It’s a fact - boys are behind in Western education; at every level, every age group, and in virtually all developed countries. There’s no denying it and there’s no ignoring it. But what we don’t know for sure, is why? What has happened over the last three decades to see boys slip silently further and further behind our girls? Is it teacher bias? Is it the grading system? Is it boys delayed cognitive development? Do we problematise boys’ behaviour? What about gendered scholarships? Or perhaps the structure of the educational system itself is flawed? The point is, we don’t know for sure - these are only ideas. Nobody really knows, because nobody has cared to ask. And why not? America already has a National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education to ‘improve their educational opportunities’, so why is there nothing for our men and boys? Is anyone going to ask these uncomfortable counter-narrative questions, or challenge popular misconceptions? And how far do our boys have to fall behind, before we do something about it? ~ Sources The Difference between Girls and Boys Learning Teaching to the minds of boys The Early Education of Males: Where Are We Failing Them?  The Plight of the Male Teacher: An Interdisciplinary and Multileveled Theoretical Framework for Researching a Shortage of Male Teachers Redshirting the Boys, The Atlantic OECD Teacher Bias Study Images by Dan Cristan Padure, Yustinus Tjiuwanda and Joshua Hoehne from Unsplash

2022-10-06