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Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do [NOOK Book]
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The imbalance in higher education isn’t just a “boy problem,” though. Boys’ decreasing college attendance is bad news for girls, too, because admissions officers seeking balanced student bodies pass over girls in favor of boys. The growing gender imbalance in education portends massive shifts for the next generation: how much they make and whom they marry.
Interviewing hundreds of parents, kids, teachers, and experts, award-winning journalist Peg Tyre drills below the eye-catching statistics to examine how the educational system is failing our sons. She explores the convergence of culprits, from the emphasis on high-stress academics in preschool and kindergarten, when most boys just can’t tolerate sitting still, to the outright banning of recess, from the demands of No Child Left Behind, with its rigid emphasis on test-taking, to the boy-unfriendly modern curriculum with its focus on writing about “feelings” and its purging of “high-action” reading material, from the rise of video gaming and schools’ unease with technology to the lack of male teachers as role models.
But this passionate, clearheaded book isn’t an exercise in finger-pointing. Tyre, the mother of two sons, offers notes from the front lines—the testimony of teachers and other school officials who are trying new techniques to motivate boys to learn again, one classroom at a time. The Trouble with Boys gives parents, educators, and anyone concerned about the state of education a manifesto for change—one we must undertake right away lest school be-come, for millions of boys, unalterably a “girl thing.”
From the Hardcover edition.
In a spinoff from her 2006 cover story for Newsweek, "The Boy Crisis," Tyre delivers a cogent, reasoned overview of the current national debate about why boys are falling behind girls' achievement in school and not attending college in the same numbers. While the education emphasis in the 1990s was on helping girls succeed, especially in areas of math and science, boys are lagging behind, particularly in reading and writing; parents and educators, meanwhile, are scrambling to address the problems, from questioning teaching methods in preschool to rethinking single-sex schools. Tyre neatly sums up the information for palatable parental consumption: although boys tend to be active and noisy, and come to verbal skills later than girls, early-education teachers, mostly female, have little tolerance for the way boys express themselves. The accelerated curriculum and de-emphasis on recess do not render the classroom "boy friendly," and already set boys up for failure that grows more entrenched with each grade. Tyre touches on important concerns about the lack of male role models in many boys' lives, the perils of video-game obsession and the slippery dialogue over boys' brains versus girls' brains. Tyre treads carefully, offering a terrifically useful synthesis of information. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.AuntieAlice
Posted October 10, 2009
What caught my eye was the blurb on the back cover that said more boys had been expelled from preschool...!! Expelled from preschool? A grandchild in our family, a boy, had been expelled from preschool. What went wrong? What is happening in our schools? How come a preschooler fails, and how come a teacher can't deal with it? What is the problem? But I understood that it happened to boys more often.
This book is a MUST read! It answers some of the problems facing both children, especially boys, and the schools themselves.
As I read the book, I was either madly emailing quotes to friends and relatives, or calling them on the phone to get this book. I even bought another one to send to my son who is the father of a boy, although a boy still not crawling, walking or talking.
As a former teacher, I could relate to much of what Ms. Tyre had to say. I agree that boys are different and should not be expected to fit the mold of what the system mandates. We want all kids to succeed, and this book does not take away from any gains that have been made for girls, but it looks at the special problems facing boys in the classroom.
Much of what was said, I thought could also be a prescription for schools in general. It may be time to go back to teaching "kids" and not the test, not for national or district test scores. We are short-changing our children when we ignore their interests, and not respond to their delight of discovering something "new" and wanting to investigate, learn more about, and immerse oneself in the study.
I highly recommend this book!
Anonymous
Posted November 29, 2011
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Anonymous
Posted October 20, 2010
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Anonymous
Posted April 30, 2011
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Anonymous
Posted December 27, 2009
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Overview
From the moment they step into the classroom, boys begin to struggle. They get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls; in elementary school, they’re diagnosed with learning disorders four times as often. By eighth grade huge numbers are reading below basic level. And by high school, they’re heavily outnumbered in AP classes and, save for the realm of athletics, show indifference to most extracurricular activities. Perhaps most alarmingly, boys now account for less than 43 percent of those enrolled in college, and the gap widens every semester!The imbalance in higher education isn’t just a “boy problem,” though. Boys’ decreasing college attendance is bad news for...