Boys are okay
Boys in the middle years of schooling may be aggressive, bombarded with hormones and less than skilled at multi-tasking, but given the right environment they can do very well in many fields, reports Robert Smith, who points to a need to support boys without disadvantaging girls.
Boys’ Business is a program initiated by the Northern Territory Music School that runs for boys in the middle years for an hour each week. Each session engages boys with music and related activities, and encourages positive feedback between boys and adults, and boys and their peers.
It is the shared belief of the adults, teachers and parents working with boys in ‘Boys’ Business’, that it is the environments the boys inhabit that need changing, not the boys themselves. Encouraging boys to have reasoned and democratic expectations of those around them is far more important than ‘control’. However, even more critical to equity and access for boys in the middle years is an acceptance that we, the adults who work with them, must initiate and implement changes in our own ways of learning and teaching to engage boys positively.
There is a huge amount ‘right’ with middle years’ boys
If, globally, boys have changed very much in recent years in terms of intellectual, physical, literate, social or emotional potential then these attributes have improved rather than declined. These attributes are clearly evident as the competencies boys demonstrate in playing electronic games, roller-blading and skate-boarding, their general prowess on the sports field and in their quite remarkable capacities for learning and performing music, to name but a few.
None of this denies that there are problems in education and elsewhere with the engagement and performance of boys. However, we ought to consider how incredibly difficult it must be for many boys to find satisfactory ‘comfort zones’ in a dissonant social and cultural climate catering for fewer of their essential needs every year. In fact, I contend that boys themselves are actually okay! Given appropriate contexts within which to operate, boys can achieve across most fields of endeavour in quite remarkable and positive ways.
Consider, for example, that almost universally middle years’ boys have grown up in historical, cultural and societal settings that accommodated their needs to take physical risks. Show a boy a tree or a rock face and he will probably want to climb it. In almost everything he tries, the typical boy wants to take it just beyond that boundary we consider and assume is ‘safe’. What may be difficult for us to deal with is that the boy has an almost instinctive need to do this. It is part of his psyche, and a part of his own journey of personal discovery. It is also a part of that seemingly unsavoury attribute of all males: aggression. Contemporary society seems bent on curbing and even eliminating male aggression. And yet without it we wouldn’t be male.
The ‘Boys’ Business’ initiative acknowledges, accepts and even abets aggression as one of its primary premises regarding the middle years’ boys involved in the project. Rather than attempting to constrain an attribute that makes males masculine, it invites boys to engage with activities that allow aggression full play in safe and affirming settings.
That it embraces ‘aggression’ in this way ought not to indicate that ‘Boys’ Business’ is anti-female. In fact, ‘Boys’ Business’ is dependent on the role models provided by the many women who share the project. These women freely acknowledge that learning to understand and work with boys is perhaps the most critical and useful outcome of the project.
Role models for boys
Ian Lillico, a powerful advocate for boys in education, advocates and praises the roles of women in boys’ lives. Boys are raised and cared for by women but at the same time they are usually encouraged to learn ‘male’ things with male mentors. In Indigenous Australian communities, these mentors may be uncles or older brothers who might, for example, teach middle years’ boys to hunt or to fish. In other societies, boys may be apprenticed to men to learn a trade or occupation regarded as appropriately ‘male’.
In contemporary Western settings, men seem to accept less opportunity to play a significant part in the general rearing of children. Increasingly too, fewer boys have a father or an adult male contributing to their social and cultural learning. There may not even be an adult male in their home environment or, in too many instances, there may be a violent and inappropriate male role model in the home environment.
When boys set off for primary school it is equally likely that there will be few, if any, males there either. Recent research indicates that most children will now pass through all of their primary education without having had a male teacher.
We need to be clear that the issue of women teachers in middle years’ education is only one of numbers and proportion, not quality. However, it would be a remarkable thing if, given the usually high calibre of female teaching staff, this had no impact on the culture of primary schooling. The evidence strongly suggests it has. Consider the expectations of women teachers generally, based on their own competencies. Women have a greater capacity to multi-task and to verbalise and vocalise both effective and affective communication. These competencies also encourage order and organisation. As carers, women usually have expectations that their charges will be compliant. The challenge here is that middle years’ boys are passing through the most dramatic of all their developmental stages, blithely unaware that this or they might be a problem!
Hormones at work
During the middle years, boys are unconsciously taking on testosterone at eight times the speed they will for the rest of their lives. Testosterone inhibits left hemisphere brain activity and this significantly constrains literacy, reflection and reason. At the same time, this hormone powerfully stimulates right hemisphere brain activity, generating affective and physical competence and ‘unleashing’ energy. Add to this the fact that the neural pathway connecting the left and right brain is much less efficient in males than in females. Give a boy one task and he can carry it through. Give him three and his eyes will probably glaze over! His thought processes are suffering serious information overload. Little wonder that when he is then accused of ‘not listening’ he becomes ‘stubborn’ and ‘recalcitrant’ as he tries to deal with the inequity of our demands.
Conclusion
All of this ought to suggest that adults working with middle years’ boys must develop strategies for accommodating these changes in ways that affirm boys, but do not disadvantage girls. With some obvious exceptions, girls are coping adequately in environments that are likely to be largely of feminine ‘construction’ and thus comfortable for female students. At the end of the day, anything that works for boys is bound to accommodate girls too. Isn’t that the end we all want?
References
Lillico, I (2003). ‘Contemporary Strategies in Boys’ Education: The vital role of women teachers and recommendations for schools’, presentation at the ‘Boys to Fine Men’ Conference, Newcastle, 27-29 March.
Robert Smith is music-in-schools adviser, based at the Northern Territory Music School (NTMS). He is also national president of the Australian Society for Music Education Inc (ASME).
topEQ Winter 2003 © Curriculum Corporation