When Niobe Wei, a professor of developmental psychology at New York University, works in the classroom, she likes to dive into the deep end.
It’s a technique she borrows from the young children she interviews for her research, who often ask the most engaging and meaningful questions. But the innate propensity to want to know about other people’s thoughts and feelings – an essential part of forming friendships and connections with teachers – is overcome by the time many students reach full maturity. She says it seems like it.
As a result, by the time people reach adulthood, they show no interest in other people. Some are turned off. Wei argues that this is a reflection of society, including schools, being bad at fostering our natural curiosity about others.
So in every class she teaches, Wei says she gives students a few minutes to turn that part of themselves back on. She had them discuss her questions that explore what it means to be human.
“Tell me about a time when you felt a sense of belonging.”
“How does trust feel?”
“What does home mean to you?”
Wei said people are hungry for these questions, which she sees as a sad result of a culture and education system that has cut off people’s natural tendency to seek deep relationships.
Perhaps surprisingly, this is a phenomenon Wei brought up when asked about concerns about boys’ performance in American schools. In a culture that doesn’t value relationships, vulnerability, and emotion, everyone suffers, she argues. To really help boys, she says, we need to focus on the natural tendency for connection that all people have.
That’s an approach not everyone will accept. Nevertheless, this work responds to the common perception that “the boys are having a hard time.” There is renewed interest in gender dynamics in schools, as more people begin to pay attention to boys’ academic and engagement struggles. Beyond the basic gender binary.
While some observers argue that more male role models would help address the problem or point to solutions such as enrolling boys in school at a later age, all Some believe it is more important to help teachers become aware of gender patterns in their classrooms and pay attention to gender trends. Healthy development of characteristics shared by all humans.
A man’s world?
The data shows that girls and women are generally outperforming in school, but boys and men are a cause for concern. Women more often graduate from high school on time and earn more degrees. In the early days, girls Outperform boys in reading comprehension.
Jason Ablin, a former K-12 school principal and author, argues that men’s performance appears to be underperforming in part because barriers to women’s education have been removed. Ablin says that by removing some of the barriers for women, it has become clear how much men are really struggling. Almost half a century ago, fields in which men appeared to outperform women were largely due to the false impression given because women were being held back, rather than because men were necessarily outperforming. It was a result, he says.
For example, he says, there’s a common notion that men are better at math than women. It’s a myth. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, when women weren’t able to participate in advanced math classes and programs, men were actually at the bottom of the bell curve in math achievement, Ablin said. In contrast, women were in the middle, unable to rise to the top, but not at the bottom.
But in some ways, he says, men are going backwards. Still, he is optimistic about the boys’ development. This is because we have noticed a growing interest in the development of boys, especially among parents of young children who are sensitive to these dynamics.
But how exactly to help boys and men is another matter.
equality not separation
Ideas are plentiful. For example, Richard V. Reeves, founding president of the American Association of Boys and Men, said: claimed Schools are required to “redshirt” boys, enrolling them a year later than girls. That, he argues, would explain the boy’s slow neurological development.
Curtis Valentine, one of the founders of Real Men Teach, helps schools attract and retain more male teachers, particularly those of color who are structurally disadvantaged within the education system. I hope that the boys’ performance will improve. Mr. Reeves proposed strategies for subjects that are often avoided by male students, such as English.
But Ablin disagrees that boys necessarily need male educators or male-only spaces.
“That’s a guess and it’s not really accurate,” he said, pointing to research that suggests schools separate classes for boys and girls. not shown Persuasive to improve education.
But it’s a little complicated. Although they may be thematically related, hiring more male teachers is not synonymous with same-sex education, a focus of the study summarized in the research note.
Ablin said her own experience in the classroom has shown her that emotional, human connections are most important, more than the gender of the teacher or the makeup of the students in the classroom.
Ultimately, Ablin argues, school staff who are well-trained to notice gender patterns in classrooms are best able to explain those patterns. He believes researchers like Wei at New York University have illuminated the path by showing that boys often learn to disengage from relationships.
Wei says boys’ innate ability to be beautiful, sensitive and emotional is lost as they grow up. She says this culture turns natural human instincts into “gendered” traits, punishing both boys and girls in different ways. For boys, it can mean that their natural emotional sensitivity is not valued. One result is that both boys and men are not encouraged to take up occupations that are wrongly labeled by their culture as “feminine” and therefore devalued, such as caregiving, Wei said. he says. And masculinity, she added, is often premised on denying what is considered the “softer” side of humanity.
For Wei, that means schools are ignoring the healthy development of boys. Rather, if it were widely understood that men and women alike possess all of these traits and drives, and if those traits were nurtured in schools, homes, and workplaces, we would have healthier relationships and learning environments. According to Wei, this will be of great help in building the
she, listening projectprovides course credits that are integrated into middle school and high school English and humanities classes, and promotes connections between people. This lesson teaches “transformational interviewing,” which emphasizes curiosity about others.a study The project’s researchers claim that this commitment – “interpersonal curiosity” as a way to guide development – is associated with stronger social and emotional skills and well-being. Wei argues that it leads to better listening, curiosity, and engagement in scholarship while building a “sense of common humanity.”
Paying some attention to gender dynamics could alleviate the social isolation, mental health issues, and even self-harm that plague schools, Wei suggests.
“My hope is that we can start to actually listen to what young people are telling us about who we are as humans and use that as a basis for how we teach,” she said. To tell.
