Telegraph.co.uk, 01-08-2007
As a survey of eight to 11-year-olds reveals that 39 per cent of boys have no male teachers, former teacher Kurt Browne explains why male role models in schools are vital
He was one of the brightest boys in the year, with supportive parents but when he was 15 he suddenly stopped trying.
He left school at 16 with two GCSEs and two children by different girls. He felt very proud of himself. I'm convinced that one of the reasons that made it cool for him not to care was the power of his peer group.
Peer pressure is one of the strongest influences on boys today and one reason why so many are leaving school with no qualifications and virtually no chance of getting a job.
The absence of positive male role models in many of their lives - at home and particularly in the school environment - means that their peers are the only people they have to judge themselves against.
More male teachers in primary schools mean we could pre-empt this problem. Once boys reach year 10 (at 15), a surge of masculinity takes over and they will want to assert their authority, and challenge both parents and teachers.
The teacher's battle is then against testosterone, the peer group and the street where the culture is never to back down to authority no matter what.
I have spent all my adult life trying to help disaffected boys. I was born in Trinidad but came to London when I was 19 because my father could see I was mixing with the wrong crowd at home.
I did ''A'' levels followed by a teaching degree then, in 1984, became a youth worker in the tough Stonebridge Estate in north-west London.
I met many parents in despair because their children were failing in school so I decided if I wanted to make a difference, then I would teach.
I taught RE and PE for 20 years in comprehensives and in 2000 I became the lead learning mentor in my school, supporting children through their problems and motivating them.
Many former pupils have told me that I've been like a father to them.
Some parents have low expectations for their children and that is another reason for failure. Boys in particular don't value education.
They don't see men succeeding in the professional world so it doesn't occur to them that they could make something of themselves.
Schools are at fault here, too. Due to the immense pressure on teachers to gain results, students are spoon-fed and trained to pass exams, rather than encouraged to think for themselves.
Instead schools must help children learn to take responsibility for their education and their lives. After all, school is the most powerful influence on youngsters after their parents.
We can't change a child's mother or father, but schools can provide the environment for change, and provide the right role models for them.
Without male teachers as an alternative role model, the influence of peers and street culture is all-powerful. Boys want to be part of a club or gang.
Teachers need to be trained to challenge that but not in front of a child's peers. You have to do it one to one, because that is when you see the real child without bravado.
It's pointless sending a child home if he or she has done wrong. They see it as a welcome day off to watch television or play computer games.
Instead schools should have a special unit where a child who misbehaves goes for the day and is counselled about his behaviour -somewhere he can work away from his peers and go home after the other children.
We need to build up a culture of education; ditch political correctness and give teachers the means to do the right thing.
We have to make it cool to learn rather than cool to be deviant, and to do that we need more men in the classrooms to show young boys that there is another path they could take.
· Kurt Browne was talking to Angela Levin
Parents' Role Vital in Education of Boys Through Educational Games
Wednesday, August 8th 2007
By Alistair Owens
A global issue. The following comment were made by Patrick Manning Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning says research has shown that parents have a vital role to play in reversing the ongoing trend of girls outperforming boys at school. He did not identify the research data to which he was referring, but Manning urged parents to pay particular attention to the education of their male children."Early intervention in the home is therefore most necessary. We must keep a careful eye on the boys as well," Manning said.
Manning was speaking less than two months after the results of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination taken by primary school pupils showed female pupils again outperformed the boys.Manning said it was becoming a global phenomenon that girls were outperforming boys at school. "And whilst our education systems must diagnose and prescribe cures for this growing trend, for this growing malaise, parents have a vital role to play in arresting this trend, particularly since the research shows that the gap starts very early in the education process," he said.
Manning said earlier that while Government acknowledged its responsibility in ensuring education played a critical role in national development, it was a fact that the vast majority of successful students came from homes where parents took a keen interest in the education of their children.
