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According to some estimates, 80 percent of students diagnosed with learning disabilities and ADHD are male. Boys get 70 percent of the D’s and F’s in school. And federal figures show that almost 3 of every 5 dropouts is male. So what’s wrong with boys? According to some experts – nothing, really. The real problem lies in how they’re taught.

At a grade school in Owensboro, Kentucky, educators saw the academic performance of their boys drop to alarming levels. So they decided to try something.

All third grade girls are now in one classroom, the boys in another.

The boys also have more breaks, shorter lessons and more interaction.

The school had decided to practice what some experts have long preached, that boys learn differently than girls.

“Boys don’t remember the same way girls do, our temporal lobe doesn’t work the same way. Our hippocampus doesn’t work the same way,” says Micheal Gurian from the Gurian Institute, an education training organization based in Colorado Springs.

What that means in the real world, these experts say, is that boys need more motion, more hands-on experience, in order to learn.

“Whenever we, like, run around, then we sit down – and we have more motivation to do our work than if we just to sit all day,” explains 12-year-old Preston Wright.

Unfortunately, say experts, too often classrooms teach in a way that stifles boys.

“Students come to us in pre-K and Kindergarten: bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, ready to take on the world,” says School Superintendent Michael Glascoe, Ph.D., “and by the time they reach third grade we’ve beaten them to the ground. They’re misbehaving, they’re too loud, they’re out of their seats… and you can see the eyes drop.”

And, in order to keep some boys “calm,” drugs like Ritalin are often prescribed.

“This is the wakeup call,” Says Gurian, “I think 10-percent of the male population on Ritalin; people are [saying] ‘oh no, there’s something wrong’. We can’t really say that 10-percent of our boys are sick!”

Experts say that, besides making classrooms more “boy-friendly,” an important factor in helping a struggling student is a teacher, tutor or parents — who work with the boy, one-on-one.

“Relating to this kid constantly for a period of a couple of months, and after a couple of months, wow,” says Gurian, “things change. The kid starts doing his homework, you know, a lot of these things that were presenting as problems in school can be fixed and helped. So it is still human relationships that can cure a lot of this.”

What We Need To Know

• A boy’s attention span often wanders after about 20 to 30 minutes. Instead of expecting your child to do a large block of homework all at once, allow him to take breaks and then come back to it. (John Delacey, Educator)




• Too much television in the first five years of life can alter the brain’s organizational development. It can also lead to a child who has an unusually short attention span. (Michael Gurian, Author, The Minds of Boys; Founder, the Gurian Institute)




• Parents need to work with their school and their son’s teachers if their son is struggling. Oftentimes there will be a counselor or teacher at your child’s school who can connect with him – and start to turn his problems around.
  (Michael Glascoe, Ph.D., Paterson, N.J. Superintendent of Schools)

Resources

• The Gurian Institute
• American Educational Research Association
• U.S. Department of Education

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