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Page 1 of 4 ‘The trouble with boys’Author gives ideas on why boys don’t do as well in schoolStory and Photos by Brad Buck | The Free Press
It sounds like a catchy phrase, but The Trouble with Boys is the title of a book by Peg Tyre, an investigative reporter who, for years, researched why boys do not generally perform as well as girls in school.
Her instincts as a reporter led her to dig deep into data about what teaching and learning methods work for boys and girls.
Tyre spoke to a standing-room only crowd at the Santa Fe County school board meeting room Monday night. She also sold and signed copies of her book.
Her intensive research told Tyre many things: - Boys get expelled from preschool at four times the rates of girls.
- They are prescribed the lion’s share of ADHD medication.
- They get most of the C’s and D’s in middle school, and they drop out of high school more than girls.
- Currently, only 43 percent of college undergraduates in the United States are men.
Why the negative numbers?
“Being good in school is considered girly (to boys),” Tyre said. Their teachers are mostly women, and they often become disengaged. In particular, boys see reading as “girly,” because most of the books students read focus on females, she said. Boys are aggressive. They fantasize about more male things, like killing people, but as heroes, not as villains, she said. They want to read books like The Gas We Pass and The Adventures of Captain Underpants.
Teachers must walk a fine line when dealing with boys who want to write about violence and valor. They’ll write a narrative about one of their fairly violent fantasies, and their teacher will likely say, “that’s not appropriate,” and the boy gets the message that, “you can’t be yourself in that classroom.”
Further, boys come to school with less nurturing toward reading and with a more limited vocabulary, Tyre said.
A common notion used to be that boys performed better in math and science and girls did better in language arts and history. That’s changing, and boys are now falling farther behind in reading and writing, Tyre said.
“There’s this giant gender gap, and nobody’s talking about it,” she said.
And let’s face it, Tyre said, boys love to play video games. That’s not all bad, she said. People can learn by playing video games. If that’s the case, educators might consider using the games.
Another area where most boys do not excel is organization. Academic grades are so often tied to organizational skills, she said. So some schools give separate grades for students’ competency in a subject and for their organizational skills, Tyre said, a concept she applauds.
“Why are they so into video games? Well, they can win,” she said.
In the final analysis, Tyre said, in helping boys learn, “We don’t get there by ignoring the very real struggles of schoolboys.”
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