The painstaking and highly effective role achieved by parents when their children were toddlers, teaching them for example to walk and talk incurred two major facets. Learning was at the pace of the individual child and the learning process involved constant practice.As the child goes to school this vital interaction is generally lost. Parents don't want to interfere, feel inadequate, or are glad to get some free time back! Although teachers introduce the subject effectively the vital practice function, where 75% of learning retention is obtained is the most difficult aspect to achieve at school. Class size, range of ability and the reluctance of children; too shy to ask questions, embarrassed that they do not understand or peer pressure means they can easily slip behind and lose interest. The diligent teacher with some free time in their hectic schedule can help to correct the gap in their understanding but this is often a bridge too far.
Modern teaching resources used in school are predominately in the form of educational games and ideal to practice the lesson at home, critically at the pace of the child. Parental interaction in maths games, word games, science games, all have an element of "learning in disguise" and not seen as conventional homework. These learning games follow the curriculum from ages 3 - 15 years have a substantial benefit to the child in improving their understanding - and also the parent who can once again becomes pro- active in the schooling process.
Alistair Owens www.keen2learn.co.uk
Author's Bio
Alistair Owens is passionate that modern fun based education increases interest and understanding, and by re-engaging parents in an interactive role at home using these educational games and educational toys can substantially support their child's progress at school. He has developed an Intel award winning web site http://www.keen2learn.co.uk that promotes an extensive range of classroom games and educational learning programmes for use in UK schools and with parents at home.
What boys want from schools and teachers
Massey University, August 2007
Boys say having friends at school and having a lot of physical activity are very important for their happiness and success.
These were priorities for most of the more than 350 secondary schoolboys interviewed by University researcher Michael Irwin in a study of what boys believe enhances and inhibits academic success.
Auckland-based Mr Irwin, from the College of Education, initiated New Zealand’s first national conferences on the under-achievement of boys (when, two years ago? Three?) and has been at the forefront of research exploring the reasons why boys lag behind girls at school and feature in many of the negative statistics relating to accidents, learning difficulties, and educational achievement.
\ Asking boys themselves what makes school a good place for them to be is, he says, an important part of providing successful education for them.
He found that having a group of friends, supporting them socially and assisting and motivating them educationally, was a huge factor in boys’ lives.
“Almost without exception the boys I interviewed said being with their mates at school was very important to them. I have found that throughout their schooling these close groups of, say three to five boys, are very important to each boy individually in significant ways. They develop their own identity through these groupings, they share ideas, they will often discuss learning issues in these groups and it is often these ties that have a very positive influence in keeping them at school.”
Physical exercise was also a high priority and Mr Irwin says schools need to look seriously at how they meet this need.
“Schools need to provide much more opportunity than they currently do for boys to be physically active. We know from existing research that physical activity and sport brings many benefits from bonding to stress release, mental stimulation and providing an outlet for competitive spirits.”
He also found boys wanted learning to be challenging and for school to be fun.
“They don’t want learning to be too hard or too easy. They want to be challenged and they feel the best way of meeting those challenges is to work together in groups with a problem-solving, hands-on approach.
“Most showed a high dislike of what they felt to be too much copying and writing things down at school.
“Almost all wanted to have fun, to have a laugh and for their environment to be one that they enjoy. This is the same thing that motivation researchers are also telling us.
“Schools need to take note of what matters most for boys at school – the importance of mates, the need for physical activity and for challenge in learning and the desire for school to be fun.”
Mr Irwin’s research highlighted some common attributes boys expected of their teachers. They wanted their teachers to focus on learning not content, to use humour, to collaborate and listen, to explain, to set clear expectations, to help them individually, to give specific feedback, to use activity based learning and co-operative learning, to be fair in managing behaviour.
Mr Irwin will present his research, Boys’ perceptions of what enhances and inhibits their academic success, in London next month to the British Education Research Association.
Leave those kids alone
The idea that adults should be playing with their kids is a modern invention -- and not necessarily a good one (The Boston Globe, July 15, 2007)
By Christopher Shea
WHAT COULD BE more natural than a mother down on the rec-room floor, playing with her 3-year-old amid puzzles, finger-puppets, and Thomas the Tank Engine trains? Look -- now she's conducting a conversation between a stuffed shark and Nemo, the Pixar clown fish! Giggles all around. Not to mention that the tot is learning the joys of stories and narrative, setting him on a triumphal path toward school.
