Girls Chase Boys

The most important thing I learned in from the presentation was the vast difference between the way genders learn. Now, it all seems so obvious.  Of course boys and girls are different.  We’re different in more ways than just learning, so of course learning would be apart of it.  Its not that I didn’t know, and more that I didn’t think about it before.  It just wasn’t a topic that came into my head.  It had never crossed my mind that boys might learn different than girls, especially at a young age.  It makes sense of course, thinking back to my grade school days when boys would get distracted halfway through presentations and begin throwing things, while girls were (not always) focused on what was in front of them.

When I think about girls and boys in an educational atmosphere, I think of girls in groups talking about what they read, and boys as talking about what they did.  As a child, I remember only two classmates who were boys (twins) who read frequently- so frequently that they were rarely paying attention to the lecture, their noses dug into Animorphs, Harry Potter, and anything else that passed through our small library.  The problem was that these two boys were ridiculed for it.  The idea that they would rather be reading than playing at recess or enjoying in free time activities was something that we, as a class, were unable to get over.  I wouldn’t say that I made fun of them; I was part of a group of slightly nerdy girls.  We read a lot and played games based on what we had read.  I did think it was odd how much the Viacillo twins read, but I didn’t hold it against them in the way that my classmates did.  They were ostracized from the other boys and were given even fewer opportunities to participate in recess activities, which made them read more, which in turn led to more bullying, thus perpetuating the cycle.  I would say something about the girls ostracizing them, but in third grade girls and boys at my school just didn’t play with each other, and the Viacillo twins had somewhat less than perfect hygene.  Other than that, I can’t remember any reason why we (the girls) didn’t play with them.  It was actually just because they smelled bad.  Really bad.

I imagine now that single gender schools would benefit from same sex teachers, at least in subjects such as History, English, and science, where deep focus on literature and reading is emphasized.