A Gendered Choice by David Chadwell, who oversees the single sex programs in that state, is out. I’ll let folks like Leonard Sax and Lise Eliot battle out the science behind the surge in single sex schooling. What I know for certain is the issue [...]
…pay close attention to what’s going on in South Carolina.
From the Spartanburg Herald Journal:
instruction a change for better
By LEE G. HEALY
lee.healy@shj.com
Published: Monday, November 30, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, November 30, 2009 at 12:23 a.m.
Windy Hodge’s fifth grade class at Boiling Springs Intermediate School is a [...]
…the boy troubles are being defined through the prism of single-sex schools.
From the LA Times:
latimes.com
Single-sex middle school aims to divide and conquer
At Young Oak Kim Academy, students focus on science, math and technology in mixed-grade, single-gender classes. Teachers are still tweaking their methods to better reach each group.
[...]
One of the smartest commentators I know of on these issues has a commentary in today’s Chronicle.
Here’s the top:
November 28, 2009, 09:00 PM ET
A Book for Boys
By Mark Bauerlein
For a few years now, a recurring concern has been the widening gap between boys and girls at the college [...]
Here’s the key graph in this piece:
“It doesn’t help that women outnumber men on most college campuses, where there are about 80 men for every 100 women. So men are the scarce resource, and they get to make the rules. And they know it, too.”
That’s what I wrote about in [...]
Keep in mind, this is a state with relatively modest gender gaps at the high school level. I wish the writer had cited graduation data rather than enrollment numbers. That’s the number that counts.
Also, it’s instructive to read the method used by Middlebury to keep gender gaps there in check. [...]
…in this study from England. From the Telegraph:
Poor boys ‘turned into criminals’ at school
A generation of working class boys are being transformed into “misfits and criminals” by the education system, according to research.
By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Published: 8:01AM GMT 27 Nov 2009
According to figures, white boys eligible for [...]
Thanks to Greg Toppo for spotting this one:
Contact: Kelsey Jackson
JacksonKN@missouri.edu
573-882-8353
University of Missouri-Columbia
Female breadwinners bring home the bacon and tension
MU professor examines female breadwinners’ experiences in nontraditional role
COLUMBIA, Mo. - In nearly a third of U.S. households, women are the sole or main breadwinners for their [...]
From Australia:
Boys face compulsory feminism programs in state schools across Victoria
John Masanauskas From: Herald Sun November 26, 2009 12:00AM Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Print Email Share Add to Digg Add to del.icio.us Add to Facebook Add to Kwoff Add to Myspace Add to Newsvine What are these?
Picture: [...]
One in three boys showing up for a summit here said they had to sell drugs to survive:
From the Detroit Free Press:
November 24, 2009
JEFF GERRITT
What the streets don’t teach
BY JEFF GERRITT
FREE PRESS EDITORIAL WRITER
One in three of the 225 teens at the Boys to Men Education Forum in downtown [...]
Here’s Sax speaking outside Philly on the growing gender gaps among teens. From PhillyBurbs.com:
By: GREG FORESTER
Burlington County Times
Education expert warns parents about the problems facing today’s teens.
DELRAN - Boys are obsessed with video games. Girls are obsessed with their bodies. Both are overindulging in distractions such as [...]
KATE HAMMER
From Monday’s Globe and Mail
Published on Monday, Nov. 23, 2009 12:00AM EST
Last updated on Monday, Nov. 23, 2009 3:10AM EST
Co-ed classrooms can promote gender stereotypes and leave most boys longing for the escape of video games, according to Leonard Sax, a Philadelphia-based physician, [...]
…drinking clubs or support groups? You decide.
From the Guardian:
Rise of male student support groups sparks row at British universities• Support groups explore masculinity as a concept
• Critics claim societies a front for ‘macho activities’
Caroline Davies The Guardian, Monday 23 November 2009 larger | smaller Article history
A male student [...]
Chronicle of Higher Education writer Thomas Bartlett does a thorough job surveying the books and reports about boys. The piece (which requires registration) is strong on weaving together the flow of books but weak on reporting (boys’ academic struggles are, for the most part, shrugged off, especially the college imbalances).
[...]
…tracing who’s faring the worst in the recession: young, poorly educated men.
[...]Not sure, because nobody’s looking. I’ve come across several data points that suggest something similar is playing out here, but nothing definitive. I know that universities that serve the sons and daughters of blue-collar families are experiencing especially sharp gender imbalances.
But for now, all the coverage of this issue comes [...]
That’s the title of Christina Hoff Sommers’ new book. She’s tackling an issue that has been discussed here before, the relative paucity of women in the sciences — roughly a fifth of the B.A. recipients in the key fields. If college campuses were gender [...]
I get a sense there’s a shift taking place on the boy troubles issue. The recession has laid bare problems with men and employment, which in turn exposes the gender education imbalances.
This report from the Association of Public Land Grant Universities may not have drawn much press attention but it [...]
This commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education lays out another factor behind the reluctance among women to pursue careers in the science.
[...]It’s all part of a science-based approach to heading off gang violence among Chicago males, at least according to this.
[...]The drive to ramp up college graduations will go nowhere unless the issue of lagging males is addressed. To date, that problem has been pointedly ignored by educators and foundations, mostly due to political correctness. I mean, who wants to talk about helping males when they rule Wall Street and [...]
Linda Perlstein, who writes The Educated Reporter blog as public editor for the National Education Writers Association, filed this. Go the actual link to get her embedded links:
Next in the course catalog: Chicks 101?
