Blue Notes from a Red Zone

Learning Curves

Around ten years ago, I began to worry over the fact that reading was not coming as naturally to my son as it had to my daughters. I quickly found I was not alone in my concerns. Educators, librarians, booksellers and other parents were all discussing boys’ relative lack of reading skill proficiency. The neighborhood wisdom was that boys could read as easily as girls if they so chose, but they just didn’t find reading that interesting when compared to sports and video games. Parents professed to be unconcerned, while educators expressed alarm.

I was not convinced that the problem lay merely in a lack of interest. Not all books were targeted for girls; many could quite successfully capture the imagination of a young boy even to the point of luring him away from video games and computers on the occasional rainy day. I felt reasonably certain that if my son could read easily, he would. Meanwhile, because he wasn’t, he was not getting the full benefit from his academic environment.

As Tom grew older, my personal concerns began to subside. By 5th grade, the combination of an excellent teacher, steady encouragement at home, and the release of the first Harry Potter book resulted in a quantum leap in academic skills. He is now having outstanding success in the International Baccalaureate program, which is the most demanding course of study offered in high schools across the country. But unfortunately his academic success is a rarity among his male peers. Of the 40 students in his IB class, 34 are girls; the same ratio which held true for my youngest daughter’s class five years ago. Increasingly, girls are taking over the science fair awards, the valedictory slots, the academic teams. And, as has been well documented, they will soon represent 60% of all college undergraduates. Female enrollment surpassed male enrollment in law schools years ago; it is now overtaking male enrollment in the last male professions such as medicine and accounting. Only engineering remains overwhelmingly male in composition, and inroads are being made there as well.

Statistical analysis and personal observations have been increasingly bolstered by scientific research. Richard Whitmire in the New Republic writes:

“Combine [Ken] Hilton's local research [that women read more proficiently than men] with national neuroscience research, and you arrive at this: The brains of men and women are very different. Last spring, Scientific American summed up the best gender and brain research, including a study demonstrating that women have greater neuron density in the temporal lobe cortex, the region of the brain associated with verbal skills. Now we've reached the heart of the mystery. Girls have genetic advantages that make them better readers, especially early in life. And, now, society is favoring verbal skills. Even in math, the emphasis has shifted away from guy-friendly problems involving quick calculations to word and logic problems.

“....Ninth grade is where boys' verbal deficit becomes an albatross that stymies further male academic achievement… where every student now gets a verbally drenched curriculum that is supposed to better prepare them for college. Good goal, but it's leaving boys in the dust.”

For some reason, the greatest outcry in the media has been: “But who will the girls marry? If men marry down, and women marry up, then won’t large percentages of women be left behind?” By this reasoning, large percentages of men are also going to remain single, but perhaps they are not perceived as minding so much (although I would beg to disagree with that premise). I have some concerns in this area myself, since I think it important that married couples be able to talk together on topics of interest, but it’s not my primary source of stress.

Of all the various frightening trends in American culture today – attacks on civil liberty, concentration of power into the executive branch of government, religious fundamentalism, control of the election process by right-wing idealogues – what worries me most is the lack of value placed on quality education. As men find the scholastic world more challenging, many respond by devaluing its validity. When scientific and historical research becomes inaccessible to many, it is dismissed as being irrelevant anyway. And thus American universities begin to recede in importance, and American jobs move overseas.

There are many forms of intelligence, most of which can be channeled into the creation of a well-educated population. We need to shake loose from the rigid structures common in most schools, and look beyond our assumptions of learning as confined to visual, auditory and kinetic modes. We need a learning environment that produces an appreciation of research, analysis, logic models and communication skills, and it needs to start in the colleges of education. It’s a challenge. I hope someone is up to it.

posted by Lenore Wilson @ 1:15 PM