A "natural" scene? Actually, parent-child play of this sort has been virtually unheard of throughout human history, according to the anthropologist David Lancy. And three-fourths of the world's current population would still find that mother's behavior kind of dotty.American-style parent-child play is a distinct feature of wealthy developed countries -- a recent byproduct of the pressure to get kids ready for the information-age economy,
Lancy argues in a recent article in American Anthropologist, the field's flagship journal in the United States."Adults think it is silly to play with children" in most cultures, says Lancy, who teaches at Utah State University. Play is a cultural universal, he concedes, "but adults aren't part of the picture." Yet middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans -- abetted, he says, by psychologists -- are increasingly proclaiming the parents-on-all-fours style the One True Way to raise a smart, well-adjusted child.There is now a concerted effort to spread adult-child play beyond its stronghold in the upper- and middle-classes of wealthy countries. To this end, many cities and states support programs of some sort. Massachusetts will give the Parent-Child Home Program, which has 33 sites in the state, $3 million this year (up from $2 million last year). Through the program, staff members visit the homes of low-income residents and offer tips not just on good books for toddlers but also on "play activities" for parents and kids. Likewise, the eminent Yale psychologist Jerome Singer has partnered with a media company to devise imaginative parent-child games (examples: "My Magic Story Car" and "Puppets: Counting") that librarians and social workers can teach to low-income parents.
Lancy is concerned that specialists behind the movement -- psychologists, social workers, preschool teachers -- are too aggressively promoting this intense, interventionist parenting style to low-income parents, and that they are are too quick to claim that adult-child play is crucial for human development. He doesn't quite rule out that some interventions may improve literacy -- though the data are murkier than the psychologists admit, he insists. But the programs, with their premise (as he sees it) that a whole class of people is simply parenting badly, leave their advocates "open to charges of racism or cultural imperialism."
One inspiration for the article, Lancy says, was that he kept coming across accounts of parents who felt guilty that they did not enjoy playing with their children. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman and the economist Alan Krueger, both at Princeton, have found that parents routinely claim that playing with their kids is among their favorite activities, but when you ask them to record their state of mind, hour by hour, they rate time spent with their children as being about as much fun as housework.
In his article, Lancy draws on decades of ethnographic work to show how rare parent-child play has been in the world. The Harvard anthropologist Robert LeVine, for example, observed in a 2004 paper that among the Gusii people of Kenya, "mothers rarely looked at or spoke to their infants and toddlers, even when they were holding and breast-feeding them." (So much for the universality of peek-a-boo.) On Ifaluk Island, in the South Pacific, tribespeople believe that babies are "essentially brainless" before age 2, so there is no point in talking to them.
The goal of the Yucatec Maya is to keep babies in a "kind of benign coma," through bathing and swaddling, so that parents can leave them and get work done. As recently as 1914, the US Department of Labor's Child Bureau advised parents not to play with babies, for fear of overstimulating their little nervous systems.
If interactions with babies are rare in much of the world, "mother-toddler play is virtually nonexistent," Lancy writes.
To be sure, there are exceptions. Some African foraging tribes display striking examples of parental playfulness. And the Inuit make toys for their toddlers and get goofy -- but they're cooped up for months at a time in igloos, bored witless. Lancy suggests that the American milieu -- caregivers stuck, without a community, in oversized homes -- is not entirely dissimilar.
Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at Berkeley, agrees with parts of Lancy's argument: In much of the world, parents are unlikely to be the main caregivers, and Americans go overboard with structured parent-child play which has explicit academic goals. But she says that Lancy vastly understates the interactions between parents and children. In many cultures, mothers hold their babies much, much more than American mothers do, and holding and cuddling a child can be as stimulating and playful as peek-a-boo, she says.
"The fact that non-Western parents do not interact with their babies like Western parents doesn't mean they aren't interacting with them," Gopnik says.
