From the Desk of Sally Knowles - Junior Preparatory Deputy Head
Understanding Boys
A few months ago, I came across an interesting quotation from the best-selling author Jennifer L. Armentrout. “I understand books,” she declared, but “I don’t understand boys!” Intrigued, I did a bit of digging and discovered that Armentrout is the author of a series of science fiction novels geared to girls and young women.
Reflecting on Armentrout’s self-confessed inability to understand boys, I came to see the way in which boys and young men are so often misrepresented. Think about it for a moment.  The media rarely features ‘good news’ stories depicting young males in a positive light. To quote from a recent Globe and Mail article:  “Teenage boys are one of the most maligned demographics in the human species.” 
 
Having worked in boys’ schools for almost two decades, I am puzzled by these misperceptions. Even more distressing is the lack of attention given to the chronic and systemic underperformance of boys in schools around the world.     
 
Whether he is growing up in Canada, the United States, the UK, Australia, or New Zealand, studies show that a boy is less likely than a girl to master core academic skills, to perform well on standardized tests, to graduate from high school, or to pursue his studies at the post-secondary level.  He is more likely to be disciplined for poor behaviour, to be diagnosed with a learning disability, or to be medicated for conditions such as ADHD.  A growing majority of the people graduating from universities in the Western world are women.
 
The situation is similar in the developing world. According to a recent UN study, educational systems in countries such as Thailand and the Philippines “are not meeting the basic requirements of boys.”  “Boys’ enrolment rates have declined. Many boys are leaving school early. Fewer are continuing on to higher levels of education.” To quote a group of Thai educators: “Boys are the group of students in the back of the room that don’t show much interest in learning, in contrast to the more attentive girls in the front rows.”
 
A particularly compelling analysis can be found in a report commissioned by PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment.  Drawing on 10 years’ worth of research involving half-a-million students in 65 different countries, it concludes that males are struggling in schools around the world. “Young men are significantly more likely than young women to have low levels of skills and poor academic achievement, and are more likely to leave school early, often with no qualifications,” the report states. “The sizeable number of boys who fail to make the grade in all three core PISA subjects is a major challenge for education systems.”
 
According to PISA, many boys simply don’t like school and fail to see its relevance. To quote: “Education systems in most countries appear to be unable to develop learning environments, pedagogical practices and curricula that relate to and engage the interests and dispositions of many teenage boys.” But there is hope. The research indicates that male students can do well and even flourish, as long as they are engaged through meaningful relationships and authentic learning experiences with ‘real world’ applications.”
 
So what does all of this mean for St. David’s?  The good news is that in our monastic school our students don’t underperform in shared assessments in comparison to their female counterparts.  In other words, our boys do as well as girls in independent schools. Many of our boys resist the tendency so pronounced in co-ed schools of opting out of programs such as art, creative writing, drama, music, public speaking, student leadership, debate, and service learning. Our students are engaged and achieving, despite the fact that they are boys!
 
But we are not resting on our laurels. Our aspiration is to become global players in the education of boys. In other words, when educators from around the world are looking for a school that really understands boys and has structured its programmes and instructional practices to meet their learning needs, we want St. David’s to be at the top of their list. In recent years, we been working incredibly hard, fine-tuning our instructional practices and developing new programs that will engage our boys even more fully, while providing additional opportunities for choice, deeper learning, and ‘real world’ applications. Inquiry-based learning in the Prep School; re-calibrated Grade 8 and 9 programmes; flipped classrooms; blended learning; renovated teaching spaces and redesigned time tables are all part of this exciting, innovative process.
 
But don’t get me wrong. We are not ‘dumbing down’ the curriculum; nor are we abandoning our commitment to core academic skills, such as numeracy and literacy. To the contrary, we are expecting more, not less, from our students. We are compelling them to dig deeper and to develop a variety of additional skills, ranging from critical thinking and problem solving through to collaboration and communication. By renewing our programs and instructional practices, we will do an even better job of preparing our boys for the challenges and opportunities of a complex and rapidly changing world—a world in which change is the only constant.
 
And here’s the bottom line. Unlike Jennifer Armentrout, we understand boys, we are active members of the International Boys School Coalition. Not only do we understand boys, but we actually like them, and we embrace them with all of their wonder, complexity, exuberance and potential. I don’t know about you, but I believe that boys can do almost anything—as long as they set their minds, their hearts and their souls to the task at hand.
 
We will continue to inspire them to become scholars, artists, designers, writers, entrepreneurs, explorers, musicians, actors, poets, physicians, activists, athletes and leaders, along with a long list of callings and professions that I’ve overlooked or that haven’t been invented yet.
 
We want our Marist boys to do well, but we also want them to do good. Whether they realize it or not, they are highly privileged. In comparison to most of humanity, they have been dealt an incredibly good hand in the great card game of life. Our collective responsibility is to put that privilege to good use, and to deploy it, not just to advance our own interests, but also to further the interests of our community and the world at large.
 
Our boys chart their own course in life, but must be taught to do it in such a way as to ensure that they are making a positive difference, and that they are always part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.