Is Our Education System Unfair to Boys?

I can remember my school years like they were yesterday. Some great memories, some not so good, but very different than what I see my own kids doing today. Primarily, we had a more balanced day-some sitting and some running. We had Gym everyday and a pretty long recess where especially the boys could run off the energy. Not that the exercise wasn’t also great for the girls too.

Not to paint with too broad of a brush or to sound sexist, and with the knowledge as a thrilled parent, to have the great fortune of having a girl and 2 boys, who has lived the differences, not to mention my 26 years of close observation of girls and boys with school related attention, processing and behavior problems, I have seen a lot that tells me that some changes in the way we educate boys would probably go a long way toward improving their educational experience, lower the amount of labels like Adhd, and prevent the sometimes adversarial situation that happens based on what boys do naturally. As we march further and further into larger numbers of diagnosed kids in our public school systems, I think this topic is of epic importance as the definition of a "problem" in a school setting needs to change, along with the kinds of activities our kids are doing at school.

I have loved watching the differences between our girl and our two boys throughout the years, and it always amazed me how much of the things they did, followed "traditional" girl boy behavior. I find the differences to be refreshing and wonderful, but a lot of folks I know do a lot of complaining about boy behavior. Unfortunately for them, they could be enjoying more of their boy’s lives if they understood how to define what boys do and what boys need.

I know there are many feminists and those who would say we are built exactly the same and can do things exactly the same way, who will cringe when I say these things, but what I saw started from birth, and was not based on modeling or things they imitated. I saw differences in activity level, in what they were attracted to and in the kinds of activities they were drawn to. Not that I didn’t have friends who had kids the exact opposite of this. Again, not painting with a broad brush here because behaviors can also be related to things like lack of sleep, diet and other influences as well.

There are definite differences, though, in the way boys and girls process information and handle different kinds of activities and environments.

From a Web MD article called "Does your son's fidgeting and wriggling mean he’s checked out at school? Don't worry -- he's perfectly normal."

"Studies show that boys learn differently than girls. Brain scans tell part of the story. In general, more areas of girls' brains, including the cerebral cortex (responsible for memory, attention, thought, and language) are dedicated to verbal functions. The hippocampus -- a region of the brain critical to verbal memory storage -- develops earlier for girls and is larger in women than in men. "That has a profound effect on vocabulary and writing," Gurian says.

In boys' brains, a greater part of the cerebral cortex is dedicated to spatial and mechanical functioning. So boys tend to learn better with movement and pictures rather than just words, Gurian says. (my comment: maybe the intense attraction to working on computers).

"If teachers let boys draw a picture or story board before sitting down to write," he says, "they'll be better able to access color and other details about what they are writing. They can access more information."

There are also biochemical differences. Boys have less serotonin and oxytocin -- hormones that play a role in promoting a sense of calm -- than girls. That's why it's more likely that young boys will fidget and act impulsively. "Teachers think the boy who can't sit still and is wriggling in his chair and making noise is being defiant," Leonard Sax, MD, author of Why Gender Matters and Boys Adrift, says. "But he isn't. He can't be quiet."

Sax says there are no differences between boys and girls in terms of what they can learn. "But there are," he says, "big differences in the way to teach them."

At it’s simplest form, I have always looked to our evolution with men being hunter gatherers and women being the home makers. Yes again, I can feel the glaring eyes of the feminists, but the truth is that before the feminist movement and the politicizing of this issue, we did have a certain structure of living along sex lines. Not saying I agreed or disagreed with any of it, but it seems to me that the natural brain functioning and processing along sex lines, manifested itself in our lifestyles.

So if you take this Web MD information into account, and you apply that to the way we have our public schools set up, you know there are inherent problems built into the system for boys, that will shine a very strong light on their NORMAL differences and how it is taking the class off track.

Most schools require-sitting still, listening, following directions, reading, memory, answering questions and participating in conversation. All things girls are naturally great at based on the Web MD article. Add to that the reduction in amount of movement based education. Less Gym, less recess, more sitting. Don’t get me wrong. I know these sitting based activities are all important things for kids to learn, regardless of girl or boy, and I have been helping people help their kids to practice these skills over the years. They also will need these for a healthy functional adulthood, but is it so good that we are asking boys to learn in an environment that is more girl centered, while calling natural boy behaviors aberrant or abnormal? Is it possible to make a school day, like when I went to school where boys would be given an opportunity to run and move around for a good portion of the day? Would it be better to have them learn in a more active environment where the normal fidgeting would blend into the active learning? Is asking them to work hard against what their brains and hormones are telling them to do, to fit into a contrived situation, such a healthy thing?

I believe that regardless of girl or boy, that everyone needs to have great processing skills to handle whatever situation they need to, and to have the best choices available to them in life. However, I also believe that we need to be acknowledging and utilizing the natural strengths and habits, to create a better learning environment for all kids. The old model doesn’t work for all people and I would think we would have enough creativity and resources to be able to go beyond the constraints of time and history to do something better.

Since most of the labels and diagnosing I have seen over 26 years are boys, I can’t help but wonder if all of it or much of it is the boys crawling out of their skins from being required to sit and force their brains to process like girls do.

Am I saying that we should let them run around all day like wild animals or be on screens all the time? No. They need to learn how to function within the normal limits of our society. I just know that the first experience of learning, leaves an indelible impression on how kids feel about school and learning throughout their lives. Those who have a very negative experience don’t normally live that down and negative usually build on more negative. Doesn't create a very good outlook for their futures. With more kids going into a school type environment earlier in life, not focusing on this kind of information could have some far reaching consequences. Maybe these innate instinct behaviors have a purpose that we are extinguishing. Forcing a "one size fits all" type of education just doesn’t seem necessary or healthy to me.

Is there a such thing as too much socialization? You tell me.

Dr. Sherri was a Child and Family Processing and Motivation expert seeing people via webcam. She is currently a writer and consultant, updating her website and will post when done for contact purposes.