See Dick think. He is not like Jane.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...s/13328086.htm

Posted on Mon, Dec. 05, 2005


SECOND IN A FOUR-PART SERIES
Hard-wired to learn?

By RICK MONTGOMERY

The Kansas City Star

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.

Talk of sex differences can ignite arguments in these gender-neutral times.
But growing numbers of experts say society must face some politically
incorrect realities:

That males and females, on average, show differences in learning skills -
differences that may be hard-wired. And the evidence is compelling enough
that schools rooted in equal treatment should rewrite their manuals to keep
more boys engaged.

Take Dick's brain.

At age 12 it's three times more likely than Jane's to misfire enough to be
medicated for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. One out of 11
American boys that age downed medicine for the condition in 2003. That's
200,000 12-year-olds - many of whom truly need the calming, while others
reflect a culture of too much calming.

Surveys also show boys landing the bulk of school suspensions. They bring
home roughly 70 percent of the D's and F's, according to national data and
the local Kauffman Teen Survey.

Certainly, lots of boys shine. Lots of girls don't. But boys as a group have
long puzzled teachers and parents by crowding into two opposing camps -
overachievers or discipline cases that may end up as dropouts.

Researchers say more mysteries than answers exist. But a surge of findings,
aided by advances in brain imaging, is spurring changes many hope can
enhance boys' schooling:

? Teachers sold on "brain-based learning" are using more visual and physical
stimuli to help boys retain lessons.

? Citing that boys mature at least a year behind girls, some experts are
urging more parents to delay kindergarten for their sons.

? Advocates of single-sex public schools are touting neurological data to
justify separating classrooms by gender - to help both sexes.

? Some scientists even see a day when parents bring their kids' brain-scan
charts when meeting teachers.

For Amy Cameron, who teaches English at Grandview Alternative School, the
research has turned around a world view. "It used to be, 'Every child is
equal - male or female.' It was our ideology," she said. "But a lot of us
have done a 180.

"Now it's, 'They really do think differently, and it's biological.' Most
boys resent lectures. Girls respond well to them. It's pretty obvious."

It is to eighth-grader Chuckie Gunderson-Gabaree of Fairway, a proponent of
less yakking: "I'd change school to make all of the teachers explain
something once so we could all understand it, instead of going all around
the place."

Not everybody agrees that schools need drastic changes. And nobody advocates
treating all boys one way, girls another. But what science and common sense
dictate is that society should reject temptations to treat common boy
behavior as a disease, many experts say.

Unless schools retool, "it's a setup for failure," said Kathy Stevens,
co-author of The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Failing in School and
Life. "He can't sit still, he can't stay focused . he must have a disorder!

"No. He's a boy."

Maryland physician Leonard Sax is so convinced of nature's role in learning,
he founded a national group calling on public schools to segregate
classrooms by gender. "Both girls and boys have been disadvantaged by a
system that disregards their hard-wiring."

For example, science has shown - and teachers should know, he said - that
little girls generally hear better than little boys.

Even as toddlers, girls tend to score higher in language ability, face
recognition, fine motor skills and "social sensitivity." Their higher doses
of oxytocin, a hormone linked to bonding, probably plays a role, scientists
believe.

Girls even test out better at multitasking.

All of that augurs against boys in the modern classroom. The language gap -
which researchers find worldwide - can be especially troubling in early
grades, when Sax says many boys aren't yet ready to enjoy reading or even
hearing a book recited (unless it's loud and theatrical).

"The acceleration of early education has done more to cause boys to
disengage than anything else. They sit like a lump and think schooling is a
complete waste of time."

In higher grades they are hampered, Sax said, by trends in reading
curricula: "There's less reading about action and adventure, Captains
Courageous, and more on personal relationships . As a result, boys are
reading less in their spare time than they did just 15 years ago. Reading
for fun has almost become a marker for gender identity."

By the teen years, only 19 percent of boys report reading for pleasure at
least three hours a week, compared to 37 percent of girls, one poll found.

Any good findings for boys? Yes, plenty.

