Can Boys Do Better?
...l factors alone are the cause of boys’ recent failure to succeed in school. For a more in-depth exploration, lets look at social and educational factors that contribute to this issue. Social factors: William Pollack, author of Real Boys, spent twenty years working with and thinking about men and boys as the co-director of the Center for Men at McLean Hospital, as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, and as a founding member of the society for the Psychological study of Men and Masculinity at the American Psychological Association. Pollack studied hundreds of young and adolescent boys, observing them in various settings, conducting empirical testing, and talking with their parents. He coined the term “Boy Code” which is the unwritten code of behaviors, rules of conduct and cultural behaviors that are inculcated into boys by our society – an image that our boys feel under great pressure to emulate. According to the Boy Code, writes William Pollack, we expect our boys to be little men: tough, independent, autonomous creatures (184). We restrict how much affection they show one another. And although it is not easy to tell, writes Pollack, many adolescent boys – just like adolescent girls – suffer from a crisis of self-confidence and identity. Yet unlike girls, who generally feel comfortable speaking to one another in private about their pain and insecurities, boys find it more difficult to express their genuine selves in private, with family and friends. (Pollack, xxvi). Their voices, which may be loud and forceful and full of confidence, may not reveal what is really in their heart and souls. Another factor to consider are the sweeping social changes that have taken place in the later part of the twentieth century, which have left men with a more ambiguous role in society. Previously the roles of each sex had been more clearly defined, and boys were expected to become fathers and breadwinners while protecting their families and country, if necessary. They would join a profession or trade that they anticipated staying at and held a job for life. But today, the change in the way society views women has resulted in many girls choosing careers in addition to or instead of the traditional mother and homemaker’s role. While this there is nothing wrong with this trend, men have had a more difficult time finding their path towards being more nurturing and participating more in the home in a world where women have easily become more visibly clever, strong and capable, taking on previously male roles of fighter or leader in their careers. This breakdown in gender roles has left males more confused than ever. According to Lucinda Neall, if boys are disaffected in school, have poor qualifications, and worse job prospects than women, then the future for them, their partners and their children is bleak (239). While many men take a greater part in the birth and care of their children and may even choose to work at home, most sons still lack the role model of a whole father – emotionally available and self-confident, strong and gentle, aggressive and life-affirming. (Elium, 49). Many boys are without fathers at all, as is evidenced by the skyrocketing incidence of divorce and single parenting, and even when they are present, many fathers remain on the fringes of their son’s lives. This is troubling, as the father is a key role model for boys, as they will learn from him more than anyone else what it is to be male. A survey of 1400 British boys found that the involvement of a father or father figure had a significant affect on boys’ self-esteem and their attitude to school (Neall 13). Boys with a man in their life who spends time with them, does activities with them, and actively listens to their problems while providing guidance are more likely to have high self-esteem and a positive outlook on school. In the absence of a good male role model in the family, boys may look elsewhere to find a model for masculinity. They may look to their peers. Educational Factors: When faced with energetic, disruptive, inattentive boys, teachers often radiate, unwittingly, an assumption of low expectation (Neall xiii). Within a typical school setting, one can easily understand why teachers’ comments often focus on the negative when it comes to disruptive boys, such as poor behavior, lack of concentration and insufficient work. As William Pollack found, many educators seem not to take the characteristics of boys’ learning styles into account in their attitudes in the classroom (247). Many of the comments teachers make about boys tend toward the negative, such as boys have more learning difficulties, physical aggressiveness, inattention, hyperactivity, and perhaps even ADD or ADHD, rather than stating their observations more positively in terms of differences in learning styles. As I mentioned earlier, recent research has found that boys in general are performing more poorly in school than girls, especially in the areas of reading and writing. Although there is an attention –getting handful of stars performers, many boys muddle along in the mediocre middle, getting by as “average” students, and that the bottom of the class actually contains a majority of boys rather than girls. Behind these disturbing statistics, William Pollack finds an irrefutable yet under-discussed reality: boys have a significant problem with their self-esteem as students. And while several well-publicized, large scale surveys have shown a crisis of low-self esteem among adolescent girls, is it not possible that while we address why it is the girls are in trouble, we may be thinking that boys must be doing fine? Pollack believes that one reason we often fail to recognize boys’ low self-esteem is that some of the surveys used to assess self-esteem are not designed to generate accurate results for boys. (Pollack 236). They ask very direct questions, such as “Do you feel you are good at math?” and boys, more than girls, know the answers that will make them sound self-confident – as dictated by the Boy Code – and are quick to respond accordingly. Boys often use bragging as a shied to hide a deep-seated lack of confidence, and as they move into adolescence, they are more and more prone to distort the extent to which they feel confident. In 1987, a researcher named Professor Notleman studied young teens as they made their transition to secondary schools, assessing what they perceived about their competence and self esteem as compared to what their teachers felt about them. He found that boys consistently rated themselves more competent than they were rated by their teachers. (Pollack 238). These studies show that the longer boys are influenced by our society, the more they feel that they have to hide their confusion by making believe they feel good about themselves when they don’t. Pollack also finds that an unintentional disconnection between teachers and boys often grows in intensity as boys approach adolescence. (Pollack 241). The teacher may not know about the Boy Code, and he or she may not fully understand all of the societal pressures that make boys feel they need to act strong, tough, and aggressive. As a result, the teacher may be unable to see the boy’s genuine vulnerability and thus feel intimidated or, in some cases, physically threatened by him. Often this disconnection between teachers and boys contains a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Lucinda Neall writes in Bringing out the Best In Boys: A boy who feels neither accepted nor respected may become rebellious or disrespectful and will look to his peers to fulfill his needs. If he does not get the admiration he yearns for from his teachers, he will seek it from fellow-students, both boys and girls: admiration for his humor, for acting cool or breaking the rules (27). Finally, boys’ unique learning styles, coupled with the traditional classroom environment, often unwittingly contributes to boys’ failure to succeed in the classroom. Some research suggests that, whereas may girls may prefer to learn by watching and listening, boys generally prefer to learn by doing, by engaging in some action-oriented task. In learning environments biased against their strengths, boys may get turned off or become frustrated, attempting to get their needs met by seeking negative attention. (Pollack 247). This last-ditch rebellion completes the circle for failure, for now these boys are labeled as having a conduct disorder or diagnosed with hyperactivity. Another hindrance to boys performance may be found in today’s heterogeneous classroom. In Real Boys, William Pollack describes what happened when Mr. Ray Bradbury, an administrator at Kings’ School in Winchester England, did an experiment by segregating boys from girls at the same academic level after finding that boys scored so much more poorly than girls in English on a standardized test. The boys and their parents resisted this approach at first, but as the boys were directly addressed by their teacher Mr. Jeckells, who explained the statistical evidence that showed they were in danger of underachieving, and then made his high expectations of them very clear, their attitudes changed and their motivation doubled (Pollack 249). Mr. Jeckells soon developed a deep insight into why it might be that this same-sex class was so successful. He discovered that in a single-sex class, it was possible to cr...