London Free Press Article: Who Is To Blame For The Lack Of Success Of Male Students In School?
London boys lack male role models
By LEN LESSER, Special to QMI Agency
Last Updated: November 27, 2010 12:00am
Do you have a son who is unmotivated and not achieving his potential? You are not alone. There is a growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men.
The schools have become female-oriented. Sometimes the only male authority figure in a school is the custodian. For single young boys being raised by a mom, it is sure hard to find a positive male role model.
I checked with Mike Serida, manager of human resources at the Thames Valley District school board. Here are the numbers. Elementary female teachers 2,574; male 596. Do the math and we have a four-to-one staffing ratio of women over men. Among principals, there are 147 women versus 74 men.
Secondary staffing has 1,028 female teachers versus 825 males, but a nearly even split of 40 male administrators to 37 female.
Lori Gribbon, manager of admissions and liaison services at the University of Western Ontario, sent along the numbers for UWO’s full-time equivalent enrolment for 2009-10. Check out the stats: 11,288 females vs. 9,236 males attending.
We have a pretty even split for faculties of business, law, science and social sciences.
But the numbers of students in the faculty of education showed we had 499 females and only 227 males. Sadly, too few of our young men are attending Althouse College of education in London.
We have fewer males going into teacher training every year, proportionally and in raw numbers, for both elementary and secondary panels. The problem of attracting qualified men to the teaching field is not unique to the Thames Valley board.
Many of our young men are adrift, merely floating wherever the currents in the sea of life takes them.
Let’s look at some of the reasons why. Boys are different than their sisters and often can’t sit still for hours on end in a classroom setting. They are wired to move.
The stats show that one in three young boys from affluent homes are designated ADHD. In my many years of counselling for the Thames Valley board, I recommended only two young men for medication.
Your son is in need of a curriculum that is developmentally appropriate to him and taught by teachers who know how to teach male students. Boys need to have interaction with other males. Positive role models (fathers) are needed to interact with their sons. Boy Scouts, the YMCA and athletic programs allows your son to be competitive and interact with other males.
Girls will do their homework to please their teacher. If a boy thinks school is boring or stupid, he’s more likely to ignore his studies. Girls on the whole seem to get better grades in every subject.
Many male teens have become fixated on computer games and television, playing Xbox for six hours a day. If they are not motivated, then sitting in front of screen can take up most of their day.
The more time that your son spends on video games, the less likely he will do well in school, whether he is in elementary, secondary or university. Social interaction with friends and family suffers in direct proportion to the amount of time spent in front of a computer playing video games.
There are solutions to your son’s video game “addiction.” The computer should be in the family room and accessible to all. Parents have the right to check on what the children are accessing on the Internet. Time spent in front of the computer screen has to be monitored with appropriate time limits, Make sure your son knows where his priorities should be. Family comes first, school work second, friends third and video games last.
Parents need to try to encourage the growth of healthy, happy, independent, motivated children who are able to stand on their own. Scary thought: The average age of a young man who leaves his parent’s home in Canada is now 27.
First semester-one secondary school mid-term report cards were given out Monday. Did your son do well?
Gayblackcanada 