As a group - even when very young - they are better at putting shapes
together and visualizing an object's appearance in three dimensions. They
tend to outscore girls in computation.

They excel in map reading. Boys can focus for longer periods on one task
(Nintendo, anyone?). And, on average, they finish tests faster than girls.

Some of these studies go back decades. And it's not likely our brains at
birth have changed much over generations. What keeps changing is society's
expectations for schooling, marked today by greater emphasis on reading and
attention, said KU Med Center child development specialist Kathryn
Ellerbeck.

"Boys pay more for it now," she said. Years ago, a boy "could have ADHD and
run around the farm without anybody even noticing."

In recent years, brain-mapping technology has revealed more hints of boys'
learning hurdles.

Neural pathways between the two brain hemispheres generally allow girls to
"cross-talk" and activate both. Most boys, when hearing instructions, are
thought to activate only the left side. While researchers aren't certain of
the effects, David Powell of the International Center for Health Concerns
equates the pathway variations to a paved interstate highway (in girls) and
a meandering dirt lane (in boys) between two towns.

"On average" is key to understanding such differences, said Diane Halpern,
past president of the American Psychological Association and author of Sex
Differences in Intelligence.

Within each gender, the differences between one brain and the next can be
countless; the averages are close by comparison. It's that way in height,
too: the gap between the tallest and shortest boy is far greater than the
average boy and average girl. "There are no winners and losers," Halpern
said.

Some differences appear more striking than others, however.

Using functional MRI imaging on 19 persons ages 7 to 17, Harvard
neuroscientist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd recorded how brain activity linked to
strong emotions moves up, as children age, from a deep nugget of the brain
called the amygdala. In older teens, scans caught activity in the cerebral
cortex, the area that does the talking.

But this was found only in girls. In teen boys, the emotions remained stuck
in the amygdala.

"Asking a 17-year-old boy to talk about why he's glum may be about as
productive as asking a 6-year-old boy," said Sax, author of Why Gender
Matters.

Sizing up the mysteries, KU specialist Ellerbeck co-wrote a paper urging the
sciences to devote more resources for decoding sex selection in learning
disorders. Autism, for example, affects boys 4-to-1. Some studies describe
Asperger's syndrome, a high-functioning cousin to autism, as claiming 10 to
15 boys for every girl.

A boy's take on fidgeting, by Kansas City sixth-grader Demond Jones: "If the
teacher is reading something long, I feel like going home and doing
something fun like video games. I wiggle my pencil around until it flies out
of my fingers and hits somebody."

They fidget for a reason, said therapist Michael Gurian, author of a dozen
books about boy development: "Boys are more likely than girls to attach
their learning to physical movement."

This may explain why many adult males pace, tap pencils and bend paper clips
while thinking.

Gurian urges teachers to allow kids - boys in particular - to walk freely
around the room, squeeze stress balls, deliver papers to the principal's
office, build a report instead of writing one, and work often in same-sex
groups.

Several regional school districts have done Gurian seminars. In 1999
Principal Debbie Murphy went with teachers from Edison Elementary School in
St. Joseph and came upon "an epiphany:" Strict order and confinement to
desks brutalized boys.

So Edison teachers let pupils stand and move around as much as they wanted,
provided they disturbed nobody. "I saw a change in teacher attitudes, in
kids in general and boys in particular."

Trips to the principal's office plunged, suspensions fell from 300 to 22,
"and when boys did come to me angry, I walked around the block with them,"
said Murphy, now the human resources director for North Kansas City schools.
"What did we have to lose? What we had to gain was the universe."

Edison's test scores that year soared from the bottom of 18 St. Joseph
schools to the top five, according to Gurian's book, Boys and Girls Learn
Differently! Only two students failed among 400 at Edison, serving a
minority, high-risk student body. The school's success drew a 2001 salute in
U.S. News and World Report.

Its current principal, however, said the effort has "fizzled out," partly
because of high teacher turnover.

"Sometimes you get great test results for a year or two and think, 'That's
the silver bullet,' " said Doug Flowers. "But new people come in, new styles
develop.

"I'm not saying the teachers didn't buy into it. Sometimes they've just got
so many things on their plates."

