Oh, Boy!

Are You Following the Boy Crisis?

That’s what Newsweek called the discovery that girls do better in many education arenas than boys. Some critics go so far as to say that schools are unfair to boys. And to that end, one Massachusetts high school student filed a civil rights complaint. “If you sit still, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you’ll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this,” he told a reporter.

What can we do? Sara Mead, author of The Truth About Boys and Girls, points out that some pundits propose more classroom structure, because boys need the discipline. Others propose less structure, because boys hate restrictions. That’s hardly a clear solution.
But Mead has another take on the crisis: It doesn’t exist, at least not as described in so many media reports. Looking at test scores, Mead and other investigators found little or no gender gap among affluent, White and Asian students. The problem is among minority and low-income students—and even there, gender gaps are generally much smaller than the differences in school success that go with race, ethnicity, and income.

“Poor, Black, and Hispanic boys would benefit far more from closing racial and economic gaps than they would from closing gender gaps,” says Mead.
Read her analysis at www.educationsector.org .