A Brief Review of
Why Boys Fail:
Saving Our Sons from an Educational System
That’s Leaving Them Behind.
Richard Whitmire.
Hardback: AMA.com, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]
Reviewed by Michelle Van Loon.
Most of us relax into “conventional wisdom” about the way the world works until someone comes along and yanks us out of the metaphorical mental easy chair. Author Richard Whitmire has confronted the conventional wisdom that boys have all the advantages in the classroom with a yank meant to jolt educators and parents into re-thinking their assumptions.
Whitmire, an education writer with an solid resume, marshaled an impressive amount of research to support the central thesis of his book: “The world has gotten more verbal, boys haven’t”. Whether it is an early focus on reading or writing or a shift in math instruction from crunching numbers to solving word problems, Whitmire insists that current instructional trends heavily favor female students.
This controversial and very non-PC conclusion is certain to rattle some cages.
“….(there are) dramatic gender imbalances unfolding on most college campuses, many of which hover near a 60-40 balance favoring women on graduation day….men are both likely to enroll and more likely to drop out before earning degrees. The journey to find the answer to the question of why this is happening began more than a decade ago when, like every other education reporter at the time, I bought into the reports that schools were treating girls unfairly, shunting them aside in favor of aggressive boys thrusting their arms in the air to answer teachers’ questions…by hindsight, we now know that research was flawed. I was wrong to write those stories.”
Why Boys Fail is Whitmire’s carefully-crafted attempt to right that wrong. The book not only presents and dissects current research and stats, it takes readers to visit innovative programs that have found solutions that reverse the current trends. A few techniques used by educators in these programs may be simple for motivated classroom teachers to adopt, such as committing to hunt down action-oriented books designed to appeal to boys, but most of the programs he profiled require commitment from administrative higher-ups.
Those higher-ups may prove to be the most resistant to the conclusions in this book. Many have bought into the “boys have all the academic advantages” paradigm, and have shaped education to fit the paradigm. But, according to Whitmire, this paradigm hasn’t been reality for more than twenty years. Whitmire, the father of two daughters, believes that both boys and girls can succeed – but not without shattering those old paradigms.
Why Boys Fail is certain to provoke lots of discussion among educators and parents. It is a worthwhile read if you are willing to be yanked into this necessary conversation.
——
Michelle Van Loon is the author of two books on the parables of Jesus, and blogs at Theparablelife.blogspot.com.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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