Thread: Boys underachievement in education Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
This is a spin off from this hell thread which started with challenging an assertion that it education policies were the fault of feminism.

Leorning Cniht said:
quote:
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.
The discussion continued further to where Kelly got into a couple of posts on pre-school education policies here and here

I also work in education, with students who have fallen out of schools, trying to provide them with support and qualifications. The service I work for mainly works with boys and mainly older teenagers, all on high tier intervention programmes. Some are on the sex offenders register so cannot be put into school settings, some are in care, some have made sexual allegations, some are school refusers, but there's a whole raft of reasons and complications - so I'm permanently interested in this area.

When I looked for references there were a number of recent articles:


Yes we are failing boys, and it seems as if the same features that are driving the rape culture for women are causing the boys failures:


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

[ 08. June 2014, 12:31: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Thanks for bringing up the institutionalized compliance of girls, I kept hinting that early childhood practices hurt them, too, but wanted to focus in boys. While boys are punished for their failure to control impulses they aren't allowed to master, girls can" fake it" through inappropriate curricula by mimicking the teacher or simply quietly detaching. We reward girls for being quiet and uninvolved.

Girls with Aspergers, ADD, and other learning disabilities are sometimes diagnosed very late, because their symptoms are hose of withdrawal rather than acting out.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
And here's part of what I said on the referenced thread, just to get the ball rolling:

quote:

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).

 
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
The medicalisation of behaviour is 'nother whole can of worms. I worked with someone who felt that if we had to do that to get boys an education then so be it. Because the real solutions: parenting classes and support, early years teaching of play and socialisation, classrooms that allowed boys to be more active was too hard.

I read an article, Why French kids don't have ADHD (Psychology Today) saying that ADHD does not exist in France because those things are put in place rather than drugs.

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)
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
quote:
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.
You will never hear a developmentalist promoting that kind of talk. Appropriate challenges and expectations demonstrate respect for a child's capabilities. Connecting the dots between a child's personal needs and the similar needs of their peers is exactly the ideal goal of Early Childhood education. They need to just learn how to treat each other.

The key word is appropriate-- if you translate what you just said about "regulation of behavior" to sitting down at a table and plodding your way through an inappropriately academic project- wrong.

The two primary goals of ECE are 1. Socialization and 2. the kind of sensory- motor stimulation and general life-skill building that brain development is begging for at that age. From a brain development perspective, the way the US handles ECE is like putting pasta in cold water. We say, "Hey, we gotta get that pasta in as soon as possible, faster than anybody!" and neglect the fact that heating the water is necessary-- and takes time.


Our desire for quicker results are not going to trump the way the brain develops-- evolution has had 2 million+ years to perfect its progress. We need to work with the brain, not try to work around it.

[ 08. June 2014, 17:43: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
quote:
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)
Neph was diagnised ASDD, and he was lucky enough to get a primary care doc who recommended behavior modification-- basically instead of madication him he gave the adults in his life a perscription for how to treat him appropriately.

When I looked at the list of suggestions Sis got for behavior mod-- he was diagnosed at age 8, I think-- I thought, holy crap, this kind of disciplinary technique is pretty much Standard Operating Procedure for preschool teachers-- giving directions one at a time instead of in a big lump, phrasing a direction toward a positive goal rather than just saying "don't do X..."

It's not the kids who need fixing. it's us.
 
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :
 
quote:
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.
Are you sure, no prophet? I'm not familiar with the Canadian situation, but thought the gap was a lot more significant than that. Certainly here in the UK it is much more than could be explained by statistical differences of overlapping means. I could probably dig out some figures, but I suspect existing contributors may have the stats more readily to hand.
 
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
Heres a link: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-004-x/200410/7423-eng.htm. It doesn't discount the issue, but I confess I overstated above.

Re meds: our local health authority informed on this morning news that we have 7 months wait for counselling services whilst family physician is quick. I think there is a core group who need medication but another group that doesn't get separated from that and also gets meds.
 
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
In my own observation, the problem for boys shows up quite early: they don't develop some skills as fast as the girls.

The ability to sit and draw or colour or write for long (to them) periods of time. The toning-down of active movement of all sorts. Language skills. Mechanical coordination, such as holding a pencil

And their social development lags by a bout a year at school-entry time.

So they act out more than the (usually-female) teacher wants, so they are warned/silenced/punished more often.

Then they realise that the girls are ahead of them, and that the girls will be preferred by the teacher for that reason.

And, all too soon, they realise that the school system is set up against them, so: "Why bother?"

This gets added into the mix imposed by their older siblings or by the adults: "Boys will be boys" (not in the rape sense, just in the acting-out sense) "Boys don't need to read, they just DO stuff" All those stereotypes that people here will pooh-pooh because their little darlings were GOOD. But you aren't typical of the run of the mill.

Classic case in point: 8-y.o. boy gets in trouble in class, because he doesn't want to colour AGAIN. Parent talks to teacher. "But he won't sit still!" Parent: "Give him a chess set, then he and another boy won't bother you" T: "But he won't be doing what the others are doing!"

This was an intelligent, active boy, who could concentrate on something like chess. But he learned that the system would not tolerate his enthusiasm, and signed out mentally at about age 11. 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.

Similarly for the mechanically-minded. "no, we won't have "shop" classes. Everything is going to be done on computer" But who then will learn from the tradesmen around him and become the guy who fixes your things? We lost an entire generation of boys on that one, before some sense was put back into the system, and we still drive boys into boredom before we allow for mechanical aptitude at age 15.

Teachers are actively afraid of people who have mechanical aptitude, largely because so many teachers are mechanically incompetent themselves. (and don't get me started on the teachers who are math-phobic!)

Whatever. Rant over. Make what you will of it. I'm just working on 50 years of observation in schools.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
[Gross Generalisation Alert]

I did a degree in primary ed. My specialised subject was science. In an intake of about 100 of us, there were six science specialists. The vast majority were doing English as their specialism.

Primary Ed. attracts a particular type. I really, really struggled with the staffroom culture because I wasn't of this type. It's really hard to explain, but for me, as a sciency, techy, nerdy oddball, I found very little meeting of minds between me and existing and other prospective primary school teachers, especially those outside the science specialism. The same failure to connect that I felt as a child, to be honest. Everything was so painfully conventional. So nice. So about being a Good Little Boy/Girl. Caring more about how neat my writing wasn't (and still isn't) than how I was pouring out my knowledge of the Solar System.

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.

[ 12. June 2014, 11:02: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
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.

[ 12. June 2014, 14:22: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Karl and Bree-- wonderful.


Stories from the front:

1. Years ago I worked in a Head Start class (I am going to call them out as having the least appropriate classroom I have seen in the bay Area)and the teacher there decided to call the kids to circle-time by gender. The girls were called to the circle shapes carpet first, they sat sown on their taped mane tags and waited "criss -cross applesauce" (
[Roll Eyes] ) The boys were called. They gamboled over, rolled onto the carpet, flung themselves on their little pieces of tape, but at the end of it each boy butt was on a piece of tape. I genuinely was impressed, so I enthused "Good job! You all are sitting down!"

The teacher snapped"GOOD JOB!? The did not walk NICELY!Did you see how nicely the girls walked??" She full=-on said that! And made all those reasonably obeying boys get up and come over to her and practice walking nicely.

Oh, by the way, this was a group of three year olds.

