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I think the character if what is expected of 5 and 6 year olds in UK schools has changed somewhat. Add to that the Early Years / Foundation Stage standards in the national curriculum, and you get the same picture - a tendency towards increased academicalization of small children, and the effective exclusion of open-ended, unstructured play.

It's the same in the US. There's a lot of talk in the US at the moment about providing state-funded preschool. Except that what all the talking heads mean is children sitting in rows filling out worksheets. The claim is that we have to prepare our young people for college success and a globalized world economy by drilling 4-year-olds on sight words.

It's daft, and it's just not supported by the evidence.

(There is actual evidence that says that "academic" programs show an advantage over nothing for children from very deprived backgrounds. My suspicion is that the cause of this effect isn't the early academics, but is the simple fact that these children spend some time away from a poor-quality home environment. Using this data to claim an advantage for early academics over play-based learning is, I think, drawing entirely the wrong conclusion.)

Oh, and it has nothing at all to do with feminism.

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• Gender and Education Association discussion on boys underachievement - which they trace back to John Locke in 1693;
• The Independent on why boys fail at secondary school;
• The Guardian on why girls are being equally failed by an education system that looks as if it is failing boys.

• a attitude that it's not cool or masculine to study - referenced in the Gender & Equality article.
• boys needing more support to deal with set backs (the finding of the article in the Independent) and a structure that provides that support helps boys succeed;
• that girls are being failed by an education system that concentrates on

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  exam success [which] is not so good at developing the equally important skills of experimentation, challenge and risk-taking. It is hard to convey to those without children of exam age just how fact-choked and test-obsessed schools have become. For some boys, the resulting boredom and frustration provokes them to make the "wrong" sort of challenge to the school's authority. But many girls, faced with the same pressures, respond by becoming too compliant.

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  (sorry, forgot to attribute this to the Guardian article above)

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And I still contend that this impacts boys specially-- when we deprive kids of that academic transitional period in which they learn to govern their own bodies and emotions and generally learn how to navigate the necessary but unnatural position we put them-- that of starting life in a large group of developmentally similar peers-- this has a unique impact on boys. it sucks for girls, too, but they can fake it-- boys in general have a harder time mastering impulse control in the early years, and this is what US (and UK! [Frown] so hoping it was different) curriculum exacerbates. Boys in state funded programs that force these inappropriate curricula are stocked with a significant number of boys who start life being told that they suck at pretty much everything-- academics (even though science has told us over and over again young children are not ready for it) and relationships (they are so occupied in being chased around by teachers trying to force then to do things they are not ready to do yet that they don't have time to learn how to relate to their peers in other than aggressive ways).

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Originally posted by no prophet:

I think philosophies of parenting that promote doing whatever a child wants are part of the problem. Such that child does something they shouldn't and the parent talks to them about their needs, de-emphasizing self control and internalization of regulation of behaviour.

All of this said, the range of girls' and boys' achievement overlap for almost all of the range. With the mean differences not that significant.

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:


Personally, I don't agree with this whole trend and I am the mother of a child who was diagnosed with ADHD (and dyspraxia and dyslexia). We worked very hard on parenting, allowing down time, diet and behaviour management rather than medicalisation. (Plus explicit teaching of coping mechanisms for the dyslexia from a tutor and so many gymnastics lessons I trained as an assistant coach)

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Originally posted by no prophet:
It seems that stimulant medication prescriptions - Ritalin, Concerta, Pemoline - are given out rather freely here. The pattern seems to be that school tells parents to investigate ADHD and the parents go to their family physician who gives the medication as a trial often after no real assessment, merely parents' report of what school told them. The frequency of such medication is high.

I think philosophies of parenting that promote doing whatever a child wants are part of the problem. Such that child does something they shouldn't and the parent talks to them about their needs, de-emphasizing self control and internalization of regulation of behaviour.

All of this said, the range of girls' and boys' achievement overlap for almost all of the range. With the mean differences not that significant.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
Snap, and I get an extra point for being female and sciencey.

And Horseman Bree, can you go and contribute some of that on the touch typing thread? My feeling that it is wholly inappropriate for primary children seems to be falling on deaf ears ... or appropriate metaphor.

