Boys Have Problems in School, Too

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Recently, there has been recognition that boys, particularly African American and Latino boys, have increased problems in schools. In elementary school, boys are more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and assigned to special education, are more likely to be suspended for behavior problems, and regularly score lower on standardized tests (Gurian & Stevens, 2005). In high school, boys drop out more and are more likely to be involved in serious disciplinary cases. Over 80 percent of violence in schools is initiated by boys (Flood, 2000). The excellent work of the Children’s Defense Fund (2007) on the “cradle to prison pipeline” notes the increased incarceration of young men.

One reality is that with the dramatic changes in family structure, more and more single-parent families are headed by women and young boys in these families have fewer males to teach them appropriate, mature male behavior (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006). Increasing numbers of young boys bring disruptive and potentially violent behaviors to school. Schools, with few male teachers in the elementary grades, have difficulty dealing with this behavior (King & Gurian, 2006).

A special task force in the state of Maryland examined the particular crisis in school behavior and success of African American boys and recommended, among other ideas, single-gender classrooms in some schools (Task Force on the Education of Maryland’s African-America Males, 2006).

We know from studies of incarceration and studies of working-class life that young women are being far more successful in avoiding incarceration and developing a professional life than are young men (Schmalleger & Bartollas, 2008). In a rapidly changing and globalizing economy, young women are being more successful than are young men (Weis, 2004).

A particular concern has been voiced about the destructive impact on African American children, particularly boys, of common public school practices such as negating children’s home cultures and using biased assessment methods, usually carried out in elementary schools by female European American teachers. Researchers King, Foster, Ladson-Billings, and others have documented several basic issues facing African American girls and boys in classrooms in Teaching Diverse Populations: Formulating a Knowledge Base (Hollins, King, & Hayman, 1994b). They have suggested characteristics and tendencies in the African American culture that teachers can use as background information to reduce the cultural conflicts in the classroom and to improve student achievement. The excellent work Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities (Leadbeater & Way, 1996) offers a needed balance to the earlier limited research.

The predominantly European American teaching profession needs such research to begin to understand the diverse classroom roles of girls and boys within specific cultures. For example, young Latinas who succeed often have supportive parents, particularly mothers (Gándara, 1995). These insights support the importance of schools offering programs to develop parental support for pursuing education and for attending college (Gándara, 1995; Ginorio & Huston, 2001). One persistent social myth is that women do most of the work in the home and men do most of the work outside the home. Amott and Matthaei (1991) provide a multicultural history of how farm and working-class women have labored for wages in increasing numbers since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the Unites States in the 1840s. The great historical and social events of the 20th century—the Great Depression (1929–1939), the shift from a rural to an urban society, the worker shortages caused by World War II—brought even more women into the paid labor force. More recently, the economic stagnation that began in the 1970s has produced a dramatic increase in the number of middle-class women entering the paid workforce (see Figure ). Although more than 50 percent of all women of color have been in the paid labor force since the 1950s, since the 1970s more than 50 percent of all women over age 16 have worked for wages (Amott & Matthaei, 1991). According to the AFL–CIO (2002):