2. Almost a repeat of the above-- last week I worked in another Head Start classroom and the teacher was presenting an inappropriate flashcard activity. The class was mostly boys with about three girls. To me, the girls clearly hated the dumb, teacher directed activity as much as anyone, but they had learned to parrot back what she wanted so they could go do what they were really interested in.

After an attempt at group response to the dumb activity, the teacher dismissed the girls to go play, and sat the boys to repeat the activity because they "weren't listening" (all but three-- one boy who had actually been reciting the rote script the whole time the teacher had been yelling at the other boys-- I pointed this out to her-- and two boys with obvious LD who desperately needed a shadow and didn't have one, and who fled the dumb activity the minute they saw it. The teacher expected them to "sit nicely in the book area" during circle. These two boys rarely if ever participate in a corporate experience.

Oh and the girls were the oldest in the class- almost five. The rest of the boys who were being scolded for their lack of control were aged early 3- early 4 years old. They were LITTLE.

I identify with Karl about feeling out of step in most places-- not only am I a science nerd, I believe teaching is a science, and I approach it that way. I read up, I study brain development, and I develop curricula and classroom experience based on the best of what I know to be the way children learn.

Again I am going to call HS out as a place where teachers are not supported in acting like educational scientists-- while the needs and abilities of preschool children are demonstrably different than those of primary school kids, the pressure in America is fierce to make preschool conform to primary practices and standards.So preschool becomes a factory of educational product. Teachers in this position become less involved in the unique abilities and passions of their students, and become more focused on how they themselves are being evaluated, by the impossible standards.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
quote:
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.
? The hell?

Most primary kid fingers do not have the kind of reach they need to comfortably do home- row touch-typing.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
quote:
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.
? The hell?

Most primary kid fingers do not have the kind of reach they need to comfortably do home- row touch-typing.
Go and read. Apparently by not teaching it I have been depriving them forever of an essential skill. (Not just the reach, the coordination.)
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Nonsense. Do we teach kids cursive the minute they pick up a pen? Allowing them to hunt and peck the keyboard for a good space of time allows them to get a good mental map of the keyboard itself, so that when touch typing comes, they have an idea of where the keys are.

But this will probably derail the thread, so I will copy this exchange there.
 
Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :
 
quote:
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.
The school should so totally invite him back to speak to the boys about how they too can become snipers. They'll listen to that.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
And I've just read your description of the Govian idiocies in that class. These people should not be allowed near children ever! And as a spinster teacher, myself, especially that sort of spinster teacher, who doesn't like children, and doesn't remember what it is like to be a child.

I wish I could remember the whole of the story a good friend told me about the teacher he and his class met while moving around the school he had moved to. Her class all silent and nun-like, his full of enthusiasm and talk. And she told them off in front of him. Something along the lines of "Now we'll show Mr Hadley's class how classes walk around this school, won't we?" and the smug little dears smiling smugly. He could remember being a child.

I remember realising that some of my teachers at the tech had gone through this childhood eradication procedure at some point, and determined that I never would. And I didn't. But I never spotted the occasion when I had the choice to go the other way. (It might, I suppose, have been during my ghastly final teaching practice when I was, apparently, given some simple advice I refused to follow. But didn't actually notice being given.)
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
I should add that I dropped out of gaining qts in my final year, such was the obvious disconnect. So the system as it exists (and I can only imagine it getting worse with more on the job initial teacher training) actively excludes anyone who isn't being created in the image of the existing.

Of course, I may just have been a crap potential teacher, so pinch of salt, natch.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
My college thought I was one of those. But they were wrong. Wrong, I tell you. Lovely young men come up and tell me I was the best teacher they ever had.... Which doesn't speak well of all the others. (And, of course, ignores all the others who don't do so. But they don't troll on Friendsreunited, either.)
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Penny S on touch typing:
quote:
My feeling that it is wholly inappropriate for primary children seems to be falling on deaf ears ... or appropriate metaphor.
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.
 
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
quote:
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.
This was sent to me today. Which suggests that the nature of school itself is a part of the problem.

quote:
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.”

 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Yup. We are basically reaping the fruits of about 30 or so years of really inappropriate educational standards.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Oh that article is so full of yes.

quote:
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.

 
Posted by art dunce (# 9258) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
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.
This was sent to me today. Which suggests that the nature of school itself is a part of the problem.


quote:
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.”
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

[ 12. June 2014, 16:24: Message edited by: art dunce ]
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
I actually spoke to one of the teachers in that class I was describing while no one was there and mentioned some of the inappropriate expectations-- she was griping, I had an in-- and she sighed, "but the parents want to see them doing educational things!"

It is our job as teachers to educate the public about what constitutes adequate education. It is up to us to explain things like "the vestibular system" to parents and how that has an effect on how a kid can concentrate, on the difference between writing and pre-writing, on the necessity for language fluency before we graduate to text learning. My experience in several school tells me that either the teachers in the class are not educating themselves adequately enough to support such conversations, or the leadership at the school does not support the teachers in their attempts to have those conversations.

it's frustrating-- every ECE teacher in California takes the same courses I did to get their credential, we are all taught the same things about appropriate practice. We simply don't have enough people holding the line-- and it starts at the very top. Education leaders seemingly will listen to any congress critter with a school voucher agenda over what developmentalists have to say.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
quote:
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
In all of those countries, preschool is handled more or less appropriately. That's why they are immune, They were given time to practice working their vestibule system.

I had someone ask me a similar question about Japan's preschool system, and it lead me to some fascinating articles-- I can track them down when I have time, but basically it turns out that what Japanese schools call kindergarten is more like what American preschools are like-- they really do respect the early growth of the child, ease the child into academic experience gradually, and that does translate into later academic success. I can track down the articles later if you want, but that's what it boils down to- nations that give appropriate respect to the very special needs of early childhood turn out kids that excel in later academic experience.

[ 12. June 2014, 16:33: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
 
Posted by art dunce (# 9258) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
Far too many teachers (and whole schools) do not respect kids in the first place. Kids are just the input to a production system, along the lines of Henry Ford style pug in the right part and eventually you get a middling product with no personality (while ignoring the growing junk pile out back)

Any trace of personality must be removed, surgically if necessary.

OTOH, I'm not sure that home-schooling is any better. The parents don't know enough to be able to teach, the books are mass-produced for the specific market (usually religious, and therefore incomplete) and the kids are driven frantic by having to deal with the same family all day every day. But then I am being biased by the news of this week, in which the shooter and his friend, the threaten-to-kill-police guy, were both home-schooled by strongly-religious parents and are puzzled that anyone might think them wrong or weird or whatever.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Sorry I missed that you are talking about Silicon Valley. Preschools in that area tend to be privately run and therefore the teachers are free to create appropriate curriculum that is not constrained by Title 22 funding standards. They are some of the best schools, curriculum wise, in California. It's the subsidized childcare centers that got hit hardest with inappropriate curriculum requirements.

In fact, Palo Alto is one of the few public school districts in the nation that has a project-based approach ( basically emergent translated to primary school). this curriculum standard was supported and championed by educational pedagogues at nearby Stanford. SO basically, in affluent, education -rich areas the standards for all grades are going to be a lot more appropriate, and that is going to translate intl better classroom behavior.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
quote:
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.
If Stanford CDC is an example, they are a state model for appropriate practice. They practice emergent based curriculum (Reggio Emilia version, I believe) and focus on total development. Stanford put a high premium on making the standards excellent because they have a reputational stake in the results.

