Bad, or just bored?

TheTinMenBlog · 2023-06-21T11:48:01+00:00

I was a naughty boy at school.

Bored, restless, and disinterested; I was disruptive, cheeky, and disobedient. A clown, a show off, a real little shit.

“He’s a bright boy, but he doesn’t apply himself”, my teachers told my parents time and time again, as I fell behind.

The same conversation with my parents; sat at the end of the same bed, with the same look of concern and meagre disappointment in their eyes.

But at no point did anyone ever wonder: maybe the learning styles used in school are just not working on him? Is that the problem?

Maybe a naughty child, is just… a bored or disinterested child?

I knew I was not stupid. I knew my dwindling exam results, and my failures, were not a true reflection of my ability.

In my eyes, I was not failing school, but school was failing me.

So I saw my grades slip from As, to Bs, to Cs and further, to my final results of straight D’s. I saw other boys in my class, follow me down the same slope.

I found out my dad did worse than I did.

He left school with straight E’s, only to spend the next ten years under his own direction, becoming a professor of psychology, and a leading expert in the field of neuroscience.

He was not a stupid boy either, but no doubt must have found it hard to shake off the disappointment of his own parents, and look past the same solemn conversations at the foot of his own bed.

This is a universal problem.

Boys are behind at every stage of education, in more or less every developed country in the world. Decade after decade slides by, as boys fall further and further behind.

Whilst the media, politicians and educators sit at the bottom of beds, to talk to our boys about how they just need to work harder, or apply themselves more, or be more like the girls in their class.

An epidemic of brilliant boys being convinced they are stupid, or bad.

So how long before we ask, who’s failing who…Are boys failing us, or are we failing them?

~

The Atlantic, OECD teacher bias.

Images by Gryffn M, JD Mason, Gradienta, Ben Den Englesen, Zach Vessells, Michael Shanon, Sigmund, Paige Cody and Michal Parzuchowski.

MelissaMiranti · 2023-06-22T19:53:19+00:00

Boys in the classes I taught always engaged more when there was a more physical component to the lesson. Have students change seats even a little and you get them interested. It's not hard to engage boys, but it's easier to just sit there and blame them as so many teachers do.

Mustard_The_Colonel · 2023-06-23T09:09:32+00:00

As always excellent write up. You are in the UK not sure what sector you work in but as a household of teacher assistant and NHS staff I know how much emphasises we put on reasonable adjustments and person centred care for people. All the people BUT boys. I rarely heard about adjustments to boys and young men.

I worked in secured mental hospital we have reduced incidents on male ward by nearly 80% over weekends by simply offering to run different groups with patient. We used to get a lot of complaints that men didn't engage in sessions but sessions were not in their interest at all. They were having art therapy sessions that non of this working class men cared about. Moment we started to run Sunday football club engagement skyrocket even those who didn't play would come out with us sit on a bench and watch. It was great.

But many solutions to boys and men problems is "they need to be more like girls and women" rather than we need to change the way we work with them to accommodate their unique needs.

sniper1905 · 2023-06-22T23:25:49+00:00

Do 1/3 of primary schools in England really have NO male teachers????

nothingnothing2308 · 2023-06-27T07:59:59+00:00

the answer is bad. as a former school-girl, i was bored as shit in school and most of my female friends were too. we just weren't raised with the idea that men could do whatever they wanted so we behaved.

CatoticNeutral · 2023-07-09T14:29:30+00:00

It's possible to be expelled from preschool? What?

SteveClintonTTV · 2023-07-15T20:35:57+00:00

This is a topic which gets me heated. It really frustrates me that schools seem tailor-made to the ways girls learn best, at the expense of the ways boys learn best, and then when boys don't mesh with that as well as girls, boys get blamed for just being bad eggs. It's just shit. We shouldn't be blaming boys for simply being boys. We should be looking for a way to cater to both girls and boys, instead of being so eager to blame boys for their existence.

But that just touches on the broader issue of men always being blamed for their own problems. It's always "toxic masculinity" this, "patriarchy hurts men, too" that, and so on. Very frustrating pattern.

Nklst · 2023-06-25T16:29:51+00:00

I think that rules for behavior in schools today are actually less strict than they were when schools were boys only and discipline was strict, and classes way more boring.

Half of things you mentions are also things that a lot of kids would hate in school. I do not want motor activity, i certainly did not want any kind of teamwork, and I did not want to be responsible for other people's succes.

School is not supposed to always be fun end engaging, I probably hated few subjects and some teachers, but you burry your head in a book, do your homework, burn midnight oil etc.

Are you going to tell me that males are incapable of doing that?

2023-06-24T14:01:45+00:00

I think a large potion of the academic design that is incompatible with male's preferences stems from an inability to admit biological related differences across men and women.

Title	Bad, or just bored?
Author	TheTinMenBlog
Upvotes	139
Comments	20
Date	June 21, 2023 11:47 AM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/14f5io7/bad_or_just_bored/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/bad-or-just-bored.1222940 https://theredarchive.com/post/1222940

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