Somersfield Academy Sponsors Lecture on Male Apathy Towards Education

"Boys Adrift": Dr Leonard Sax with students and copies of his book

February 01, 2010 — It's Scrabble time in a classroom for high-achieving students.

As the board comes out, one 14-year-old boy says nervously: "I wish they didn't have glass doors on this classroom. I'd hate for anyone to walk by and see me playing Scrabble."

According to Dr. Leonard Sax, the American author of 'Boys Adrift', that comment is symbolic of a rising epidemic of male apathy towards education.

Dr. Sax, who has a background as a family physician and research pschologist, will be in Bermuda next week to give a lecture and workshop on solutions to address this problem. The lecture will be on February 8 at Somersfield Academy.

"In Ontario, Canada, in terms of writing proficiency, the gap between girls and boys is now larger than the gap between rich kids and poor kids. In many cases, we were comparing brothers and sisters in the same household."

He said until the 1960s immigrants in Canadian schools did less well than children raised in Canada. "That is no longer the case," he said.

Education experts have found a similar situation in England where newly arrived boys from South East Asia do better than Caucasian boys born in England on foundation skills assessment tests.

But he said in some countries the epidemic did not exist. "In places like China, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Korea, boys see nothing unmasculine about working hard to get a good grade," Dr. Sax said.

In contrast, in the United States, it was so uncool for boys to be intelligent, that Dr. Sax advised schools to take down the honour roll.

"Fifty years ago, being on the honour roll was a good thing," said Dr. Sax. "Now it is a badge of shame for boys. I know of one case where the honour roll was publically posted in the school and there was only one boy's name.

"He was so ashamed he stopped studying. He started misbehaving. He was doing everything in his power not to be on that list anymore."

In 'Boys Adrift' Dr. Sax named five factors for the epidemic including video games, teaching methods, prescription drugs, endocrine disruptors, and devaluation of masculinity.

He said one of the biggest things sapping boys' will to study were video games. "Social networking sites, and texting are more of an issue with the girls," he said.

Dr. Sax said while most people over 40 have never heard of a video game called 'Call of Duty Modern Warfare', it's known in every classroom.

This first-person shooter game was the top selling video game world-wide in 2007 reaching more than seven million copies by January 2008, and more than 13 million by May 2009.

"Parents don't realise how incredibly good these games are," Dr. Sax said. "The technology has become so advanced. We grew up with Pacman and Space Invaders. Those games were silly and not particularly engrossing or addictive."

But he said today's games tap into boys' innate desire to be heroes.

"These games give a false sense of accomplishment," said Dr. Sax. "I have spoken to so many boys. Their parents are frustrated because the sons are staying up past midnight to play the latest game, when they have a French language examination the next day, or a maths test or an essay due."

But the boy is more concerned with getting to the next level of his game.

"This is a generational divide," said Dr. Sax. "Many people over 40 assume that accomplishment in the real world is more important than accomplishment in the virtual world. For people under 30, that does not always hold."

Dr. Sax urged parents to take control of their children's video game usage.

"Many parents don't know where to begin," he said. "But the parent must be in charge. You must know what games your son is playing and how much time he spends on them. With your girls, you need to know what sites your daughter is visiting."

He said sometimes parents don't feel comfortable with using technology, so they don't feel comfortable regulating it. "The computer should be in a public space," Dr. Sax advised.

He said many children, especially girls, were up past midnight on their computers. When the parent knocked on the door, they simply switched over the page to make it look like they were doing their homework.

"You must take the cell phone and charger away at 10 p.m.," said Dr. Sax. "At that point it stays in the parents' room. The child can retrieve it at 6 a.m. the next morning."

Dr. Sax also blamed certain environmental factors for increasing male apapthy including exposure to a chemical called Bisphenol-A, commonly found in plastics.

He is in the process of writing a scholarly paper about the possibly emasculating effects of Bisphenol-A.

"Environmental estrogens from plastic bottles and food sources may be lowering boys' testosterone levels, making their bones more brittle and throwing their endocrine systems out of whack," said Dr. Sax.

He thought that the overuse of medication for attention defiict disorders could also be causing irreversible damage to the motivational centers in boys' brains.

Although he will not be talking about it in his lecture on Monday, Dr. Sax is a big proponent of single sex education. He founded the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE).

"Picture a group of girls playing dodge ball," he said. "They are doing well and being quite aggressive.

"As soon as you bring in the boys to the game, now it is the boys who are wrestling for the ball. Now the girls cease to play competitively and disengage."

But he said you couldn't just one day switch to a single-sex classroom.

"If you don't have training for the teachers it can be a disaster," he said. "Girl dynamics have a lot of drama going on. You have to understand how to bring those girls together and prevent the cliques."

He said there were various strategies that could promote harmony in a single-sex classroom.

"You would need at least a year to prepare," he said. "You need to educate your teachers and inform parents and students."

Dr. Sax has travelled the world making presentations on education. He has visited over 300 schools.

He has also written several other books including one about girls called 'Girls on the Edge'. His most famous book is probably 'Why Gender Matters' which looks at gender differences in boys and girls and what it means for the way they learn.

He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania with his wife and three-year-old daughter.

For more information go to his website at www.leonardsax.com or www.boysadrift.com .

The lecture next Monday 8 will be from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Somersfield Academy. It is free. It is being sponsored by Somersfield Academy.

Originally published in The Royal Gazette