[ 12. June 2014, 16:57: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
In fact, I will add that most of the preschools I have worked at that are run by universities or community colleges are absolutely kick-ass-- because they have the education department to oversee practices. when you put the actual experts in the driving seat, things work.

Also, a lot of them wind up being lab schools to train new teachers in practicum-- so they have to be on the top of their game.

[ 12. June 2014, 17:04: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Sorry one more thing about Silicon Valley-- a lot of the tech businesses out there have onsite childcare offered at a reasonable rate to their employees. Google, for instance, has a fine CDC which was designed by a team of Reggio Emilia experts-- one of my former bosses was one of them. Geokids in Mountain View-- exact same story (they serve the California Geological Survey). Also, a lot of other tech compounds have onsite childcare provided by franchise companies like Bright Horizons or Children's Choice Learning Centers, both of which are emergent and socio-emotional development based. You will simply not find these kids being made to do things that kids in your average Head Start in Downtown SF are made to do.

[ 12. June 2014, 17:17: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
 
Posted by ecumaniac (# 376) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by art dunce:
Then why are the Persian, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc kids in my Silicon Valley school immune?
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.
 
Posted by Alex Cockell (# 7487) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Penny S on touch typing:
quote:
My feeling that it is wholly inappropriate for primary children seems to be falling on deaf ears ... or appropriate metaphor.
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.
In offices, there'll still be keyboards - thin clients have those...

You know.

Terminals.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by ecumaniac:
quote:
Originally posted by art dunce:
Then why are the Persian, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc kids in my Silicon Valley school immune?
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.
I don't think that is quite fair. I have worked in many, many SV preschools and have never got any strong feelng that any of the demographics mentioned are any more or less inclined to physical discipline than Anglo Americans.

To me, art dunce's question can be boiled down to "Why is it the kids in the most educationally* rich sector of the state perform so well?" and my answer is "The answer is contained in the question." See the posts above for my rationale.

* note I am saying "educationally rich," not "materially rich." Silicon Valley is just lucky enough to have a lot of actual scientists and education leaders on their school boards.

[ 14. June 2014, 01:22: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
 
Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :
 
quote:
How do we reverse this trend and help boys achieve to their potential?
How about single sex education?
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
quote:
How do we reverse this trend and help boys achieve to their potential?
How about single sex education?
That's an interesting point - IIRC, girls do better academically when educated in a single sex environment, while boys do better when mixed.

From my experience in a primary school, the monomaniacal emphasis on numeracy and literacy means that, while most lessons can be interesting, the cumulative effect of them is simply soul-crushing. And that's just from helping deliver the material. There's so very little time for the rest of the curriculum - sport, art, history, geography, science, IT, music, PHSE, languages - most pupils won't get even a regular hour of those a week, out of all the hours of teaching time.

If you are smart and can read, write and do sums, it's still tedious. If you find it difficult, it's hell. And a lot of it - the base stuff that you have to be able to do in order to do well at them - is sitting still and quiet for long periods of time and being coordinated enough to use a pen or pencil. You can teach that, but since state school starts when you're 4 (in Master Tor's case, only just 4), the teaching of everything else is going to be dependent on it.

The upshot is, you label the kids who can sit still and quiet and hold a pencil as intelligent and hardworking, no matter what. Those who can't are disruptive and slow to learn, and those labels stick. We value sitting still and being quiet and holding a pencil over and above everything else.
 
Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Yep. And the teachers are given soul crushing jobs ( as Doc Tor aptly describes) crap pay, and a lot of them invest only as much thought and study in educational theory as they need to pass their credentialing requirements. They therefore reward the kids that give them the least headache and suppress the ones that give them the most work. I said somewhere else, it's almost like we are training them to see women as the enemy.
 
Posted by Alex Cockell (# 7487) on :
 
Hmm - a far cry from then going home and learning maths from Johnny Ball...

Sample BBC Think of a Number episode.

God - I remember how we had teachers who knew their stuff and enthused...

Youtube lookup for other TOAN eps.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
I've read this with interest and spoken to the sons about their experience of school - much more recent than mine! What they've highlighted is
Granted, that is pretty subjective but I'm sure it will strike some chords.

After Year 2 we hauled them out of the state system and sent them to a small prep school where they thrived: the school day was much longer but with longer breaks, there was sport or PE every day, they were taught sport by a specialist teacher, there was a competitive house system, and the staff were 50-50 male/female.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
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
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
I mentioned on the Mass Murder and Guns thread that I was hoping to catch up on Mr Drew's School for Boys, a Channel 4 series showing a four week summer initiative working with 11 primary school boys from around the UK who were a risk of permanent exclusion. Cynically I suspect it was televised to fund it. The last programme is still available on 4OD. That had the boys and their parents on a weekend camp with canoeing, archery and a bonfire as one of the ways to show the families to interact together.

An article in the Guardian says:
quote:
[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.
Most of the papers I want to read are behind pay walls, but there's an interesting suggestion from this review which suggests that a cause is
quote:
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
and
quote:
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.
The other thing that article says is that the educational achievement of both girls and boys is more affected by class differences than by whether they are male or female.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
quote:
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
Weird thing I have noticed in subbing-- at schools that have little recess, when the kids are turned loose fir their 15 minute burst of outside time-- they don't actually play. They devote their time to just running and screaming. It's like the tension is pulled so tightly they can't even stop and think about what they want to do.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
The flips side of all this: it sucks for the girls, too.

While boys are discouraged by being held to inappropriate standards of classroom expectation as far as sitting still, being quiet, girls are rewarded for this behavior. The truth is, very young girls shouldn't' be sitting around holding their pencils carefully either--unless that is part of their personal nature, which is rarely is at that age. we reinforce them to be passive, to lack initiative, and to stand aside for others. To recap, we set boys up to hate women, we set girls up to be appropriate receptacles for marginalization.

I was thinking about this the other day, as I was helping a class with naptime. The teacher had spent the day scolding one of the older boys about his behavior, and further told me that the only way he could behave was when he stayed by her side and be her little buddy.

At naptime, the teacher had me, the other TA, and herself positioned by the rowdiest boys-- we had to rub their back sit by their side and make sure they went to sleep first. Which I don't mind doing at all. But across the room a little girl was smiling at me, clearly wanting a backrub herself, but by the time we got all the rowdy boys done, she had fallen asleep. Her aptitude in "resting quietly" meant she could be "left alone."

So, after half a day of hearing boy's names shouted across the room while her benign or even brilliant activities are ignored, she even has to see evidence that her golden behavior excludes her from basic affection. (I feel so crappy about this I will actually run over and give girls a quick backrub while they are sleeping. But if it's not my class, I have to do what I am told.)
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
The higher levels of Oxford Reading Tree (the only ones I saw) had a lot of stories I felt were interesting enough for me - time travel to Ancient Rome for example. And I didn't have children rereading. I thought not rereading was the point of all those hundreds of books. If children have been made to feel bored by them, and they really were most imaginative in the later levels, that's down to the teachers, not the books.

Try Janet and John for boring.

