The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do

This is an eye oppening look at how our educational system cheats boys out of the love of learning. I highly recommend it.

Peg Tyre's is a serious book which points out undeniable problems facing both boys and girls in contemporary American pre-schools, K-12 classes, and colleges as well. As has already been pointed out, she's done all parents who've felt just their own sons were having trouble in schools these days a real service. Emphasizing the unconscious, largely boy-unfriendly assumptions governing everything from the touchy-feely curriculum to the abolition of recess, she's provided evidence for needed change - if boys, as well as girls, are to succeed - that is unanswerable.

At the same time, I think her case is seriously undermined by her insufficient attention to the all-important role of the home and the society in shaping children BEFORE they attend any sort of school. She does speak favorably of the good old days when parents exercised a "laissez-faire" attitude toward afterschool play and children were free to carry on as they might. And what she correctly sees today, on the contrary, is excessive micromanagement by parents as manifested by play-dates and a push toward merely academic success at far too early an age. What I think she misses, however, is central, the new sort of laissez-faire marking contemporary parenting, the decision that children, boys especially, should be allowed to grow naturally, like plants, without any pruning or shaping, lest they be repressed by authority. Watch the little dears running through supermarkets, department stores, and restaurants with their playground voices at full volume and with nary a parental reprimand, and you'll get the idea. I read Peg Tyre as a devotee, since she quotes him, of what might be called the "Philip Roth School Of Early Education," a kind of stale compendium of leftover 60's cliches which privileges the liberation of natural impulse over the creative action of loving parents in shaping naturally rude, boisterous children into potentially civilized human beings - in other words, creating children already socialized to learn BEORE they enter any school.
Tyre quotes Roth at length:
"what boys like me needed to learn was not only how to express themselves with precision and acquire a more discerning response to words, but how to be rambunctious without being stupid, how not to be too well concealed or too well behaved, how to begin to release the masculine intensities from the institutional rectitude that intimidated the bright kids the most." While this may have been true of what Philip Roth needed, were he a goody-goody "model boy" of the old school, I question whether any instruction in rambunctiousness or release of masculine intensities from ...institutional rectitude, other than the blowing off of steam provided by recess, is what members of the current crop of boys need. Raised "naturally" as so many of them have been, they'd sooner kick a kindergarden teacher in the shins when thwarted than be intimitidated by her. Clearly, the merely "natural" child is not yet fit for education.

In short, a sentimental view of the nature of children and an ignoring of the civilizing essentials that parents should provide them with weakens Tyre's otherwise impressive book.

This is a must read for all parents of boys. My friend who only has daughters even found it informative and very interesting, as it talks alot about the public school system and the changes that have occurred over the years and why they have happened as they have.
If you do have a son in school who is having ANY TYPE OF problem, you will feel better and more hopeful after the first few chapters.

As an experienced male elementary public-school teacher, I find this book outstanding, even if I disagree with some of it. Instead of repeating other reviewers, let's elaborate on some specific issues. To begin with, Tyre professes objectivity, and denies having any agenda (p. 13). She categorically rejects the notion that concerns about boys are a form of anti-feminism, or some kind of backlash against female successes.

Boys in general, not only poor and minority ones, undergo learning difficulties, and the problem has only gotten progressively worse in recent decades. The wealthy Wilmette Public School system, of suburban Chicago, is presented as a model of a school system that systematically investigated and remedied the unique problems of males.

Tyre is at times an iconoclast. She sees boys' playing with finger-guns as normal. She questions the high frequency of ADHD diagnoses, but doesn't go as far as suggesting that ADHD is nonexistent (p. 110). She deplores the replacement of traditional play-centered pre-K and K curriculum with academics, and other manifestations of the cram-school phenomenon. She doesn't believe that children, especially boys, are sufficiently developed for academics before 1st grade, and contends that children in play-based classes catch up with their academic-based counterparts by third grade (pp. 74-75).

Tyre is a strong advocate of phonics-based learning-to-read over the look-say method. Manipulatives should be emphasized. She recounts an experiment wherein the children were allowed to use magnetic letters which they could rearrange to make new sounds (p. 147). The children came out well ahead of grade level in reading and spelling. Astonishingly, the boys did better than the girls in this female stronghold.

Are little boys really more physically active than little girls, or is this a culturally-based perception? Attached sensors demonstrate that boys are, on average, more active than girls, but the difference in averages is not great. The extremes, however, are prominent. The most active individuals in class are almost always boys, and the least active ones are usually girls. (p. 68). This is largely hormonal. For instance, pregnant women with high testosterone levels are likely to give birth to girls that are tomboys.

Besides unfailingly providing rough-and-noisy recess, schools should allow boys to move around, and to stand at their desks, when they wish, instead of sitting all the time. Oversize pencils should be given to those with graphomotor challenges. Various other boy-friendly strategies are mentioned. These include providing mentors to boys, encouraging boys to do mathematical studies of sports players, letting boys solve math problems with classwide card games (p. 215), welcoming stories and writing that have grandiose, goofy, gory, and good-vs.-bad-guy themes, etc.

Tyre doesn't think that advances in the study of brain neurology translate into a direct understanding of the learning process. For instance, an increase of blood flow into a certain area of the brain can be interpreted in different ways. She recounts the onetime misunderstanding of brain function related to "left brain" and "right brain" activities.

Boys having male teachers don't generally do better than those with female ones. Also, Tyre doesn't think that, in general, all-male schools are superior for boys. However, boys in such schools appear to feel freer to pursue "feminine" activities such as art, music, etc.

Teacher attitudes and expectations count a lot. Tyre concludes: "Teachers who express hostility toward the natural way in which little boys express themselves--even if it is sometimes noisy, noncompliant, quirky, rambunctious, aggressive, and, yes, a little irritating--should be removed from classrooms (and if possible from the profession). To teach children, you have to love what they are. And teaching little boys is part of the job." (p. 284). Strong words!

The book ends with a list of references to professional journals and websites which illustrate and support her main points. These can be used for further study.

Peg Tyre has written a revealing and somewhat alarming book on the condition of boys in our schools and society. The Trouble With Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School and What Parents and Educators Can Do is insightful. Quite simply, in society's rush in the 1980s and 1990s to support our girls both socially and educationally we have apparently put the boys at a disadvantage.

Among the many points Tyre makes, boys mature on a variety of scales later than girls. In our rush to improve standardized test grades, activities such as recess have been virtually cut from the daily school activities. Boys are genetically designed to run, throw, explore, and test their abilities. In modern America, this has normally been achieved through physical play some of which occurred at school. Among other things, this allowed the boys to burn off that abundant energy. In our current educational environment the morning and afternoon recesses have been scrapped so that additional study time could be found. The normal physical play at lunch has also been eliminated in most schools. This one factor has aggravated boys' natural restlessness and caused problems with their ability to pay attention. Our response has been to drug them. Insane!

But Peg Tyre also points out that male educators are in woefully short supply as teachers during the elementary grades. Boys may lack positive male role models in their personal lives due to the national plague of absentee fathers and this is aggravated when male role models are missing at school.

Peg Tyre isn't the only game in town on this subject though her book is quite good. If you're interested in additional materials on the plight of boys, checkout the following:

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Leonard Sax
Bring Up Boys by James C. Dobson
The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life by Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens

Also, if you want information what little boys used to be interested in read The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden.

An editorial point. This is an intelligent country in which most teachers and principals are dedicated to the proper education of their students. Certainly we can find a way to meet the needs of both boys and girls without short changing anyone.

Peace always.