We hear the results in a wide variety of places. At a local nursery, the owner explained why most all of his helpers were women by using his thumbs to indicate that men’s problems could all be traced to a preoccupation with handheld video games. “All they want to do is play,” he said. Another local employer of part-time helpers explained that it is impossible to find qualified males saying, “There are few men who are even interested, and those few lack the qualifications. They don’t know much, and they don’t care.”In a report by the Independent Women’s Forum of Washington, D.C., entitled, “Taking the Boy Crisis in Education Seriously,” (April 2007), Krista Kafer makes the case that, “Boys, not girls, are being left behind by our nation’s schools.” She backs up this conclusion in an astounding paragraph of findings:
Girls surpass boys in reading, writing, civics and the arts. Girls get better grades and more honors; they have higher aspirations, are more engaged in school and are more likely to graduate from high school and college. Boys, on the other hand, are more likely to be suspended or expelled, need special education, smoke, drink, and do drugs, repeat a grade, commit suicide, become incarcerated, leave school without attaining literacy, drop out of school or be unemployed. Marginal advantages in math and science for boys pale compared to the sheer advantage girls enjoy throughout school.
Kafer makes it clear that this is no “manufactured crisis” or a “backlash against the women’s movement” as some feminist authors have suggested.
A survey of high-school seniors found that girls are more likely to participate in music and performing arts activities, academic clubs, student council or government, and join the newspaper and yearbook. Also, they are more likely to participate in community affairs, or volunteer once or twice a month. The only extracurricular activity boys are likely to take part in is athletics.
A survey of high-school sophomores found that girls are more likely to perform community service, take music, art, and language classes, read at least three hours a week of non-school reading, and talk on the phone. Boys work on hobbies, drive or ride around, visit with friends, play sports, watch television, and play video games. Of those who said they watched 6 or more hours of television, 22 percent were boys and 15 percent were girls.
The public education system must respond with innovative strategies and environments that help boys and girls, because the consequences of these conditions are serious. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 60% of the new jobs being created in our economy today will require technological literacy, yet only 22% of the young people entering the job market now actually possess those skills. By 2010, all jobs will require some form of technological literacy, and 80% of those jobs haven’t even been created yet. Students must be prepared for a world that even we ourselves cannot completely anticipate. If students do not know how to learn, and if they do not have a desire to learn, adaptation to and flexibility within a new, uncertain environment tomorrow is unlikely.
What both educators and students must understand is that scientific knowledge is doubling every few years. As a result of breathtaking changes—the sudden growth of information technologies, medical breakthroughs, and advances in genetic engineering, for example—most major societal institutions are in a state of change. Yet schools remain much the same institutions as our grandparents attended. Faced with this flood of change—in large measure driven by science and technology—we are, as a society, failing miserably to produce an informed and scientifically literate populace.
We are in dire need of a serious discussion in this country about the importance of public
education, what our children actually need to be taught, and the extent to which quality instruction currently exists. Schools need to increase everyday standards for classroom attendance, behavior, homework completion, and academic participation and cooperation. And consequences for not meeting these standards also need to be increased and enforced.
Failing to hold students accountable for inappropriate behavior and unproductive
academic performance is a recipe for lowering standards to the point where individuals no longer believe that the rules apply to them. Often, students spend more time complaining about educational requirements they are expected to follow instead of attending classes and figuring out and using constructive strategies for passing.
Once we focus more on instilling academic values in our students instead of worrying
about bruising their egos, damaging their self-esteem, or stifling their voice, our schools will finally begin to recover the ground lost to the specter of low expectations. Doing so will do more to indicate increased standards than any exit exam ever could.
Good schools that help boys and girls reach their potential exist in both the public and private sector. The existence of some of these schools, however, is insufficient. Public education must embrace innovation and encourage the replication of strategies—wherever they can be found—that will help boys and girls reach their potential. If this means allowing families to choose schools, single-sex schools or classrooms, new charter-school laws, unique scholarship programs, or instituting new math and science requirements, the development of innovative strategies must be the goal if we are not just to give every boy and girl the chance to succeed, but if we are to be successful in providing society with an informed and scientifically literate populace. Kafer writes that, “Successful single-sex classrooms and single-sex schools can have a positive effect on student achievement for boys and girls. Such environments can break down stereotypes and help girls attain high achievement in math and science and boys attain high achievement in reading and writing.”
Public education is important, but we need to approach it in such a way that we both recognize and emphasize its importance, but, most importantly, strengthen and improve it.
This Wikepedia essay on public education is outstanding. To read the essay, go to the web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_education Here, you will not just find the reasons for, funding and history of public education, also you will find an explanation of its development in Israel and Scotland as a foundation for the system eventually established in the United States.
At http://www.engines4ed.org/hyperbook/nodes/NODE-40-pg.html the essay is entitled, “Why Schools Fail Our Children,” and the essay is strong, but more important are the links to further brief essays on the role of the teacher, what does the future hold, why children lack motivation, and at least a dozen other topics.
Contact Richard L. Weaver II
Video games have become such an immersive environment that to many players, the games have become their "world." It is amazing to me (in my 40s) how many of my acquaintances spend the majority of their "spare" time playing video games. If not playing them, they are scouring the web for "cheats" to advance to the next level. If they are not looking for "cheats," they are discussing the video games with their friends. They are basically living in the video game world at all times! Surveys show that the current largest number of video game purchasers are in the 35 to 45 year old range. You might think that they are buying them for their kids but you would be wrong. The highest proportion of players are also in that range. That should scare every educator and education institution out there! We need to figure out something soon. Our country's future depends on it.
ReplyDeleteI jumped back into the video game world recently after taking a long break from it. I stopped playing video games when my Sega Genesis died many years ago. The Nintendo Wii offered me something that made sense... a video game unit that you have to get off your duff and move around. A system where you don't have to an expert to play. As the Wii library of games grow, there are and will be more opportunities to learn using video games as an educational device along with having a little fun.
ReplyDeleteBlame the video games, blame Public Schools... put those two together with a game system that can be tailored for teaching... now you might just have something. Help the teacher... teach.