I just came across this intriguing post over at Trix and her Kids, a mother’s defense of her boy in school. One bit grabbed me in particular:
I have issues with the all female staff at the school not taking the time to learn how to deal with the over-active boys, because they are too busy coddling the girls. Maybe that’s harsh. Perhaps they aren’t coddling the girls, maybe they are just more in tune to how they learn.
It’s a side of the issue I haven’t really thought about in, say, 30 years, since this time around, my older kid–the one who is in preschool–is a girl. And from our perspective now, it’s the boys who are the disruptors, the pushers and the pishers.
And who knows–Trix and her hubby are standout parent-bloggers, but I don’t know them or their kids. Maybe their boys are little terrors. Maybe not. But she’s got a great point about the teachers: they’re almost all women. That’s as true at my daughter’s boutique-y Upper West Side school as it was at the preschool I went to in Florida. The 2004 numbers released by the census showed that 79% of all elementary and middle school teachers were women. Early childhood education is likewise dominated by female teachers, and yet, as Trix pointed out, that’s the time that boys are least able to deal with their emotions, and possibly least suited for a classroom environment.
Now, I know that teachers are professionals. They can overcome their own gender in the same way that I, an apostate, can write about evangelicals from time to time. And I know there’s a bit of a vicious irony questioning women for being teachers, when historically that’s all they were allowed to do (and even today, with the way the U.S. pits career against family, teaching’s attractiveness to women is due in part to factors beyond their control). But with all the studies showing that boys get behind early in school and stay behind, it’s an important question to ask: Are boys just misunderstood? Is teacher gender part of the problem?
Do we think this might be a new issue? Because, I doubt it’s a gender issue – I would have to think it’s an individual issue. The teachers as individuals and the children as individuals. Making it a gender issues seem far too sweeping a generalization to make on both sides of the equation.
As far as I recall, all my teachers through about 3rd grade were women and I don’t feel remotely like I was misunderstood.
I worked in a school district’s preschool for two years. My primary role was a special education teaching assistant, but I worked with students of all levels of development. I was the only male who regularly worked with the children as the other male on staff was a therapist. It seemed that it was every day that I witnessed something that I disagreed with in terms of how the boys were treated. Here’s one example: I was sitting with three boys who were working on their eye/hand coordination by hammering wooden golf tees into a styrofoam block. They were having a wonderful time and doing quite well. I simply was observing them and not necessarily interfering as I thought they were doing it just fine. From across the room the teacher directs me to tell the boys to hammer a bit more quietly. That’s right…HAMMER a bit more QUIETLY. I did not like this and politely informed her that I would not do so, but that she could if she wished.
This kind of “keeping boys in the box” was evident all the time, from art time to music time to outdoor play. It seemed that they wanted the boys to act like girls.
This is something we have talked about and thought a lot about as a family with our two boys. My wife loved her experience at school while I hated it and we have talked about what will work best for our kids. We dont have any answers yet but I think the fact that we are having the conversation we will get to the bottom of it.
I don’t believe there is a single male teacher on staff at either of our sons’ schools. To be honest I’ve never given it any thought, but these posts make me wonder about the children that don’t have a male influence present in their daily life. I’m not one to say if such things are good or bad, and I would never suggest that the schools “do something about it” — they have enough problems, but it’s definitely interesting. I’m looking forward to what other parents have to say on the matter.
And for the record, our boys have their moments.
Nathan;
This is a growing problem of substantial consequence to our society. A blog I wrote about wanting to teach my boys to be men garnered almost more comments than any other of mine on momlogic (http://bit.ly/BoysMen).
The statistics about this are frightening and the consequences to boys/girls I think equally devastating.
I think this is a topic worthy of much greater exploration and I appreciate this post a great deal.
Bruce Sallan
“A Dad’s Point-of-View”
Wow. Never thought about this. My four year old has massive amounts of energy and I can’t even imagine the frustration if that were caged by misunderstanding authority. Luckily he’s in a preschool that allows kids to have structured chaos. Hammer quietly? (re: few comments back) lol. That would put my son on tilt. He would implode, I am sure of it!