Just discussing Dick versus Jane stirs unease.

"There is some reluctance on the part of some people" to make leaps about
male and female learning patterns, said Susan Adler, director of teacher
education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. While the research
intrigues, she said, science hasn't made a clear case for transforming
schools: "I just don't think we're there yet."

Sociologist Michael Kimmel of the State Universities of New York rejected
anyone pressing a case that sex differences affect learning. "Really, how
could you not call that anti-feminist?" he asked.

Neurobiologist Larry Cahill of the University of California-Irvine, who
recently wrote up the topic in Scientific American, took exception:
"Laughably wrong, but I believe that view prevails.

"A lot of scientists still don't want to talk about sex differences in the
brain. It scares people.(But) what scares me is seeing my own findings and
choosing not to believe them."

Cameron of Grandview acknowledged that basing teaching practices solely on
gender would leave countless varieties of minds in the lurch. Still,
accepting that differences exist can be "a starting point" toward mining the
hidden strengths and weaknesses of each student.

"Bingo!" said Karen Mershon, kindergarten teacher in the North Kansas City
district. "You look for what works with each child."

It's called "differentiated instruction," which her district encourages: one
mind at a time.

While it is a tall order for high school instructors facing 150 students a
day and standardized-test demands, grasping the varieties of brain-based
learning and behavior patterns would make their jobs more enjoyable, said
Mel Levine, author of A Mind at a Time.

"Teachers need to know a lot more about individual learning and how it
works," the University of North Carolina pediatrics professor told parents
and teachers at Pembroke Hill School, which invited him to lead a training
session.

"To treat everyone the same is basically to treat them unequal."

A Mission Hills mom took her 8-year-old son to a chiropractor rather than
medicate his attention problems. His teacher "had no patience for the boys,"
she said.

"It takes a lot out of boys to be sitting there seven hours (and) constantly
told to stay on task, quit fidgeting. It gets to their self-esteem. My son
came home sad a lot."

She said the chiropractic sessions helped ease pressure on the base of her
son's brain. "Now he says, 'Homework? Let's sit down.' " Also, his new
teacher is "committed to teaching every child individually."

Parents must do their part, said Joan Caulfield, a former Kansas City
teacher, principal and associate superintendent who consults schools in
brain-based learning.

"It's up to the parent to communicate to Mrs. Jones: 'Yes, Johnny has
trouble with geometry, but do you know he's great at poetry and art?' The
parent needs to be a child's advocate."

Parents can bone up on the brain and foster good learning at home.
Encouraging boys to articulate opinions, for example, can coat those bumpy
neural pathways and speed language development. And always, said Levine,
look for learning strengths and keep massaging them.

"We need to be optimistic," he said. After all, Dick the adult likely will
pursue a specialty "and not be asked to know about everything.

"It's going to be so much easier than being a kid."


--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Liberalism: that haunting fear that someone,
somewhere, can help themselves without
Government intervention.

As mom of three (two sons and a daughter), and as a woman with an
applied science degree working in a non-traditional industry (I'm a
professional forester working for a large utility company as a project
manager) I really think sex segregated classes for many subjects would
be a real plan, to play to the learning styles, preferences and
strengths of the specific sex.

I have certainly seen both sides of the argument with my own children,
including a miserable 1st grade teacher for one of my sons who had a
marked preference for quiet little girls who would sit and colour vs.
wiggly and exhuberant boys like my son.

M.

wrote in message
oups.com...
As mom of three (two sons and a daughter), and as a woman with an
applied science degree working in a non-traditional industry (I'm a
professional forester working for a large utility company as a project
manager) I really think sex segregated classes for many subjects would
be a real plan, to play to the learning styles, preferences and
strengths of the specific sex.

I have certainly seen both sides of the argument with my own children,
including a miserable 1st grade teacher for one of my sons who had a
marked preference for quiet little girls who would sit and colour vs.
wiggly and exhuberant boys like my son.

M.