And if African children learn from older siblings how to use a bow-and-arrow in a playful way, she asks, how different is that from American parents (or nannies) playfully teaching kids practices useful in American culture, such as verbal agility?
Tribal practices aside, the real source of contention is what sort of child-rearing advice low-income Americans should be receiving from social workers, psychologists, and other people interested in improving the academic readiness of poor kids. Yale's Singer, co-author (with his wife, Dorothy) of "The House of Make-Believe: Children's Play and the Developing Imagination" (1990), says his data show that children who played versions of "My Magic Story Car," in which a parent pretends to drive with the kids to various locations, having adventures along the way (with a subtle vocab lesson or two thrown in), do better on literacy tests than their peers.
"I'm not clear what's bothering this guy," he says, referring to Lancy. "We are not talking about the parents playing all day long with the children. We're just saying that children need to play, and particular kinds of play -- imaginative play that has a storytelling element to it -- are very useful" in our culture.
Still, the proselytizing on behalf of playful middle-class approaches vexes many anthropologists. A crystallizing moment for their concern came with the publication of a lengthy article in The New York Times Magazine last November by Paul Tough, an editor at the magazine, on efforts by some educators to erase cultural differences between low-income and middle-class students.
Tough leaned on the work of the University of Maryland sociologist Annette Lareau, who has described the dominant middle- and upper-middle-class parenting style as one of "concerted cultivation": scheduled time, interactive banter and play, and the encouragement of the child to challenge the parent's opinions. In contrast, she summarizes the low-income parents' approach as "the accomplishment of natural growth": less direct involvement with the kids, more unsupervised play, and more enforcement of rules.
More controversial than the sociological work was Tough's summary -- that poor parents fail to deliver "everyday intellectual and emotional stimuli" or to impart "character," "self-control, adaptability, patience, and openness."
Mica Pollock, an associate professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, says it's one thing to encourage low-income parents to read to their kids or tell them stories. But "it's a huge and dangerous overstatement to say that low-income parents don't stimulate their children." In fact, some research, she says, suggests that the approach used by some low-income parents teaches virtues such as patience and adaptability better than more freewheeling parenting styles.
And let's not idealize middle-class kids: "Some of those children are being raised to be spoiled, demanding, requiring constant adult attention, and inclined to argue with their parents," Pollock says.
This debate is unlikely to sway the convictions of the pro-play crowd. Stevanne Auerbach, the author of "Smart Play, Smart Toys: How to Raise a Child with a High PQ" -- play quotient -- says her goal is to "encourage parents to understand that they are their children's first big toy." But for the parents not energized by the prospect of all those hours in the playroom -- parents who would rather be doing something else -- Lancy's article offers the solace that comes from knowing you're not alone, globally or historically. Goodbye Thomas the Tank Engine, hello sports pages?
El éxodo de la mujeres capacitadas y la marginación del varón en Alemania del Este
Visto desde Alemania, 13/07/07
Es asombrosa la conclusión a la que llega el estudio "Not am Mann" (faltan hombres) del Instituto de Población de Berlín, recientemente publicado y recogido en las portadas de la prensa, sobre el éxodo de la mujer en la Alemania del Este a pocos años del vigésimo aniversario de la reunificación alemana.
Desde 1989 un total de 1,5 millones de jóvenes se han trasladado a la Alemania occidental, especialmente mujeres cualificadas, buscando un mejor futuro profesional y familiar. Este déficit de mujeres no tiene parangón en Europa, ni siquiera en las regiones frías del norte de Suecia y de Finlandia.
En muchas localidades deprimidas de la Alemania oriental este fenómeno migratorio se explica por el hecho de que las mujeres están mejor preparadas que los hombres. Sus expedientes académicos son mucho más brillantes que los de sus compañeros varones y, por este motivo, encuentran trabajo con más facilidad en otros lugares más desarrollados. Las consecuencias son, por un lado, un claro descenso de la natalidad y, por otro, la amenaza de una nueva capa social inferior que ha sido denominada "Prekariat" (precariado: véase su relación fonética con proletariado). Dicho segmento de la población lo forman varones que, por ser excluidos de los principales ámbitos de la sociedad (trabajo, formación, pareja...) pasan, a los ojos de la gente, a ser unos inútiles incapaces de mejorar de vida y que, además, se manifiestan más propensos a la violencia y a la participación en grupos radicales.
