Article in the Irish Independent yesterday. Boys are not studying as diligently as girls. Girls will out-perform boys in Junior and Leaving Cert exams. Blah, blah, blah.
Look, I don't care what the "experts" say. If the experts only told us what our eyes and ears have been telling us for years they'd soon find their well paid research posts would be gone. Boys will NEVER – that's NOT EVER – do well in the type of "understanding", "caring" environment that too many of our schools/homes are today.
Sure there are exceptions. Some boys don't need the firm hand (I was probably one of those). Some girls do. But, overall, boys need a more structured, more disciplined school environment than girls do. And, boys need to be pestered more at home too, preferably by their father. This should start from the day they enter school.
You can talk to a 4 or 5 year old girl about why hitting another is bad and how that makes you "feel bad", but boys don't care about that. Unless they themselves suffer for their actions, they won't give a damn if you "feel bad". Okay, they may care, somewhat, but it will not change their behavior. Boys need rules AND they need to know they'll be punished if those rules are broken. Those rules should include performance measures on exams and in-school behavior. The rules may be adjusted over the dozen years of schooling, but they should probably remain until high school graduation.
One somewhat related problem is that more and more of the teachers that boys and girls see are women. There are virtually no men in primary education here, in Britain or in the US. I don't have any good ideas about how to address this problem, but I think that boys (& girls too) need to have men teach them at least some of the time.
