Girls versus boys

Teaching methods tip the scale of success towards girls. This is one of the main reasons girls have been outperforming boys in all levels of the education system, educators have found.

Social and biological changes are also factors, according to educators Sunday Newsday interviewed on the trend of girls dominating the top spots in the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA), Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) Exams.

While stressing there were also top male students, former TT Unified Teachers Association president and retired principal Trevor Oliver admitted there were more girls in those top slots.

In primary and secondary schools, girls were generally more settled; less prone to restlessness; and were more likely to sit, listen and absorb what was being taught, he observed. Boys are more active and need greater stimuli to learn.

Therefore, he said teachers needed to find ways to “enrich” teaching and employ testing with a multi-faceted approach including discussions, oral presentations, and projects. “Some teachers have to make the curriculum more exciting. Boys like excitement: they like games; things to manipulate with their hands; build things; and so forth. “There are some girls who learn better in this way (also) just as there are boys who learn well with the current approach. It’s just that, generally, we have to make learning an interactive thing and more technology driven.”

Another educator agreed saying the system’s teaching method was geared more towards the learning style of girls. However, he said it was a problem that had not been officially acknowledged, though, from time to time, commentators had alluded to it. He thought it important for the country to engage researchers and ask them what was happening.

“A fundamental problem we have is that boys are disengaged in the classroom because of our teaching approaches – chalk and talk. Activities engage the attention of boys because boys are more tactile. They learn by doing, touching, moving.”

He said it was obvious that boys who seemed to be under-performing in traditional schools were capable of learning because many of them excelled in different learning environments such as the Youth Training and Employment Partnership Programme, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the National Energy Skills Centre.

Therefore, he said teachers had to adjust their teaching approaches to accommodate to boys’ learning style.

When this reporter noted that, over the decades, the education system’s teaching method had not changed much yet for years boys outperformed girls, he voiced several theories.

First of all, he said back in the day, not everyone went to secondary school and some were not even tested. Second, there was the problem of parental engagement. He said children were not, currently, being prepared for school in terms of self-control, limits of behaviour, following rules, and respect for those in authority.

“The education institution of the family, the home, the community, is not doing what it aught to be doing, what it used to do. When you have a breakdown of the fabric of the society – children are not being given that kind of discipline at home, in the communities, in the broader national context – they take that diminished social capital to school and it impacts on their ability to take advantage of the education opportunity.”

Third, he said young men no longer see the value of going to school and working hard because they look for other pathways to “success,” including crime. He said gangs were recruiting boys and they were making money from criminal activities so they see no need for hard work or sacrifice.

“Unless, as a society, we acknowledge those realities we would not do anything about it. We could continue to lament the situation but nothing would change. We can’t have gender imbalance either way. We need to do what is necessary to restore that sense of balance because many of our boys are becoming young men who are a burden to society. They can’t add value to their own lives or a decent contribution to the development and growth of society.”

Professor and researcher Dr Hollis Liverpool recalled a time in primary school when he got licks from a teacher because the girls had beaten the boys in “Exhibition” (which became Common Entrance and is now SEA). Then, in the 50s and 60s, he noted there were four open islands scholarships which were all for boys, and then there was a special girls’ scholarship.