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
Snap, and I get an extra point for being female and sciencey.

And Horseman Bree, can you go and contribute some of that on the touch typing thread? My feeling that it is wholly inappropriate for primary children seems to be falling on deaf ears ... or appropriate metaphor.

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? The hell?

Most primary kid fingers do not have the kind of reach they need to comfortably do home- row touch-typing.

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Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
He did graduate, and had a successful military career as a sniper and officer, so he was clearly educable and responsible. But the school didn't want any part of it.

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My feeling that it is wholly inappropriate for primary children seems to be falling on deaf ears ... or appropriate metaphor.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I think that primary ed, especially, desperately needs to recruit teachers who themselves did not enjoy or "get" primary school as children. People who will understand why sitting still and writing stories is not an attractive proposition for a lot of children, quite probably especially boys.

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more and more children are being coded as having attention issues and possibly ADHD. A local elementary teacher tells me that at least eight of her twenty-two students have trouble paying attention on a good day....
Children are going to class with bodies that are less prepared to learn than ever before. With sensory systems not quite working right, they are asked to sit and pay attention.... What happens when the children start fidgeting? We ask them to sit still and pay attention; therefore, their brain goes back to “sleep.”

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Ironically, many children are walking around with an underdeveloped vestibular (balance) system today--due to restricted movement. In order to develop a strong balance system, children need to move their body in all directions, for hours at a time. Just like with exercising, they need to do this more than just once-a-week in order to reap the benefits. Therefore, having soccer practice once or twice a week is likely not enough movement for the child to develop a strong sensory system.

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Originally posted by no prophet:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I think that primary ed, especially, desperately needs to recruit teachers who themselves did not enjoy or "get" primary school as children. People who will understand why sitting still and writing stories is not an attractive proposition for a lot of children, quite probably especially boys.

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This was sent to me today. Which suggests that the nature of school itself is a part of the problem.

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more and more children are being coded as having attention issues and possibly ADHD. A local elementary teacher tells me that at least eight of her twenty-two students have trouble paying attention on a good day....
Children are going to class with bodies that are less prepared to learn than ever before. With sensory systems not quite working right, they are asked to sit and pay attention.... What happens when the children start fidgeting? We ask them to sit still and pay attention; therefore, their brain goes back to “sleep.”

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Originally posted by art dunce:
Then why are the Persian, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc kids in my Silicon Valley school immune? Kids here behave, are engaged and work hard from a young age. My husband and I are from families and communities where education is not valued (we are the first in our families to graduate college) and I look at my nieces and nephews and then my kids and their cohort and wonder how to change things.

ETA: I am talking about Public schools

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Originally posted by art dunce:
These kids are born and raised in the US although their parents were not. Most spent early childhood in places throughout the US from Georgia to Wisconsin to Utah or wherever grad schools and entry level jobs exist. Although they eventually made their way to SV many of these kids spent early childhood in university run grad student child care (we did this) and it is not exactly great but is cheap and convenient.

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Originally posted by art dunce:
Then why are the Persian, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc kids in my Silicon Valley school immune?

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Originally posted by Jane R:
Penny S on touch typing:

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My feeling that it is wholly inappropriate for primary children seems to be falling on deaf ears ... or appropriate metaphor.

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Can't believe anyone actually does this... <checks out touch typing thread> Oh, right.

Doesn't make any sense to me. Touch-typing is a mechanical skill that you can learn at any age in a few months if you are determined enough. There are more important things to learn in primary school; if you're going to introduce yet another activity that involves sitting still at a desk for long periods of time, better make sure it's something really enjoyable. If the trend to use tablets and mobiles instead of desktop computers continues, knowing how to touch-type on a computer keyboard may soon be irrelevant anyway. I have yet to encounter a touch-screen that can keep up with my typing speed.

I never fitted into the primary staffroom culture either, and my degree was in linguistics, not science.

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Originally posted by ecumaniac:

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Originally posted by art dunce:
Then why are the Persian, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc kids in my Silicon Valley school immune?