****Warning, ranting to ensue**

As a teacher I'd love to see classes separated even more than this. Rather
than group classes by age, group them by ability. Not every 8 year old
reads at the same pace. Not every 16 year old understands English in the
same way. Not every 13 year old has the same physical abilities. Classes
should be grouped by abilities, and kept small enough for teachers to be
able to encompass all the students learning styles. I realize that this
would never happen, however. Most people (at least in my part of the world)
would rather have huge homes and drive huge cars and pay tiny little amounts
in taxes, and don't understand why the schools need "so much money". After
all its only the future of the world that schools are dealing with.

***Thank you for your time. This rant has now concluded and I return you to
your regularly scheduled newsgroup postings****

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
oups.com...
As mom of three (two sons and a daughter), and as a woman with an
applied science degree working in a non-traditional industry (I'm a
professional forester working for a large utility company as a project
manager) I really think sex segregated classes for many subjects would
be a real plan, to play to the learning styles, preferences and
strengths of the specific sex.

I have certainly seen both sides of the argument with my own children,
including a miserable 1st grade teacher for one of my sons who had a
marked preference for quiet little girls who would sit and colour vs.
wiggly and exhuberant boys like my son.

M.


****Warning, ranting to ensue**

As a teacher I'd love to see classes separated even more than this. Rather
than group classes by age, group them by ability. Not every 8 year old
reads at the same pace. Not every 16 year old understands English in the
same way. Not every 13 year old has the same physical abilities. Classes
should be grouped by abilities, and kept small enough for teachers to be
able to encompass all the students learning styles. I realize that this
would never happen, however. Most people (at least in my part of the
world) would rather have huge homes and drive huge cars and pay tiny
little amounts in taxes, and don't understand why the schools need "so
much money". After all its only the future of the world that schools are
dealing with.

***Thank you for your time. This rant has now concluded and I return you
to your regularly scheduled newsgroup postings****

chuckle I hope that made you feel better. I do understand what you are
saying. I hope you have a great couple of weeks off before returning to the
task of educating the future of the world. smile

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
oups.com...
As mom of three (two sons and a daughter), and as a woman with an
applied science degree working in a non-traditional industry (I'm a
professional forester working for a large utility company as a project
manager) I really think sex segregated classes for many subjects would
be a real plan, to play to the learning styles, preferences and
strengths of the specific sex.

I have certainly seen both sides of the argument with my own children,
including a miserable 1st grade teacher for one of my sons who had a
marked preference for quiet little girls who would sit and colour vs.
wiggly and exhuberant boys like my son.

M.


****Warning, ranting to ensue**

As a teacher I'd love to see classes separated even more than this. Rather
than group classes by age, group them by ability. Not every 8 year old
reads at the same pace. Not every 16 year old understands English in the
same way. Not every 13 year old has the same physical abilities. Classes
should be grouped by abilities, and kept small enough for teachers to be
able to encompass all the students learning styles. I realize that this
would never happen, however. Most people (at least in my part of the
world)
would rather have huge homes and drive huge cars and pay tiny little
amounts
in taxes, and don't understand why the schools need "so much money". After
all its only the future of the world that schools are dealing with.

***Thank you for your time. This rant has now concluded and I return you
to
your regularly scheduled newsgroup postings****

Here's the rant as I view it - If the teacher's unions would get out of the
picture and stop siphoning off money needed to educate our children into pay
increases and their retirement accounts I would be willing to pay more for
the schools. As it is now, teacher retirements take more tax revenue than
school taxes increase each year and the retirement benefits exceed what
teachers earned while teaching. Articles in the newspaper showing married
teacher couples in retirement at age 55 earning over 110% of their combined
working salaries while living in plush resort retirement communities
infuriate me.

And if the state legislatures really cared about educating our children they
would fund the schools first, and cut other services. Instead, the
legislatures fund everything else first, and then claim they are short of
money to fund education.

Where I live the catch phrase "More money for the classroom" means pay
increases for teachers. And every time the voters approve more money for
the schools the teachers union wants the local school board to divert the
new money to teacher pay increases, rather than the budget items presented
to the voters that would have benefited the students. It's bait and switch!

