Results are now coming in from the American education system
which indicate that it is not good to have boys and girls in
the same class.
Experts are now realizing that boys and girls have different
learning styles and classroom needs. As a result, more boys
are failing and being sent for special education classes.
"Boys receive between five and ten times more disciplinary
actions in elementary and middle school than girls do,"
William S. Pollack, an assistant clinical professor in the
Department of Psychology at Harvard University's medical
school, said in a recent interview. "And mostly, we're told
that it is because they are more difficult. My answer is:
it's because the environment is more difficult for them to
attune to."
A report called "Entering Kindergarten: A Portrait of
American Children When They Begin School" released a year ago
by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for
Education Statistics, says that regarding reading skills,
boys soon begin to fall behind girls. Girls and boys have
similar skills overall when they enter kindergarten, but
girls are slightly ahead in reading. According to the report,
more boys experience developmental delays, and "girls are
more pro-social and less prone to problem behaviors."
The NCES also recently reported in the Digest of Education
Statistics in January, 2001, that girls are more able to
stay on task, better able to pay attention and more eager to
learn when they enter kindergarten. But a study released in
the fall of 1999 by the University of Chicago says that by
age four-and- a-half, boys have a better understanding of
spatial relationships than girls do.
A study published last February in the journal Education
and Treatment of Children says that nearly two-thirds of
the students receiving special education services in the
United States are boys.
To study some of the factors that contribute to placement in
special education, researchers reviewed the records of 695
students with mental retardation and specific learning
disabilities from three midsize districts for three school
years, from 1992 to 1995. All of the students were at least
six years old and were new to special education.
The researchers gathered data about gender, reasons for
referral, and the grades of the students when they were
referred to special education, and asked classroom teachers
about the students' behavior, coordination and academic
skills.
Only 2.5 percent of the girls had been referred to special
education because of behavior problems, but 20 percent of the
boys had been referred for that reason. "Boys are more likely
to be referred by regular education teachers, presumably
because they are more disruptive and difficult to manage,"
the study says. The researchers concluded that fewer girls
are referred to special education because girls typically do
not misbehave in classrooms the same way boys do.
However, when boys and girls are separated and given their
own classrooms, performance and achievements improved and the
boys exhibited fewer problems. Kathryn Herr, an associate
professor of education at the University of New Mexico, spent
the 1999-2000 school year studying 1,100 students -- boys and
girls -- who were being educated in separated classrooms. She
found that both boys and girls performed better and felt more
comfortable in their non-coed environments.
One lesson we can derive from these comments is that we need
to customize our approach to children and be aware of whether
we are dealing with boys or girls. The results of the
research will not be surprising to any parent of a large
family. From the very earliest days, we can often see the
differences in behavior between boys and girls.
However, often, in the education system, the standards of
behavior of girls is taken as the norm.
Researchers report that "According to the report, more boys
experience developmental delays" and that "Girls are more pro-
social and less prone to problem behaviors." This means that
they are setting the girls' achievements as the standard and
judging boys as compared to girls. However, if we give boys
their own standards, then the results will be different.
Boys are boys. They have a different rate of development to
that of girls. For example, by nature, they are more physical
in their play, have a shorter attention span and pay less
attention to detail. Boys tend to be more aggressive in their
attitude to their learning and enjoy arguments and throwing
out ideas. Typically, a boy's handwriting is less neat than
that of a girl.
This means that a boy might be labeled as ADD or ADHD or
dysgraphic according to the standards of a girl, but he might
be within the norm for a boy.
So, a well-organized girls' school might fit in with our
ideas of what a school should be like. But when we walk into
a cheider or a yeshiva, we should not be surprised if
it seems to be noisy and the lessons less structured.
Boys have different needs than girls and we need to relate to
them.
