A rchive Date
[ 28-09-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/byfield.html
Boys live by their code
By TED BYFIELD -- Edmonton Sun
September 28, 2003
A growing concern that we no longer know how to educate boys seems to be spreading all over the western world, and with good reason. The drop-out rate for boys is now running anything up to quadruple that of girls, and university enrolments are 60% female. Twenty years ago they were 60% male.
A national argument now rages in the United States between those who favour all-boy and all-girl schools, and feminist lobbies who may favour the latter but never the former. In American education, writes Ellen Wahl for a Web site called Equity Online, "separate has never meant equal. From the first public-free schools, single-sex male schools have had more money, more resources and more status than single-sex female schools."
Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand have commissioned major inquiries to discover why the literacy level of boys has declined so sharply, and why their school performance falls ever farther behind that of girls.
A current American best-seller, Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, by Harvard psychologist Dr. William Pollack, notes that eighth-grade boys are 50% more likely to be held back in school than girls, that two thirds of special-education kids are now male, and that boys received 71% of school suspensions and are 10 times more likely to be diagnosed with various "emotional" problems.
Get rid of the boy code
Whether Dr. Pollack's proposed remedy will make things better or worse, however, is a good question. His solution is to get rid of the "boy code," which requires boys to do things like suffer pain bravely, never cry, be a man, and so on. Boys must be treated more individualistically, he says, shown that learning can be "fun," and that it's OK to show your emotions.
My own conclusions from educating boys - I taught in a boys' school for about 10 years - are somewhat different. Yes, there certainly is a boys' code, and it's plain from history there always has been, in all societies, in all ages.
Yes, it requires boys to be brave, show little emotion, not to tattle-tale, never to cry. It has other stipulations - that they shouldn't pick on little kids, never hit girls, never kick a guy when he's down, help people who aren't able to help themselves, that kind of thing.
It also has higher, more distant requirements - that they be prepared to die for their country, and that they have a responsibility to their family. (Meaning, that if anybody picks a fight with your brother, he has picked a fight with you.) And (if they're Christian) that they never "deny Christ."
All this was the "code," an ancient thing, and perhaps that's why Dr. Pollack wants it scrapped. Like other academics, he begins with the assumption that these hoary old human traditions no longer apply, that the world has moved beyond all that.
Such assumptions, of course, re-shaped the schools that are now demonstrating themselves unable to educate boys. Some call our schools "feminized," with their whole ethos, methodology, disciplinary systems, and curriculum in the arts subjects addressed to a female student.
Boys need structure
Then what do boys need? They need mostly male teachers. They need a highly structured environment with objective examinations and a clear pass-fail grading system in every subject and at frequent intervals.
They need good English courses with an early emphasis on the grammar and the structure of language. They need literature that dwells on human conflict, both inner and outer, and makes them want to laugh, cheer, think and weep.
They need the same courses in maths they're getting now with somewhat more Euclidian geometry because it will teach them that things can be "proved" by reason, and they need good courses in logic to demonstrate that things can be shown true or false.
More than anything else, they need a school that makes them stand up when a teacher enters the room, makes them show up for all the classes all the time, and gauges their progress, not by how they "feel," but by the marks that appear on their report cards.
"Perfect training for the Hitler Youth," the modern educator will sneer. But the historical experience is otherwise.
This kind of structured education produced all the modern democracies. Hitlerism by contrast emerged from the kind of social chaos the same modern educator has produced in our schools.
Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@edm.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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