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The Problem with Boys and School, And How to Fix It

The Problem with Boys and School, And How to Fix It

Last updated on: April 3, 2023 at 10:16 pm by Elizabeth Grace Matthew

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The Problem with Boys and School, And How to Fix It 2023-04-03T22:16:49-04:00 Elizabeth Grace Matthew

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Little students hurrying to the school building for classes.

I am a mom to three boys. My oldest two attend what is by today’s standards a fairly traditional parochial school; the youngest is not yet school age.

For a boy, my oldest son is by nature somewhere above average in conscientiousness and exceedingly high in agreeableness (like his father). His little brother is by nature less than average in agreeableness but exceedingly high in conscientiousness (like me).

The adult-pleasing orientation of my firstborn, the task-orientation of my second-born, and the educational and cultural resources of our upper-middle-class household lead me to believe that my sons will probably do just fine in today’s educational environment.

But I am not as sure about that as I might have been a decade ago, mostly because schools have changed for boys since the 1990’s and early 2000’s, when I was a student. Even back then, more girls than boys were good students. (I excelled in English and got A’s in non-advanced math, but I could not be called a top student: I was grateful to be kicked out of advanced math, where an all-consuming combination of difficultly and boredom drove me to sometimes literal tears). Still, very top students—especially in math and science—were often boys. And, on average, boys’ test scores were equal to or better than girls’.

Not so today.

Boys and School

Boys are falling behind girls in school at alarming rates, and this trend has been building for some time. Today, they are behind not just in reading and language arts, but also in math. The entire enterprise of traditional school—which was for so long male-dominated—has become female-led.

There are a few reasons for this:

First, education has become less competitive, more verbal, and more subjective. Meanwhile, many more boys than girls—including smart ones—are as bored by writing assignments (especially the increasingly subjective, reflective, socio-emotional ones our schools increasingly assign) as I was by problem sets. As we have known for more than 10 years, boys would benefit from more emphasis on employable and tech skills, less emphasis on college prep, and more objective academic competition.

Second, at the same time that primary and secondary schools have become academically biased toward softer skills and discarded more traditional approaches, they have also become culturally sedentary and oriented toward the completion of ever-more busy work. On average, these developments also foster girls’ dominance. Many more girls than boys find it easy to sit still for extended periods at a young age.

Third and finally, boys are on average both less agreeable and less conscientious than girls. Hence, more boys than girls struggle to complete tasks that fail to interest them in deference to either the regard of their teachers and parents (because they are on average less agreeable) or the potential future consequences of earning less than stellar grades (because they are on average less conscientious).

Obviously, each of these reasons for boys’ comparatively weak academic performance is full of caveats and qualifications: many individual boys (and girls) do not fit the picture I’m painting; these differences are on average, not to a person.

Moreover, boys’ troubles in the educational sphere are certainly part and parcel of a broader cultural landscape in which, as I have previously written, males are struggling in all kinds of ways.

Nonetheless, my focus here is on the disparity in academic performance between the sexes, which is significant and widening.

So-Called “Educational Experts” are to Blame…

Since the 1970’s, the far left has mostly controlled the educational sphere: first and foremost higher education, where ideas about education are introduced and codified; and primary and secondary education, where (thanks to colleges’ education programs) there is a great appetite for discarding policies that are known to work but require objective accountability (like phonics reading instruction, and unequivocal discipline) in favor of policies that don’t work but make many (mostly white, secular, and female) progressive educators feel good (like whole language reading instruction, and so-called restorative disciplinary practices).

On average, boys find the achievement and mastery of reading more difficult than girls do; require more consistent, fear-based, and punitive discipline than girls do; and find objective academic competition invigorating and subjective academic assignments boring.

By remaking reading instruction to avoid the rote discipline of phonics, softening conduct policies to avoid the accountability of actual discipline, and eliminating objective competition in favor of socio-emotional work, the ideological extremists that control a lot of public education have marginalized boys in ways that centrist and right-leaning reformers have long been eager to rectify.

…And Attempts to Counter Their Bad Ideas Have Had Negative Unintended Consequences

But bipartisan and conservative-led educational initiatives—of which there have been many, despite the left’s broad control of the educational sector—haven’t made school better for boys. If anything, they have unintentionally made it worse.

The test-based accountability introduced by bipartisan standards like No Child Left Behind (2002) and Common Core (2010) is meant to reward schools that meet objective standards. Objective standards are good, and rewards for meeting them are even better.

But the incongruity between the zeitgeist of many teachers and educational leaders (who patently reject objective standards, and therefore will not prioritize the kinds of rigorous, directive, old-fashioned instruction that would help meet worthwhile benchmarks) and the demands of the current standards themselves (which are indeed rigorous, and therefore mostly unmet) has led schools to eliminate recesses, cut art programs, and incorporate more instruction that requires students to remain seated.

Thus, the unintended consequences of increased accountability in an environment where many of the most influential adults bigotedly believe by way of extreme progressivism that accountability itself is racist, classist and inequitable (i.e., lost recess and longer hours sitting in desks—both of which adversely affect behavior more than they increase academic performance) is far easier on girls than on boys.

How to Fix It

Especially in the younger grades, most boys need a lot more physical play time and a lot less time being expected to sit still doing worksheets and other academic tasks. Today’s mostly left-leaning educational experts agree on this; they also believe that more recess would benefit girls as well, as it likely would.

But to facilitate more recess time and spend less time on academic tasks, schools have to take a far less tolerant approach to disorderly conduct, which is mostly the province of boys.

For many of today’s left-leaning educational experts, singling kids out for discipline is anathema; hence, to maintain any semblance of order, we keep all kids in seats for a lot of the day and thereby repress through boredom and enervation the academic drive of many otherwise well-behaved boys.

Moreover, constant shepherding and redirection wastes time—time that might otherwise be spent on less structured, more physical, less boring tasks. This is especially true in under-resourced schools, where children without disciplinary issues are dis-served by the imperative not to marginalize the sizable numbers of students with them.

So, a vicious cycle ensues, in which the consequences for one person’s bad behavior are increasingly borne by everyone in ways that affect girls far less than boys. As a result, too many boys—the well-behaved and the poorly behaved alike—are educationally marginalized.

As with so many problems, untangling the web that is keeping boys stuck will involve a multifaceted whole that is greater than the sum of its parts: the educational establishment’s correct emphasis on free play and shorter school days can and should be facilitated–but this can happen if and only if traditional expectations of compliance and discipline make a comeback.

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