Males and Learning

This interesting essay caught my eye. I am such a minority in my household that I think that I am perhaps oversensitive to gender issues. But I have certainly seen how the school system in K-12 doesn’t fit the way my own boys learn, and many of the faculty I work with worry about the “back-row-baseball-hat-boys” who can sour a whole class with their attitudes if not handled properly. And yet, when they are engaged, they can play leadership roles. How to get them engaged?

Working with a faculty memeber the other day, I noted that 22 of his 30 students were male. He said this was common in his field. I detailed for him the evidence of lack of engagement during his hour and 20 minute lecture: 3 people took random bathroom breaks, about 1/3 of students actually took notes, 2 students fought off sleep unsuccessfully. The problem was not his lecture: he was interesting and well prepared and the material was good. So what is the problem? Sitting and listening for long periods of time just isn’t the best way to get engaged–for either gender. I ran through a list of about 10 ways to break up a lecture and invite engagement and participation, and then he made a really interesting point: “Isn’t that infantilizing the students?” Many professors feel it is the students’ job to be motivated. (I don’t agree; I believe learning is a dance with responsibility for both partners.) But at the same time, we have to be careful. If students feel they are being “babied” or treated like elementary students, they will rebel.

The essay linked above quotes  George Gilder in National Review:[ The American university is now a ]”fluffy pink playpen of feminist studies and agitprop “herstory,” taught amid a green goo of eco-motherism . . . �  ”

There is an association of “feminine” with “childish” and both of those things as being anti-masculine. But I think we really have to fight these notions.  Good learning theory is good learning theory, and neither gender does too well after 15 minutes of sitting still and listening passively. We need to create intellectual challenges for students that draw them into the conversation.  It is crucial to not leave words and conversation and collaboration in the realm of the feminine alone.  Kimmel says it very well:

Perhaps the real “male bashers” are those who promise to rescue boys from the clutches of feminists. Are males not also “hardwired” toward compassion, nurturing, and love? If not, would we allow males to be parents? It is never a biological question of whether we are “hardwired” for some behavior; it is, rather, a political question of which “hardwiring” we choose to respect and which we choose to challenge.
The antifeminist pundits have an unyielding view of men as irredeemably awful. We men, they tell us, are savage, lustful, violent, sexually omnivorous, rapacious, predatory animals, who will rape, murder, pillage, and leave towels on the bathroom floor unless women fulfill their biological duty and constrain us. “Every society must be wary of the unattached male, for he is universally the cause of numerous ills,” writes David Popenoe…
By contrast, feminists believe that men are better than that, that boys can be raised to be competent and compassionate, ambitious and attentive, and that men are fully capable of love, care, and nurturance. It’s feminists who are really “pro-boy” and “pro-father” who want young boys and their fathers to expand the definition of masculinity and to become fully human.

I wonder whether faculty are really partly afraid of “feminizing” when they express concern about “infantilizing”?  And it may be even more of a fear for female faculty.  I know that I often fear that if I project too much in the way of nurture or creativity that I will lose students’ respect and they will not work hard.   But I know from experience: we have to have high expectations for all students.  Part of those expectations are that girls can do math; the other part of that is that boys can do the “touchy-feely” stuff of literary interpretation and collaborative group projects.