The new disadvantaged: white male students

[Ethel]

That's certainly a significant demographic change, yovargas. So is the large number of working mothers. But... do you have any reason to think that being fatherless does not also affect girls? Or that it's only the sons of single mothers who are doing badly in school? Do the sons of intact families do materially better in school? (They may - I'm just not aware of statistics that support this.)

[sauronsfinger]

It is a bit amusing that some here are reacting here as if we are trying to take away their favorite toys. Seems more of a personal reaction than an intellectual one.

[vison]

Moved to video game thread.

[yovargas]

But... do you have any reason to think that being fatherless does not also affect girls?

In my total laymen pov, I would guess that it affects girls but in a very different way.

[sauronsfinger]

And in whatever way fatherlessness impacts girls, it certainly cannot be positive.

[yovargas]

Certainly, but it might not interfere with education as much (again, total guess, though it makes sense to me).

[sauronsfinger]

yovargas
If are you saying that living in a father absent home has a greater impact upon boys than it does girls you could be correct. I imagine there is a stack of research out there on such a topic. If you are serious and want to pursue it, it might advance the discussion here if you did some research on it and presented it to the group.

[vison]

Every culture has different expectations of family life. If our particular family falls outside the norm, we feel as if we are lacking something. I guess we are.

Still, I knew many children who grew up in essentially fatherless homes since the fathers were remote and seemingly uncaring, who had no daily interaction with their kids. They lived in the same house, but were not really part of the family. They would have been hard-pressed to name their kids' teachers, or even what grades the kids were in.

The boys grew up to be like their dads and not ONE of the boys in my highschool classes is still married to his first wife. Only two of "us girls" are still married to our first husbands. These marriages fell apart for many reasons, but one heard in every case was that the women were just not going to put up with the kind of marriage their mums had. (Then they all turned around and married the same kind of man again, only most of the men had learned something and the second marriages have lasted.)

Kids need a lot of things, but what they mostly need is love and lots of it. They need parents who are not totally self-absorbed in their own romantic difficulties.

[Alatar]

I think balance and moderation are key. Playing video games won't hurt you if you also spend time reading and playing outdoors.

Before I go post in the other thread I'd just like to acknowledge this. Well said Ethel.

[Athrabeth]

No useful skills are learned, you are expected to find the programmer's preferred solution, that's all, as someone pointed out above.

That can be said about a lot of curricular endeavours as well.......you are expected to find the teacher's/textbook's/test-writer's preferred solution, and that’s all.

Is there a bias against boys in elementary schools? I'm afraid I have to reluctantly say yes to that question. It's subtle, and most likely unconscious on the part of administrators and teachers, but I definitely think it's there. It's there in the kind of books that are chosen for classroom and library shelves, it's there in the kind of "effective behaviour programmes" and strategies a school adopts (I REALLY dislike "EB" programmes!! ), it's there in topics chosen by teachers (or chosen "for" teachers through set curricula) for kids to discuss or research or just “learn about”, and it's there in the kinds of materials available for kids to use for self-expression, exploration, and, dare I say it.......FUN!!

I remember attending a lecture a few years ago by Robert Sylwester, one of the leading "gurus" in the "brain-based learning" movement, which is basically about trying to develop what we know about brain development, "emotional memory", and different learning styles (to name a just a few areas of interest) into practical classroom applications. At the time, there had been much hand-wringing and wailing over the new "Pokemon" phenomenon that seemed to be sweeping North America. Boys in the primary grades, it was being said by many in the legions of primary teachers attending the conference, were becoming so consumed by Pokemon cards and video games that it was acting as a barrier to their development as readers. Asked to comment on this negative and worrisome problem, I think Sylwester stunned the greater part of his audience by asking them to consider the vault of information young boys carried in their brains regarding Pokemon. Basically, he was saying, “Consider that you have boys in your classrooms that can tell you, in detail, the history and attributes of each of 150 different characters. Not only that, consider that they also know how each character can be expected to interact with the 149 others based on general background information and specific statistics. Then consider that those boys in your class gained this knowledge primarily through reading cards, magazines, handbooks, and video text. What might YOU do as teachers in order to use this to your students’ advantage in the classroom?”

