An administrator observed a teacher friend of mine a couple of years ago and kept a checklist of how many times she called on girls to answer questions. In a conference a few days later, he told the teacher that he had to keep a checklist in order to make sure the teacher didn’t overlook girls and that she had called on more boys during his observation than girls. He claimed that too many teachers overlook girls.
I’m afraid the administrator was a little behind the times. While we worried about girls a decade ago, the tide has turned, and it appears that girls are excelling in school at a much greater level than boys. Take a look at just about any college campus except engineering schools, and the girls outnumber the boys. What has happened to create this change?
The Chronicle of Higher Learning posted a fascinating story about how various researchers interpret the current functioning of boys. Are they really so different from girls? What does it mean to say that a child is “all boy”? Should we worry about boys? In addition to providing excellent information about boys, the article closes with a reading list of books that explore this issue.