I was a late reader. Miss Squires announced to the school on prize day that I wasn't getting a prize because I couldn't read. I went home, angry because I thought that it was her job to teach me (and she used my short name, which was for friends, not people who gave me nightmares). My mother was not happy. We had an expedition to Smiths for pre-readers and Beacon Readers, and in three weeks I was skipping through George MacDonald's Princess and the Goblin. (Mum was a teacher, brought up not to interfere with the schools' plans.)

Years later, required to listen to children struggle through telling John to look at Spot run, I realised I knew the text, I knew what was over the page. I had been reading when I was 7, just not aloud, because Janet and John were B O R I N G.

I was prepared to take Oxford Tree books off the shelf for a quick read! But they were the later ones.
 
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
since state school starts when you're 4 (in Master Tor's case, only just 4),
My son started at 5 1/2, as did both nephews and one godson (Scottish system, boys with January or February birthdays). My son couldn't write his name till he was 6. Sending him to school at 4 would have been a living nightmare; I honestly don't think he had the fine motor skills to write any earlier than 6.

Originally posted by QLib:

quote:
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.
The "feminisation of the teaching profession" started 150 years ago and hasn't been a sudden thing; firstly there was the feminisation of early years (up to age 8) teaching, which was more or less complete by the 1870s, then the feminisation of later primary teaching, pretty much a fait accompli by 1900. Then the ratios stalled post world war one as teaching was seen as a good option for returning soldiers with minor injuries. The feminisation of secondary teaching of languages and social sciences came next, and now we have the feminisation of secondary teaching of the remaining subjects.

It's not been a "feminisation" IMO, though, so much as a "demasculination" as men retreat from teaching and women fill in the vacuum created. The process started with the expansion of the Victorian civil service, which offered jobs with better prospects of promotion to the men who would previously have become teachers.

None of this helps with the problem we have of under-achieving boys, but it's important to recognise that boys being taught by women is not some new phenomenon to be factored in.
 
Posted by Rosa Winkel (# 11424) on :
 
Since my son was born last December I've been thinking more about his future schooling, and I'm far from positive about this. I find this thread useful in addressing concrete areas, and appreciate that feminists are talking about boys' issues.

Just to contribute a bit:

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

quote:
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.
The hip-doctor checked my boy out and said that she hadn't seen a boy with such developed hips for three months. She put this down to the fact that (a) our boy is often put in a baby sling or baby carrier (we don't have a car, so it's either that or the pram), and (b) other parents tend to have them in seats most of the time, therefore they are hardly moving. (I wonder how that is possible. Our boy would complain after too much sitting)

Coming back to the opening post, I got grades of C or higher in a total of three GCSE's (Welsh, computer studies and maths); I remember the whole issue of learning as being labelled as being "swotty". Leaving aside the political aspect of a sense of hopelessness in the 1980s, sex stuff was going on. It was the girls who tended to sit at the front, and us boys were at the back, tending to misbehave.

Most primary school teachers in my school were women. Perhaps our natural rebelling against our mothers (a very healthy thing) founds its outlet partly in seeing education as being a "mother" thing.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
Reading all this in black and white makes me wonder how any of us came out of the system sane.

I taught DT to Y6 for 5 years, minimal writing, maximum making, lots of noise and movement in the lesson, but with a purpose. I could have done so much more (in conjunction with the science teacher, who was brilliant). But I got one hour a week with each Y6 class, and no money for resources. In the end, I gave up.
 
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
Doc Tor, what is DT? Google isn't helping.
 
Posted by ecumaniac (# 376) on :
 
DT is Design Technology (or is it Design and Technology?)

So what you might call "shop" in the States, I believe.

Edit: so sorry, didn't notice your location.

[ 15. June 2014, 23:35: Message edited by: ecumaniac ]
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Not sure how this worked out because checking the website it is no longer happening, but one of the secondary schools I worked planned Fun Fridays just after I left - timetabling lessons from Monday to Thursday, and leaving Friday for other things. There was logic to the madness - it meant that trips (museums, galleries, France for the day) had to be planned on Fridays rather than disrupting other lessons, and allowed for cross-curricular projects, team building, tournaments, other things that fell out of the curriculum on a regular basis. In the planning meetings we were throwing around ideas like building trebuchets for firing tomatoes as far as possible as something that could work (cross curricular DT, history, physics), but rumour had it that the teachers didn't enjoy it.
 
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by QLib:
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.
Sadly I think one of the main reasons that most teachers in primary schools are women is related to fears about sexual abuse or accusations of it.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
Yes, sorry. DT is design technology.

What I was supposed to do was talk about designing packaging for products, how to produce posters for events, how best to create and advertise a new pair of trainers, stuff like that.

But because it wasn't part of the core curriculum, no one was testing the pupils on the subject, and because no one in the senior management team cared, I turned it into a one year crash-course in basic engineering, the emphasis being on 'crash'.

So we designed and built bomb shelters, then destroyed them, designed and built model cars and raced them, flew planes, built rockets, did egg-lofting... very intensive, and some of the kids couldn't hold a saw or even fold a sheet of paper accurately when they started. I really enjoyed it, so did they, but I ended up funding the consumable materials out of my own pocket, which became unsustainable after a while.

At some point, when I get the time, I'll write up all the lesson plans and stick them on the interwebs. Good times, but I don't miss it.

And to drag it back to the OP, the boys were initially far more cocky than the girls - tools, bits of wood, designing things that were going to be strong and manly like bridges and rockets. But because of the way these things work, the boys soon realised they simply couldn't clag stuff together and hope it'd work. And the girls realised that what colour it was wasn't actually important if the wheels didn't turn smoothly (massive stereotyping, but it happened year after year). The best girls were easily as good as the best boys, and if I've turned out a couple of engineers, I'll consider it job done.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by QLib:
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.
Sadly I think one of the main reasons that most teachers in primary schools are women is related to fears about sexual abuse or accusations of it.
Doubt it. Primary Ed's always been overwhelmingly female, and has been since Adam were a lad.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
I was thinking about this over the weekend. Watching my kids, seeing how they get when they're cooped up for five minutes.

And it occurred to me that the situation is this. For six hours a day, five days a week, for most of the year, we make children do activities they'd be unlikely to choose freely. We make them be quiet for extended periods of time. We expose their inadequacies compared with their peers, whether it be red dots all the way down their maths book in the lowest achieving group in the class, or making them run races against people they haven't got a cat's chance in hell of getting near. We push them into an artificial social construct where party invitations and so on clearly delineate who's popoular and in, and who's Billy no mates.

The mystery is not that boys kick off. It's the degree to which girls don't.
 
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by QLib:
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.
Sadly I think one of the main reasons that most teachers in primary schools are women is related to fears about sexual abuse or accusations of it.
Doubt it. Primary Ed's always been overwhelmingly female, and has been since Adam were a lad.
David Stow, one of the most influential figures in Scottish education, said in the 1840s that children should have female teachers initially, i.e. at age 5/6/7. This crept up to age 8 at some point.

In 1872, elementary education became almost wholly state-run in Scotland; the cost of schools were born by rate-payers, who elected the people who administered the schools. Keeping costs down, and the tax payers happy, meant that an "ideal" model was created of a school with a male head, one or two male teachers who were working towards becoming head teachers and a dozen or more cheaper-to-employ female teachers. This gender balance was carefully thought out - it didn't just happen.

What is interesting is that that model persisted until about the 1980s, when female head teachers started displacing the male.