Well, let me tell you, I felt quite vindicated by Sylwester’s position on the matter. At the time, I had Pokemon hand-books, cards and simple “chapter books” in my Primary classroom’s reading bins. I was using those bizarre Pokemon names to model phonemic and phonetic spelling patterns. I was supervising a weekly “Card Club” at lunch where kids (mostly boys) from across five grades could gather to trade, play or just discuss their collections. A few months before, Pokemon cards and other paraphernalia had been banned from the school, and looking at the “up-side” of the whole phenomenon, I was glad that I’d fought the prevailing attitude and instead had done what Sylwester was suggesting – using it to my, and my students’, advantage.

I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with other teachers about how they won’t “allow” books based on popular games in their classrooms. “Too commercial”, “too weird”, “too war-like”. Me? Well, generally speaking, if they’ll read it, I’ll buy it. Do I “get” the mythic world of Lego’s “Bionicle” series? Not really. But I have four or five boys in my Grade Five class who simply love it and can’t wait for the next installment. Is it great children’s literature? Of course not! But neither are the “Pony Pal” and “Camp Confidential” books that many girls happily consume (and which the majority of female teachers happily provide, it seems). Classroom libraries, in my opinion, should have just as wide a range of reading materials as one would find in a public library. In my room, you’ll find Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield, Tintin and Asterix, Spongebob Squarepants and Narnia, Harry Potter and Eragon……..and of course, Tolkien . You’ll find shelves of non-fiction ranging from “extreme skateboarding” to “medieval warfare”. I have well over five hundred books that range from the "sublime to the ridiculous" available to my kids, and because they have that kind of choice, because they can read what interests them and what “speaks” to them at a level that suits their abilities (even it does amount to just a passing phase), pretty much everyone in my class of twenty-eight READS for a minimum of thirty wonderfully quiet minutes a day.

As a district "mentor", (I've achieved "Master Teacher" status due to my advanced age and experience ) I go into many elementary classrooms that have very distinctive slants to their reading materials, and in my opinion, these often show some kind of bias towards “kinder, gentler, new age” kind of text. Not a blood-drenched sword or trebuchet or fearsome monster in sight. After all, we wouldn’t want to encourage that violent streak in boys, now would we? It is done with the best intentions, but IMO, it denies many boys the opportunity to read what they are drawn to read, leaving them disinterested in and disconnected from the books that surround them every day.

There is no doubt in my mind that kids’ brains are now “hard wired” differently from our own (at least those of us who did our growing up before the ‘eighties). All the research points to the rise of computer and video use as shaping increasing numbers of kids (mostly boys presently) into distinctively “extreme” visual learners. Linguistically, their skill levels are dropping: lower vocabulary rates, difficulty with sequencing and expression in oral communication, difficulty with recalling oral instructions. Jane Healy’s book on the subject, “Endangered Minds”, is a fascinating read, but I have often heard teachers talking about how “scarey” this brave new world is, how “terrible” and “disheartening” and “frustrating” it is for them. They are throwing up their hands in dismay at the increasing ineffectiveness of teaching strategies that were “cutting edge” no more than ten or fifteen years ago, but don’t seem to know what to replace them with. IMO, there MUST be more opportunity built into the school day for directed, meaningful oral communication, extra attention must be given to the establishment of precise and effective vocabulary, challenging literature must be explored through teacher-read novels, not just for “the story”, but for the higher-level comprehension, language, and reasoning skills they can help develop (you wouldn’t believe the depth of thought that many ten-year old boys can put into their writing on the themes of a novel like “Holes”, but it takes weeks of discussion to facilitate such expression).

