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Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

theatlantic.com

31–40 of 227 posts

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#31
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son's classroom has employed smaller versions of exercise balls to keep some of the kids focused (including my own). It's interesting to observe. The kids are fidgety and restless while sitting, but when you sit them on one of these the subconscious motor control going on seems to quell the foreground restlessness.

Maybe it's a metabolism thing? If they're used to burning calories a a certain rate, homeostasis will cause their bodies to seek to maintain that rate. Fidgeting burns a lot of calories. Maybe tensing up core muscles for balance fills that need?

[deleted]

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to your classmates "all the time" has very clear potential to be highly disruptive to the teacher and other students' ability to learn. Significantly different from just fidgeting.

But yet it may have been what he needed at that stage in his cognitive and social development. It's only disruptive to a disciplinarian, industrial age approach to education.

And what of the needs of the other kids in the room, who might need to be able to hear what the teacher is saying?

A whispered request for clarification on something the teacher just said is one thing. 15 separate conversations about the latest Call of Duty and who made out with whom while the teacher tries to explain material is disruptive.

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#33
post #13
post #3

Yeah , stop trying to teach kids discipline, especially when there is none at home ...

And yet if you work in an office the Health and Safety advice is to change position frequently and take regular breaks to standup, stretch and walk around. Sitting still for an hour is unpleasant and unhealthy.

This is almost completely unrelated to problems of children disrupting a class, not complying with requests, not listening, etc. Which are real issues. These are not strictly moral issues, but we are screwing kids over if we don't try to help them learn these skills in some compassionate and effective way, and we are screwing over all the other kids in a class when we do nothing about disruptions. What a kid wants right in this moment is not always what is best for the kid in the long term, even more often not what is best for other kids.

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#34
post #24

Although I was a generally calm student (I am introverted and not into causing mayhem or attracting attention), I never copied from the blackboard, don't did my homework, slept during classes, or instead kept drawing, or later writing ASM code or toying with physics formulas, or I just outright spent my time chatting about video games with whoever was nearby. Every time I had a new teacher, my parents were called int…

Ah, to have grown up in an education system where homework and in-class participation aren't counted as some huge part of the grade!

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But yet it may have been what he needed at that stage in his cognitive and social development. It's only disruptive to a disciplinarian, industrial age approach to education.

And what of the needs of the other kids in the room, who might need to be able to hear what the teacher is saying? A whispered request for clarification on something the teacher just said is one thing. 15 separate conversations about the latest Call of Duty and who made out with whom while the teacher tries to explain material is disruptive.

Teaching doesn't have to be organized as a lecture from the front. For how many of those other kids is it optimal? Alternative styles have been around for decades. It doesn't take much to learn about them if you just Google a bit.

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#36
post #3

Yeah , stop trying to teach kids discipline, especially when there is none at home ...

Aside from the flippant tone, I sort of agree with the point...judging by the habits that I see a lot of millenials exhibiting in the workplace, the general breakdown of discipline in primary education over the last 2-3 decades has not served students well in the classroom or on the job. I think it has mostly to do with "helicopter parenting" ("WHAT? My kid is not the problem, you are!") ... where teachers used to be able to count on parents backing them up, they mostly just complain and try to get the teacher fired for disciplining the kid - ergo, the teacher either has to give up instilling discipline in their classroom (thereby hurting the education of every other kid in the class) or resign themselves to spending a huge amount of time fighting parents instead of focusing on their lessons and having their career hurt as a result...it's a catch-22 for teachers.

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#37

One of the guiding objectives of the current cohort of education thought leaders is to focus on girls. So, we're focusing on girls. Boys, time for your pills. My personal goal is to figure out how to make enough money to keep my children out of the insanity of public schools.

My personal goal is to figure out how to make enough money to keep my children out of the insanity of public schools. It doesn't necessarily take a lot of money to homeschool children. (Been there, still doing that.) It does take agreement among the parents about what lifestyle adjustments each parent is willing to make so that children have flexibility in their learning. My oldest son, now a programmer working for a…

I find it peculiar that you regularly cite scientific studies of this and that, and yet you are using this terribly misleading, n-of-1 implication that home schooling is why your oldest son has the success he has. Do you really think that children cannot do exactly the same thing coming out of a public school, and if so, why?

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#38

As a youth, I was only able to sit still by focusing on sitting still. If I was paying attention to the teacher, I was fidgeting, and would be told to pay attention...

They gave me silly putty to harness my fidgeting. I soon discovered silly putty can be made into a bouncy ball, that I could use to distract everyone.

Well done Sir.

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#39
post #24

Although I was a generally calm student (I am introverted and not into causing mayhem or attracting attention), I never copied from the blackboard, don't did my homework, slept during classes, or instead kept drawing, or later writing ASM code or toying with physics formulas, or I just outright spent my time chatting about video games with whoever was nearby. Every time I had a new teacher, my parents were called int…

Ah, to have grown up in an education system where homework and in-class participation aren't counted as some huge part of the grade!

class participation and whatnot counted, and I had not a problem with that, when a teacher asked a direct question and I was not sleeping deeply enough (if I was half-sleeping and heard the question I woke up) I would usually be the first to reply.

Only later I figured this was bad idea (here in Brazil at least, the norm is to noone ever try to reply to the teacher, as a kind of weird social convention, and since I always replied, even while half-asleep, I quickly attracted negative attention, I was frequently involved in fights I did not started with the less performing boys... also girls sometimes pulled some horrible stuff, like spreading rumors or attempt to frame me)

Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School

#40
Are there any private all-boys[1] schools that embrace this side of childhood? Look at tiger cubs and what not: they play, they bounce around, they fight, they figure out the world around them through investigation and exploration.

I spent so much of my time outside as a kid, but I also spent a lot of time inside on the computer. Both were amazing worlds where your imagination could run wild; especially in the early days of computers and the internet... being a part of a "wild west" frontier at the age of 10 was a special privilege.

My point is that learning and running around in the mud are both very valuable and can be balanced to create well-rounded people who have confidence with technology and the outdoors.

Has any institution figured out how to balance these two in a formal curriculum? Spend half the day exploring the woods and classifying wildflowers, the other half back inside working with math formulae and reading lessons.

Some might say there's not enough time in the day to spend half of it outside, but I disagree. The kids will be more efficient in their inside learning time if they've spent half the day learning outside.

[1] I'm not saying that girls wouldn't appreciate the same type of learning. I suspect that in an environment that harvests the physical energy (horseplay, outdoors activities) of boys to improve learning, even in a positive and productive manner, might alienate some young girls who might feel uncomfortable, so perhaps it's better to separate the genders in this sort of environment?

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