In my area the "All funds" school budget exceeds $12,000 per student per
year and the teachers union claims that is not enough money and wants more.
In addition taxpayers also pay for community colleges, state colleges and
universities, education service districts, and park and recreation district
facilities that the schools use.

And why are the teachers unions so adamantly against the No Child Left
Behind law? Because the teacher unions want to protect poor performing
teachers from being held accountable for their results through performance
standards.

I say clean up this mess or gives us vouchers to educate our children using
alternative methods.

12,000 a year. I would love to start a private school and take that
voucher amount. 20 kids in a class, 240,000 per grade, K-6th grade,
that gives me a budget of 1,680,000. 40,000 a year for seven teachers
is 280,000. I bet I could have a nice, nice little school with the 1.4
million left over for a building, principal, counselor, part-time
nurse, support staff, buses, and of course a big fat salary for myself.


This brings the real problem to mind. The real problem is a huge amount
of administrators and unneccessary people in the system. Government
always wants to grow, it has to be constrained. Private schools would
kill public schools if they were in a free-market because the private
sector is better at cutting costs. Do you think you could get a haircut
for $15 if the government ran the hair-cutting business. I probably
couldn't afford a haircut then, so the government would given me a
haircut stamp to get one for $15, and the taxpayers pick up the tab to
keep me looking good, funny...

I support school vouchers, but make any school that gets them not
charge above the voucher amount for tution, so it is still free. The
high-tuition private school would disappear quickly as well. Choice is
a good thing,

wrote in message
oups.com...
12,000 a year. I would love to start a private school and take that
voucher amount. 20 kids in a class, 240,000 per grade, K-6th grade,
that gives me a budget of 1,680,000. 40,000 a year for seven teachers
is 280,000. I bet I could have a nice, nice little school with the 1.4
million left over for a building, principal, counselor, part-time
nurse, support staff, buses, and of course a big fat salary for myself.


This brings the real problem to mind. The real problem is a huge amount
of administrators and unneccessary people in the system. Government
always wants to grow, it has to be constrained. Private schools would
kill public schools if they were in a free-market because the private
sector is better at cutting costs. Do you think you could get a haircut
for $15 if the government ran the hair-cutting business. I probably
couldn't afford a haircut then, so the government would given me a
haircut stamp to get one for $15, and the taxpayers pick up the tab to
keep me looking good, funny...

I support school vouchers, but make any school that gets them not
charge above the voucher amount for tution, so it is still free. The
high-tuition private school would disappear quickly as well. Choice is
a good thing,

When enrollment is DOWN school districts need more funding to cover the
basic costs of running the education system. And when enrollment is UP
school districts need more funding to cover the costs of the increased
enrollment. The number of actual students have nothing to do with how much
the school districts demand in funding.

What really makes me mad is people pretending taxpayers don't understand the
school budget shell game!

"Lesa" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
oups.com...
As mom of three (two sons and a daughter), and as a woman with an
applied science degree working in a non-traditional industry (I'm a
professional forester working for a large utility company as a project
manager) I really think sex segregated classes for many subjects would
be a real plan, to play to the learning styles, preferences and
strengths of the specific sex.

I have certainly seen both sides of the argument with my own children,
including a miserable 1st grade teacher for one of my sons who had a
marked preference for quiet little girls who would sit and colour vs.
wiggly and exhuberant boys like my son.

M.


****Warning, ranting to ensue**

As a teacher I'd love to see classes separated even more than this. Rather
than group classes by age, group them by ability.

Remember the class bully? They should automatically advance all bullies to
the next grade to place them among those who are better able to handle their
antics. And if the bullying continues, advance them again. Eventually, they
will learn their lesson.

Not every 8 year old
reads at the same pace. Not every 16 year old understands English in the
same way. Not every 13 year old has the same physical abilities. Classes
should be grouped by abilities, and kept small enough for teachers to be
able to encompass all the students learning styles. I realize that this
would never happen, however. Most people (at least in my part of the
world)
would rather have huge homes and drive huge cars and pay tiny little
amounts
in taxes, and don't understand why the schools need "so much money". After
all its only the future of the world that schools are dealing with.