I think more than one person in this thread has mentioned that there really is not much difference between classroom expectations of twenty or thirty years ago and those of today. I agree. And I am quite appalled by that. The kids of twenty and thirty years ago are not the same as kids today for a myriad of reasons. There is no “right or wrong” about the matter, no “better or worse”. It is what it is. The world is changing, as it always does, as it must. As teachers, we have to adapt to the prevailing strengths and weaknesses of our students as well as the realities of our rapidly changing society. We can’t expect them to adapt to systems that are no longer relevant or practice skills that do little to prepare them for their future. That is not to say that we throw out standards, that we give up on developing literate, thoughtful, healthy and creative members of our communities. The role of schools and the efforts of teachers in these areas are arguably more important than ever before. But mourning for what is past, and railing against the ever-mounting tide of a technologically experiential world is accomplishing little more than producing frustrated, disheartened educators and disenfranchised, ill-prepared students.

Hmmmmmm…….well I see I haven’t even started ranting about those “effective behaviour” models I included in my first paragraph. But I’m feeling a little “rant overloaded” after this post, so I’m going to take a break <hears collective sigh of relief from thread participants>

But I’ll be back!!

[sauronsfinger]

Excellent post Athrabeth ... some really good stuff there. You sound like a wonderful teacher ..... much of what you wrote made me smile.

[vison]

Athrabeth, your students are very lucky to have a teacher like you.

Your post only reinforced what I think. You wrote at great length about the reading materials available in your classroom. I notice you weren't having your students play video games, though. Yes, boys can learn a great deal of "information" from video games. I've noticed it with my own little guys, particularly the 8 year-old: he can tell me far more than I ever want to know about the games he's allowed to play. But, since he's lucky to have great teachers and his grandma severely limits his time on vids, he can also tell me a great deal about the books he reads.

If kids want to read about Pokemon, let 'em. But they should spend at least as much time READING about Pokemon as they do playing the game.

You say "There is no doubt in my mind that kids’ brains are now “hard wired” differently from our own (at least those of us who did our growing up before the ‘eighties). All the research points to the rise of computer and video use as shaping increasing numbers of kids (mostly boys presently) into distinctively “extreme” visual learners. Linguistically, their skill levels are dropping: lower vocabulary rates, difficulty with sequencing and expression in oral communication, difficulty with recalling oral instructions."

Kids' brains aren't hardwired any differently than they ever were, but the world they are exposed to is sure different, and it affects the way they think and learn. They have different "software" than earlier generations, but the computer is the same. It isn't necessarily bad, either.

But really and truly, the meat of your post is in the part I bolded.

Children who are fortunate enough to have YOU for a teacher may be able to overcome the problems mentioned in the sentence I bolded. Because those ARE problems.

Ask employers what it's like to try and train these kids for even the simplest task! It's crazy making, I can tell you that.

And I DON'T mean it is the function of schools to "turn out" employees for industry. But these kids are not only poor employees, they are . . . . clueless, restless, aimless, noisy, demanding, unsocial! Extreme visual learners? Learners of WHAT, exactly? Video games forever? What occupations, what sources of contentment, are open to them? What kind of citizens are they going to be?

Education systems cannot, generally, be geared toward either the exceptional child or the exceptional student. The public systems must try to be all things to all, and that's not going to change.

I respect your opinions about teaching and what is good for children, since you obviously know your onions and care a great deal. But having survived I don't know how many "revolutions" in teaching methods through my own school years, my childrens' school years, and now my grandsons', I can see that one thing, at least, will never change: "the system" is slow to adapt. And so often the adaptation is just plain WRONG. Perfectly good methods are tossed aside because they are "old fashioned", ridiculous notions are adopted because someone with a cause has overpowered common sense in administrators and educators.

[Athrabeth]

Actually vison, brain research is pointing to some strong evidence that today's kids have brains that are structurally different from ours when we first entered school (ancient biddies that we are). This article (a capsule of what is included in Healy's book of the same name) is close to fifteen years old now. When I last attended a lecture by Healy about three or four years ago, she was presenting new evidence that makes this passage from the article somewhat obsolete: "As yet no one has attempted to demonstrate less dramatic brain changes from a heavy diet of video and rushed, adult-directed activities or from immersion in thoughtful conversation and spontaneous creative play, but it is eminently possible that they exist."

