Figure 1.--New Zealand schools since the 1970s have made enormous progress in addressing the difficulties that girls faced in achieving academic success.
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Figure 1.--New Zealand schools since the 1970s have made enormous progress in addressing the difficulties that girls faced in achieving academic success. |
Inspired by the Women's movement, educators and sociologists have given a great deal of attention to the performance of girls in school. New programs were initiated to incvourage girls and help them to succeed. Educational statistics show that girls are performing better in school than ever before. Educators are becoming increasingly aware the schools are failing many boys and many indicators show boys leaving school earlier and performing far below girls in certain areas, especially the critical area of language skills. The question is what causes the differing academic achievement and whay can be done about it. The authors stress that many of the trends noted here are not trends unique to New Zealand, but faced by school systems in many western countries.
The Education Review Office (ERO) released a report on July 29, 1999 describing the alarmingly low levels of academic achievement by New Zealand bows and disparitities with achievement levels reported for girls. The gender disparities are alarming. This did not come as a surprise to teachers and school administrators. Problems associated with boys, especially teenage boys are all to obvious. It did, however, surprise the general public, especially the size of the disparity between the achievement levels of boys and girls. It does not, however, seem to be a problem that the Ministry of Education had previosly highlighted. In fact if you look at the ERO assessment reviews of individual schools, it is a problem that they raely raise with school administrators. In fact one is struck by the often minor problems raised in these reviews while this various serious problem of the disparities between the achievement of boys and girls is not raised.
The ERO report identifed some strategies that will help boys do better. These include recognizing that boys and girls have different learning styles. The ERO found in particular that poor discipline can affect boys learning. Discipline also appears to be important for girls, but not nearly as important for boys. Teenage boys require firm guidance and discipline, much more than girls do. Boys are much more likely than girls to test boudaries. In many ways our society expects them to do so. Meek boys are not generally highly regarded by their peers or indeed the public at large.
Notably one of the factors that we noted during our school visits was the lack of effective discipline at many schools, especially state secondary schools. We observed students speaking rudely to teachers. We observed teachers that had no control over their classrooms. Some have even given up attempting to control their classes. This is not to say that such instances were the norm, but in only a few state secondary schools we visited did we fail to observe such situations. Almost always the descipline problems we observed were in the classes of female teachers. We stress that innour brief observations we wouldnot begin to address the question of the academic competence of the teachers we observed, classroom discipline, however, can be assessed within minutes of entering a clasroom.
Improving descipline standards at state schools may be especially difficult at state schools. Private schools have less of a problem as they can simply ask parents to remove unruly pupils. This is much more difficult at a state school. It is especially difficult because many of the problens associated with the discipline problem has nothing to do with the schools, but rather larger societal trends.
Some of the trends that are leading to the rising descipline problems in secondary schools include:
It is a unfortuate consequence that the succcess of New Zealand schools including most children in the secondary system has created unintended consequences. A generation ago the secondary system delt largely with academically capable youngsters that were self motivated and self disciplined. Now that virtually all New Zealand youngsters attend secondary schools, the roles of state schools include larger numbers of youngers who have not interest in academic achievement and or have limited capabilities. These young people need to be in school. Their ability to obtain good jobs in the new economy will depend on it. Yet in many ways they are very difficut to teach. These youngsters are unhappy at school and their lack of interest and often failure in many cases creates discipline problem. As any teacher can tell you, it only takes one or two discipline problems in a classroom to totally change the dynamic of that class. A skilled teacher can deal with it. A less capable or inexperienced teacher may not be able to do so.
Even academically capable youngsters are increasingly less self disciplined. There are a variery of causes of this. Modern parents are more pemissive. New Zealand has nearly 60,000 boys growing up in households without a father. Many parents are relying on the schools to discipline their children. Many fine, academically prepared teachers are understandbly not capable of desciplining a teenage boy whose parents have not properly disciplined. It is the family, not the school, thathas to be primarily respnsible for raising mature, responsible young people. A single mother should not be dispairaged, most do wonderful jobs. Yet undeniably, children misbehaving at school usually have trouble at home and a disproprtionate number of those problems come from fatherless homes. Yet divorce levels are rising. New Zealand officilas project that by 2010, if present trends continue, half of Pakeha and nearly three quarters of Maori infants under 12 months will grow up in fatherless families. After divorce more than half of fathers have no significant contact with their children.
New Zealand teachers, especially at the secondary level, used to be mostly mem. Limited pay has meant that men can not adequately support a family on a teacher's wage. Thus the proportion of women is rising. Girls have probably benefited from this, boys have not.
For the most part, women are not the sole provider for the family--but rather a secondary income and thus are more willing then men to accept low wages. Whatever the reason, just at a time when more men are needed in the schools to deal with rising discipline problems, usually unruly boys, men are leaving the teaching profession.
New Zealand teachers are today better trained and educated than ever before, but larger socieatal trends have changed the recruitment pool. The Women's Movement has opened job opportunities for young womem. Once women had only a few areas in which they could pursue a professional career. Teaching was one of thse areas. The school systen thus could pick from a very large recruitment pool. Today capable young women have many more opportunities.
Talented individuals who might have considered teaching are looking elsewhere where they can find higher pay and not have to contend with rude children.
One New Zealand observer believes that the school descipline problem is in part related to the feminist ideology. He writes, "For over twenty years in New Zealand what we now call "gender politics" has been driven by the demands for equality in both opportunity and outcome. The "girls can do anything" programme was shaped by this kind of thinking. Propaganda, television and film have consistently presented girls and women as the new elite or the new potential elite. On television it is difficult to find a programme where a man is not a duffer or a boy who is not immature or even a lout." [Bruce Logan, "Disciplining of Boys Key to Education, " Evening Post, Otago Daily Times, 5 August,1999] The authors are less sure that this is a major cause of the problem.
New Zealand's national character has not affoded great prestige to intelectual performance. In this New Zealand is similar to America. Pioneer societies in general appreciate the practical, the individual whose brawn carved out the wilderness. It is no accident that the most popular sports in New Zealand and America are the very physical sports of Rugby and American Football, respectively. For teenagers, especially boys, the peer group is of great importance and discipline involves loyalty to the group. The group is very often influenced by a kind of sub-culture that has grown up in New Zealand among young men. One has to be ‘cool’ and that means, far too often, loutish behavior. Far too many New Zealand boys view academic excelemce as "nerdy", an apelage to be avoided at all costs.
