Monday, April 13, 2009

Boys have problems too


Leonard Sax MD PhD is the founder and executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. His first book is called "Why Gender Matters". But for a change, I thought I would focus on the males and talk about his latest book called "Boys Adrift". In this book he shows 5 reasons boys are having behavioral and educational problems:

1. Video Games

Boys spend less time in the real world, like playing outside, where they can face real problems and use their imagination.

2. Public Education

Boys are pushed to learn and behave long before they are ready, at a time they just want to run around energetically.

3. Over-medication for Behavioural Problems

Boys are being over-prescribed for medications for disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder.

4. Lack of Male Role Models

A boy without an active father might not have any role models and instead look to their friends, celebrities, and television characters. I would like to add that it doesn't help that divorce is a lot more common nowadays.

5. Toxins in Plastics

Dr. Sax shows how chemicals from plastics change boys' brains.

There you have it, both boys and girls have a lot to face!

4 comments:

Mackenzie said...

#3 is usually stated as girls being under-diagnosed with ADD/ADHD because when girls have it they're usually still quiet, just ignoring everything, staring out the window, reading a book, etc. while boys run around and throw things across the room. Granted, I was not one of those quiet girls (I was always talking in class), but I still wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was 18 and in university.

Teachers tend not to recognize ADHD when it's not over-the-top disruptive. If it's mildly disruptive or not disruptive, it doesn't matter.

Gail Carmichael said...

One of today's talk radio topics was about single-gender schooling. It sounds so politically incorrect, but the more I read/hear about it, the more convinced I am that it's a good idea, at least up to a certain age (I think it could work in high school, but I also can understand why many parents might want more mixed gender interaction at that point). Some of these points could definitely be addressed in single-gender classrooms.

Terri Oda said...

Did you know that the research has shown that single-gender classrooms are usually beneficial to girls, but detrimental to guys? I always thought that was kinda interesting...

Gail Carmichael said...

Really? I hadn't heard that. Do you have any idea why the boys would hurt not having girls around?