Girls Rule?

Thank you JJ for posting a great link in my comments on my Should Boys Be Homeschooled post. You realize that a link like that consumes me, right? And I just had so much time to spend clicking through on the various articles! ;)

JJ posted a link to an organization called the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. There are a variety of articles and opinions on the subject of gender in education, but this article by Margaret Wente, was particularly interesting. Wente notes that there has been a complete reversal in higher education over the past 25 years. Apparently, females now outnumber males in college, law school and medical school.

No wonder the hottest topic in education is how to help the boys. The remedies suggested range from more boy-friendly books (Surprise! Boys are interested in cowboys and cars) to more recess (Surprise! Boys have a hard time sitting still) and more male role models (Guess what! Boys admire hockey stars).

To the average parent, this may seem like a stunning statement of the obvious. But in education, it’s an earthquake. An entire generation of educational theory has been rooted in the notion that boys and girls are the same, and that gender is socially constructed. Worse, social critics such as Christine Hoff Summers (The War Against Boys) have argued persuasively that schools tend to pathologize normal boy behaviour — in other words, to treat boys as defective girls.

That last sentence really resonated with me, but this article is 5 years old. Has anything changed? Apparently the “earthquake” wasn’t big enough. In my personal experience, and in my observations of others, very little has changed to “accommodate” gender differences in education. I can’t find an accurate number to quote (lucky for me I just blog and don’t get paid to write).

The good news is, I don’t have to. I have taken matters into my own hands, so to speak. No longer do I have to hear the teacher say, “He was supposed to be doing worksheets, but I found him under his desk making pig noises.” No longer do I have to sit in meetings with all the Big Scary School People (do we EVER get over the inferiority complex that schools instill in us?), hearing that maybe drugs would help (no, they are not allowed to say that, but they did).

Now, we celebrate boys. We do whatever we can to foster that creativity and allow that creative energy. And YES, it drives me nuts! I am a girl. I grew up in a family of 6 girls raised by my mother. This is all foreign to me, but I embrace it. Boys are different, like it or not. Not better or worse, just different.

By the way, none of my boys has been diagnosed with ADHD, not even the one making the pig noises. His pediatrician said no way, my psychologist sister said no way, and I said no way. Turns out he couldn’t read the worksheets, so he would do other things instead.

stuntmen


kids 1

kids 2

kids 3

reading

fireman

bottle rockets

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under Homeschool Issues, Parenting 

Comments

13 Responses to “Girls Rule?”

  1. Piseco on February 2nd, 2008 8:43 am

    I was nodding along with your whole post this morning! I was raised by a staunch feminist, who drilled into us that boys and girls are inwardly the same, and gender is a social construct.

    Then I had a baby boy of my own, who was drawn to all these “boy” energies. And this fall, I brought home my daughter, who at 14 months likes mostly “girl” activities. Here I’ve been trying so hard to make everything gender neutral, when there is no neutral!

    But I had to laugh when I came to the picture with the diet Coke boxes and Target bag. That’s so completely my son! He rips, cuts or pries apart anything he can get his hands on to repurpose it, often as weapons (surprise!) or costumes.

    Thanks for a great post.

  2. tribeofautodidacts on February 2nd, 2008 8:49 am

    Under the table making pig noises instead of doing a worksheet - eh? Oh my gosh, I wish he could meet my 9-year-old son James. I feel sure they’re kindred spirits.

    There is no doubt in my mind that if we had kept him in PS (he only went to preschool), by 3rd grade, there would have been serious talks about having him *mainline* Ritalin. I can’t imagine anything but home ed. (with SHORT lessons, no worksheets, his being able to bounce around on the back of the couch or play with Legos while we read) working for him.

    LOVE your pictures.

  3. paradisefound on February 2nd, 2008 1:02 pm

    Two boys, here. Honestly, my oldest is pretty calm, but even so I think he has benefited from our hands-on style. He *could* have sat through school lessons, but he would have been bored to tears.

    My youngest is a different story, and also would have been guaranteed a ride on the Ritalin road had he been in school. Everything comes late for him, not because he’s not listening, but just because that’s who he is. The good news is, his intensity has crossed over into his reading. When he picks up a book (daily) he’s intent on finishing it and will read for hours on end.

    Love the coke box costume. Totally something that would happen here.

