Here’s the rationale for all-boys schools…
It’s about steering urban boys in the right direction. In New York, fewer than 40 percent of black boys graduate from high school, according to David Banks from the Eagle Academy for Young Men. In my search for what works academically, I tend to overlook those other needs. From the perspective of academics-only, I”m not convinced that all-boys charters are needed. I see coed charters, and a few traditional schools, doing just as well with boys. But there are other perspectives, especially in large urban districts.
Here’s another all-boys charter high school opening in Rochester.
Tags: boys charters
December 28th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
I think it all still goes back to the line from Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” The masses need to become aware of the problem and then decide that they will not just let the status quo go on and on and on. Right now, in your average coed school, boys are doing poorly. Girls are doing much better. How do you deal with these boys who are doing poorly? How do you modify that status quo environment so that the problems of boys are addressed? You are asking a status quo that has 80% female teachers who have to enjoy teaching the girls, the girls who are not discipline problems, the girls who do their work, to care so much about the fact that boys need saving that they are willing to put up with the garbage the boys hand out and fight to keep them from dropping out and keep them learning. Is that truly realistic for the great mass of teachers? I hope you are right and that I am simply not properly informed in the methods that allow coed schools to succeed with boys. It is one of the big reasons I look forward to reading your book. Unfortunately, I have been having difficulties with Amazon. I went to my local bookstore to see if I could simply buy a copy, but they told me it won’t be available until January 13. I hope you are right, but I suspect that the points that David Banks is making apply (to a lesser degree, granted) to all underachieving boys, not just certain minorities.
December 29th, 2009 at 9:37 am
anonymous:
would you contact me directly at richard.whitmire@gmail.com
thanks…
December 29th, 2009 at 9:39 am
By the way, let me point out this article, also about the Eagle Academy for Young Men: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/06/04/2009-06-04_bronx_teachers_rage_over_being_told_to_inflate_grades.html
This follows on my previous comment. These teachers can’t see the forest for the trees. They don’t understand how damaging failure is. I once read a piece calling failure “psychic poison.” You talk about the effect of failure yourself. You point out that at the kindergarten level, boys do worse than girls in reading and get discouraged. I think you need to try to minimize failure experiences and maximize success experiences. There has been a movement, a small one granted, for schools that do not give grades at all, simply because they warp the educational experience. W. Edwards Deming, whose management ideas created the Japanese model where, for instance, everyone gets together for morning calisthenics, in his 14 points said that there should not be appraisals of employees, that they are more destructive than helpful. But the idea of grades is so ingrained in all of us that the idea of controlling them so as not to produce negative effects and deal with problems like epidemic dropout rates just seems totally foreign, certainly to most teachers. They see grades as an end rather than a means to an end. In addition, there is a deeply ingrained belief in the idea that “this failure will teach them, they’ll learn their lesson and do all their work and be angels in the classroom.” And, of course, that does happen sometimes. But the idea has become a one size fits all mantra, regardless of the evidence that it may do more harm than good from evidence such as epidemic like dropout rates. I look at this as the problem of Skinnerian thinking. B.F. Skinner believed only in stimulus/response pairs. He saw that if he varied the schedule of reinforcement (stimulus) in his Skinner box, that the laboratory animal would then have a mathematically precise response. People, including teachers, think of us that way, despite all evidence that we are more complicated, and our overall set of stimuli more varied, than that involving laboratory rats. So when you see certain coed schools who do well by boys, I am very curious as to why. Too often it is due to a charismatic and determined administrator. If you can truly “fail” your way as a school or system to success in suppressing dropouts, I’d love to see how that works.