El quinto capítulo de este estudio merece especial atención al analizar si los varones de la Alemania del Este se encuentran en una crisis de educación y de formación. En 1960 el 37% de los bachilleres con acceso a la universidad eran chicas. Hoy el 54 % de la chicas alcanzan el acceso a la selectividad. Estas cifras –dice el informe– no son sólo el resultado del sistema escolar (la gran mayoría de los colegios son mixtos), sino que también en el proceso de admisión escolar ya se perciben claras diferencias entre chicos y chicas. El 60% de los no aceptados son chicos y las chicas sobrepasan la cifra de los que son aceptados anticipadamente. Los chicos, con comportamientos llamativos más frecuentes, repiten curso con mayor frecuencia. Los resultados de PISA de 2000 y 2003 manifiestan claramente la diferencia de rendimiento escolar: la chicas leen y escriben mejor que los chicos. Es ahora cuando comienza –continua el informe– el análisis sobre las causas de los retrasos de los chicos en el sistema escolar.
Durante mucho tiempo los sociólogos y los psicólogos opinaron que las diferencias biológicas entre los sexos no tenían una influencia significativa en su comportamiento sino que éste era consecuencia únicamente de la educación y del entorno social. Por el contrario, numerosos estudios de los últimos veinte años se manifiestan en otra dirección. El informe cita a Eleanor Maccoby, 2001: Psychologie der Geschlechter. Sexuelle Identität in den verschiedenen Lebensphasen, Stuttgart (Psicología de los sexos. Identidad sexual en la distintas fases de la vida). Estudios comparativos en países industriales, países en desarrollo y observaciones de campo transculturales en algunos pueblos indígenas muestran que la chicas en todo el mundo prefieren juegos inofesivos mientras que en los chicos dominan los juegos motóricos activos y de más interacción corporal. En situaciones de conflicto las chicas tienen una tendencia más proclive al compromiso y al entendimiento mutuo y los chicos se caracterizan por una tendencia al dominio, a la fomación de jerarquías y a conflictos corporales.
Los médicos y psicólogos aluden que los chicos obtienen peores resultados en el colegio porque se adaptan peor a éste y aprenden peor que las chicas. La causa –dice el informe– se encuentra en la anatomía y en el funcionamiento distinto del cerebro según el sexo. También las hormonas juegan un papel importante. La testosterona fomenta en los chicos la concentración en el resultado y no en el proceso, y por eso los chicos se pueden concentrar menos y tienden a comportamientos no razonados que pueden llevar a la violencia.
Las diferencias de chicos y chicas suponen distintas maneras de pensar, de aprender, de comunicar o de competir. Otros estudios atestiguan que los chicos tienen una mayor capacidad de abstracción y que las mujeres tienen una mejor capacidad de expresión y de comunicación. De este modo, las chicas parecen más adeptas al éxito en el colegio pues aquellas aptitudes que les son más necesarias, son precisamente las que tienen más desarrolladas.
Otra componente es que los chicos sufren, si son expuestos a los videojuegos, en sus resultados escolares mucho más que las chicas. El estudio también señala que muchos pedagogos son de la opinión de que en el crecimiento de los chicos los ejemplos de roles masculinos son de primordial importancia. Los padres, pero también los educadores y profesores, deben vivir de un modo varonil que les sirva a los chicos de orientación para su propio desarrollo, que les ponga límites. La realidad es que cada día crecen más chicos sin ejemplos masculinos. En el año 2005 existían en Alemania 2,6 millones de padres solteros y de éstos eran 2,2 millones de madres solteras. El porcentaje de padres solteros ha crecido entre 1996 y 2004 del 17 al 20%, especialmente en la Alemania del Este. A casi un millón de chicos les falta el padre como ejemplo. Cuando llegan al Kindergarten y al colegio apenas encuentran personal masculino y, por eso, se habla de la "faminización del sistema educativo". Desconozco los datos correspondientes en España pero intuyo que nos acercamos bastante a esta situación.