So, in Scotland at any rate, primary schools have bee overwhelmingly female since 1872.
 
Posted by Talitha (# 5085) on :
 
I just want to address the EYFS-criticism by Leorning Cniht in the OP. The EYFS is absolutely not about academicalisation of small children, or 4-year-olds sitting in rows doing worksheets.

Its core areas are personal, emotional and social development (making friends, playing cooperatively etc); physical development (running, jumping, throwing, all that vestibular stuff someone mentioned); and communication (verbal).

The secondary areas (both secondary in importance, and second chronologically after the core areas are mostly mastered) are literacy, numeracy, understanding the world, and expressive art/design (drawing, dressing up/role play, singing, etc). In these, the emphasis is on learning through play (the example of playing shops to learn adding would be ideal, except the EYFS doesn't go up to that level, its numeracy goals are more along the lines of learning to count and recognise digits). Also, the emphasis isn't on assessing and grilling the kids, but on what adults can provide to facilitate learning in the areas. If applied properly, I think it should prevent misguided teachers from over-academicalising their 4-year-olds.

My daughter starts school in September, and it looks like the classrooms are laid out like a continuation of nursery school, with sand and water play areas, dressing up, dolls' houses, board games, outdoor play areas, comfy reading corners, and tables for the activities that need them, but not a desk for each child.

I think, if anything, the trend is the other way. I think when I started school, we did have desks, and spent a lot of time doing sitting-down written work. And, going back further, my nan has a photo of her at infant school, where they're sitting in rows on hard benches at desks, looking quiet and subdued, and it's a fair bet there was physical punishment if they didn't sit down and behave (even if not actual caning, knuckle-raps with a ruler). So I think the trend is for early education to become less academic and formal, not more.
 
Posted by Spawn (# 4867) on :
 
My 13-year-old son came home from school last week and said some of his teachers were sexist. This was because he was hearing comments every now and then from teachers singling out boys and criticising them in comparison to girls.
Are some groups of boys faring badly because [sometimes] expectations of them are so low? [I'm trying to qualify this with the word 'some' because at the moment both my boys are doing well educationally as do many other boys].
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
I've certainly heard repeatedly my teachers negatively compare the boys to girls, but I also remember hearing those same teachers compare the girls negatively to the boys. I think it's quite possible that his teachers do both, and he only notices it when it gets to him. Or said teacher criticizes the boys to the boys and the girls to the girls in which case he might have no way of knowing. But if said teacher always prefers girls to boys? Yeah, that's definitely sexism. Mild sexism perhaps, and fortunately he won't hear it all over or it would be rather insidious Of course I doubt it's likely to ruin him for life. I can think of multiple sexist (against girls, though I can also think of one of them who was sexist against boys) high school teachers, and it didn't kill me. In my experience, it's not the sexism you notice from your teachers that screws you up, it's the insidious stuff you don't notice.
 
Posted by Spawn (# 4867) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
Of course I doubt it's likely to ruin him for life.
No, I'm pleased he rejects sexism of either kind and feels able to criticise attitudes he regards as unfair. On the other hand, Low expectations of less confident boys or girls might become self-fulfilling prophecies.

In any case, I'm rather less sanguine that you seem to be about sweeping generalisations made by teachers about girls and boys as though they aren't all individuals.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Talitha:
I just want to address the EYFS-criticism by Leorning Cniht in the OP. The EYFS is absolutely not about academicalisation of small children, or 4-year-olds sitting in rows doing worksheets.

Its core areas are personal, emotional and social development (making friends, playing cooperatively etc); physical development (running, jumping, throwing, all that vestibular stuff someone mentioned); and communication (verbal).

The secondary areas (both secondary in importance, and second chronologically after the core areas are mostly mastered) are literacy, numeracy, understanding the world, and expressive art/design (drawing, dressing up/role play, singing, etc). In these, the emphasis is on learning through play (the example of playing shops to learn adding would be ideal, except the EYFS doesn't go up to that level, its numeracy goals are more along the lines of learning to count and recognise digits). Also, the emphasis isn't on assessing and grilling the kids, but on what adults can provide to facilitate learning in the areas. If applied properly, I think it should prevent misguided teachers from over-academicalising their 4-year-olds.

My daughter starts school in September, and it looks like the classrooms are laid out like a continuation of nursery school, with sand and water play areas, dressing up, dolls' houses, board games, outdoor play areas, comfy reading corners, and tables for the activities that need them, but not a desk for each child.

I think, if anything, the trend is the other way. I think when I started school, we did have desks, and spent a lot of time doing sitting-down written work. And, going back further, my nan has a photo of her at infant school, where they're sitting in rows on hard benches at desks, looking quiet and subdued, and it's a fair bet there was physical punishment if they didn't sit down and behave (even if not actual caning, knuckle-raps with a ruler). So I think the trend is for early education to become less academic and formal, not more.
I notice you are from a university town. Again, this might make a big difference. The parents using the schools in your area probably can be convinced by a brief orientation of best practices, with well reasearched notes.

The Desired Results tool that Title 22 programs are made to use isn't that bad on the surface either-- but it involves a lot of paperwork, and for teachers to provide evidence of children's progress. There is a huge pressure on teachers in state run program to make sure each child demonstrates "kindergarten rediness" and that means getting something on paper. The amount of paperwork a Headstart teacher has to fill out is staggering.

There are ways to approach this appropriately, but an undereducated staff can't challenge an undereducated parent base's demand to make their children ready for school. A director that is so buried in qualifying paperwork that they can't observe and guide the staff-- AND back up their practice to parents-- is not going to be able to ensure the quality of care the center needs.

IMO the weakest link is Practicum-- right now, if you take the right classes and do enough time in a classroom, you can hold a teaching certificate. Only just recently has a practicum component for child care been introduced-- and most of it is long distance, with proof of completion only needing a director's signsture and the approval of a mentor who might not even see the teacher in class. Good practice us built by working side by side with an excellent teacher, and it is difficult right now for the average state preschool teacher to get that support.
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Spawn:
In any case, I'm rather less sanguine that you seem to be about sweeping generalisations made by teachers about girls and boys as though they aren't all individuals.
Oh it's ridiculous, but if you gave me a quarter for every time I heard or saw an inappropriate sweeping statement made about a group of people, I'd have lunch out much more often.
 
Posted by Spawn (# 4867) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
quote:
Originally posted by Spawn:
In any case, I'm rather less sanguine that you seem to be about sweeping generalisations made by teachers about girls and boys as though they aren't all individuals.
Oh it's ridiculous, but if you gave me a quarter for every time I heard or saw an inappropriate sweeping statement made about a group of people, I'd have lunch out much more often.
Fair 'Nuff.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
One of the articles I found talked about boys being run down disproportionately ~iirc ~ but I'll have to be on something other than a phone to find it.
 
Posted by ecumaniac (# 376) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
building trebuchets for firing tomatoes as far as possible as something that could work (cross curricular DT, history, physics), but rumour had it that the teachers didn't enjoy it.
I actually did this (a giant cross bow, of sorts) but over the years it's been more and more difficult to get the measly £400 to run it and last year we were denied any cover, so had to operate it with other staff volunteering their free time to cover my lessons, so screw that for a joke.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
There is a thing called the BLB/GLG - two archetypes, the Bad Little Boy and the Good Little Girl. When someone, and primary school teachers are not immune, is guided by these archetypes they tend to be led by cognitive bias; boys doing bad things and girls doing good things (for culturally determined values of good I might add) are seen as confirming the accuracy of the archetypes; when the reverse occurs it's seen as an aberration and the archetype is still not challenged.

