Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by PebblesRox » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:55 AM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #63

altcognito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google homeschooling resources, and begin talking to the homeschooling groups in your local area. Homeschooling has a network of families that support each other generally. It's the easiest and best way to get started. Plus, you'll get a lot of guidance on what resources are good and which are a waste of time.

Having been homeschooled, this is a great suggestion. It's pretty easy to get too isolated, and homeschooling groups help a lot. Also check with your local schools - I was able to take 2 classes while still being classified as 'homeschooled', for free (since it's part of taxes already), which can give access to tools that are otherwise way too expensive.

I'm so jealous! My parents homeschooled me for nine years, but put me in public high school because they weren't sure how to teach language classes and science labs effectively, and they wanted me to have more opportunities for social development. I was miserable and ignored the opportunities for gaining social confidence until college (when I finally put effort into making friends and realized what I'd been missing out on).

I wish I could have gone your route; it seems like you got the best of both worlds! Oh well, I know what to look into for my own kids : )

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

#192

Post by kenster07 » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 4:02 AM UTC

-This article strikes a chord with me. I remember I was placed a year ahead in math, in Algebra I Honors, and the class was so easy that I would bring little toys into class and play with them while still getting A's. The teacher, a female, sent me back to Pre-algebra as a result. In hindsight, that reaction was so patently absurd. If anything, she should have tested whether I should have advanced to Geometry Honors.

-I don't think anyone is surprised that the article claims that boys perform better under conditions which simulate actual adult workplace conditions.

-A bigger issue is really the education system targeting the median student. That means those students with the highest potential have to fight against the system to reach it -- if they ever reach it at all. And holding back the brightest people, when the economy is advanced by that small percent of bright people, sounds horribly ineffective.

This educational system is an artificial structure imposed on people with disparate learning capabilities, trying to fit every peg under the sun into a square hole, and I think we've missed out on a lot of value because of that.

Hopefully, as automation increases, this is something we'll be able to improve upon.

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

#193

Post by artsrc » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 4:15 AM UTC

swamp40 wrote: post #177

I have a 6 year old daughter in a Montessori school. After a class observation I noticed the teacher spent a significant portion of her time just dealing with a few rambunctious boys, while all the girls in the class worked quietly. Afterwards, I asked the teacher why they just didn't separate the boys from the girls, since they were obviously two different species at that age (at all ages?) It seemed to me that a cl…

> a few rambunctious boys

As the parent of a less rambunctious boy, I believe that discrimination should be on the basis of behavior, not gender.

> The classroom dynamic was an absolute necessity to the healthy social upbringing of each.

I think that it is great to have everyone learn to work together, but I don't think it has to be all the time.

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

#194

Post by xiaoma » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 4:16 AM UTC

As a long-time teacher in multiple countries, I've also had this concern. I realize it's a fairly heretical belief to hold on this site but I think boys are systematically discriminated against in most western societies.

As a child that teachers (nearly all women) tended to be biased against boys and downright dismissive of male dominated interests such as science fiction, video games or arm-wrestling. Talking with students in recent years, I get the impression that my teachers were actually more tolerant of boys than most current K12 teachers are. Invariably boys get punished more severely for similar infractions, boys are more likely to be forced onto medication and more likely to receive "tough love" in the face of academic difficulties.

Compounding this is that even in this day and age when there's nearly a 3-2 ratio of females to males in college, it's the boys who get fewer grants, fewer sex-specific support organizations and less support in general. This chasm continues, even for mid-career adults. Many organizations provide women with free training in various fields, including tech (see Railsbridge, Women Who Code, etc) and allow men only as guests of women at all. In fact the amazingly good hacker school I went to charges men $2000 more than women.

Things probably still seem okay at this point due to the fact that the trends have gradually been getting more extreme and the educational imbalances weren't so bad 15-30 years ago, when much of the workforce was in formal schooling. But the swelling ranks of disenfranchised young men is a demographic that isn't going to be good news for anyone, including women.