En Alemania el dominio de la mujer es especialmente llamativo en primaria, en la fase en la que los niños desarrollan especialmente sus capacidades cognitivas y fundamentan su futuro escolar y académico. El 86% de los profesores de primaria son mujeres. La preocupación de los pedagogos es que las maestras manifientan poca comprensión ante el comportamiento de los chicos porque, por su propia socialización, desconocen este comportamiento y se muestran poco propensas a sus modos de juego, lo cual aumenta el rechazo de las maestras hacia los chicos. Esto también resulta en que los chicos obtienen peores notas que las chicas. Hay estudios que demuestran que las notas en primaria se basan más en el comportamiento que en el rendimiento intelectual.
Por lo tanto, los padres están en pleno derecho de buscar alternativas a la educación mixta, de modo que se tengan mejor en cuenta las capacidades y cualidades específicas de cada sexo y las lleva a su pleno desarrollo.
NOT AM MANN: http://www.berlin-institut.org/pdfs/not_am_mann.pdf
NOTICIA: http://vistodesdealemania.blogspirit.com/archive/2007/07/13/el-exodo-de-la-mujeres-capacitadas-y-la-marginación-del-varó.html
Es asombrosa la conclusión a la que llega el estudio "Not am Mann" (faltan hombres) del Instituto de Población de Berlín, recientemente publicado y recogido en las portadas de la prensa, sobre el éxodo de la mujer en la Alemania del Este a pocos años del vigésimo aniversario de la reunificación alemana.
Desde 1989 un total de 1,5 millones de jóvenes se han trasladado a la Alemania occidental, especialmente mujeres cualificadas, buscando un mejor futuro profesional y familiar. Este déficit de mujeres no tiene parangón en Europa, ni siquiera en las regiones frías del norte de Suecia y de Finlandia.
En muchas localidades deprimidas de la Alemania oriental este fenómeno migratorio se explica por el hecho de que las mujeres están mejor preparadas que los hombres. Sus expedientes académicos son mucho más brillantes que los de sus compañeros varones y, por este motivo, encuentran trabajo con más facilidad en otros lugares más desarrollados. Las consecuencias son, por un lado, un claro descenso de la natalidad y, por otro, la amenaza de una nueva capa social inferior que ha sido denominada "Prekariat" (precariado: véase su relación fonética con proletariado). Dicho segmento de la población lo forman varones que, por ser excluidos de los principales ámbitos de la sociedad (trabajo, formación, pareja...) pasan, a los ojos de la gente, a ser unos inútiles incapaces de mejorar de vida y que, además, se manifiestan más propensos a la violencia y a la participación en grupos radicales.
El quinto capítulo de este estudio merece especial atención al analizar si los varones de la Alemania del Este se encuentran en una crisis de educación y de formación. En 1960 el 37% de los bachilleres con acceso a la universidad eran chicas. Hoy el 54 % de la chicas alcanzan el acceso a la selectividad. Estas cifras –dice el informe– no son sólo el resultado del sistema escolar (la gran mayoría de los colegios son mixtos), sino que también en el proceso de admisión escolar ya se perciben claras diferencias entre chicos y chicas. El 60% de los no aceptados son chicos y las chicas sobrepasan la cifra de los que son aceptados anticipadamente. Los chicos, con comportamientos llamativos más frecuentes, repiten curso con mayor frecuencia. Los resultados de PISA de 2000 y 2003 manifiestan claramente la diferencia de rendimiento escolar: la chicas leen y escriben mejor que los chicos. Es ahora cuando comienza –continua el informe– el análisis sobre las causas de los retrasos de los chicos en el sistema escolar.
