Boys and guns

Despite many academic articles, a gap between boys and girls’ achievement remains. Among low achievers in the UK, boys outnumber girls by 20 per cent. A gender gap in achievement between boys and girls has been discussed in Australia since the O’Doherty report, Challenges and Opportunities, was released in New South Wales in 1994. Last year the subject rose to prominence in the USA and is still being hotly debated.

The UK report says too many boys develop negative images of themselves as learners, in part because of learning that is not purposeful. The report argues that schools and childcare centres want pupils to listen patiently, speak nicely and (as they grow older) write attractive descriptions. These are exactly the things most boys find the hardest.

Boys’ natural exuberance and energy may often be misinterpreted. Thus boys can be labelled as difficult and their behaviour called “inappropriate”. Boys are not seen as positive learners and they become fed up with learning as such. If their interests and learning preferences are not respected, they lose interest in formal learning and switch off. In contrast, a project which followed boys’ interests  found sudden, dramatic improvements in their speaking and listening skills AND behaviour.

Boys cited in the report said that sitting on the carpet was boring, and “it wastes your life”.The issue was summarised when one British boy wrote in an exam, “I will try my hardest, no matter how pointless the task is”. Following boys’ agendas does improve learning, the report says. Staff should “help boys to achieve more rapidly by providing opportunities for learning that engage them”.

Engaging boys in schoolwork has been discussed in all countries surveyed by the OECD’s PISA Report. Emphatically, boys are not all the same. But the problem of capturing boys’ interests has been registered in almost all countries surveyed by the OECD and it keeps cropping up in unexpected places. Only last week I was asked by a theatre in London “How on earth do we engage the boys who visit us?”

There will be many implications from the report. For instance, do we have enough men in teaching? Professor Andrew Martin at Oxford University told me that although teacher quality is paramount, boys prefer to raise certain issues with a trusted older male, not always a father. And males often tolerate more active and boyish learning, Sebastian Kraemer argues. Yet getting suitable males into teaching has been oft-discussed, but no workable solution has been found.

Perhaps the report follows a trend back to more boy - and girl - specific learning. It might encourage a move back to single-sex learning, even within a coeducational school.

There are some echoes of the report in the work done to date by the Federal Government’s Boys Education Lighthouse Schools Program. Among its ten principles for engaging boys appear the following: flexibility of approach, rather than a standard, teacher-directed activity; practical and hands-on learning; and the use of appropriate male role-models. Like the UK report, the BELS program wants teachers and caregivers not to enforce stereotypes but to challenge them. The balance among all these principles is difficult to maintain.

The report is not a sensational call encouraging boys to be aggressive in childcare centres and the early years of school. It is a cautious call encouraging questioning of caregivers’ understandable anxiety about the ways in which many boys play. It might spark a useful debate on what is permissible in the early years and how to channel the restless activity that many boys show.