I believe the perceived gender bias has less to do with maturity and more to do with active vs passive teaching. Boys tend to be active learners. As long as we continue to push this “test to learn” approach to education and rely upon worksheets, boys will have difficulty at the elementary level. Please do not get me wrong. Rocky Hill Elementary is a quality school. I have been an active parent there for 14 years and given numerous volunteer hours. I support our school.
Our society has an issue with men right now. It is unfortunate and wrong but sensationalism and fear has made it difficult for men to work with children. The harmful results can be seen in the faculty at Rocky Hill Elementary: http://rockyhilles.knoxschools.org/modules/tt/staffList/staffListSimplified.phtml
One regular ed male teacher to 32 fremale teachers. The ratio changes to 3m:38f if we include special areas. Jordan Haney is an exceptional teacher and highly sought after by the students. I can’t help but wonder how having more male teachers in the earlier grades would improve the boy students’ engagement to education. And ultimately we are not talking about maturity or bias but student engagement. An engaged student is a learning student. I recently saw someone’s story about being told their child should be on Ritalin. Their response to the teacher? “Have you tried being more interesting.” It’s a good point.
Ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius once said, “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; and involve me and I’ll understand.”
“Active vs Passive learning” http://www.units.miamioh.edu/celt/events/docs/CFLING/active%20vs%20passive.pdf
“the student/chaperone ratio is so high” If the school would return to inviting parent chaperons on the trip, this would be less of a problem.
“A study on gender disparities in elementary-school performance found that boys received lower grades than girls, even when their test scores were equal to or higher than the girls’” Read more: Do Teachers Really Discriminate Against Boys? | TIME.com http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/06/do-teachers-really-discriminate-against-boys/
(same study as above…different article with more info)
“New research from the University of Georgia and Columbia University published in the current issue of Journal of Human Resources suggests that it’s because of their classroom behavior, which may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades than their male counterparts.” Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-girls-school.html
