Improving academic performance of males in early childhood education

Improving Boys' Academics

Improving the Academic Performance of Males in Early Childhood Education to Foster Greater Success in the Future.

The foundation of early childhood education has been historically limited, as the standard idea that a child under the age of 6 should not be separated from his or her parents, as the watchful eye was needed to keep them safe, that a single instructor, of many children could not provide, the more we learn about children the more aware we are that they need educated instruction far earlier. (Morgan, 1999, p. 94) Early quality education is clearly the tool that determines later success (Abboud & Kim 2005 p. 5) and yet, boys are failing at alarming rates in the developmentally challenged system that has been wrongly attempting to implement gender neutrality in the equation for the last fifty years, despite substantial evidence that there are extreme differences between the very biological make up of the brains of boys and girls. (Sax, 2005, p.15)

Psychologists who were the first to study child development -- many through university courses in early childhood education -- have informed us that learning starts at birth, and that what children experience in their early years is critical for later knowledge acquisition. During the early years children acquire language, the knowledge needed to make meaning of their environment, and basic characteristics that form their personality and cognitive style at a highly accelerated rate. This makes early education the phase of teaching and learning that lays the foundations for healthy, learning children. (Morgan, 1999, p. 8-9)

It has also been known for many years that there are clear gender differences in learning. These know gender differences are based on anecdotal evidence, learning testing, scientific research and overall observations by educators and parents alike. The actual situation of the failure of boys in school is disturbing and has been called a crisis by some. Boys get more failing grades, are more often in trouble, are more frequently diagnosed with learning difficulties and are far more likely to drop out of school before graduation than girls are (80% of all high school dropouts are boys). (Gurain & Stevens, 2005, p. 22) Others are even demonstrating that the difficulties men and women have with the "equalization" of education carry into life failure, as the lives being led do not match the lives they are told they should be leading. (Barnett & Rivers 2004, p. 2) (Sax, 2005, pp. 3-6)Yet, regardless of this information, there is still a challenging lack of real information about gender differences in education.

For to many decades, biological information about the development of a child's brain, as well as the crucial differences between male and female brain development, has been fragmentary, incomplete, and sometimes nonexistent. This state of educational training has brought real harm to our educational culture. We are walking into classrooms unprepared to do our jobs. We are putting boys and girls together in classrooms and a system of education that is unprepared to deal with who these children really are. (Gurian, 2001, p.15)

Historically speaking the gender differences in education have been under-recognized if not overtly ignored throughout the establishment of early childhood education as a specialty within education. Additionally, the field of educators has been traditionally and currently gendered toward women, and this is especially true in the lower grades. (Sargent, 2004, p. 173) Though this is not to say that women are incapable of teaching young boys, given the training to do so it does leave some questions as to the validity of the thinking process that helps develops everything from curriculum to day-to-day classroom interactions between young boys and their peers as well as their teachers, and limits male role models in the system significantly.

Again in a historical sense when education was geared only toward boys, (Morgan, 1999, p. 2) the system tended to cater more to their needs, additionally it is also arguable that when children were segregated by gender in education each set of children received an education that better me their needs. When desegregation by gender began to occur the emphasis on change was toward stepping up the education of young girls so they might have equal advantage in education as boys, and yet the challenges for boys then increased.

This is also not to say that all the shortcomings associated with gendered education have been surmounted for female's either but in a bid for equality of education, we may have lost sight of the condition of both gender's different learning styles and needs. One can see from a simple observation of a mixed gender group of children at play the significant differences between the way the genders think and therefore act and so much of the learning process of children in ELE is through play that this is a good place to start and examination.

Play is a primary source of development in young children, and play is children's work. Theorists have attempted to define play by humans and animals as an activity from which participants derive pleasure. Lev Vygotsky pointed out that while play is the leading source of development in young children, defining play as a source of pleasure misses the mark. (Morgan, 1999, p. 5)

From a foundational work on the education of children, written in by the famous educator/philosopher Comenius 1633 (reprinted in Morgan 1999) is a passage that demonstrates the specific ideas of the manner in which boys learn.