I believe that boys, even socially naive ones like I was, are painfully aware that the implicit expectations of their behaviour are greatly at odds with the explicit expectations. Girls do not have this set of conflicting expectations to live up to. Perhaps that's why they play up less; it's clearer how they are meant to "be girls".

Just a hypothesis.
 
Posted by Alex Cockell (# 7487) on :
 
I miss the days of Tomorrow's World and The Great Egg Race.

Meant both boys and girls had healthy rolemodels....
And saw both sexes with badass competency - Judith Hann and Maggie Philbin for example. Both engineers...

LOTS of learning on the Beeb back then, and in primetime...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IEMCjpgx74
 
Posted by Rosa Winkel (# 11424) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
One of the articles I found talked about boys being run down disproportionately ~iirc ~ but I'll have to be on something other than a phone to find it.
It starts with all that shite about "slugs and snails".
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
There is a thing called the BLB/GLG - two archetypes, the Bad Little Boy and the Good Little Girl. When someone, and primary school teachers are not immune, is guided by these archetypes they tend to be led by cognitive bias; boys doing bad things and girls doing good things (for culturally determined values of good I might add) are seen as confirming the accuracy of the archetypes; when the reverse occurs it's seen as an aberration and the archetype is still not challenged.

I believe that boys, even socially naive ones like I was, are painfully aware that the implicit expectations of their behaviour are greatly at odds with the explicit expectations. Girls do not have this set of conflicting expectations to live up to. Perhaps that's why they play up less; it's clearer how they are meant to "be girls".
That's one interpretation. An alternate one would be that this double standard effectively gives boys more latitude in their behavior, where good behavior will be praised but bad behavior is often shrugged off with a "boys will be boys" or similar.

[ 16. June 2014, 22:55: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
 
Posted by Alex Cockell (# 7487) on :
 
However, bwbb can be applied either of two ways depending on which substrate belief system you hold.

If you hold to "equality before the law", then bwbb is related to perceived maturity. However, if you believe that men are innately bad and women innately good, then bwbb gives a pass for people in authority to come down extremely hard on male behavior and give female behavior a pass. " boys will always be that bad so we must beat them down so they become good".
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
It was this source that I was half remembering, and it suggested that both mechanisms were in place (it comes from a long way down that resource):

quote:
It has been argued even fairly recently that teachers have failed to appreciate the educational disadvantages that boys actually face. so that they may assume incorrectly that "laddish" behaviour is relatively harmless and make few attempts to correct it.
It may be argued also that the kind of negative labelling investigated in earlier units may apply nowadays especially to many mainly working class boys who may continue to be labelled by teachers as lacking in ability and/or interest and that teachers' ongoing emphasis on relative failure[ not the relatively slow progress] of boys may by now be convincing some boys that they are actually incapable of progress.
There may be some truth in the two previous points but it is also the case that, nowadays, teachers spend huge amounts of time on the investigation of boys' relative underachievement which may undermine the notions that they fail to take "laddish" behaviour seriously and that negative labelling is still widespread. However there are also recent studies which suggest that negative labelling of both male and female working class students is still widespread as was shown in previous documents on social class differences in educational achievement.

 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
There is a thing called the BLB/GLG - two archetypes, the Bad Little Boy and the Good Little Girl. When someone, and primary school teachers are not immune, is guided by these archetypes they tend to be led by cognitive bias; boys doing bad things and girls doing good things (for culturally determined values of good I might add) are seen as confirming the accuracy of the archetypes; when the reverse occurs it's seen as an aberration and the archetype is still not challenged.

I believe that boys, even socially naive ones like I was, are painfully aware that the implicit expectations of their behaviour are greatly at odds with the explicit expectations. Girls do not have this set of conflicting expectations to live up to. Perhaps that's why they play up less; it's clearer how they are meant to "be girls".
That's one interpretation. An alternate one would be that this double standard effectively gives boys more latitude in their behavior, where good behavior will be praised but bad behavior is often shrugged off with a "boys will be boys" or similar.
It's a bit more complicated than that. "Good" behaviour will be praised by adults, but may have negative implications socially. "Bad" behaviour will meet with adult disapproval but may enhance social standing. I certainly know that when I was a primary age boy I didn't experience it as latitude in behaviour; I experienced it as confusion - "I know the teachers want me to do X, Y and Z, but I'm sure that's also what the other boys call being a cissy"

[ 17. June 2014, 09:00: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Karl:
quote:
"Good" behaviour will be praised by adults, but may have negative implications socially. "Bad" behaviour will meet with adult disapproval but may enhance social standing.
This happens to girls too, but the disconnect between what adults expect and what your peers approve of is less obvious to the casual observer.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Karl:
quote:
"Good" behaviour will be praised by adults, but may have negative implications socially. "Bad" behaviour will meet with adult disapproval but may enhance social standing.
This happens to girls too, but the disconnect between what adults expect and what your peers approve of is less obvious to the casual observer.
I wonder if it happens at the same age? This starts for boys from the get-go.
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Probably. Socialisation starts at birth. As Kelly and CK have already said, overly formal early childhood education hurts girls too.

There is a growing consensus among neuroscientists that brain structure is plastic: it changes in response to experience and the environment. So even if there is some truth to the idea that 'male' and 'female' brains are different, this could be because of differences in socialisation, not because of innate sex differences.
 
Posted by Alex Cockell (# 7487) on :
 
One other tendency we saw in the 90s was the regendering of under-5's toys. Instead of one central line and neutral colours (as we had in the 70s), there was a hell of blue and pink coming onto the market. Even stuff like Lego was split into "girl" Lego Friends with a colour palette based on pink, and a lot more gender-neutral activity toys were slanted towards boys.. or line copied each side of the divide.

This was done at the same time as Faludi's Backlash hit the shelves.

So gender roles were baked into plastic brains at a lower level.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
That's a very good observation about the neutral stuff being shifted towards the boys...
Lego Friends was much more recent than the 90s. The other Lego change which I dislike is the increasing tendency to package everything into kits for particular outcomes, which reduces the creativity for everyone.

And I wanted to get Lego Technik for my great niece (who wanted the Friends sort), but that was even worse kit wise.

The way Meccano and Bayko were packaged, with general sets which could be topped up to the next one, each of which could be used for a variety of models from the book, or for play off-piste, as it were, was much better, in my opinion. (No H required.)

Early Learning had blue and pink keyboards - nothing neutral.

Great niece, however, is into wanting an astronomical telescope as well, so the plasticity directing hasn't been completely effective.

[ 17. June 2014, 12:34: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:
Instead of one central line and neutral colours (as we had in the 70s), there was a hell of blue and pink coming onto the market. Even stuff like Lego was split into "girl" Lego Friends with a colour palette based on pink, and a lot more gender-neutral activity toys were slanted towards boys.. or line copied each side of the divide.

This was done at the same time as Faludi's Backlash hit the shelves.

So gender roles were baked into plastic brains at a lower level.
Can we clarify please:
1) Which of the following are you saying:
A) Faludi approves of gender roles; you think she's right?
B) Faludi approves of gender roles; you think she's wrong?
C) Faludi disapproves of gender roles; you think she's right?
D) Faludi disapproves of gender roles; you think she's wrong?