The works of researchers like Healy and Sylwester should be included in every teacher-education programme, IMO, along with the still wondrously applicable writings of John Dewey. After thirty-two years of teaching, I know an educational bandwagon when I see one, and believe me, I just step out of the way and let it pass. The ideas stemming from this research are not a "fad de jour". They are, I believe, essential to helping our kids develop the kinds of "habits of mind" that will allow them to remain independent critical and creative thinkers who can successfully communicate their own thoughts and intepret those of others, in a dizzying and often dangerous world full of technological and social change.

ENDANGERED MINDS
Jane M. Healy, Ph.D.

Meaningful learning -- the kind that will equip our children and our society for the uncertain challenges of the future -- occurs at the intersection of developmental readiness, curiosity, and significant subject matter. Yet many of today's youngsters, at all socioeconomic levels, are blocked from this goal by detours erected in our culture, schools, and homes. Fast-paced lifestyles, coupled with heavy media diets of visual immediacy, beget brains misfitted to traditional modes of academic learning. In a recent survey, teachers in both the United States and Europe reported overwhelmingly that today's students have shorter attention spans, are less able to reason analytically, to express ideas verbally, and to attend to complex problems. Meanwhile, school curricula modes of instruction do little to remedy the deficits by engaging either attention or curiosity. The result? A growing educational "crisis" of misfit between children and their schools.
Narrowing the gap between the school's demands and the "readiness" of the students' brains can be accomplished in two ways: changing the student and/or changing the classrooms. Both are possible. Let's start with the students.



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Shaping the Malleable Mind

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The brain's functioning -- and thus its "readiness" for any type of learning -- is shaped by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Genetic nature combines with prenatal nurture to endow the infant brain with a range of possibilities, but the environment after birth helps forge the neuronal connections that underlie later learning. Like a sculptor, the child's experience prunes away unneeded -- or unused -- synapses, while strengthening those patterns of connections that are repeatedly used. Thus habits of the mind may become, quite literally, structures of the brain. Although the susceptible cell groups comprise but a small proportion of total brain mass, they are critical to learning because they facilitate higher-level thinking, planning, and skills of mental organization so essential to self-directed and meaningful human learning.

While our understanding of this phenomenon of "neural plasticity," or malleability, of the growing brain is still rudimentary, several principles suggest themselves from the research. First, repeated experiences cause synaptic differences if they comprise a significant part of a child's mental life. For example, the brains of deaf children, or of those otherwise deprived of oral language experience, develop differently from those of hearing children because of differences in the dominant types of input to which they have responded. As yet no one has attempted to demonstrate less dramatic brain changes from a heavy diet of video and rushed, adult-directed activities or from immersion in thoughtful conversation and spontaneous creative play, but it is eminently possible that they exist. (Certainly, anecdotal information from teachers suggests that there has been a shift in information-processing abilities of children in recent years.)

Secondly, animal research and common sense converge on the notion that a brain which is actively involved and curious is likely to develop stronger connections than one which is merely a passive recipient of learning. Third, there appear to be critical, or at least "sensitive" periods in the course of development when certain neuron groups become particularly amenable to stimulation. If sufficient mental exercise is lacking, the related ability may be permanently degraded. This phenomenon has been demonstrated for basic aspects of human language development; very little is known, however, about its applicability to most human learning, particularly the higher-level skills (e.g., understanding of more complex syntax, abstract and analytic reasoning, self-generated attention) which may have sensitive periods well into adolescence. In today's world, these skills appear to be particularly endangered.

