Girls learn better from women. Boys learn better from men. So says
this Washington Post article cited
by Will Meek at Psych Central. That's the upshot of a provocative study by Thomas Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College and visiting scholar at Stanford University. His study was to appear Monday in Education Next, a quarterly journal published by the Hoover Institution.
Interesting. Only problem? The only male teacher my son is taught by is the gym teacher. Not enough to outweigh the female influence, I suspect.
Unfortunately, most boys will not have a chance to have a male teacher until middle/high school. Seems like most elementary teachers (at least in our area) are female. Our son has his first male teacher this year (6th grade). We'll see how it goes, however I have a feeling it will be a great year for him.
ReplyDeleteJen
This is part of why my husband is a Boy Scout Executive. He believes strongly in the importance of boys' having frequent contact with men in educational and moral-building situations. Unfortunately it often doesn't happen in church, but in troop meetings every couple of weeks, the kids do have an opportunity to get to know men who care about how they are doing.
ReplyDeleteHe ran an inner-city troop for two years and was pretty well the only steady male in those kids' lives. That was rough for him to realize because a present father figure is so important.