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

#195

Post by unmei » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 4:37 AM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #117

tokenadult wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is an interesting comment, but none of it is responsive to the submitted article's concern about differences between boys and girls in school. I have actually lived in another country, and I am aware by direct observation that that country has BOTH higher academic achievement by school pupils than the United States and pervasive recess periods during the school day when young children get outdoors and exercise.…

I have to second this. For instance, everyone in education and policy circles these days is talking about Finnish education. Besides the fact that Finnish schools make sure every student eats enough and teachers have a lot of autonomy to shape lessons to student needs, students get something like 50 minutes of recess at lunch and less formal breaks every hour or so during the day. The school days are often shorter, t…

I don't know how familiar you all are with the Montessori method, but I spent Preschool through 5th grade in one and it worked out quite well for me. Basically I had a list of things that needed to get done every week, so I would get them done on Monday and spend the rest of the week researching lasers, learning BASIC in the computer lab, etc.

I think unstructured learning time is hugely lacking in the traditional school setting.

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

#196

Post by DrewRWx » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 4:55 AM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #125

jsnk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>instead they all cheat, bribe the teacher, etc. This is wrong. Sure there are stories of Chinese students, parents and teachers cheating the system, but keep in mind that China is a country of whopping 1.3 billion people.

Just this past week they had a riot because some poor teachers tried to crack down on cheating.

The justification for the protests was that the crackdown was a "pilot program" that only affected a small portion of students.

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

#197

Post by Alex3917 » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 5:11 AM UTC

gthrowaway wrote: post #171

Alex3917 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Any good books on this you'd recommend?

Books are tricky since the required funding/publicity tends to mean that only people with reactionary/highly-conservative viewpoints can break into that, and come with their own views on why we have this gap and how to address it. Mostly this is something you'll find in academic articles and published statistics. The US Department of Education's June 2012 report on gender equity is a decent starting point: http://www…

Reading this stuff now, thanks for the links!

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

#198

Post by barry-cotter » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 5:18 AM UTC

speeder wrote: post #163

pinaceae wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many teachers in the past were men? I went to primary school in the 80ies (Austria) and had only female teachers. Which completely sucks as those women do. not. understand. young boys. Any natural behavior by young girls is good, any natural behavior by boys is distracting. You can't do that ad nauseum. My step-son, 10years, had a male teacher for 3 years. What an amazing difference that makes. It's a mixture of…

Teaching became a female job around the early 1900s, but I don't remember why now... I need to find it again. I once had a male teacher when I was 12 or something like that, he managed to engage both male and female students with pure awesomeness. Also when male students had a problem, this teacher was the automatic go-to one. Later during the end years of the school, I went to a elite one focused to get people into…

What country are you from?

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

#199

Post by embolism » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 5:40 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #184

embolism wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that anywhere. I believe it should be possible to design school experiences that can meet a wide variety of needs. If the other commenter needs a quiet environment where he/she can listen to a lecture, that should be available without forcing those for whom it is unsuited to be there too.

Sure you did, up there where you said "it's only disruptive...". That is saying you want school optimised for other people's needs (perhaps not yours, specifically). The tone of the comment ("industrial age") indicates that you think it's broken and needs to change.

Wrong. I do think school is broken and needs to change, however nowhere did I say that it should be optimized for my needs at the original commenters expense.

Have you not considered the possibility that a school could be optimized for more than one set of needs at the same time?

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

#200

Post by icelancer » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 6:10 AM UTC

T-hawk wrote: post #105

joonix wrote: post #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…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education The Montessori approach has some similarities to what you propose, and is probably about as close as you can get in current American education. Not outdoors or all-boys, but otherwise it's structured largely as you propose, with time divided between direct instruction in academic subjects and free-form exploration. Kids are free to roam the classroom and pick up whate…

Yeah, the more I read about this stuff as well as our excellent public education system, the more I realize I will strongly consider putting my son into Montessori schools.