Words by Chris Carriere
The first day of junior kindergarten is hard for every kid. For Kieran, though, it was a little bit different. What started as first-day jitters had, by the next year, developed into a definite pattern of non-participation, say parents Sarah and Alan.
By grade one, Kieran was struggling with reading; by grade two, he was struggling right across the board. His teachers (who canât diagnose developmental problems, but can recommend a child be assessed) suggested he might have a learning disability.
âThey told us he couldnât follow two-step instructionsâyet at home, he could rewire all of the electronics in the house,â Alan says. âWere we just biased, we wondered?â
Increasingly, it seemed that they werenât. They hired a tutor, who found that Kieran performed quite well. They had him formally assessed at a major private school in Oakville. The verdict? No learning disabilities of any kind. Vindicated, they showed the report to Kieranâs teachers.
âThey told us, âWe canât help you,ââ Alan says.
Sarah, Alan and Kieran donât actually go by those names, but Iâm willing to bet that their story sounds familiar. Across Mississauga, across Peel, across Ontario and Canada and beyond, boys are struggling to fit into an education system that just doesnât work for them. And the ramifications reach far beyond their classroom wallsâinto their homes, their personal lives, their burgeoning careers, or their lack thereof.
âI absolutely am worried,â Sarah says. âIf I look at my circle of friends, thereâs one boy who is thriving in the current school system. One out of sixteen.â
So whatâs the deal with boys?
Over the past two decades, weâve largely stopped talking about education equality for girls, and started talking about education equality for boys. And with good reason; the statistics donât lie. Sixty percent of university students are female. Boys routinely lag behind girls in standardized test scores, particularly reading and writing. Theyâre far more likely to drop out, feel alienated, be diagnosed with ADHD and have problems with bullying.
But the stats donât tell the whole truth, either. How can they, when at the same time as the Peel School Board is preparing a long-term overhaul of their curriculum, author Michael Reist (Raising Boys in a New Kind of World) can claim that âthere is no crisisâ?
Once you start talking to the experts, a pattern of buzzwords starts to emerge. Kinesthetic learner: somebody that absorbs information more effectively through motion and activity. Factory-model schools.
âIt goes back to the beginning of schooling in Ontario,â says Reist. âOur system is based on a factory model: the teachers are the workers and the kids are the product, and we try to meet these specifications.â
Both Hazel Mason, a Superintendent of Education with the Peel District School Board who has been with the board for 31 years, and Aaron Sawatsky, the head of St. Judeâs Academy, agree that a big part of the problem is that boys are just not being engaged on a physical level.
âWeâre still in that place where kids have to sit for long periods of time and pay attention,â says Mason. âBoys are just very active people. Iâm not saying some kids donât have ADHD, but for many boys the kind of teaching and learning weâve been doing for a number of years simply doesnât match their learning style.â
âA typical classroom is just set up to be a more feminine environment,â the plainspoken Sawatsky claims. âGirls are just a whole lot better at the sitting there and shutting up thing than boys.â
Like Mason, most educators are reluctant to claim that ADHD or other learning disorders are overdiagnosedâthe research clearly shows that, for many kids, medication is a lifesaver. But many will readily agree that, in a carefully structured scholastic environment offering a single mould that many boys donât fit, we have turned the hallmarks of boyhood into symptoms. Even the expectation that boys âtalk throughâ problems may be predicated on a preference for skills where girls naturally dominate, says Sawatsky.
âEarly on,â adds Reist, âboys get the message that school is not for them. As early as the primary division, boys get the impression that something is wrong with them, because they love to move⌠We need to stop the self-fulfilling prophecy of âboy you canât read, boy you have a problem, boy youâre a loser.ââ
Thereâs an inevitable question that arises from this line of inquiry: why is this an issue now, if it wasnât before? What has changed? The answer wonât surprise you, but the way that it ties into the physicality of boys might.
âI think the main reason is the influence of technology,â says Reist. âMore and more, I think itâs coming from cyberspace. Screen-time is a right-brain activity, a spatial activity. At school itâs typically [left-brained] logical, linear, verbal activity. Boys are getting a huge workout in the spatial brain, the right brain, at home, but the left brain is valued at school.â
In other words (and to greatly oversimplify the complexities of neuroscience), technology dependence may actually be chipping away at the same set of proficiencies where many boys are naturally weak. The basic principle of neuroplasticity (i.e., the relatively new notion that our brains change in response to stimuli) is: use it and it grows, donât and you lose it.
While the world outside Ontarioâs classrooms was becoming more wired, a different shift happened inside of them: standardized testing. Remember Michael Reistâs earlier claim that âthere is no crisisâ?
âThe problem is standardized testing,â Reist goes on to say. âYouâre testing males and females in the same year. Boys in the last 10 years have been flagged as problematic. But before EQAO [Education Quality and Accountability Office] tests, we didnât see it that way! It isnât that boys are deficient; theyâre just on a different developmental timeline⌠Dr. Leonard Sax mentions the difference in language development as being up to one and a half years.â
For parents like Sarah and Alan, who have boys that are falling behind, solutions, and not theoretical answers, are what matter.
What worked for Kieran was Aaron Sawatskyâs private school, St. Judeâs Academy. St. Judeâs is not an all-boys school, nor did start out with the objective of serving the interests of kinesthetic learners.
âThe big difference between public and private schools is that our parents are actually customers. So when parents come to me and say we need a solution, I have to do it.â
âKieran is a very physical kid⌠[but] teachers look at boys, say theyâre hyper, and they just disengage. They wonât teach them,â Sarah says.