2) Have you read Backlash? (I haven't.)

3) Did you know Faludi has written a book called The Betrayal of the American Man? (which according to wikipedia is about umm... the betrayal of most American men by a few powerful men?)

I would be very surprised if Faludi didn't object to gender-segregated lego. All feminists that I know of object to gender-segregated lego.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
I've linked to this Scientific American article on the difficulties of identifying whether gender brain differences are caused by nature or nurture before. It concluded that many brain differences are effected by socialisation.
 
Posted by Alex Cockell (# 7487) on :
 
Umm - I wasn't besmirching at all. I was referring to timeline. That's it.

If gender roles were being deconstructed at a higher age - but baked in by marketing at a younger age... could that dissonance have an effect?

So if you have a child being socialised in one direction by the toys they play with.. and then socialised in a diametrically opposite direction when they hit school....?

I was just commenting on the effects of different trends and directions...

[ 17. June 2014, 13:02: Message edited by: Alex Cockell ]
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Gender roles are socialised in babies from the day a child is born. There's a raft of research, which if I have to I'll find, that shows babies dressed in pink and blue being treated differently, whichever gender the child was born. The language used and the way the children are treated is different. Somewhere I have OU films showing this.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
My sister knew someone who was used in filming for a Horizon programme on the subject, in which a group of women were interacting with babies in different colours (some counter their gender). Sure enough, the friend handed a boys' toy to the little dear dressed in blue. But my sister said they should have shown her with a pink dressed baby as well, because the "girl" would have got exactly the same toy. Whether this had been filmed but not shown because it ran counter to the thesis of the programme, I have no means of telling.
This was probably back in the 70s, when my toddler nieces wore dungarees.
Come to think of it, I did when I was a toddler in the late 40s.

[ 17. June 2014, 13:11: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by Alex Cockell (# 7487) on :
 
I remember pretty much unisex colouring on damn near everything..
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Talitha:
I just want to address the EYFS-criticism by Leorning Cniht in the OP. The EYFS is absolutely not about academicalisation of small children, or 4-year-olds sitting in rows doing worksheets.
If this is the UK, I suspect Leorning Cniht was picking up on my linking to the 2014 EYFS framework (pdf) and this quote that I gave on the Hell thread:
quote:
All our curricula are being made more rigorous under the aegis of Mr Gove.
 
Posted by bib (# 13074) on :
 
I've thought for some time that most boys should start school a year later than girls as they mature later and are less ready at the age of 5 than most little girls. I also tend to think that the gap is appearing wider between boys and girls because girls are now having the opportunity to study subjects that were once mostly offered to boys.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:
One other tendency we saw in the 90s was the regendering of under-5's toys. Instead of one central line and neutral colours (as we had in the 70s), there was a hell of blue and pink coming onto the market. Even stuff like Lego was split into "girl" Lego Friends with a colour palette based on pink, and a lot more gender-neutral activity toys were slanted towards boys.. or line copied each side of the divide.

This was done at the same time as Faludi's Backlash hit the shelves.

So gender roles were baked into plastic brains at a lower level.
Sorry, I have to call "bullshit" on this one. Gendering of toys is not a recent phenomenon. Defining certain play objects as "boys toys" and "girls toys" goes way back beyond the recent trend in color-coding everything, pernicious as that practice may be.

I recall a study where small children were told a neutrally-gendered play object (I believe it was a white tissue) was a toy meant for the opposite sex. Those who were told this refused to interact with the white tissue, while the control group (who hadn't been given any information about the tissue) interacted and played with it (to the extent you can play with a tissue).
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I recall a study where small children were told a neutrally-gendered play object (I believe it was a white tissue) was a toy meant for the opposite sex. Those who were told this refused to interact with the white tissue, while the control group (who hadn't been given any information about the tissue) interacted and played with it (to the extent you can play with a tissue).
Though that of course is also a trained behavior. I suspect (hope) that by her current age (almost 6) my daughter would respond by asking why it was for boys.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Were the reactions of the girls any different from those of the boys - only I have noticed that boys seem to have much stronger resistance to supposed girls' toys than vice versa. And indeed girls.

I've lost track of the number of times I've had to point out that the boy would not like it if people went Eewrch and moved away from him as if he had the Dreaded Lurgi, so would he please not do it to girls.

My nephews played gender neutral until the oldest got to school, when he was told in no uncertain terms by his peers that he must not use toys that were girls' toys. And this transferred back home, as I recall.

I was somewhat taken aback by a piece about Judy Murray's initiative to involve girls between 5 and 8 in tennis which included this:

quote:
Girls taking up tennis in that age bracket are outnumbered four to one by boys. WE researched what was putting them off - the weather, noisy boys, big blokey coaches, all kinds of things. So we've created an indoor course incorporating all the stuff research shows girls like - dancing, music, being with their friends, doing girly things with nail stickers, bows in their hair, colouring in - and also subtly including some very basic aspects of tennis, just to get them interested.
Eewrch. Are those the girls they really, really want - worried about their finger nails?
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I recall a study where small children were told a neutrally-gendered play object (I believe it was a white tissue) was a toy meant for the opposite sex. Those who were told this refused to interact with the white tissue, while the control group (who hadn't been given any information about the tissue) interacted and played with it (to the extent you can play with a tissue).
Though that of course is also a trained behavior.
Well, yeah. That was the point of the experiment; to see how readily very young children would conform to an arbitrary gender norm invented solely for the experiment.
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I recall a study where small children were told a neutrally-gendered play object (I believe it was a white tissue) was a toy meant for the opposite sex. Those who were told this refused to interact with the white tissue, while the control group (who hadn't been given any information about the tissue) interacted and played with it (to the extent you can play with a tissue).
Though that of course is also a trained behavior.
Well, yeah. That was the point of the experiment; to see how readily very young children would conform to an arbitrary gender norm invented solely for the experiment.
Yes, I didn't put that very well. I meant that there are two trained behaviors that are possibly the same one, but possibly not. One is to pay attention to gender-conditioning, but the other is to obey adults who clearly don't want you to do something. If an adult makes a point of telling you that said object is not for people like you, an obedient child might avoid the object just to please the adult whether or not they care about using objects intended for other groups.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
Yes, I didn't put that very well. I meant that there are two trained behaviors that are possibly the same one, but possibly not. One is to pay attention to gender-conditioning, but the other is to obey adults who clearly don't want you to do something. If an adult makes a point of telling you that said object is not for people like you, an obedient child might avoid the object just to please the adult whether or not they care about using objects intended for other groups.
Given that gender norms fall under the general rubric of "doing what the adults expect you to", I'm pretty sure these are the same thing.

[ 17. June 2014, 18:41: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
That indubitably depends on the parents. You are assuming everyone is the same again. For instance, my daughter half- apologizes for bringing princess stuff into the house because she's seen me react with negative emotions too many times. She certainly doesn't think it's what I want her to do. And I am a rather large part of her adult world. Now I'm more extreme than average, but for every parent like me there will be also be parents who manage to teach their children to question gender norms without inflicting their own prejudices (say against princess stuff) on their children. Such children would not think that adults expect them to follow gender norms either. (I'm here thinking of multiple long haired boy children I know let alone the boy I sometimes see dressing like daddy in clothes that most people would expect to see on a woman. Yes, I live in a liberal area, but I certainly don't select my children's playmates for their politics.

