During my last five years of teaching, I noticed a considerable shift in the classroom. Girls weren’t inhibited about answering questions anymore, nor did they act shy, unlike in the previous thirty years when many didn't want to show off. They, too, had a brain. Yes, of course, there’s always been a few boys who thought school wasn’t cool, so they didn’t do any homework or study. But in a few of my classes, I noticed that the boys seemed to be sitting back and allowing the girls to take over. I saw it time and time again when I assigned students to mixed groups. The girls seemed more confident, and my high school boys had lower self-esteem than usual. Are males getting lost in this crazy demanding curriculum? Or are males becoming lazy because they know the girls can do everything they can, so why work so hard? Or are there so many divorces that young males don't have a male role model?
Why do males overall do poorly in schools? Yes, female and male brains develop differently. Language development and motor skills develop faster in girls, and in boys, spatial memory develops faster. Boys are 50% more likely than girls to fall short in the basics. (Heaven forbid that the first few years of schooling be more active so the males can move around, which would help them focus better.) Statistics show that girls read more and spend more time on their homework, and boys spend more time on virtual online games and the internet. ( I won’t go into how the curriculum has also become more demanding, at least not in this blog, so a lot more memorizing and writing.) But is it just a developmental difference between males and females?
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| It's important to teach girls and boys to work together. |
1970’s – burn the bras, women’s lib…… that’s when I noticed men began becoming afraid to help women. (Oops, I’m showing my age. Yikes!) I had much fewer doors opened for me. Or if I dropped something, heaven forbid a nearby male would help out. I remember talking to a guy friend about the issue, and he said he was so confused about even opening a car door for a date, let alone a door. He shared that sometimes he would get barked at by a female. Have we demasculinized the males so much over the years, trying to show that the female species is equal now that young males feel lost and unneeded? I don't know.
After watching full-length cartoons such as Tangled, Brave, Frozen, Mulan, and Moana, I noticed that females were the heroes. Am I just not watching enough cartoons? At least on T.V., the shows have now tried to balance the female, male hero, or heroin.
What we allow our children to watch empowers them. Why can’t we have movies and cartoons where males and females work together to save the world? Isn’t that what we should be teaching our children, work together, compromise, listen to each other, and honor each other’s opinions? Am I missing these shows?
I perused quite a few websites on parenting and found these very informative. Four is my favorite number, so that’s all the recommendations that you get. (Wow, were these types of articles out there when I was a parent? I’m sure there were, but I never thought about reading articles online about being a better parent. I read three books; I guess that counts for something.)
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