The Patriot Post® · In Brief: How to Save the Boys of America

Besides the obvious problem of leftist indoctrination, arguably the most fundamental problem with public schools is the “one size fits all” paradigm. Children learn differently, and not all of them are cut out for six or seven hours a day in a desk. Boys and girls learn differently, and yet boys are stuck in a system geared toward girls. That’s the point of an article by researcher John Mac Ghlionn.

From an academic perspective, girls are wiping the floor with boys. Girls tend to do considerably better in languages, math, and science. This is true not just in the U.S. Girls’ dominance in the classroom can be seen in Australia, the U.K., and Canada, as well as in dozens of other advanced countries. According to Richard Reeves, the author of Why the Modern Male is Struggling, "Girls are about a year ahead of boys in terms of reading ability in OECD nations (the U.S. included). Boys are 50 percent more likely than girls to fail at all three key school subjects: maths, reading, and science.“ 

Why is this the case? My suggestion, backed up by peer-reviewed studies, is that the demise of boys’ academic achievements is closely linked with the demise of same-sex schooling.

Obviously, he notes, "males and females are not the same.” Well, that’s obvious to fewer and fewer people as the public school indoctrination continues. But we digress.

Because of these differences, males and females have very different learning styles. Boys show greater activation in the areas of the brain dedicated to visuo-spatial strengths, whereas girls are, on average, better at verbal-emotive processing. This difference in learning styles perhaps explains why so many boys in co-ed environments are misdiagnosed with both learning disabilities and attention-deficit issues. As the psychotherapist Andrea Schneider has noted, boys are “hardwired to be single-task focused” unlike girls, who tend to be considerably better at switching between multiple tasks. …

Of the four different learning styles — visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic — boys excel in environments that promote the latter. Kinesthetic learning, or tactile learning, involves movement and physical activity. How many schools in the U.S. promote kinesthetic learning? The answer is quite simple: Nowhere near enough of them.

This is why single-sex schooling is so important. Girls and boys are not the same, and the schooling system should reflect this fact. Boys learn better when they are given freedom and space to move around; they are energized, physically and mentally, by movement. Co-ed schooling asks students to sit still for hours at a time. This works for girls, but it doesn’t work as well for boys.

Mac Ghlionn also notes the basic distractions inherently caused by putting males and females “under the same roof,” as well as the better rates of success and advancement for boys in same-sex schools. Despite these truths, however, just 5% of American schools are same-sex. He concludes:

If you are a parent of a young boy, wondering where to send him to school, choosing a single-sex option — if that option even exists, of course — could prove to be the best choice you ever make.