I’m glad to see more people talking about young men’s troubles getting through college, and [...]
Here’s an interesting upcoming conference on boys, focusing on the problems in New Mexico and held at a casino. I visited that state as part of my research for Why Boys Fail — schools there could use some guidance. There are some good ideas in the program that other [...]
All-girl technology classes, as outlined in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.
(Good tables at the end of the article)
November 16, 2009
Fairport battles gender gap with all-girls tech program
Ernst Lamothe Jr.
Staff writer
The Fairport Central School District has approved an aggressive approach to counteract the gender gap in technology classes.
The [...]
As Strauss points out, it’s not just the private colleges that favor men in admissions — a legally dicey thing to do. And she repeats my favorite line from the College of William and Mary, a public university that engages in the practice: “It’s not the College of Mary [...]
Plastics ingredients could make a boy’s play less masculine
Study links boys’ fetal phthalate exposure to tendency toward gender-neutral play later on
By Janet Raloff Web edition : Monday, November 16th, 2009
BOYS WITH TOYS Exposures in the womb to a ubiquitous [...]
It’s the President, not the First Lady, who has the creds to launch a campaign to help boys. From the Huffington Post:
Jessica CorryDenver-based public policy analyst and political strategist
Posted: November 16, 2009 02:21 PM BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers’ Index
Mrs. Obama, What About Our Boys?
As [...]
This from Inside Higher Education:
Study Links Coed Housing to Binge Drinking
A new study suggests that students in coeducational housing are much more likely to engage in binge drinking than are students who live in all-male or all-female housing. The study, appearing today in the Journal of American College Health, is [...]
As the New York Times article says, everyone has their pet theory. My pet theory: when the situations are truly apples to apples, which due to subtle career path shifts too fine for economists to detect doesn’t happen that often, the differences are due to negotiating differences. It’s what rings [...]
This story in Inside Higher Education gets beyond the coventional wisdom about why far more women than men elect to study abroad. It’s not just about majors. My favorite part: Men don’t learn as much as women abroad. Drinking opportunities?
[...]To me, this story doesn’t break it down by gender enough. Girls face many of these same pressures, and yet their numbers are significantly better.
November 15, 2009
Summit aims to keep young men in school
Boys to Men links at-risk youths with community mentors
BY MEGHA SATYANARAYANA
[...]
The book is: Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life, by Baruti Kafele.
See a video by the author here.
[...]The Great Recession has scrambled the timetable for the large-scale economic change already underway, the result of the surge in the number of highly educated women. The two forces, the recession and education gender imbalances, are somewhat related but have definitely become intertwined. Social trends that I consider important, the [...]
I believe it was released openly, so I’ll paste below:
Published in Print: November 11, 2009, as Teaching Girls to Tinker
Commentary
Teaching Girls to Tinker
By Lisa Damour
Girls now surpass boys in nearly every measure of academic success. A 2004 report from the National Center for Education [...]
The National Summer Learning Association tackles the boy problems at the right place — the middle school years.
[...]But here’s a more hopeful story from Detroit:
November 12, 2009
EDITORIAL
No boys left behind at Detroit public school
The school-to-prison pipeline, especially in poverty-plagued cities like Detroit, has become a national disgrace. Nearly eight in 10 African-American males drop out of Detroit public schools.
As someone who spends a lot of time [...]
Usually, when I refer to the boy troubles as international I keep to the Western countries where there’s reliable data for comparison. Expanding it beyond that world seems problematic: What about the regions of Pakistan where girls are attacked for even going to school?
But I can’t [...]
Subtext: Do we really need to be concerned about college gender gaps?
Chronicle of Higher Education taps the experts.
[...]
Sax’s book, Boys Adrift, lays out chemical exposure issues that are unique to males. The Washington Post today outlines male sex problems arising from exposure to high levels of BPA.
The article:
High BPA levels linked to male sexual problems
Study in China is likely to [...]
Let’s start with this graph from the USA Today story:
“When you talk about opportunities and chances, these kids don’t have (any),” Johnson said. “Football is 90% to 95% of the boys’ only opportunity to get out of here. We have academic all-Americans, but our school, [...]
A shout-out to Greg Toppo for spotting this:
chicagotribune.com
Women on pace to become majority of unionized workers within a decade
SAM HANANEL
Associated Press Writer
1:47 PM CST, November 10, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) - Women are on track to become a majority of unionized workers in the next 10 years, signaling their [...]
Washington Post turns in another great editorial on the struggle to turn around urban school districts designed more for adult employment than educating children — districts where in some instances well under half the black males graduate.
What was Arne Duncan thinking when he gushed over the all hat, no [...]
Once again, single-sex schools are offered up as a solution. Actually, the best step was approving the KIPP co-ed charter school.
From the Arkansas News:
- Arkansas News - http://arkansasnews.com -
Education Board may seek A.G.’s opinion on charter school application
Posted By jlyon On November 9, 2009 @ 8:35 pm In Arkansas [...]
This nuts-and-bolts report avoids ideology by laying out achievable steps to lure more women into the sciences and keep them there.
[...]This coming out of the Senate to replace Reading First and other reading programs. Two things to watch: the emphasis on improving reading among adolescents (far more boys than girls need that help) and any research on how to teach reading to very young children. The push on literacy [...]
Washington Post education columnist Valerie Strauss details the new, parentally-induced stresses of preschool.
[...]