So, how do we change the children? First, we stop blaming them -- and their teachers. Parents, policy-makers, and the arbiters of popular culture are also part of the the problem. If we wish to retain the benefits of literate thought, we must educate parents, encourage more constructive uses of media, and set our priorities in every classroom to show children from the earliest years how to get ideas into words and to listen -- not only to peers and to adults, but also to the voice of an author. I would suggest that every home and every school institute a "curriculum" for listening and following sequential directions, as well as emphasizing the use of language to talk through problems, to plan behavior, and to reason analytically about such concepts as cause and effect. Deficits in these fundamental "habits of mind" cause not only academic but also social problems. Reading instruction should take a back seat until language foundations and skills of auditory analysis and comprehension are in place, lest reading become a meaningless exercise.

Someone must also take time to listen to the children, soften the frenetic scheduling of their lives, read to them, give them some quiet time to play, to ponder, to reflect, and to use the inner voice that mediates attention and problem-solving. Without adult models, children cannot shape their own brains around these intellectual habits which, in the long run, will be far more valuable to all concerned than a frantic march through content. The executive, or prefrontal, centers of the brain, which enable planning, follow-through, and controlled attention along with forms of abstract thought, develop throughout childhood and adolescence. We have a responsibility to children -- all children -- to demonstrate the habits of mental discipline and attention necessary to reflect on, utilize, and apply the information they learn. If the culture refuses to cooperate by providing models outside of school, we must add it to our academic curriculum -- even if it means sacrificing some of the data in the syllabus

Since each brain's developmental timetable is different, we must also disabuse ourselves of the notion that children can be made to learn on a set schedule. And, finally, we should recognize that whoever is minding the children is shaping our national intelligence -- and choose and reward these persons accordingly.



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Expanding Minds for a New Century

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Merely reinstating some of the mental habits of a bygone era will not suffice, however. We must also accept and capitalize on the fact that today's children come with new skills for a new century. The changes we observe in our children may, in fact, represent a cusp of change in human intelligence -- a progression into more immediate, visual, and three-dimensional forms of thought. Schools will need to accept the fact that lectures and "teacher talk," which commonly comprise approximately 90% of classroom discourse, must give way to more effective student involvement. Today's learners must become constructors of knowledge rather than passive recipients of information that even the least intelligent computer can handle more effectively. Many examples already exist in outstanding literature-based programs that turn students on to reading, writing, and oral communication, "hands-on" science and math curricula in which product takes a back seat to understanding of process; project-oriented, multidisciplinary social studies units; cooperative learning paradigms; multi-modal teaching; training of teachers in open-ended questioning.

Particularly exciting are curricular innovations in which the unlimited potential of visual thinking is used to complement language and linear analysis. Courses in critical viewing and effective use of visual media are examples; computer simulations requiring step-by-step progression to three-dimensional reasoning herald development of new skills which may eventually transcend the linear constraints of scientific method and even unite the talents of the two cerebral hemispheres in expanded modes of thought.

Traditional parameters of learning must be broadened, even redefined, not simply because of the changing priorities of future technologies, but also because of present realities. Our growing crisis in academic learning reflects societal neglect of the neural imperatives of childhood. We find an alienation of children's worlds -- and the mental habits engendered by them -- from the traditional culture of academia. Merely lamenting this fact, however, does not alter the reality or rebuild the brains. Nor does choking our young with more didacticism -- under the rubric of "competency" -- make them learn to think. In past decades we got away with insignificant subject matter and poor pedagogy because the culture dutifully sent us docile minds, well-endowed with the linguistic currency of academic learning. But our children today have been differently prepared, and, sophisticated consumers that they are, do not suffer drivel lightly -- nor should they.

Closing the gap between wayward synapses and intellectual imperatives will not be accomplished by low-level objectives, such as memorization and recapitulation of information. Human brains are not only capable of acquiring knowledge; they also hold the potential for wisdom. But wisdom has its own curriculum: conversation, thought, imagination, empathy, reflection. Youth who lack these "basics," who have forgotten how to ask the questions that may never have been asked, who cannot ponder what they have learned, are poorly equipped to become managers of our accelerating human enterprise.