  4. Not June Cleaver on February 2nd, 2008 11:09 pm

    Costume? That is ARMOR! ;)

    And Piseco, thanks for stopping by. There are definitely social aspects to gender, but I am learning that there are also some definite biological differences (besides the obvious ones!). Early in my kids’ lives, we tried to be gender neutral with toys and colors, etc., but we quickly learned about energy (oh, and weapons).

  5. JJ Ross on February 4th, 2008 12:43 pm

    Ditto NotJC - I LOVE the pictures! Best response to an academic link I’ve ever seen, maybe. . .

    And I love this collaborative education talk among homeschooling parents about real ideas they are living, instead of standardized schoolish nonsense. Does my heart good! :)

    Hmmm, let’s see what link I can send next to get you going! JJ

  6. JJ Ross on February 4th, 2008 12:50 pm

    And another thing, not only do schoolfolk tend to treat boys as defective girls, but they treat unschooled learners as defective shcoolkids.

    Come to think of it, schools treat all kids including teens, as defective adults!

    Wait, but they also treat all parents as defective teachers and teachers as defective administrators, and vice versa, the administrators as defective teachers, hey, I think we’re onto something — so if you had to pick one adjective to define the theme that defines schooling, wouldn’t it have to be defective?
    ;-)

  7. Not June Cleaver Plays With “Girls Rule, Boys Drool” School « Cocking A Snook! on February 4th, 2008 1:41 pm

    […] Not June Cleaver Plays With “Girls Rule, Boys Drool” School 4 02 2008 Schooling could use real intelligent design but it’s in short supply. We’ll have to learn this stuff about learning for ourselves imo. Maybe start with a little eye-opening homeschoolers’ field trip to “who kids really are” and why they aren’t interchangeable widgets? You can jump onboard NotJC’s “real ideas for real learning with real kids” express here. […]

  8. Stephanie on February 4th, 2008 4:07 pm

    This is great!
    I love the coke armour, my 5 year old did it with VHS cases, up his arms and legs, he has also made a robot suit out of a box. Who knew cardboard was so versatile :)

  9. Laura on February 4th, 2008 9:59 pm

    LOVE the pictures! We have pig noises here too, and all sort of other random noises. I’ve learned to embrace the noise, thanks to some very wise unschoolers further down the path. I now LOVE their energy, outbursts and all. It’s who they are, and if I could siphon some of that energy and mainline it, I would. I miss having boundless energy myself. Yay for boy energy! Yay for grrl energy! Yay for all of us! Except those stodgy school-folk. :)

  10. Not June Cleaver on February 4th, 2008 10:51 pm

    Yes Laura! Grrrl energy is abundant and good. I never meant to imply that girls are not active. I’ve just never witnessed a pile of girls. ;)

    And JJ, I’m pleased to see that I have been linked to several other blogs (though not all the links are showing up here, I have found a couple of others too). Kids need to learn the way that works best for THEM, not those teaching them. We’ve really messed up the focus with our schools.

    Ouch, and you hit a nerve with the defective unschooled learners! I’m still trying to overcome that impression myself. Every day, I have to remind myself that they WILL learn. I just have to trust them. It is very hard. That’s why I love The New Unschooler. She does such a great job saying what I’m feeling every day.

    Stephanie, Alvin gets MAD at me when I throw away cardboard. Every box, no matter how big or small, can become something I never imagined! FUN! I’m so lucky to have my boys. They teach me a lot.

  11. childsplay on February 5th, 2008 2:37 am

    Have you checked out the interviews with John Scieszka? The author of Time Warp Trio and lots of other fun books? I think you’ll enjoy reading his take, being a teacher in PS and now trying to get boys interested in reading. He has some pretty strong opinions on boys in school–particularly if you read down to ‘Two Different Rocket Ships’.

    http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/scieszka/transcript#reading

    Good stuff!

  12. sue on February 6th, 2008 4:25 pm

    I see you made a rockety thing (forget the name)……do you have a link for the instructions?

    or a book?

    Sue

  13. Not June Cleaver on February 6th, 2008 6:19 pm

    Hi sue,

    Nope I don’t have instructions. They did this as part of a physics class they took (homeschool mom/engineer sitting in the sand was the teacher). I’m sure there are instructions online though. They are bottle rockets, powered by air pressure (created with the bicycle pump).

    It was a really great project for the kids, as they experimented with several types of bottles and bottle contents. Simon’s went WAAAAAY up in the air and then had a garbage bag parachute pop out.

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