I try to keep this account objective and evidenced based, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a piece of me in every post. I wouldn’t do this work if I didn’t relate to a lot of the things I write about. Because I do, and perhaps none more so than this... Education. And especially boys’ ongoing and hidden failure within Western schooling systems. For I was not a good student at school and performed poorly; you can forget As, Bs and Cs, I was a student who frequently returned Ds and Es. My love of science and psychology were quickly crushed beneath mountains of books, endless exams, and tiresome text based learning. Soon I was transformed into an impatient, disengaged and naughty little shit. My English teacher once held me back after class and told me, “George, the only thing worse than a student that doesn’t try, is one who is smart and who doesn’t try.” Those words still stay with me. Because despite my grades consistently telling me, my friends and my parents otherwise… I was not stupid. I was just bored. So as boys quietly continue their thirty year descent, falling further and further behind girls at every stage of education, in every age group, and in virtually all western countries… at what point do we start to ask ourselves: maybe the way we teach boys is, at least in part, to blame? Don’t our boys deserve us to at least ask that question? Can we not move past this pathetic and highly politicised gender based squabbling, for the sake of our sons? Well, what do you think? What was your experience of education? ~ Study Summary Images by Gradienta and Adrien Converse from Unsplash.

2022-10-28