"I certainly still lie awake some nights worrying that I am in denial, that Simon has some gross deficiency not yet identified, and I am did him great a disservice. I worry constantly that I should limit his reading and solitary time and push him into sports and classes and social activities. But just when I am about to write that check for ice hockey classes I touch base with my instinctive sense of my son, this imaginative, overly verbose happy creature, and decide not to risk ironing out his uniqueness.  Until we can figure out more creative ways to educate and encourage introspective boys who are neither high achievers nor troublemakers—boys “in the middle,” like Simon–I will keep holding my ground, my breath and my tongue, and shoo away the well-intentioned label makers who cross our path."

"GRCC English professor Mursalata Muhummad interviews journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates. Presentend by the Bob and Aliecia Woodrick Diversity Learning Center at Grand Rapids Community College."

"…many of the issues associated w/ 'under-achievement' are related to tensions btwn the culture of the school & images of masculinity held in the local community & wider society…

…commitment to process as well as outcome…Closely allied to this was an emphasis on relationships…The importance of time to establish trust and productive working relationships was crucial to the success of the project. Finally was the emphasis on the pupils themselves, which involved not just listening to them but engaging with them, being interested in them and helping to ensure that their perspectives were valued and taken into consideration in the schools' own evaluations of project initiatives."

"The colour-coding of toys – pink for girls and blue for boys – reinforces pernicious gender stereotypes, says Kat Arney"

"Word Clouds of the Day: Crystal Smith @ The Achilles Effect (a site that examines how young boys’ understanding of masculinity affects their perception of femininity) culled a list of words from 59 toy spots directed at either boys or girls and plugged them into Wordle to produce a word cloud illustrating which words are used most often in ads targeting boys (top) versus words used most often in ads targeting girls.

“This is not an exhaustive record,” Smith says, “it’s really just a starting point, but the results certainly are interesting.”

A complete breakdown of the facts and figures can be found here. A follow-up post with responses to common questions and criticisms can be found here."

"Whatever the reason for gender imbalance, college administrators across country have been going to great lengths to lasso boys—adding sports programs, building bigger gyms, expanding departments in engineering, math, & hard sciences, which are historically attractive to men. & presidents make sure their admissions directors are doing their best to ‘rectify’ the problem of gender imbalance by lowering the academic threshold for the (mostly white) boys who apply. Anyone who doubts the futility of human progress should ponder this. After several generations of vicious racism, followed by protest marches, civil rights lawsuits, accusations of bigotry, appeals to color-blindness, feminism, & eloquent invocations of the meritocratic ideal, the latest admissions trend in American higher education is affirmative action for white men. Just like the old days." —One more irresistible quote from Crazy U. As Mr. Burns says in The Simpsons Movie, “For once, the rich white man is in control.”

"I definitely want to continue this conversation and, while I often write with a view or a position, I am really writing this with less of an opinion and with more of a question today.<br />
<br />
I do come to the conversation with my own biases.  I don’t know how to handwrite.   I was slow to learn how to print and given how messy it was — and still is — I never really took to handwriting.  I don’t think I’ve missed out on not knowing how to handwrite. I can read handwritten work, sign my name but, beyond that, it has been a life of printing and, more recently, keyboarding.<br />
<br />
I recently discussed this with several teachers in our district who suggested that handwriting is a huge hang-up — particularly for boys — and creates a level of stress that interferes with their learning.<br />
<br />
The instruction of cursive writing is not simply teachers clinging to past practices, it is part of the curriculum."

"for a growing number of boys across the country, school is creating what some experts consider to be real psychological trauma. “We’re seeing a massive effect not only on boys who are falling behind in school but also on those who seem to be doing fine,” said William Pollack, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “They’re hiding behind a mask, feeling an angst and pain that go very deep and that lead not only to a disengagement from learning, but also from the adults who provide it and the parents who care for them. There’s a silent sense of shame that some will eventually outgrow, but that others who are not as lucky will carry with them for the rest of their lives.”"

"When LotF is taught this way [blaming "nature of boys" for what happens], it encourages adults in school to continue to behave as they do, & blames children, & their inherently evil nature, for all that is wrong in society...lies at heart of how bullying is usually combatted...

"Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences"

"# Boys and girls are different, but most psychological sex differences are not especially large. For example, gaps in intellectual performance, empathy and even most types of aggression are generally much narrower than the disparity in adult height, in which the average man is taller than 99 percent of women.

"common wisdom that teenage boys either can't express or don't possess strong feelings about friends...[but] boys in early teens can be downright sentimental when discussing their friendships...boys frequently said: "They [best friends] won't laugh at me when I talk about serious things." What has emerged from research is portrait of emotionally intelligent boys...might not sound revolutionary, but what boys told her & fellow researchers...runs counter to often one-dimensional portrayal of boys in popular culture. "They were resisting norms of masculinity,"...Note the past tense. At some point in high school, expressiveness vanishes, replaced with more defensive, closed-off posture, perhaps as boys give in to messages about what it means to be a man. Still, her research undermines the stereotype that boys are somehow incapable of discussing their feelings. "And yet this notion of this emotionally illiterate, sex-obsessed, sports-playing boy just keeps getting spit out again & again."

"Guys Lit Wire exists solely to bring literary news and reviews to the attention of teenage boys and the people who care about them. We are more than happy to welcome female readers - but our main goal is to bring the attention of good books to guys who m

"It seems that playing video games for boys is a marker of social competence...Kids that don't play video games at all are actually at greater risk of getting in trouble."

"theories proliferate on why boys don't read – brains work differently, women teachers assign books that appeal to girls, boys like silly stories – I think answer is less complicated. Before..we must guarantee long stretches of time to revel in solitu

"Reading, especially in school, is typically viewed as passive, private cognitive process, which are not traits boys are known for....maybe it’s time we put literature on back burner, begin to focus more on teaching strategies for content area reading."

"The stereotype of the 16-year-old boy is that he has sex on the brain. But a fascinating new report suggests that boys are motivated more by love and a desire to form real relationships with the girls they date."

"play is as fundamental as any other aspect of life, including sleep and dreams.’...One extra hour a day of play, which generally took the form of play-fighting during a critical early stage, sufficed to reduce hyperactivity.’"

"The gender gap in schools is all about the different ways children see and hear – and it’s no wonder that boys are unmotivated and uninterested, the psychologist and doctor Leonard Sax tells our correspondent"

Michael Chabon on Solitude and the Fortresses of Youth: "It is in the nature of a teenager to want to destroy. The destructive impulse is universal among children of all ages, rises to a peak of vividness, ingenuity and fascination in adolescence, and the

"The Department for Children, Schools and Families has advised staffers at preschools and play groups to “resist their ‘natural instinct’ to stop boys using pretend weapons such as guns or light sabres in games with other toddlers,” reports the Da

"Boys should be encouraged to play with toy guns at nursery school because it can help improve their academic performance, according to government advice issued yesterday."

"When my daughter was in school, they read very few books in class but read them intensively. It seemed to me they beat each poor book to death. Of course, Allison read voraciously on her own, as I did (and still do)."

'I think we have a complete mismatch between the education establishment and the kind of people we will need to get through peak oil, overpopulation, all those kind of things."

"Bleaching out gender differences hampers the education of both girls and boys."

"Boys are different from girls, writes Conn Iggulden, co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys, in the Washington Post. A former teacher, Iggulden thinks boys fail in school when they’re taught like girls."

"Boys with the longest ring fingers relative to their index fingers tend to excel in math, according to a new study. In girls, shorter ring fingers predict better verbal skills."

"The bestselling book for every boy from eight to eighty, covering essential boyhood skills such as building tree houses, learning how to fish, finding true north, and even answering the age old question of what the big deal with girls is."

"The fact that adventure stories for boys are selling well is seen as a good thing, but such old-fashioned books are also teaching them worryingly outdated attitudes."

"ild development experts say that physical and behavioral changes that would have been typical of teenagers decades ago are now common among "tweens" - kids ages 8 to 12"

from the Art Center Media Graduate Media Design Program

"The real appeal of Little House for many boys probably isn't the narrative, but rather the precise and detailed descriptions of how to tap a maple tree for syrup or load a musket...boys read on a need-to-know basis: To generalize wildly, "They don't set

"See Dick think. He is not like Jane. Teachers see it — boys tend to fidget and flail in ways unlike a typical girl. Scientists see it, too — brain studies suggest boys process language and emotions less efficiently."