I’m loving the single-sex debate in Canada…
It’s as if an entire nation woke up yesterday and discovered (a) boys are falling behind (b) not much is being done and (c) single-sex schools (just in one city, mind you) are being proposed as a possible solution.
Here’s a contribution from the con group, which suggests that worrying about the boys amounts to “moral panic.”
(Snaps to the University of Western Ontario for indulging in a professor of “gender, equity and social-justice education.” My money’s on Wayne to win campus bingo.)
The commentary:
reinforce stereotypes about boys and can sometimes compromise their academic performance
By WAYNE MARTINO, FreelanceOctober 30, 2009
StoryPhotos ( 1 )
Boys at play: Reinforcing stereotypes about boys as active learners results in compromising their academic learning.
Photograph by: LES BAZSO, CANWEST NEWS SERVICES, FreelanceRecently one of Canada’s largest school boards, in Toronto, announced that it intends to introduce boys-only classes and schools to address male underachievement. This initiative will take the form of a leadership academy for boys as an alternative school staffed mainly by male teachers.
Boys’ schools are often touted as the answer to the complex problem of boys’ underachievement and high dropout rates. Authorities in such countries as Australia, Britain and the United States embrace them because they appeal to seemingly common-sense understandings about boys, who supposedly learn in particular ways as a consequence of simply being boys.
But not only do these boys-only strategies enforce certain stereotypes, they are often just a quick fix.
Research in which I have participated showed evidence that boy-friendly schooling often resulted in perpetuating severely limiting stereotypes about boys and their interests. For example, in one boys-only class the English teacher felt that she was able to cater more to boys by focusing on topics and texts which dealt with “war, guns and cool, tough things.”
One male teacher, who believed that boys needed to be more active physically, allowed small groups to leave the class at timed intervals for three to five minutes to run around outside. This particular teacher believed boys were more active than girls in their orientation to learning and just naturally more boisterous, more competitive and that they loved sport. But the school’s boys-only environment actually provided a forum for reinforcing these limiting stereotypes.
To what extent were the boys being taught to value and to develop analytical skills that are needed for participation in a post-industrial society where teamwork and co-operation are equally valued skills? To what extent were boys being encouraged to embrace a broader definition of what it means to be a boy?
Indeed, some boys in this class actually felt that they were not being prepared adequately for high school and felt nervous about being able to deal with the higher-order problem-solving tasks they believed they would have to master in their future years of schooling.
This is just one example of how reinforcing stereotypes about boys as active learners actually results in compromising their academic learning. One-size-fits-all approaches do not necessarily foster higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills. There is some evidence that such boy-friendly approaches actually resulted in a dumbing down of the curriculum and a lowering of academic expectations.
Assuming that all boys are the same can also lead to denying that there are significant differences among them. Not all boys are underachieving. For example, specific groups of boys, on the basis of their race, social class and ethnicity, are more at risk of underachieving or dropping out than middle-class boys. In fact, the race gap in achievement is much greater than the gender gap.
In Toronto, for example, we know that boys from Portuguese backgrounds and those from the English-speaking Caribbean, Central or South America, and East Africa are more at risk of dropping out. We also know that middle-class boys are doing better than girls from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Such evidence really raises serious questions about the moral panic that continues to be generated about failing boys in schools and the strategies that are being advocated to address the problem.
The question that we should be asking is: Which boys and which girls are most at risk?
There is no evidence that simply putting more male teachers in schools, or separating boys from girls, actually makes a difference. The research shows that what makes a difference is good teaching, and the boys I have spoken to have confirmed this.
What matters for both boys and girls is an intellectually demanding curriculum that is relevant to and connected to their everyday lives outside of school. What also matters is the capacity of the teacher to relate warmly to students and to create a safe learning environment where they feel comfortable to take risks and to ask questions.
One of the main assumptions informing the call for more boys-only classes is that boys will feel more comfortable and more able to concentrate without the distracting influence of girls. This claim flies in the face of significant research that confirms the reality of homophobic and gender-based bullying among boys which is closely connected to how boys define what is considered to be an acceptable or “cool” masculinity. There are hierarchies among boys that exist whether or not there are girls present. Questions of sexuality, race, ethnicity, social class, disability, and cultural background all need to be taken into consideration when thinking about boys as individuals and the pecking order that exists among them.
Simply putting them into one classroom or school and having them taught by male teachers will not necessarily enhance the quality of schooling for boys, or for girls. What is needed is a more considered and reflective approach that attempts to engage with a broader research-based literature about boys’ education, the nature of single-sex classes, and what constitutes good teaching.
Wayne Martino is a professor of gender, equity and social-justice education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario.
Tags: canada
October 30th, 2009 at 11:36 am
As I see it, Wayne Martino is making a number of points which are problematic. First, he is parsing the problem in a way to deny part of the problem. This has been made by the AAUW and is that the achievement difference between middle class boys and other groups is satisfactory while the difference between disadvantaged boys and other groups is unsatisfactory. Therefore, we don’t have to worry about middle class boys. If that is true, then he has a point. I don’t know. Next, he says that we don’t want to separate the genders because of the reinforcement of stereotypes, which he describes as severely limiting. I find it hard to believe that these stereotypes are such a severe limitation. Rather, I suspect it is a convenient excuse to disallow boys only classes or schools as a potential method of trying to deal with boys low educational results. Next, he says that there is no evidence that separate boys classes or schools or use of male teachers actually makes a difference. I’m sure he has a point there from the point of view of validated research. But anecdotally, there does seem to be some evidence. But if you are going to say that separating boys or male teachers doesn’t work, then it is good if you say what does work. And he does. He says that what works and is shown by the research to work is good teaching. I suspect that this is true but irrelevant. Unless you have some magic way to make all teaching good teaching it is a useless point. Now, if he is advocating that we classify all teachers as to how good they are and that we make sure that all the good teachers teach the classes with disadvantaged boys, then maybe that point would be useful. But since I doubt he is advocating that, and I am sure that the teacher’s unions would not stand for that, I don’t think it is a particularly useful remedy. That is why so much thought needs to go into systemic potential remedies that can hopefully be implemented without relying on such “miracle” constructs as having all or the millions of teachers be good teachers or all of the millions of parents be good parents. Boys only classes or schools and the use of male teachers is an obvious one. The kind of careful following of data on individual students as done by the Broad Prize schools is another one. But to disallow any consideration of the use of these treatments until they are proven in double blind tests, while you sit back and let the patient die is, to me, unacceptable.
October 30th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
nice job parsing that one…richard
October 30th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Thanks, Richard.