The Disappearing Male Student

Among the less discussed reasons for men graduating in fewer numbers than women is the unfavorable treatment received by boys in primary and secondary schools in the United States. Boys tend to need to learn actively, by playing and creating and trying things out. Boys learn through energetic engagement. Much to their misfortune, misbehavior is defined in the educational context as just that: energetic engagement. Now there are exceptions of course; some lucky boys possess the constitution required in most of our classrooms -- immobility and receptivity being the two prized modes of behavior -- and, ironically, it is the presence in the classroom of these few exceptional boys -- the inevitable teachers' favorites -- which provides the justification for demanding such an attitude from all boys. If those two exceptionally mature and intellectually precocious boys up there in the front row are prospering in my classroom, then there is something wrong with the other 12 boys (as well as the 3 hopeless Chatty-Kathys) The preponderance of primary and secondary teachers are of course female, and this explains part of the issue. These women teach in a manner to which they responded positively when they were the age of their students. In addition, the development of one's gender identity advances to some degree as a process of reaction, of creating in oneself a contrasting set of behaviors and attitudes to that of the opposite gender. In the case of boys, they are identifying with the father figure and male figures in general while individuating from the mother and setting up distinctions between themselves and the female of the species, among whom their teachers. Indeed, male teachers tend to distinguish themselves from their female counterparts in that it is the male teachers who find a way to liberate male energy by offering the option of producing a video, growing a garden, allowing the class to redesign the classroom, to work in groups, to visit local institutions, to display mastery of material through skits, to chatter and laugh; in other words, to learn through activity rather than through sitting obediently in one place for hours.