In case you haven't seen this...
Jan. 27th, 2006 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desertvixenhttp://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/01/26/schoolboys_bias_suit/
Father files suit for son because the son is being discriminated against in shcool (in their opinion). The article partly posted below:
At Milton High School, girls outnumber boys by almost 2 to 1 on the honor roll. In Advanced Placement classes, almost 60 percent of the students are female. It's not that girls are smarter than boys, said Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old senior at the high school. Girls are outperforming boys because the school system favors them, said Anglin, who has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys. Among Anglin's allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys' more rebellious ways are punished.
So, girls follow the rules, girls don't get in trouble? Boys don't follow the rules, they get in trouble. This sounds pretty reasonable to me.
''The system is designed to the disadvantage of males," Anglin said. ''From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this."
Anglin, a soccer and baseball player who wants to go to the College of the Holy Cross, said he brought the complaint in hope that the Education Department would issue national guidelines on how to boost boys' academic achievement.
Research has found that boys nationwide are increasingly falling behind girls, especially in reading and writing, and that they are more likely to be suspended, according to a 2005 report by the Educational Equity Center of the Academy for Educational Development, an international nonprofit group with headquarters in Washington, D.C.
While school officials said their goal is to help all students improve, the Milton High principal, John Drottar, , suggested in an interview that there may be ways to reach out to underachieving boys. Drottar said the high school plans to reinstitute a mentoring program that will pair low-achieving students with teachers.
Anglin -- whose complaint was written by his father, who is a lawyer in Boston -- is looking for broader changes. He says that teachers must change their attitudes toward boys and look past boys' poor work habits or rule-breaking to find ways to encourage them.
Without such changes, many boys now give up, he said.
The school should also recruit more male teachers to better motivate boys, Anglin said. At the high school, 64 percent of the teachers are women, and 36 percent are men, according to the school system.
Well, I'd like to point out that perhaps more men would be teaching if it was possible to make more money doing it.
Larry O'Connor, another Milton High senior who supports Anglin, said teachers should do more to encourage freshmen boys to do well in school, because many lack motivation.
I agree boys need to be more motivated. But I would point out that this motivation needs to start at home. Besides, how long are we going to keep 'motivating' them?
He also urges that students be allowed to take classes on a pass/fail basis to encourage more boys to enroll in advanced classes without risking their grade point average. He also wants the school to abolish its community service requirement, saying it's another burden that will just set off resistance from boys, who may skip it and fail to graduate as a result.
Poor things! Maybe if there was more concern about what affect the class would have on their grades, they would be 'motivated'. I speak as someone who took AP classes in HS and worked my ass off in them. There were 2 people in my AP Government class at the end (we had 3, but one girl graduated a semester early). The other 2 members of the class - both male - dropped it because they didn't want to work hard and THINK. Funny, it was a man teaching this class. I applaud the superintendant, who says they will not drop the community service requirement.
The US Department of Education is evaluating whether Anglin's complaint warrants investigation, said a spokesman, Jim Bradshaw.
Anglin, who has a 2.88 grade point average, acknowledged that discrimination complaints are not often filed by white, middle-class males like himself. But he said: ''I'm not here to try to lower the rights of women or interfere with the rights of minorities. We just want to fix this one problem that we think is a big deal." Gerry Anglin, Doug Anglin's father, said the school system should compensate boys for the discrimination by boosting their grades retroactively. ''If you are a victim of discrimination in the workplace, what do they do? They give you more money or they give you a promotion," Gerry Anglin said. ''Most of these kids want to go to college, so these records are important to them."
So, what are they going to do when they go to college, and they still haven't learned to pay attention, or sit still? When they still haven't learned to *learn*? If they think HS teachers have no patience, the college teachers really aren't going to deal with this BS.
I saw this in my own household, though. My younger brother, who came up with all the excuses as to why he didn't want to take an AP course, but then bitched incessantly about being bored in his classes.
More discussion in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ginmar's journal, if you're so inclined: http://ginmar.livejournal.com/628608.html
DV
Father files suit for son because the son is being discriminated against in shcool (in their opinion). The article partly posted below:
At Milton High School, girls outnumber boys by almost 2 to 1 on the honor roll. In Advanced Placement classes, almost 60 percent of the students are female. It's not that girls are smarter than boys, said Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old senior at the high school. Girls are outperforming boys because the school system favors them, said Anglin, who has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys. Among Anglin's allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys' more rebellious ways are punished.
So, girls follow the rules, girls don't get in trouble? Boys don't follow the rules, they get in trouble. This sounds pretty reasonable to me.
''The system is designed to the disadvantage of males," Anglin said. ''From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this."
Anglin, a soccer and baseball player who wants to go to the College of the Holy Cross, said he brought the complaint in hope that the Education Department would issue national guidelines on how to boost boys' academic achievement.
Research has found that boys nationwide are increasingly falling behind girls, especially in reading and writing, and that they are more likely to be suspended, according to a 2005 report by the Educational Equity Center of the Academy for Educational Development, an international nonprofit group with headquarters in Washington, D.C.
While school officials said their goal is to help all students improve, the Milton High principal, John Drottar, , suggested in an interview that there may be ways to reach out to underachieving boys. Drottar said the high school plans to reinstitute a mentoring program that will pair low-achieving students with teachers.
