School board chief, concerned about boys' performance, proposes dramatic changes:“When we take a look at who we suspend, when we take a look at who’s underachieving, it’s disproportionately boys,” said Dr. Chris Spence who took the helm at the Toronto District School Board this year.

theseusastro · 2009-10-21T12:05:40+00:00

Its great to see them trying but they missed the mark in a lot of places.

Reduce the amount of homework and in class busy work, or reduce the % of the final grade homework and busy work is worth, and I'm sure you'll see improved results and renewed interest from boys in school.

I think gender segregation is good because as we all know, wherever men and women comingle, the focus is almost always on women. Its just a shame that they are only doing it for small children. I would think that it would only be truly effective once puberty sets in. I think it should start in middle school, and go through high school, when hormones and pheromones wreak the most havoc. This business with portable desks and clip boards seems hinge ridiculously on cliched stereotypes, that assume too much, without any serious query into the "why" of the matter.

As an example of the board’s commitment to girls he cites the launch of Project GO — which stands for Girls Only — a program for girls to get together and talk about issues relevant to them, with the goal of encouraging high self-esteem, mentoring and positive role models.

of course they couldn't give a little attention to boys without giving more to girls. Thats an inevitability of our current reality.

I think the thing they need to do is stop trying to mentally and emotionally neuter young boys. The more they try to encourage and ultimately force boys to think, feel, and behave like girls, the more violence and disassociation from the mainstream you will continue to see among boys because boys don't choose to be boys, and society doesn't program them to be boys, their Y chromosome makes them boys, and barring medical/scientific intervention and the occasional freak of nature, nothing and no one is gonna change that.

etherspirit · 2009-10-21T08:48:00+00:00

Wow.

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