Newsweek - The Trouble With Boys
This weeks edition of Newseek has a cover article on the declining performance of boys in school titled, “The Trouble with Boys.”
A number of important questions came to mind as I was reading this:
- Is this yet another sign of how our educational system is not meeting the needs of our children (ie. outdated)?
- When will we shift our mindset from solely looking at the student as the problem, and begin to take some responsibility for the fact that maybe the system is just not structured in a way that meets kids’ needs?
- Can technology, in conjunction with updated pedagogy, be a catalyst for the changes needed, especially since boys seem to gravitate toward a high-tech world?
“In elementary-school classrooms—where teachers increasingly put an emphasis on language and a premium on sitting quietly and speaking in turn—the mismatch between boys and school can become painfully obvious.”
I want to say, “Duh!” Is this only ineffective for boys? Or are girls more likely to thrive despite the culture of the classroom?
I’m a student in a public high school, and I can tell you from experience that the current crisis is a combination of the teachers (their personalities, their teaching methods) and the students (disruptiveness, back-talking, not caring at all, and the like).
Technology may work, in the sense that perhaps it would mostly eliminate the teacher, therefore students who actually care about school would truly LEARN the material, on their own. There’s little room for major class disruption if we all had laptops and were independently assigned to learn. It’d motive the majority of the troublemakers to shut the heck up, and, at the same time, the smart people could learn on their own.
It’s simply too hard to MAKE somebody want to learn, if they’re completely set against it.
Posted by on 01/24 at 08:29 AMYou are right, the problem is a combination of teachers and students, but is it a case of the which came first? Too often we are quick to berate the students instead of standing back and reflecting on what we could do better to meet the needs of our constituents. I have seen kids be disrespectful, disruptive and uncaring in one environment and totally opposite, and productive, in another—the right one for them. I think you are correct when you say that we can’t MAKE somebody want to learn, but as educators, we have the obligation to create a culture that will ENCOURAGE everyone to learn.
Posted by Randy on 01/24 at 04:18 PM
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