The war against Boys

Just a question...I was lucky to be in a new public elementary school that was funded specific for a new Science and Math dominant curriculum many years ago. It was a result of the Space Program.

We were learning Algebra in 4th grade.

What did or will your daughter be learning in 4th grade?

AboveAlpha

 

Of course it does not.

 

She just graduated 3rd and has already started learning pre-algebra. The new math kind of leans that way anyway.

She learned chess in 1st grade. (but still lacks forward thinking)

Reads like crazy.

I assume she will start real algebra and more advanced writing and grammar next year in her basic classes, but I have no idea what they are going to put her through in gifted.

 

In GIFTED?

So is she in a special program?

I have found that this new teaching ideology specific to no winners and no losers does not prepare kids for the real world.

As well although this is not true in my state...I have friends who live out west in the Bible Belt where even though they are not supposed to teach IDIOCY such as Intelligent Design....they are sneaking it in anyways.

Intelligent Design is anything but intelligent and I have read that book...Pandas and something...and it is quite possibly the single most idiotic thing I have EVER read.

Evolution is no longer a Theory as it is now a FACT and has been labeled as a FACT by the Association of American Scientists and many other groups.

In a day where Genetic Engineering will be a huge job creating field...it is just sad to see kids being taught things from the 1600's.

AboveAlpha

 

Nobody is teaching intelligent design at her school.

Biology is still pretty basic. She has studied cellular structure and replication. Skeletal form and function. And the basics of evolution.

Her gifted program seems to be forcing her to compete. I do not see her learning to "not think of herself or others as losers". Her gifted teacher seems much too aloof for that.

I am mostly atheist and my wife is a very liberal christian. If our daughters education starts to lean that way we will notice.

 

I am very happy for you and your daughter that she is getting a proper education.

I get sad to think about all the children who are not so lucky.

AboveAlpha

 

Don't really have much to comment on in the book, but...

That seems almost too unbelievable - not that they'd be that hypocritical, but that they won the lawsuit.

I was under the impression that a lot of the success of private schools came from them being able to basically pick and choose which students they admit?

Also, as someone who has gone to schools in various countries, most notably k-5 in the USA and 7-12th in Germany, I'd just like to throw in my personal opinion that even the best schools in the USA can't even begin to stack up to the German average. Seriously, it's just completely worlds apart.

 

Were they military schools stagnant?

The chief problem in Public schools is now discipline and an almost total inability to differentiate between actual violence and pretend violence and a distressing tendency to ignore real violence while simultaneously jumping on pretend violence or things thought emblematic of it with a ferocity out of all proprtion to the actual offence.

And the real problem in Public schools wasn't that there was ever bias against girls. At the K-5 level girls have almost always performed better than boys. Part of that has to do with the fact that boys simply mature more slowly than girls and the other part is that boys are simply not the sit down and shut up types hence we see that boys are several time more likely than girls to be placed on ADHD drugs. Another problem is that the only adult male in the elememtary shool, if there is one, is likely to be the gym teacher. This has certain drawbacks in that the only avaialbe male role model is not going to be associated with book learning, but with physical activities.

 

There seems to be this drive towards the removal of all that could be considered masculine in school policy.

The facts are Boys are not at all like girls and to treat both the same is not conductive to the learning process.

AboveAlpha

 

Gender is a social construct. The book referenced in OP was bunk.

 

Things like "Blue is for Boys" and "Pink is for girls" are social constructs, but on average, there are differences between the sexes.

 

Nah, just general public school. It was a good school, but the main issue was that it was completely meaningless.

The biggest problem I saw was the teaching methods and how we went about it - we slowed it down to the slowest in the class, and this didn't go well. Whereas in Germany, after 5th grade, they separate the people depending on their grades into three different levels. It's the difference between someone like me being bored completely out of their skull to the point of not caring about anything any more, and between me being challenged and engaged. The special ed courses did not exist. It's just... eh. How things were explained were also not impressive.

Also, the rash of ADHD drugs is outright despicable.

Yes, but the line between social construct and genetic difference has become utterly grayed in the wrong direction.

 

Voucherization of the present system would allow for sex-segregated schools that can exist outside a religious orientation.

One wonders if making America's premier undergraduate universities - the service Academies - hasn't been a bad idea.

 

What about age? Is that a social construct too? Why or why not?

 

When I was in 5th Grade and played basketball, score wasn't officially kept. Why? Because we were basically learning the fundamentals of the game. Score wasn't as important as learning the rules of the game and the core lessons of teamwork at an early age. I also disagree that competition is vital in adult life. Cooperation is at least as, if not more, important than competition.

Bans on roughhousing have been implemented because all too often bullies will claim they're just playing when they are actually attempting to hurt a bullying victim physically. No victim of bullying will ever say "well, bullying never hurt me." If you think you weren't hurt by bullying, you weren't bullied at all.

The only difference between the genders is in terms of sexual acts and bearing children. We all need to treat each other as human beings, not men and women.

There is no set "women are this, and men are that" way to the world. The world is not black and white. Gender stereotypes are unfair. I know a few guys who love to bake (I'm one of them), and I know a few women who enjoy riding motorcycles, working on cars, and woodworking. If we stop thinking of women in terms of stereotypes, they'd be a lot better off.

The United States has gone away from brawn in favor of brains, muscular strength is not needed nearly as much as it used to be. now the most valuable strength is the strength that comes from the muscle between the ears. The takeover of the nerds has already started? Don't believe me? You're reading this on a site made possible by literally hundreds if not thousands of nerds. They collectively couldn't

In terms of schooling, gender differences don't matter as much as the individual needs of the child. Of my five closest acquaintances, there is no commonality in our learning styles. Every child would exceed in an as-personalized-as-possible situation.

I agree though, that if there is an all-girls school, there should be an all-boys school allowed.

 

my local school system requires at least 1 semester of home ec for everyone--boys and girls, Basically it is basic sewing, budgeting, and simple hamburger helper type cooking

 

age? technically yes, because time is a social construct....but aging isn't, we live within the structure of space/time.

 

First can you name the school the ACLU stopped>?

Second, yes there are differences between the sexes but GENDER is a social construct.

 

Until well into the 1900s, at least after 1927 but before the 1950s, pink was the masculine color.

 

Don't understand about the dodge ball ban myth. My kids (now age 13 and 14) used to play it in elementary school all the time. The coaches renamed it 'lazer tag' but they played it all the same.

 

I don't believe it is. Yes, there are social parts of it, but IMHO, gender is mainly biological. There were some notable cases of kids who had ambigious genitalia, who were surgically transformed to a gender different from their chromosomes. Most were miserable, as their personality characteristics were that of their "chromosome" gender, not their physical genitalia.

For an example of the above:
http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/gender_reassignment.pdf

 

Yeah, but that makes age just as fluid as gender, does it not? So then how can anyone justify laws pertaining to age if they reject such laws in relation to gender?

 

I am not sure where that question comes from but gender is a social construct

 

Key is boys and girls. Not one for boys and a different one for girls.

 

I have no problem with single sex classrooms in public schools. There is some indication I have seen reported that it seems to help girls in I believe it was math and science, and didn't seem to lower the boys' crappier performance any.