http://www.whyboysfail.com/2009/12/16/tucsoncitizencom-reviews-why-boys-fail/ Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:23:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://www.whyboysfail.com/2009/12/16/tucsoncitizencom-reviews-why-boys-fail/#comment-13307 Anonymous Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:42:05 +0000 http://www.whyboysfail.com/?p=1270#comment-13307 This shows that some people are starting to pay attention. Today Tusconcitizen.com, tomorrow ...? Anyway, I found this paragraph interesting: “I applaud what schools have done for girls,” Whitmire said. “It’s just that they pushed the literacy demands into pre-k, Kindergarten and first grade without realizing that many boys can’t handle literacy that early, at least not the way it’s traditionally taught. … We need to pause to figure out how to teach literacy to boys at those young ages.” This got me thinking that perhaps the problem is actually in reverse. If they pushed literacy demands back into pre-k, etc., they did it for all children. Yet the girls thrived and the boys failed. From the point of view of the girls, maybe this explains a lot of their success. Perhaps they were actually being held back for no good reason until recently. Perhaps they were actually capable of learning to read and write well at the age of 4 and 5 all along, but the timing of when things were taught in school delayed their being taught literacy for a couple of years. When it was pulled back to earlier ages, it may have allowed more time for them to do better at reading and writing, since they were actually always capable of learning the basics at those earlier ages. Not only that, but there is the idea that there are certain windows for learning certain skills, whether it be music, foreign languages, etc. Maybe bringing literacy to earlier ages coincided with a more optimum window for girls. All this again suggests different starting ages for boys and girls. Let the girls start at age 4 or 5, but keep the boys home until they are 6 or 7. Ideally, you would avoid the boys failing at the earlier age, with its detrimental effects, and they would succeed at learning literacy at the later age. They wouldn't graduate from high school until the age of 19 or 20, but why the rush? And perhaps trying to figure out how to teach literacy to boys at the ages of 4 and 5 is simply impossible, in general. After all, I don't think we would expect to try to develop methods of teaching 2 year old girls to read. We simply wait a while until we feel they are ready. Perhaps that is the strategy that should be applied to boys. This shows that some people are starting to pay attention. Today Tusconcitizen.com, tomorrow …? Anyway, I found this paragraph interesting: “I applaud what schools have done for girls,” Whitmire said. “It’s just that they pushed the literacy demands into pre-k, Kindergarten and first grade without realizing that many boys can’t handle literacy that early, at least not the way it’s traditionally taught. … We need to pause to figure out how to teach literacy to boys at those young ages.” This got me thinking that perhaps the problem is actually in reverse. If they pushed literacy demands back into pre-k, etc., they did it for all children. Yet the girls thrived and the boys failed. From the point of view of the girls, maybe this explains a lot of their success. Perhaps they were actually being held back for no good reason until recently. Perhaps they were actually capable of learning to read and write well at the age of 4 and 5 all along, but the timing of when things were taught in school delayed their being taught literacy for a couple of years. When it was pulled back to earlier ages, it may have allowed more time for them to do better at reading and writing, since they were actually always capable of learning the basics at those earlier ages. Not only that, but there is the idea that there are certain windows for learning certain skills, whether it be music, foreign languages, etc. Maybe bringing literacy to earlier ages coincided with a more optimum window for girls. All this again suggests different starting ages for boys and girls. Let the girls start at age 4 or 5, but keep the boys home until they are 6 or 7. Ideally, you would avoid the boys failing at the earlier age, with its detrimental effects, and they would succeed at learning literacy at the later age. They wouldn’t graduate from high school until the age of 19 or 20, but why the rush? And perhaps trying to figure out how to teach literacy to boys at the ages of 4 and 5 is simply impossible, in general. After all, I don’t think we would expect to try to develop methods of teaching 2 year old girls to read. We simply wait a while until we feel they are ready. Perhaps that is the strategy that should be applied to boys.

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