[ 17. June 2014, 19:11: Message edited by: Gwai ]
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
When my daughters were small I used to say to them that if they wanted to do something and it wasn't wrong, they should go ahead. It doesn't make any difference whether something is supposed to be for a boy or a girl; it doesn't make any difference whether it's supposed to be for someone older or younger. If you want to do it and it's not wrong, go ahead.

Moo
 
Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :
 
I was fascinated when my 5yo niece told me she was playing soccer with the boys at preschool but when the ball went out of play another little girl picked it up and refused to give it back "because girls don't play soccer" Niece told her "that's not true, I'm a girl and I play soccer" but was told "well girls shouldn't play soccer".

The boys were happy for her to play (she is a good player as she's been playing in a local team) but weird that another girl wanted to enforce a gender stereotype. Teacher intervention "girls can do anything" was required to prise the ball away from little Miss gender enforcer.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
I tripped over ken ranting on this when looking for something else - it's on a thread on A Church for Men. As most of his input on that thread was pure gold, and quite a bit was relevant to this thread, I'm going to remind us all:

quote:
Except you don't need research, its obvious to anyone who has ever met a child. And forget preschool, the difference in maturity peaks at puberty. Basically an average 12-year-old girl is at the same developmental level as an average 14-year-old boy.

So girsl get a head at school at that age because at that age they really are, on average, cleverer. And they really are more mature. So they really are capable of better work. So if other things are equal they get better marks at school. The boys typically catch up sometime between age 16 and 18 but by that time at least some of them will have become discouraged and dropped out. At least in their own heads, even if they are still turning up to school. Not all of them, not most of them, probably not even many of them. But easily enough to explain why more girls get in to college, and why more girls want to get into college.
and a bit further on from the same thread:
quote:
Well, yes, but, except that the differences are statistically insignificant in adults. Yes, on average girls of a certain age are better at language then boys of the same age. But once we've all grown up there is hardly anything in it. Certainly not enough to explain the huge difference in things like churchgoing - or even football-match-going. The overlap between the two sexes on any measurable character is likely to be huge, so most people of either sex are in pretty much the same ballpark as most of the other sex.

Quite a lot of popular writing or journalism on the difference between women's and men's brains, or between teenagers and adults, is - to use the technical scientific term - bollocks. To a first approximation I'd say all of it is. Effectively all of it is either trying to sell you something or to scare you into agreeing with some political view. So when you read an article on it or see a TV programme the best thing to do is to try to work out what they are trying to mainipulate you into, not whether or not its true, because frankly it isn't. Popular science journalism is mostly crap when it comes to neurology, sex differences, and drugs. There are honourable exceptions - the Economist of course, and most of what the Guardian publishes (though not its sister paper the Observer) - but even the Telegraph or the BBC are piss-poor.
There is more ...
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
I was fascinated when my 5yo niece told me she was playing soccer with the boys at preschool but when the ball went out of play another little girl picked it up and refused to give it back "because girls don't play soccer" Niece told her "that's not true, I'm a girl and I play soccer" but was told "well girls shouldn't play soccer".

The boys were happy for her to play (she is a good player as she's been playing in a local team) but weird that another girl wanted to enforce a gender stereotype. Teacher intervention "girls can do anything" was required to prise the ball away from little Miss gender enforcer.
Somewhere in little Miss gender enforcer's past, she wanted to play soccer and was told she couldn't.

It might not have been an adult who told her this, it could just as easily have been an older brother who didn't want to play soccer with his little sister and found his trump card as to why he didn't have to.

And heck, it's not hard to form the view that girls don't play soccer. It takes a lot more effort to see girls playing soccer than it does to see boys playing soccer. Right now, there's blanket coverage of the largest boy-soccer event in the world. When the equivalent girl-soccer event is on, there'll be barely a murmur in the media.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
If this is the UK, I suspect Leorning Cniht was picking up on my linking to the 2014 EYFS framework (pdf) and this quote that I gave on the Hell thread:
Wading briefly into the shallows to mention that this was more or less what I had in mind, yes. And also that Kelly's comment about the difference between best practice and actual practice is right on the money.

I am reminded of a story from one of the Feynman books (Surely you're joking? Can't remember which one.) where Feynman goes to Brasil and finds a complete lack of actual teaching of Physics in universities. His State Dept. handlers point at the syllabi and say "but look - here's a syllabus, there's a syllabus, of course there is physics teaching" when what was actually happening was rote learning free of any actual comprehension.

(I think early years in the UK is generally in a better place than in the US at the moment, but it looks to me as though both countries are swinging towards inappropriate academicalization. Also note that it's easily possible to take a wonderful classroom with various play areas set up, and remove virtually all the benefit by insisting that children rotate around the stations on a 10 minute schedule. Good play is open-ended...)

[Heading back ashore for a couple of weeks...]
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Also note that it's easily possible to take a wonderful classroom with various play areas set up, and remove virtually all the benefit by insisting that children rotate around the stations on a 10 minute schedule. Good play is open-ended...
FFS it should be the teacher and the TAs that rotate around the stations, not the kids.
 
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :
 
Evangeline wrote:
quote:
I was fascinated when my 5yo niece told me she was playing soccer with the boys at preschool but when the ball went out of play another little girl picked it up and refused to give it back "because girls don't play soccer" Niece told her "that's not true, I'm a girl and I play soccer" but was told "well girls shouldn't play soccer".
The question of peer-group pressure has been bubbling under in several posts, but this rings very true. My eldest daughter is both very bright and also gifted with good looks. She came under a lot of pressure (bordering on bullying) from other girls not to be academic, as they felt it inappropriate. Wherever they got it from in turn is unknown to me, but by her own account it was neither the teaching staff nor the boys.

I'm sure there's a big element of this in boy's later performance. One of the biggest demotivators to success for boys later on becomes other boys. The peer group pressure becomes whether you are going to be a swot "like the girls", or join the crowd at the back generally pushing the envelope. In the example I gave above, the situation was tackled by the staff and seems to have worked. But what happens when these situations just roll on unaddressed?
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
This article (Guardian Comment is Free) discusses a recent report on the underachievement of working class British boys, and girls:
quote:
One detail of the report might throw a little light on this much contested matter. Though it has been acknowledged for many years that white working-class boys are failed most by the education system, these figures attest that the girls are faring badly, too. Their particular plight has up until now been masked by the great strides that have been made in the education of girls overall during recent decades. There has been a perception that both the education system and the workforce have been "feminised". Yet, if it has, these girls haven't been touched by it. Why?
Interestingly the article goes on to argue that the Government's reliance is using fear to force communities to conform to a middle-class aspirations.
quote:
It has been the strategy for the last 30 years. Take away job security. Take away wages large enough to pay the bills. Take away decent social housing. Take away welfare provision. Why can't these so-called leaders see that the more you take away from people, the less they have to lose? Deprivation doesn't make people aspirational. It makes them deprived.
Personal experience says there is truth in this from working with kids in the East End of London and/or Harlow, trying to give them some aspiration other than be a drug dealer or earn by crime. A trade such as plumber or electrician would be fine.

I don't go down the route of the article of suggesting that a good school is a panacea because we're also having to work with parents.

[ 21. June 2014, 12:30: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
 


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