I like boys. I like being around boys. I like talking to boys. I like, no I love, teaching boys. Yesterday, I read a post, and the comments therein posted, titled Boys Suck. Teaching boys is one of the greatest joys I have in my career since many of the boys I teach are fun, funny, intelligent, and outgoing. Hearing educators complain about boys only reinforces the underlying causes behind the gender gap in higher education.
The gender gap in higher education should frighten people. Boys in higher education are becoming fewer compared to their percentage of the population. In fact, Ali Carr-Chellman addressed a lot of this in her TED talk “Gaming to Re-engage Boys in Learning.” The facts behind male education are frightening. In higher learning, according to the American Council on Education, boys represent 43% of those enrolled in or earning bachelor’s degrees. If you are a young man of color, that number decreases even further, with the American Council on Education stating that the numbers for Hispanic males were 42% in 2007-2008, a decrease from 45% in 1999-2000. According to information from the US Census bureau for the 2010 census, 50.8% of the US population is female and 49.2% is male. While there are 1.6% more females in the general population, there are 14% more females in higher education than there are males.
What does all this mean? Somewhere, Americans are failing their boys. Ms. Carr-Chellman discusses teachers who find gaming, or other boy interests, to be wasteful. She tells a story of a boy who wishes he could write a story about a tornado blowing apart a house but that his teacher would not like it. These two examples are but two of many that explore the manner through which boys are marginalized in K-12. Marginalizing even a small portion of a population, let alone nearly half of it, marginalizes all of us. When we preach education but focus only on those behaviors or interests that our society deems to be acceptable, we tell a segment of our population that education is only meant for those individuals who can conform to a set of proscribed interests. We discuss gender equality for women and want women to succeed, but why does that mean that we have to cause boys to fail?
Failure of any group, in part, relies on the views educators have towards their students. When an educator dismisses a student (or group of students) based on race, ethnicity, religion, or gender, that instructor has disenfranchised all the students in the room, not just the single ostracized group. When one group feels left out, they find themselves uninterested in the coursework as well as uninterested in maintaining an interest in the classroom environment. This disinterest based on marginalization can be interpreted as a disinterest in learning. However, feeling disrespected for simply being something – gender, religion, race – means that the student will withdraw from learning. This is basic human instinct. This withdrawal removes an entire realm of perspective from the classroom, one that if cultivated could add instead of detract. If boys are withdrawing, we, as educators, need to help them engage.
Aiding boys in their education does not mean pandering but understanding. Boys are often more kinetic. In education today, things like testing and information retention require calm and sedate behaviors. Classroom discussion often requires an orderly path of participation. However, understanding the need for boys to find their way means that at some level educators need to leave their own comfort zone and embrace those behaviors that make boys so enjoyable in the classroom.
The boys that have taught me the most about teaching boys are the ones that are the most rambunctious. I love having a raucous class that has lively discussion, humor, and fun. I love that my male students are often more willing to speak up on topics that interest them, while girls are more willing to give thoughtful comments even when they find the material useless. When my boys are engaged, they create a roomful of loud discussion and personal engagement. For example, when discussing self-identity with technology, a conversation that even briefly brings up the idea of the video game Call of Duty brought about a lively discussion not just of the game itself, but of how the players use the game to escape a mundane life. This was parlayed into a discussion of how people use avatars or social networking sites to create an identity that helps them escape from their normal lives. When discussing the debate culture in the classroom (a la Deborah Tannen), a link between the competitive nature of sports and the competitive nature of debate engages the boys. These simple links to topics that interested the boys helped them feel comfortable within the academic realm, giving them a sense of connection to the material and the classroom discussion.
Engaging students is not about pandering. Engaging students is about noting those overlaps between your materials and their interests. Boys are socialized differently than girls. In a writing class, for example, many boys have been socialized to believe that they are “bad writers”. They have been socialized to feel that writing is something for girls. They have been socialized to believe that the best writing is about emotion, not action. They feel that their writing should be about unicorns and rainbows, not pirates and swords. They have been socialized to feel that those things that interest them, sports or video games or rock music, have no relevance to the classroom. Girls have been taught that they can do anything, be anything, and learn anything. Are girls outnumbered in certain fields? Yes, they are, but educators recognize this and focus girls towards these fields. Are boys outnumbered in certain fields? Yes, but they are socialized to feel that this should be the norm.
Educators often discuss the need to understand different learning styles. The literature gives examples types such as aural, visual, and kinetic. Yet, in the majority of classrooms, those who are aural and visual have educators who can fit this into their classroom. Students who are kinetic learners often find themselves sitting at a desk listening and looking. At a certain educational level, the idea of manipulables are considered juvenile. However, for kinetic learners, a lesson as simple as “cut your outline up into strips and move the lines around” might be enough to help them see that their learning style can fit into even a college environment. A classroom activity using my two year old’s Duplo Legos (the only Legos in our home not attached to a specific “structure” such as the White House or Millenium Falcon) garnered more interest from my male students than any other lecture. The students had ten minutes to choose blocks, build a structure, and write instructions to re-create that structure that structure exactly (including by color of block). Pictures were compared between the originals and the re-created structures. The pedagogical goal was to teach students the need for clarity in writing. This kind of kinetic environment can be used in the college classroom while still maintaining the necessary decorum.
For the adventurous, allowing the boys to use sports or video games as their examples that relate back to classroom materials may seem to lead to chaos. Using the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry (or Patriots-Giants rivalry) as the example of how to create an argument focusing on a thesis (which team is better) can get the boys engaged in the idea that they exhibit these skills without realizing it. Of course, it also can lead to a heated debate regarding team hegemony, which of course only further proves the ability to prove an argument. However, a controlled chaos is the discussion I love the most in my classroom. I love when my students are so passionate that they gesticulate or want to bang a table. I love the way that a discussion can become more than just words but show how words can evolve into physical actions. I love when my boys find themselves comfortable enough to step into the academic realm. For boys who have found themselves treated as troublemakers for being active, having a place in the academic world wherein they can express their thoughts without being sent to the principal is important.
Few boys will walk into a conference room at the age of twenty-five and expect the roundtable discussion of their file to relate to sports or a video game. Few boys will feel the need to talk loudly or be rambunctious in the office space. However, those boys will never be able to get to those conference room if educators keep marginalizing them based on their gender and interests. I love boys. I love teaching boys. What I want to see in colleges are more boys. Boys. Boys. And more boys.
