Ken Coates and Clive Keen (“Snail Males,” March) ask why men are falling behind in universities while women speed ahead. Walrus Online Exclusive: More readers’ letters for May 2007They could have saved a lot of the sociological floundering around that characterized an otherwise excellent article by asking, more specifically, what’s wrong with an education system that skews success according to the sex of the student?
In Ontario, government-mandated curriculum in the public schools bulges at the seams with stuff that is judged to be critical for success in the race for global advantage. Moreover, politicians have embraced accountability, achieved by standardized testing and invidious public comparisons of test results, as the means to improved performance. School board websites are now larded with charts showing, by grade, percentages of students at some arbitrary benchmark together with mandated plans for improvement next year.
Accountability by measurable quantities is more suited to production in the economy, the more so as production units get larger and increasingly impersonal. But the method is ill-suited to the education of young people, who thrive on freedom to create and innovate, on opportunities to experiment with minimum risk.
According to psychologists, this passion for accountability in education tends to favour females, who have traditionally been conditioned from birth to work hard at menial tasks without complaint. That’s always been the lot of wives and mothers. This cultural tradition now reveals itself in the greater success of females in mastering testable bits of the school and post-secondary curriculum. It’s no surprise that they shine in medical and law schools.
Rethinking the school curriculum in fundamental ways is overdue. A good starting point would be the abolition of state-mandated standardized tests coupled with a call on local communities to engage in curriculum reform that responds to the real needs of youngsters.
Peter H. Hennessy
Professor Emeritus,
Queen’s University
Elginburg, Ontario
“Snail Males” provides an enlightening analysis of a troubling trend in education. Based on my experience as a retired scientist assisting elementary school teachers with science education, the authors’ suggestion that males are hard-wired not to accept help seems particularly astute. In grades five to eight, one sees divergent behavioural patterns for boys and girls, regardless of socioeconomic level and ethnic or religious leaning. Boys are hard-wired for many things, just as girls are, but the current educational approach creates a disadvantage for the boys.
The old assumption that boys and girls can be educated by the same methodology is just not working. Maybe the solution is separation of the two sexes during a critical period of education.
Fernand Noel
Sarnia, Ontario
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