Until St. Judeâs, Kieranâs coping strategy had been claiming not to know the answer. St. Judeâs broke down the mental blockade that Kieran had constructed through a system of individual attention and action-based learning. Smaller class sizes that preserve a 1-to-18 teacher-student ratio enable teachers to drill down and ensure the basics are being learned. As Alan puts it, they simply donât allow you to fail testsâif a student fails one, the information is re-taught and the test is taken again, even if it means falling behind classmates. And then, thereâs that all-important moving around.
âYou have to let them move,â says Sawatsky. âStatistics show that the average attention span is shortâeven an adult can only handle about 20 minutes of sitting there.â
Classes are tailored to suit the rhythm of the young, moving body; 20â30 minutes of subdued writing will be followed by recess or some other physical activity. The curriculum emphasizes interactivity; when itâs time for medieval history, out come the suits of armour.
But itâs not cheap. Tuition for Grades 1â8 is $9,100 per year. Sarah and Alan gave up on buying a cottage and reorganized their finances to get Kieran into the school. Clearly, itâs not a choice that every parent with a struggling child will be able to undertake.
How do parents cope when steep tuition is not an option? At the behest of a friend of the magazine, I sought out Chris Doyle from the Port Credit Academy of Martial Arts. Like Sawatsky, Doyle is not an evangelist for any particular style of teaching; his method has evolved over decades of trial and error. As it stands today, itâs a judicious mixture of physical activity, concentration work and competition. Like a video game played wearing gis and high kicks, Doyle employs positive reinforcement (almost never negative) and competition to compel students to focus on the instructions theyâre being given. And, like St. Judeâs, the Academy breaks down training into short bursts of activity, varying in length by age.
And whatâs the number-one reason that parents enroll their boys (and girls)?
âWe do a survey every couple of years, and the first answer is consistently concentration, focus and discipline,â says Doyle, who has a book due out later this year.
âI have a lot more confidence since I started training,â says Igor, 14. âI always had bad grades. Now Iâm more patient, Iâm more mature, I can stay focused longer. Karate teaches you to be yourself to the best of your ability. I didnât want to sit in the corner and be awkward all day. I meet people, rather than them meeting me.â
Is it a panacea? Of course not, nor is it just for boys. But it shows that extracurricular activities are another avenue to explore for parents of struggling boys.
When I brought my story to Peelâs school boards, the reaction surprised me. Both Hazel Mason, speaking on behalf of the Peel District School Board, and Joanna Boudreau, Principal Secondary Programs/Student Success Leader with the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, agreed that serious changes need to be made. According to them, the changes are already underway.
The public board has implemented a number of pilot programs for struggling boys. Hazel Mason helped to open Cheyne Middle School in Brampton, where gender-specific classes are already in place.
At Roberta Bondar Public School and Calderstone Public School, theyâve allowed expanded movement by using PVC piping to create optional âstanding desks,â offered yoga balls instead of chairs and permitted students to complete their work lying on the floor. These schools also have an increased emphasis on athletics, ensuring that gym is notâas it is so oftenâthe first thing to go when resources get stretched thin.
There have been reports and thereâs a professional development document in progress, but is there an overarching plan guiding these new developments?
âNo,â Mason admits. âWe may not have a formal plan, but [the changes are] spreading like wildfire.â
The board plans to offer wireless access at all schools by December 2013, with an eye towards a bring-your-own-device systemâcritical for school boards, which will ânever have enough money to provide one computer for every kid in the classroom.â
âWhere weâre headed is the teacher moving from the sage on the stage to the guys on the side,â Mason continues. âItâs not so much one story out of the textbook, but multiple stories through the Internet. The teacher poses the big ideas and big questions and holds the kids to rigor and quality.â
According to Joanna Boudreau, the Catholic board has a five-year plan which has just concluded its second year. While theyâre not quite ready to cross the bring-your-own-device threshold, their Literacy Networks projects have created professional resources for teachers of Grades 7â12, offering strategies to help boys that are âreluctant readers.â
Close to half of Dufferin-Peelâs Catholic high schools have implemented boys-only English classes for struggling readers in Grades 9 and 10, which often begin with brief bursts of physical activity, followed by interest-based reading (e.g., the sports section). They incorporate the use of technology and music, and offer a different selection of course materialâfor instance, nonfiction books instead of fiction, which research shows boys prefer.
Finally, both public and Catholic high schools offer a variety of learning options that blend college or real-world experience with academia. For physical, intelligent but academically disinterested boys, this option can be instrumental. The Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program has been in place a number of years. Joanna Boudreau claims that the number of students doing dual-credit high school/college courses has tripled.
âNot all kids are going to university and this is a fabulous option for college-bound kids. Some have never considered the option, but when they see what learning would look like in college, it totally transforms them.â
Also worth checking out is the newer Specialist High Skills Major program, which offers experiential learning in sectors as varied as Arts & Culture, Hospitality, and Transportation. Not every school offers it, but full details can be found online.
I would have liked to talk about other factors eating away at 21st-century boysâabout bullying, about porn, about depression and drug abuse. But each of these subjects is worth a multi-volume encyclopedia. I chose to talk about education because I believe that finding an educational and vocational path that offers a sense of inclusion and hope can be the silver bullet for boys struggling on a personal level. Every educator I spoke to, public and private, was enormously passionate about their work and about the success of every child, regardless of gender. And all stressed the vital importance of communication, of parents getting involved, asking questions and exploring every option.
For Sarah, Alan and Kieran, the future is uncertain; the tuition for private high school is out of their price range. Because St. Judeâs is an International Baccalaureate (IB) candidate school, theyâre considering the IBâs differential curriculum.
âNever stop advocating for your child,â Sarah says. âYou canât take what youâre told at face value. Itâs very easy for children to not be seen, but you canât let that happen.â
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