Durante mucho tiempo los sociólogos y los psicólogos opinaron que las diferencias biológicas entre los sexos no tenían una influencia significativa en su comportamiento sino que éste era consecuencia únicamente de la educación y del entorno social. Por el contrario, numerosos estudios de los últimos veinte años se manifiestan en otra dirección. El informe cita a Eleanor Maccoby, 2001: Psychologie der Geschlechter. Sexuelle Identität in den verschiedenen Lebensphasen, Stuttgart (Psicología de los sexos. Identidad sexual en la distintas fases de la vida). Estudios comparativos en países industriales, países en desarrollo y observaciones de campo transculturales en algunos pueblos indígenas muestran que la chicas en todo el mundo prefieren juegos inofesivos mientras que en los chicos dominan los juegos motóricos activos y de más interacción corporal. En situaciones de conflicto las chicas tienen una tendencia más proclive al compromiso y al entendimiento mutuo y los chicos se caracterizan por una tendencia al dominio, a la fomación de jerarquías y a conflictos corporales.
Los médicos y psicólogos aluden que los chicos obtienen peores resultados en el colegio porque se adaptan peor a éste y aprenden peor que las chicas. La causa –dice el informe– se encuentra en la anatomía y en el funcionamiento distinto del cerebro según el sexo. También las hormonas juegan un papel importante. La testosterona fomenta en los chicos la concentración en el resultado y no en el proceso, y por eso los chicos se pueden concentrar menos y tienden a comportamientos no razonados que pueden llevar a la violencia.
Las diferencias de chicos y chicas suponen distintas maneras de pensar, de aprender, de comunicar o de competir. Otros estudios atestiguan que los chicos tienen una mayor capacidad de abstracción y que las mujeres tienen una mejor capacidad de expresión y de comunicación. De este modo, las chicas parecen más adeptas al éxito en el colegio pues aquellas aptitudes que les son más necesarias, son precisamente las que tienen más desarrolladas.
Otra componente es que los chicos sufren, si son expuestos a los videojuegos, en sus resultados escolares mucho más que las chicas. El estudio también señala que muchos pedagogos son de la opinión de que en el crecimiento de los chicos los ejemplos de roles masculinos son de primordial importancia. Los padres, pero también los educadores y profesores, deben vivir de un modo varonil que les sirva a los chicos de orientación para su propio desarrollo, que les ponga límites. La realidad es que cada día crecen más chicos sin ejemplos masculinos. En el año 2005 existían en Alemania 2,6 millones de padres solteros y de éstos eran 2,2 millones de madres solteras. El porcentaje de padres solteros ha crecido entre 1996 y 2004 del 17 al 20%, especialmente en la Alemania del Este. A casi un millón de chicos les falta el padre como ejemplo. Cuando llegan al Kindergarten y al colegio apenas encuentran personal masculino y, por eso, se habla de la "faminización del sistema educativo". Desconozco los datos correspondientes en España pero intuyo que nos acercamos bastante a esta situación.
En Alemania el dominio de la mujer es especialmente llamativo en primaria, en la fase en la que los niños desarrollan especialmente sus capacidades cognitivas y fundamentan su futuro escolar y académico. El 86% de los profesores de primaria son mujeres. La preocupación de los pedagogos es que las maestras manifientan poca comprensión ante el comportamiento de los chicos porque, por su propia socialización, desconocen este comportamiento y se muestran poco propensas a sus modos de juego, lo cual aumenta el rechazo de las maestras hacia los chicos. Esto también resulta en que los chicos obtienen peores notas que las chicas. Hay estudios que demuestran que las notas en primaria se basan más en el comportamiento que en el rendimiento intelectual.
Por lo tanto, los padres están en pleno derecho de buscar alternativas a la educación mixta, de modo que se tengan mejor en cuenta las capacidades y cualidades específicas de cada sexo y las lleva a su pleno desarrollo.