***Thank you for your time. This rant has now concluded and I return you
to
your regularly scheduled newsgroup postings****

wrote:

I support school vouchers, but make any school that gets them not
charge above the voucher amount for tution, so it is still free. The
high-tuition private school would disappear quickly as well. Choice is
a good thing,

Parent control enhances overall system performance in many ways. School
vouchers would be a big step up from the current system, which
restricts a parent's options for the use of the taxpayers' K-12
education subsidy to schools operated by the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel. For
several reasons, I prefer a policy I call Parent performance
Contracting (tm). To implement Parent performance Contracting (PPC),
your legislature would mandate that schools --must-- hire parents on
personal service contracts to provide for their children's education,
if parents apply for the contract. Count children educated under PPC as
enrolled in the State (government, generally) school which they would
otherwise attend. Make the contract value equal to some fraction 1/2
a/b 1 of the district's regular-ed per pupil budhet. Make payment
contingent on performance at or above age level expectations on
commercially available standardized tests of reading vocabulary,
reading comprehension (any language), and math. Parents could then
homeschool, hire tutors, extend daycare to age 18, or supplememnt the
contract amount and pay tuition to independent or parochial schools.

Parent Performance Contracting has several advantages over school
vouchers:...
1) PPC creates incentives for parents to shop around, and reduces the
incentive (relative to school vouchers) for independent schools to set
tuition at the level of the State subsidy.
2) PPC provides greater financial and performance accountability than
do school voucher legislation or the current system.
3) PPC creates a wider range of options for parents than does school
voucher legislation, and so enhances the fit between student and
curriculum.
4) PPC is less respectful of current institutions, and so promotes a
more rapid evolution of the education industry than would school
vouchers.
5) Since school districts already obtain services through personal
service contracts, PPC requires less new administrative machinery than
does school voucher legislation.
6) PPC elides the entire Church/State separation argument.
7) Since districts already obtain services through personal service
contracts, and children remain enrolled in State schools, PPC is immune
to the rhetorical attack that they "take money from public schools" or
"from public education".
8) PPC could be implemented incrementally, covering grade 1 in the firt
year, grades 1,2 in the second, grades 1,2,3 in the third, etc., or
applying to the worst-performing 10% of schools in the first year, 20%
in the second, etc., and so reduce the financial shock to the system.

Take care. Homeschool if you can.

http://www.rru.com/~meo/hs.minski.html (One page. Marvin Minsky comment
on school. Please read this.)
http://www.educationevolving.org/pdf/Adolescence.pdf
http://www.schoolchoices.org (Massive site. Useful links).
http://harriettubmanagenda.blogspot.com/

"Bob Whiteside" wrote in message
ink.net...

In my area the "All funds" school budget exceeds $12,000 per student per
year and the teachers union claims that is not enough money and wants
more.

Do you realize all the areas to which that money needs to go? That $12,000
pays for the building, the utilities for the building, books and other
teaching materials, materials for making copies of student information,
teacher salaries (and at the middle school/high school level that could be
8-10 teachers per student), salaries for support staff (cooks, custodians,
principal, office staff, nurses), medical supplies for the school health
room and sports teams, registration fees for sports teams (some of which
exceed $200/team), buses for sports teams and field trips, admission for
field trips and other special events, insurance for the school building,
repairs/maintenance for the school building, a significant portion of school
lunches, and I'm certain more that I can't think of right now, which does
include benefits for district employees . That $12,000 is not simply for a
teacher's salary, and it does not go very far..

And why are the teachers unions so adamantly against the No Child Left
Behind law? Because the teacher unions want to protect poor performing
teachers from being held accountable for their results through performance
standards.

Actually, most teachers are opposed to NCLB because they require mandated
standardized testing and as a result require basing your curriculum around
this test rather than being able to teach things that are significant to
your student, or things which are of interest to a majority of your
students. In addition the cost of purchasing, administering, scoring and
reporting those tests is left primarily to the district. The small amount
of funds provided by the federal government comes nowhere near the amount of
costs incurred. NCLB is causing *more* children to be left behind.