Boys and Girls Learn Differently!: A Guide for
Teachers and Parents.
By Michael Gurian and Patricia Henley with Terry Trueman.
Michael Gurian and Patricia Henley have
crafted a truly wonderful book, full to bursting with succinct
summaries of research on differences and similarities between male and
female brains as well as findings and suggestions for effective
education techniques.
Part One collects data on brain
research which over past decades has given us a much broader and
deeper understanding of the common and distinct educational needs of
boys and girls. Gurian and Henley seamless integrate three primary
points of view on brain-based research--neurological and hormonal
effects on learning and behavior, developmental psychology, and
gender-difference research. They deftly summarize both familiar and
relatively unknown data.
Part Two shows how we can create the
ultimate classroom for boys and girls by setting up and altering
learning environments, at home and at school, to fit the needs laid
out in Part One. It offers a practical blueprint to help teachers and
parents assess their strengths and weaknesses and learn how to design
a successful learning environment for boys and girls.
These ideas work; in Kansas City,
discipline problems were reduced by over one-third within just six
months after teacher trainings in how boys and girls learn
differently.
The stories cannot help but charm,
showing us the general through the particular. Giving one boy errands
to do helped to positively rechannel his action-seeking troublemaking.
A second overly aggressive boy became healthier after he was allowed
to lead a burial service for a dead squirrel. A teacher who one day
decided to give a ride home from school to a girl student troubled by
her father's death helped to transform her feelings and school
performance by giving her badly needed attention.
Teachers need to be educated on brain
development and gender differences in brain function. Currently, girls
constitute 60% of university admissions, have far fewer learning and
behavior disorders, and are a full 1.5 years ahead of boys in reading
and writing. Gurian and Henley focus on boys due to their greater
problems today but do not forget about girls' own troubles such as
sometimes being overlooked, often being abandoned by the teenage
fathers of their children, needing suppor with self-esteem,
risk-taking, and with finding a place for themselves in challenging
subjects such as math and physics. (The authors note that self-esteem
is great in itself but must be grounded in "hard values" such as
respect, honesty, and integrity, and thus advocate character
education.)
Our schools seem to be creating overt
depression in girls and covert depression in boys. Through violence,
male hormones and brains cry out for a different school promoting
closer bonding, smaller classes, more verbalization, less male
isolation, better discipline, and more attention to male learning
styles. Most of all, boys need men in their schools. (90% of
elementary teachers are female.) They need male teachers, male
teaching assistants, male volunteers from the parents or grandparents,
and older male students. Peer mentoring across grades helps everybody
involved.
Gurian and Henley collect a number of
fascinating facts. Female brains excel at memory and sensory intake,
while boys do better at spacial tasks and abstract reasoning. Boys
tend to move emotive material "down" in the brain to the more
primitive brain stem, while girls move it up to the most advanced
upper regions of the brain. This means that boys, whose brains are
more task-focused and who actually are more fragile than girls, are
more likely to become aggressive or withdraw and are more subject to
being overwhelmed by stimuli. They cannot as easily overcome problems
and move on to learn effectively. By contrast, girls can respond more
flexibly to stimuli and are more prone to processing pain and seeking
help from others. The danger for girls is that they may become
overwhelmed due to the number of emotive functions they may be running
simultaneously. A resting female brain is as active as an activated
male brain and thus has a learning advantage. Six times as many girls
as boys can sing in tune. Males and females see differently, with boys
doing better in brighter light and girls excelling in dim light. Males
and females even taste differenlty, with females more sensitive to the
bitter and preferring sweet tastes while males prefer salty foods.
Intriguingly, hormonal differences between male and female were not as
sharp a million years ago as they are today, since population growth
calls for more testosterone in men to equip them for the greater
competition required.
Gurian and Henley are dedicated to
helping society tailor education to boys' and girls' needs. Movement
helps boys to stimulate their brains, to manage and relieve impulsive
behavior, and to engage their whole body in emotional processing. Thus
eliminating recess or cutting back on physical education are profound
mistakes. Troublesome boy behavior can often be transformed and
rendered useful by allowing the child to play with a nerf ball while
learning or by putting him to work handing our papers or sharpening
pencils. The authors note that boys' physical aggression often follows
girls' verbal aggression, and also provide an extended analysis of
"aggression nurturance," how boys use aggression to help boys and
girls to learn how to build strength, focus, and attentiveness.
It is the practical suggestions and
stories which make the book shine. Multi-generational classes,
teaching teams and teacher-to-teacher supports will help boys, girls,
and teachers alike. Bonding rituals such as high-five games or songs
can reach even problem boys. A great list of bonding tips is provided:
be genuine, learn about the child's world, use "I noticed..."
statements, attend events in the child's life, listen and listensome
more, admit mistakes, give the child two choices to encourage healthy
decisionmaking. Specific discipline techniques are tabulated, such as
showing a child the effects of an inappropriate action, redirecting
hitting to inanimate objects, making things into games whenever
possible, and ignoring a child's refusal and not making the mistake of
engaging in a power struggle with it.
The authors suggest, "When in doubt,
become an alpha," as children crave authority figures. Give children,
especially boys, 60 seconds to respond to a question about their
behavior. Peer mediation, peer conflict resolution, and peer-driven
discipline councils help to give teens responsibility for
self-discipline while ensuring adult oversight and instruction.
Particularly effective lessons for both boys and girls will integrate
arts, geography, social studies, and even mathematics into a study of
a particular topic such as the Cherokee or Asia.
The authors trenchantly note that many
if not most learning disorders can be "cured" by rethinking our
expectations regarding a child's learning. Overprescription of Ritalin
to boys and Prozac to girls may "fix" a "problem" but also interrupts
the flow of brain development and may allow disengages parenting to
continue. What may be needed is simple: more love.
Unafraid of sounding unfashionable, the
authors eloquently promote character education for all grades, a
judicious mix of same-sex and coeducational classes, and uniforms for
high school students to assist their brains by imposing order to
reduce the bewildering, even overwhelming onslaught of sensory
information. They also remind us of the need to institute several
age-appropriate rites of passage for boys and girls. They counsel us
to spend more time with adolescents than the youths seem to be asking
us for.
Gurian and Henley also do not fear
bringing in larger issues, asking if we as a culture withhold from
boys the love they need. Are troubled boys trying to draw our
attention to how unloved they currently feel? Adolescent males are set
up for high risk behavior and are begging the community to set limits
for them. Stop the insanity of mixed-gender wrestling, the authors
implore, and add gender training to the curriculum so boys and girls
can hear each other speak and can start to demystify that wonderful
other sex. Many difficult children have been saved through arts
programs.
Gurian and Henley are careful to
repeatedly stress that many exceptions to gender brain trends exist,
as do boys and girls with bi-gender or "bridge" brains. The authors
provide a number of useful tables, including a seven-page table
exhaustively listing, for each part of the brain, the corresponding
functions, gender similarities and differences, and the impact of
these differences on behavior. Later we get an equally useful
five-page table summarizing developmental gender differences from
prebirth through infancy, toddlerhood, and middle school, right up
through high
school years. Each chapter in Part Two ends with a highlighted summary
of the principal educational strategies for boys and for girls as well
as a detailed list of tips for parents.
I would have appreciated some
discussion of economic and practical barriers to reducing the
student-teacher ratio and involving more males in education as well as
ideas as to how they might be overcome. The book could have benefitted
from more attention to the needs of gay children. But these are mere
quibbles. Gurian and Henley have penned a masterwork; regardless of
whether you have children of your own, it speaks to us all as human
beings. Ignore it at your peril!
©2000 J. Steven Svoboda
