From the father of a boy

There has been a growing buzz for the last few months over emerging research that boys are falling behind girls in terms of educational achievement, running all the way from kindergarten to grad school. Newsweek joined the chorus with this month's issue, claiming educators are trying new things to help boys succeed.

I have a stake in this because I have one of those boys. He's in seventh grade, is brilliant (not just from his dad...IQ scores back this up) and is in danger of having his love for learning extinguished by our award-winning local school district. He's a science enthusiast who's getting near-failing marks in science ("He's way above me in science," his teacher confided to my wife and I at parent-teacher conferences in December); he's a history buff who had a failing midterm report in social studies; he's a lover of good books (including Ender's Game, Winterdance and The Sword of Shannara) who has trouble completing an English book report.

He's a visual learner and a concept learner. He's a critical and surprisingly deep thinker. He's a painfully awkward square peg who doesn't fit well into the round holes provided by public school academia.

He's a boy who can tell you the mechanics of why civilizations rise and fall, but he can't remember a list of specific historical dates for a test. He can lucidly discuss money and economics, but can't remember the name of the 13th President (Millard Fillmore.) He's sloppy and disorganized and has been called stupid more than once by people who are challenged to even spell the word.

Once he learns a concept, it's unneccessary to repeat it and repetition quickly leads to boredom. He's a completely different animal from his equally-bright younger sister, the social savant who's been on the all-As honor roll practically since she was a zygote.

So why should they be taught in the same manner or expected to perform in the same manner?

Because that's the way the schools have decided to direct their efforts. They favor repetition and detail over concept and critical thinking. Much of the year is spent teaching test-specific material for the standardized evaluations at the expense of a more well-rounded and far-reaching education. The teaching establishment's response to demands for accountability has been to teach less, but concentrate on proficiency testing material to bolster the image of the school district when scores are released to the public. School funding levies are much more easily swallowed by the public when taken with the "teaspoon of sugar" of superior test results.

And so we're back to teaching via the repetition of details because it's efficient for the schools. It hurts boys, however, who learn best in a hands-on, slightly more chaotic environment. A cynical person might observe that through test teaching, the schools get maximum Public Relations gain for minimal effort. So we send a army of factoid-burpers on to college for thinking remediation, and we dumb down the college entrance tests to mask the decline in scores.

The solution has to lie in more competition for the public schools and alternate curriculum paths to teaching besides the college of education.This may have the additional benefit of ending the National Education Association's (NEA) stranglehold on meaningful educational reform. Of course, this is a longterm solution and our son will have graduated before any change bears fruit.

So for now, we're considering homeschooling and researching private school options. We're doing what we can to encourage his love of learning, working to offset the damage done by the public schools.