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Er, because they hit them to make them behave. Or they guilt and shame them into towing the line. Or both!

Bonus the drilling of familial obligation, where the parents have sacrificed sooo much for the children they must therefore pay it back by studying what the parents want them to at uni, go into the sort of job that the parents approve of, marry the right sort of person and don't dare move away, because otherwise who else will look after them in their old age? Because after all that's the purpose of having children, right? To fulfil the parents' ambitions and keep them company when they are old?

So yeah, those cultures do value education, but they value a whole lot of other things too. It's a package deal.

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How do we reverse this trend and help boys achieve to their potential?

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Originally posted by Evangeline:

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How do we reverse this trend and help boys achieve to their potential?

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How about single sex education?

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• 4 is far too young for most boys to start formal school
• female teachers at Reception/Year 1 stage tend to be younger and female and see normal boyish behaviour as 'bad' behaviour
• books in reading schemes are very dull and the requirement to keep re-reading turns them off (Oxford reading Tree anyone?)
• simple opportunities to apply learning weren't taken up - for example, playing shops to deal with adding and subtracting
• lessons of an hour are too long and should be broken up into smaller chunks
• for reception and Year 1 the school day needs to be better balanced with longer breaks and a later home time
• children are naturally competitive and weeding out the best runners in the class before sports day 'to give the others a chance' fuels resentment
• let little boys play football, don't expect them to be enthused in a bare playground where they aren't allowed to run

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[t]he driving force behind the series comes from government statistics revealing that boys aged 12 and under are almost six times more likely than girls to be excluded from school.
<snip> ... While some blame the rise on cuts for early years support services, such as Sure Start, Drew points the finger at Ofsted and the Department for Education for promoting exclusion as a useful educational tool. "And the increasing pressure of league tables and Ofsted reports puts pressure on schools to kick more pupils out rather than work with them to improve their behaviour," he adds.

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the processes affecting the social construction of femininity and masculinity. In relation to the social construction of femininity, she argues that many girls of middle school and secondary school age aim to construct feminine identities which emphasise the importance of maturity and a relatively quiet and orderly approach to school life. Girls certainly do take considerable interest in their appearance and may choose to rebel quietly by talking at the back of the class

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Female relative educational improvement has been linked also with the development of a "moral panic" surrounding the alleged development of a so-called UK underclass . It is usual to distinguish between cultural and structural versions of the underclass theory. The cultural version is associated especially with the American New Right theorist Charles Murray who argues that excessive growth of welfare state spending has created a culture of dependency among a new underclass comprising especially single mothers and uneducated , unskilled, poorly paid and often unemployed young men for whom their culture of dependency upon the welfare state has destroyed their capacity to climb out of poverty through their own efforts. The solution, for Murray, is the restriction of welfare state benefits as a means of reactivating personal responsibility and initiative.

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Originally posted by Moo:
When I was in elementary school seventy years ago, our recesses were frequent enough that we could manage to sit reasonably still in the classroom.

School started at 9; morning recess was from 10:15 to 10:30. Lunch was from 12 to 1. (Most of us went home for lunch.) Afternoon recess was from 2:15 to 2:30. School ended at 3:30.

When I felt restless in the classroom, I would think about recess when I could run and scream if I wanted to. Physical education is good, but it's no substitute for whatever a child feels like doing at the moment.

Moo

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since state school starts when you're 4 (in Master Tor's case, only just 4),

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Part of what's happening with the "feminisation of education" is that there simply are a lot more female teachers nowadays because a) the relative value of teachers' pay has fallen over the last quarter century or so and b) IMHO males are less inclined to put up with the kind of didactic crap that teachers are now subject to in terms of how/what to teach. Autonomy used to be one of the big attractions of teaching. No more.

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Oh that article is so full of yes.

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Ironically, many children are walking around with an underdeveloped vestibular (balance) system today--due to restricted movement. In order to develop a strong balance system, children need to move their body in all directions, for hours at a time. Just like with exercising, they need to do this more than just once-a-week in order to reap the benefits. Therefore, having soccer practice once or twice a week is likely not enough movement for the child to develop a strong sensory system.

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