Examiner column for July 3.
Two recent studies have brought to mind my recent “regular” twelfth grade English class.
The first, released by the Washington D.C. think tank “Education Sector,” reported that the educational boy crisis has been greatly exaggerated.
In the second, the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center revealed divergent nationwide high school graduation rates. Fairfax County led the field, eventually graduating 82.5 % of ninth graders. Detroit posted the lowest rate: 21.7%. The national average was 69.6%. Girls graduated at a higher rate (72.7%) than their male counterparts (65.2%).
My Fairfax County regular 12 classroom didn’t feel like a model of the highest-achieving high school boys in the country. Whether the flavor of the year is “boy crisis,” or “boy crisis averted,” as a teacher I still had to face twenty-two boys daily, twenty of whom had no interest in doing any work.
But they all wanted to graduate. Mid-year, I thought five or six would fail English. But by June 20, all of them had passed my class, and only one did not graduate---because he failed another class.
The four girls in this class were uncomplaining, hard-working, and never in danger of failure. (A girl crisis is never the educational flavor of the year.)
I spent all year trying various ways to snag those boys’ interest. Creative writing met with some success, as did reading plays aloud. Movies went over big, so we studied documentaries. But there were always a couple of boys who fell asleep, no matter what we did, and at least ten of them complained bitterly whenever written work was due.
“You never told us the due date.”
“If you told us, I was out of the room.”
“Why are we having a test? Can’t we just work in groups?”
The bottom line for the boys was always: “I like your class, as long as I don’t have to work too hard for my grade.”
Even in my four Advanced Placement classes, the work ethic was different for boys and girls. The girls were largely willing, if not eager, to complete the assignments and move at a brisk pace.
At least half the boys, however, longed for a slower pace---not because the work was too challenging, but because they were loath to exert themselves.
So my classroom proved that the boy crisis in education is a complicated on-again, off-again phenomenon. No wonder the studies seem contradictory. Are our high school males in trouble, or aren’t they? Nearly all my boys crossed the finish line, but they did so reluctantly, cajoled by me, other teachers, and their parents.
The good news is that by the time those same boys reach their junior and senior years in college, they will have settled down. In my George Mason University advanced composition classes, there is no appreciable difference between males and females in intelligence, performance, or work ethic.
That knowledge keeps me from giving up on my most difficult high school boys. As teachers, we need to keep trying every means to reach all students. But for many of our males, the passage of time may be the most effective teacher of all.
Comments