Anglin -- whose complaint was written by his father, who is a lawyer in Boston -- is looking for broader changes. He says that teachers must change their attitudes toward boys and look past boys' poor work habits or rule-breaking to find ways to encourage them.
Without such changes, many boys now give up, he said.
The school should also recruit more male teachers to better motivate boys, Anglin said. At the high school, 64 percent of the teachers are women, and 36 percent are men, according to the school system.
Well, I'd like to point out that perhaps more men would be teaching if it was possible to make more money doing it.
Larry O'Connor, another Milton High senior who supports Anglin, said teachers should do more to encourage freshmen boys to do well in school, because many lack motivation.
I agree boys need to be more motivated. But I would point out that this motivation needs to start at home. Besides, how long are we going to keep 'motivating' them?
He also urges that students be allowed to take classes on a pass/fail basis to encourage more boys to enroll in advanced classes without risking their grade point average. He also wants the school to abolish its community service requirement, saying it's another burden that will just set off resistance from boys, who may skip it and fail to graduate as a result.
Poor things! Maybe if there was more concern about what affect the class would have on their grades, they would be 'motivated'. I speak as someone who took AP classes in HS and worked my ass off in them. There were 2 people in my AP Government class at the end (we had 3, but one girl graduated a semester early). The other 2 members of the class - both male - dropped it because they didn't want to work hard and THINK. Funny, it was a man teaching this class. I applaud the superintendant, who says they will not drop the community service requirement.
The US Department of Education is evaluating whether Anglin's complaint warrants investigation, said a spokesman, Jim Bradshaw.
Anglin, who has a 2.88 grade point average, acknowledged that discrimination complaints are not often filed by white, middle-class males like himself. But he said: ''I'm not here to try to lower the rights of women or interfere with the rights of minorities. We just want to fix this one problem that we think is a big deal." Gerry Anglin, Doug Anglin's father, said the school system should compensate boys for the discrimination by boosting their grades retroactively. ''If you are a victim of discrimination in the workplace, what do they do? They give you more money or they give you a promotion," Gerry Anglin said. ''Most of these kids want to go to college, so these records are important to them."
So, what are they going to do when they go to college, and they still haven't learned to pay attention, or sit still? When they still haven't learned to *learn*? If they think HS teachers have no patience, the college teachers really aren't going to deal with this BS.
I saw this in my own household, though. My younger brother, who came up with all the excuses as to why he didn't want to take an AP course, but then bitched incessantly about being bored in his classes.
More discussion in
ginmar's journal, if you're so inclined: http://ginmar.livejournal.com/628608.htmlDV
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 02:39 pm (UTC)No, this isn't about equality for everyone. This is about one man being upset that his son doesn't have special privileges and attempting to secure it for him. If he can't succeed on his own, like everyone else, then he should get a special dispensation in order to give success to him anyway. Oh, the horror this guy's son will be once in the workplace. Can you imagine having to work with him? Not like you don't meet many like him everyday, but...
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 02:48 pm (UTC)...the problem is NOT simply one of "lower grades", and won't be fixed by arbitrarily raising them. Removing consequences for rules violations is also ... less than entirely helpful. I also tend to hear arguments for non-solutions that basically boil down to nicer-sounding versions of "it's the boys' problem, and if they'd Grab A Clue they'd buckle down and fly right"--which I also find nonhelpful. (Standard Exercise: how would such an argument be received were the subject "urban black girls"?)
The PROBLEM is that the boys aren't *learning*. They aren't learing self-discipline, they aren't learning useful life skills, nor are they learning the nominal academic subject matter of their classes. Some of the responsibility for teaching these things and getting boys to learn and act on them does lie in the home--but part of it also is within the purview of the school system.
I have no idea myself how to fix the problem within the schools, but *rewarding* boys for underachievement is most certainly NOT it.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 04:46 pm (UTC)I agree with you that there is a problem, that boys aren't learning. I'm not entirely sure why, and I'm sure there is a complex mass of reasons. Speaking on what I've seen in my own family, there was a lack of pushing my brothers. The older one would have done well in AP classes, esp. English if he had been pushed a little - but didn't want to. Big surprise, when he started college, he had issues with doing work that he thought was boring (work that he could have skated on if he had gone to AP classes).
Boys aren't encouraged to read for fun, or even to pay attention to reading that's required. Boys aren't encouraged to like school. Boys are not encouraged to be quiet nearly enough.
I definitely agree that we need more male teachers, at all levels of schools. There were more male teachers in my HS, but by that time, it's almost too late to reach the boys. I think a larger male influence in the schools would help, if only to demonstrate that education is important. However, without paying ALL teachers, male and female, better, I don't see a way to do this.
Maybe mentorship programs - but that would require men in the community to get involved.
DV
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 06:35 pm (UTC)Also, there are other problems with the semester system. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have kids take one year math in the fall semester and then not have math again for a year, was an idiot. Same for science, for languages, for instrumental music, just to name a few off the top of my head. To be honest, I can think of very few benefits to the semester system - flexibility in scheduling being about the only one! */rant*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-28 03:30 pm (UTC)learning styles
Date: 2006-01-28 04:15 pm (UTC)What if public schools are geared more to the predominant learning styles of girls?
Maybe we should just medicate the boys so they'll act more like girls, even if they don't learn better? After all, the classrooms will be more quiet and orderly that way.