable in current culture.

It is an objective fact that 18 year old people, men or women, are highly interested and motivated by dating and sex. If you are trying to sell them an immensely expensive and time-consuming service (college), you better take that into account or you will go out of business. That's what that quote is about. Your switch is just as true (and no more or less offensive) than the original.

I suspect(I could be very wrong) that a lot of people do the majority of their dating & find their spouses in college, so the dating prospects are almost as important as the quality of education. Just like how nightclubs reduce admission or drink prices for ladies; thus drawing more ladies and of course the boys follow... college is, wether they like it or not, is the main place to "hook up". It's just statistically higher quality than the random person at the bar/nightclub.

I fail to see how that statement is any different than any other affirmative action plan, or the popular drive for more women in tech.

Interesting contrast with russelluresti's comment...

The biggest difference is that boys are about DOING and girls are about TALKING. That's not about just schools, but the last 400 years of men's and women's role on society.

Boys don't typically learn by talking, they learn by pulling things apart and doing skills. In addition, because of all the push to "score" children, we've taken away the basic "boy" traits almost entirely.

When I was in elementary school it went form 9am to 3pm with sn hour of recess AND half hour of lunch. There was plenty of time for boys to wiggle and make noise and stuff. My kids current schools were from 8am to 3:30pm with about 45 minutes between one recess and lunch/recess. That's more "chair time" than most office workers are expected in a workday. All the "hands on" things have been removed for cost... Art, music, shop, gym are all drastically scaled back to maybe one of each one time a week if at all. School is strictly "listen and repeat" and MOST boys in history don't learn that way. As modern skills like computers, machining, manufacturing,etc require equipment folks just don't have at home, most boys never have a shot at the typical "boy jobs" until they are 16 and go to a career center or go to college or start working.

As a person who attended a Title 1 high school, I saw a lot guys who came from single parent homes get kicked out after freshman year. I mean a lot them didn't understand the concept of not talking, but at times I felt like a lot teachers where just out to get them.

>> How to Make School Better for Boys?

Make them run more, damnit.

Okay, I was willing to read this and keep an open mind. But then I got to the fourth paragraph and saw this:

" Officials at schools ... are helplessly watching as their campuses become like retirement villages, with a surfeit of women competing for a handful of surviving men."

Is the argument here that women only go to college compete for men? And that colleges with more women are "retirement villages" because there aren't enough young men to hook up with?

Yep, done with this article.

That might be an extreme interpretation but I don't see it as unlikely that romantic possibilities are a factor for college aged people when choosing a place to spend several years of their lives.

Somewhere with a healthy gender mix feel more inviting overall than somewhere with a "bro club" atmosphere (or the opposite of that).

That's where we have a bit of a double standard of expectations. We expect a girl to go to college ZPRIMARILY to get an MRS. Degree, preferably ABOVE her social standing. When guys go to school we expect WORK first, Mrs. Second. You end up with this situation where women should compete with men fairly, all the time... Except when they want to stop competing and get married. Even then, men are competing for FOOD ON THE TABLE, every day, the next 40 years. Women don't have the same "skin in the game" because Daddy pays for school until hubby marries them.

I don't know if that is necessarily true. At least amongst my peer group, men would place a high weight on non academic factors in university choice. As long as the the university offered a course they wanted and had enough prestige to match their perceived social standing and families expectations factors like distance from home, cost of living , party reputation and where their friends were going were the big factors.

From my recollection the women tended to be more conscientious about their studies too and often had added pressure from being the first woman in their immediate family to have attended higher education.

> ... women should compete with men fairly, all the time... Except when they want to stop competing and get married.

There are a number of problems with your post, but this one stands out. When a woman marries a man, the competition doesn't end, it's just starting. Many women don't plan to marry well, they plan to divorce well.

Not judging, just saying. Marriage is not the absence of competition, it's competition taken to a new height -- or do I mean depth?

> Is the argument here that women only go to college compete for men?

It doesn't have to mean only. It's not unreasonable to expect that men and women, in the late teens and early twenties, would want to go to college to find people to date. Since when it college just about academics?

Given two colleges, one with a healthy balance of genders and one without, I would except most people would rather go to the healthy-balance college.

Maybe it's just me, then. I know when I was looking at schools I didn't even consider the gender breakdown of the school. It wasn't anywhere near my top concerns - it wasn't even a factor I looked at.

Also, I'm not sure how valid the author's statement actually is. I didn't spend a ton of time researching it, but I was curious. Here are the application numbers for two recent years (couldn't find University of North Carolina):

Boston College | 38.2k -> 41.7k (+9%) Brandeis University | 7.7k -> 8.9k (+15%) New York University | 38k -> 42.2k (+11%) University of Georgia | 17.4k -> 18k (+3%)

Each college continued to receive an increase in applications that was (with the exception of the University of Georgia) on par with other colleges.

If people are still applying to those schools, and they aren't seeing decreased applications, doesn't that mean the whole "tipping point" argument where no one will want to go to those schools is invalid?

Colleges seeing a decrease in enrollment and "no one will want to go" are completely different things. If colleges are worried about it they probably have some market research to back up their worrying. Whether it will end up being true is a completely different story. However even a modest decrease in the percentage of the population going to college would have a huge effect on the money available to universities.

Do you really think 18 year olds (male or female) don't take the social scene into account when deciding which college to attend?

In business you have to know your customers. If you're selling to 18 year olds, you can't ignore dating and sex. Especially if you're asking them to spend most of 4 years of their lives and $100,000.

I thought that was a bit off putting too.

The school I go to is ~75% male and I've overheard women complaining several times about how they wish there were more girls for them to hang out with. I hear pretty much the same thing from the guys, but that is to be expected. Overall, I think most students would prefer a college to have nearly equal amounts of each gender and any imbalance will cause complaints.

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