Newsweek reported on boys and education this past week. If you have a moment, give it a read, then help me understand what exactly we can do to start bringing about change instead of always reporting on the problems!
More Reasons to Worry About Boys and School
Previous post: Teaching the Birds and the Bees to Little Children
Next post: Resources for Teachers
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Alyson,
I read the article by Peg Tyre. Sadly in the small community where I live, in rural Nova Scotia, the school my son attends recently added a pre-primary.
I am not impressed. Children need time to be children and simply have fun and play. I think too much structured time is detrimental to their development. I chose to wait until my son was six to send him to primary. This option is available to all parents. It gives their children another year to just be a kid and enjoy playing and unstructured fun time.
Debra
rural Nova Scotia
My son is three, quite calm. My nephews are 4 and 1, extremely active.
The new street we moved onto is mostly boys. Various ages.
Some go to private school, some public.
So I’m observing. Just finished Rudolf Dreikurs book and I’m watching
these techniques work.
To sum up I’d say that we expect too much from our boys. We basically
adopt that they need little positive attention and heap the moralizing
negative attention on them like we have to groom them into these
adults that take on all the traditional male roles, PLUS take on all
of the modern day sensitivities that we expect. We can’t have it all.
“Don’t cry – you’re not hurt”. “be sweet to your sister even though
she just hit you first, you must learn to respect women (even though
your mother shows you no respect as an individual what- so-ever!”
They are in some ways MORE sensitive than girls and love closeness and
lots of extra time together.
I don’t know, I think us Mom’s might not be doing as good of a job as
we can with our little guys. Working outside the home is great for
women, but there has to be some corresponding shift within the family
where everyone is aware that just as much attention is still needed as
ever was in the “traditional” sense. Maybe Dad works from home or just work something out where at the end of the day these kids feel valued
and aren’t striving for any sort of attention they can get.