The final lesson of neural plasticity is that a human brain, given good foundations, can continue to adapt and expand for a lifetime. Its vast synaptic potential at birth can bend itself around what is important of the "old" and still have room for new skills demanded by a new century. A well-nourished mind, well-grounded in the precursors of wisdom as well as of knowledge, will continue to grow, learn, develop -- as long as it responds to the prickling of curiosity. Perhaps this quality, above all, is the one we should strive to preserve in our children. With it, supported by language, thought, and imagination, minds of the future will shape themselves around new challenges -- whatever societal neglect of the neural imperatives of childhood may be. But if we continue to neglect either these foundations or the curiosity that sets them in motion, we will truly all be endangered.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Great stuff, Ath. Lot's to think about. Thank you.

[vison]

I have to go make dinner, will be back. Looks INTERESTING.

Thanx.

BTW, any power failures over there last night? Or the night before?

We had quite the wee storm here.

And will this accursed rain ever end? Even I am rusting and I was born here.

[Athrabeth]

Thanks for your responses, everyone!

I find this area of research incredibly exciting, so I can tend to go on and on about it . One of the things that I really believe in sharing with kids from quite a young age is how their brains function, how learning occurs, how there are different "pathways" of learning, and how we should have some idea of which path works best for us as individuals. I think kids find this kind of information very empowering.

vison, we have been spared from the evils of power failures (touches wood) but the winds and rain have been brutal, to say the least. Our property is looking more and more like Ithilien, with dozens of new little streams and falls winding their way down through the woods and meadow to the cove. If it wasn't so blasted cold and wet and blustery, I'd be able to appreciate them more. As it is, I'm grateful for our cozy fire and our new super-strong Telus wiring that was finally repaired/replaced after the pre-Christmas storms (hey, what's three weeks without reliable phone and internet service??? )!

[Jnyusa]

Ath, that is very interesting. And you are a great teacher!

I don't know if it was Healy and Sylvester's work, but I did hear about this research on some popular program ... like, 60 minutes or something.

Yes, it appears that the stimuli we receive during developmental years actually alter the way our brain make pathways for storing and retrieving info. I suspect this is all bound up with the socialization process as well, expecially in very early childhood.

I laughed to hear you refer to 'advanced age and experience.' This is so true! It came to me about eight years ago that it was not my job to impart necessary information to my students but to figure out where their end point was, and then find the most secure path from their end point to the starting point of the material I wanted them to learn.

Why didn't I realize this sooner? Because before that I was busy realizing that the bell curve is a property of the teacher, not the students, and what to do about that. And before that I was a student myself. And a novice, just hoping that I wouldn't teach anything 'wrong.' If a lesson plan covered everything in the alotted time, and had no serious errors or confusion, I was a success!

I think it's wonderful that you've found a way to get through to your students using their own language. If only more teachers approached their jobs so creatively!

And you have 500 books in your classroom? Wow. My daughter's eyes will pop when she hears that. I bet they haven't got 500 books in her whole school.

Jn

[yovargas]

Alright, how somebody tell me where I can sign up to the Ath fan club

[Primula Baggins]

HoF is the Ath fan club, yov.

[Athrabeth]

<is blushing down to her toes>

And you have 500 books in your classroom? Wow. My daughter's eyes will pop when she hears that. I bet they haven't got 500 books in her whole school.

I try to spend my allotted tax dollars wisely.

You should see my Lego collection!!

I always have a posted "Wish List" of books for my students to add to, and I take it with me on my forays into the "big city". I can never leave a bookstore without an armful of new (and sometimes old) titles.......I just can't resist. Next weekend, I'm due to go into Victoria, and yep.....there's quite the list that I'm bringing with me. Mr. Ath (as usual) will ask me if I'll be reimbursed. I (as usual) will answer yes. Reality (as usual) will probably mean a 50/50 split..........maybe.

Actually, as I hear more about what so many other teachers have to spend on learning materials, I feel very, very lucky.

Not even 500 books in an entire school?????

Jny, please give your daughter a big of support from me.