Boys ever delight in being employed in something, for their youthful blood does not allow them to rest. Now as this is very useful it ought not to be restrained, but provision made that they always have something to do... continually occupied in doing something, carrying, constructing, and conveying, provided always that whatever they do be done prudently. Elders ought to assist by showing them the forms of all things, even of playthings (for they cannot yet be occupied in real works) and by playing with them.... Infants try to imitate what they see others do. Let them therefore have all things except those that might cause injury to themselves or anything, such an knives, hatchets, glass. (Morgan, 1999, p. 98)

The recognition that boy's aptitudes are significantly focused on active learning is clearly far from new, and yet ECE and other learning stages have been generally focused on academic, or controlled learning, living under the misconception that what boys needed was more structured learning to help curb their overactive ways. Yet, in truth the opposite is true and boys with will and imagination are at the end of the day left feeling rejected and stifled by the system because they cannot seem to act the way adults expect them to. "The tendency for boys to lag behind girls in education is a problem that can be traced right back to the early years." (Connolly, 2004, p. 1) as is evidences by a brief dialogue between a researcher and an two boys aged five, as the researcher asks them simple questions about how they like school and the boys successively and affirmatively answer that they do not like school and do not think it is important.

Indeed, all of the trends and patterns in relation to gender differences at GCSE- (UK testing system) that have been the focus for so much public concern-are all clearly evident in Key Stage 1 test results. And yet, while the issue of 'boys' underachievement' has now become a global phenomenon, taxing the minds of governments across the Western world (Ofsted, 1993; Johnson, 1996; Epstein et al., 1998a; Arnot et al., 1999; Martino and Berrill, 2003), hardly any attention at all has been paid to the early years. (Connolly, 2004, p. 1-2)

Negative attitudes such as those of the two boys in the dialogue, cannot be realized in a situation where their learning needs are being met, and can only be achieved in a situation where curriculum and environment, stifle and strain their natural abilities and actions. The differences are not nurture, in many cases they are nature and this needs to be accepted as fact and responded to appropriately by educators and parents alike. The dangerous neutralization of child rearing needs to find its way to the trash heap. The brains of men and women develop differently and are different from the very beginning. Boys brains are more compartmentalized, in the traditional sense of brain biology, with the left and right hemispheres and the different lobe interactions we all learn about in biology, while women's brains are more fluid, hence leaving women with the ability to multitask, while men must focus in a more linear fashion to successfully complete a task. (Sax, 2005, p. 12) Sax also points out that the ability to hear is significantly more keen in the girls mind than the boys, so the rejection of school that leads the boy child to sit in the back of the classroom has a domino effect, as they then are almost assured not to be able to hear the soft spoken voice of the female teacher in the front of the room. (p. 88) Boys and girls also respond differently to stress, threat and confrontation, as girls are more likely to shy away from confrontation while boys seem to at times be motivated by it. (p. 88-89) Lastly, one of the most important issues of gender differences that effect education is in relation to social interactive differences, boys feel less of a need to connect with others in a social way while girls are driven by friendships and social engagement. In school this fact effects relationships with teachers and others to such a degree that it challenges their ability to learn in the current system, yet this is not something that should be altered the system needs to be altered to meet this different need. (p. 84) (Lundy & Firebaugh, 2005, p. 233) one suggestion, easily implemented that will alter the dynamic of the success of boys in a situation where peer relations dependant on school rejection is the norm is to only privately praise or admonish students for successes or failures as open testament to doing well or doing poorly seems to drive peer acceptance and change the manner in which boys learn. ((Rundell, 2001, online)

Boys leave school most days feeling as if they are not welcome there and they act academically and socially in response to this feeling. Gurain and Stevens point out that boys are a year to a year and a half behind girls in academics. (p.22) the natural tendencies of boys to be active, and fidgety has become an almost total liability and changing the system is the only way to alter the situation for boys. (p.53).".. It is as hard- wired into the brain as a person's genetic personality. In the same way that you cannot change an introvert into an extrovert, you cannot change the brain of a boy into the brain of a girl...." (p.60)