NOT AM MANN: http://www.berlin-institut.org/pdfs/not_am_mann.pdf
NOTICIA: http://vistodesdealemania.blogspirit.com/archive/2007/07/13/el-exodo-de-la-mujeres-capacitadas-y-la-marginación-del-varó.html
Recruiting males teachers is a waste of time
By Maralyn Parker, (News.com.au, July 11, 2007)
TRYING to recruit more males into teaching may be worse than a waste of time. According to a new report some male teachers can be bad for boys.
The 140-page report from the education department in England, Gender and Education: The Evidence on Pupils in England, claims male teachers are more likely to treat boys harshly and can have lower academic expectations of boys. Female teachers are more likely to have equal expectations of boys and girls and are less likely to be harsh with boys just because they are boys.
Researchers also found there was little evidence boys and girls had different learning styles - a small bombshell that may prick the pomposity of some high-fee private schools marketing themselves as specialists in boy-style teaching. Researchers also soundly rejected the claim that girls need "less active, less structured, less interactive, less varied pedagogy" than boys. If you are already composing an email - yes there are different styles of learning such as visual, auditory and kinaesthetic (touching, feeling, using).
The report said there are benefits in talking about and using different styles in the classroom. And some students may prefer one style or different combinations. However to be successful learners children need to be able to use all the different styles at different times for different purposes. So any school favouring one style of learning is doing its students a serious disservice. It reminds me of the left brain-right brain fad. We were told we probably favour one or the other - and the associated but very different skills.
Then scientists found the brain did not work so simply, that we used both sides when doing things previously considered either right brain or left brain. It looks like the boy and girls styles of learning are now also debunked. As for single-sex schools and single-sex classes, research remains "inconsistent and inconclusive." Separating sexes for modern languages can be positive for boys and for science and maths, can be positive for girls. But researchers pointed out when a school sets up single-sex classes there is an increased emphasis on teaching which may improve the quality of that teaching.
Also schools will often select their best teachers to take these classes, especially the all-boy classes, which will also affect outcomes. But probably the most significant finding is that the biggest gaps in achievement at school are not between boys and girls but between social classes and ethnic groups. Poor children and black children are the biggest losers. And researchers say that is what the English Government should really be worried about if it wants a clever future.
All I can say is ditto to all of that for Australia.
TRYING to recruit more males into teaching may be worse than a waste of time. According to a new report some male teachers can be bad for boys.
The 140-page report from the education department in England, Gender and Education: The Evidence on Pupils in England, claims male teachers are more likely to treat boys harshly and can have lower academic expectations of boys. Female teachers are more likely to have equal expectations of boys and girls and are less likely to be harsh with boys just because they are boys.
Researchers also found there was little evidence boys and girls had different learning styles - a small bombshell that may prick the pomposity of some high-fee private schools marketing themselves as specialists in boy-style teaching. Researchers also soundly rejected the claim that girls need "less active, less structured, less interactive, less varied pedagogy" than boys. If you are already composing an email - yes there are different styles of learning such as visual, auditory and kinaesthetic (touching, feeling, using).
The report said there are benefits in talking about and using different styles in the classroom. And some students may prefer one style or different combinations. However to be successful learners children need to be able to use all the different styles at different times for different purposes. So any school favouring one style of learning is doing its students a serious disservice. It reminds me of the left brain-right brain fad. We were told we probably favour one or the other - and the associated but very different skills.
Then scientists found the brain did not work so simply, that we used both sides when doing things previously considered either right brain or left brain. It looks like the boy and girls styles of learning are now also debunked. As for single-sex schools and single-sex classes, research remains "inconsistent and inconclusive." Separating sexes for modern languages can be positive for boys and for science and maths, can be positive for girls. But researchers pointed out when a school sets up single-sex classes there is an increased emphasis on teaching which may improve the quality of that teaching.
Also schools will often select their best teachers to take these classes, especially the all-boy classes, which will also affect outcomes. But probably the most significant finding is that the biggest gaps in achievement at school are not between boys and girls but between social classes and ethnic groups. Poor children and black children are the biggest losers. And researchers say that is what the English Government should really be worried about if it wants a clever future.
All I can say is ditto to all of that for Australia.
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