Julian E. Barnes at the Wall Street Journal reports that Robert Gates—Secretary of Defense and a former Eagle Scout himself—spoke to more than 45,000 Scouts at the Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort AP Hill — just outside Washington, D.C.–the other day. Quoting Walter Lippman, Gates said he sees daily “the disaster of the character of [...]
Leanne Italie at AP reports on some proposed solutions to the problem of boys not reading. The problem: Boys have lagged behind girls in reading achievement for more than 20 years, but the gender gap now exists in nearly every state and has widened to mammoth proportions — as much as 10 percentage points in [...]
Sharon Cohen reports for AP about Urban Prep, an all-boys charter school in Chicago. There are many things that make Urban Prep different, but perhaps the most important one is that 100% of its first graduation class is headed to college. Along the way, boys’ lives have been changed — and very possibly saved. Urban [...]
Here’s something that you may not have noticed is missing from American curricula: military history. I’m reminded of this by Jonathan Last’s piece in the Wall Street Journal discussing the long-time popularity of war strategy games among men and boys. Historian and Harvard prof Niall Ferguson has been working with the makers of the very [...]
Coming to schools in Britain– and with any luck to a politically-correct schoolyard near you– is the revival of competitive games. The aim, according to the UK’s Daily Mail, is to “turn Britain back into a nation of sporting champions.” But, as the article points out, it’s also a move away from the PC idea [...]
RiShawn Biddle, who’s published widely on education issues, has a piece in the American Spectator that gives a troubling account of the lack of reading ability of kids today. Much of what Biddle says has been said by others in other places. Yet, having so many stats assembled in one essay gives a clear and [...]
The NYT had a piece yesterday that looked at the gender gap in the kindergarten gifted programs in New York City. If you guessed that the girls outnumber the boys you are correct. The article looks at some possible reasons for the imbalance. Bias in the tests that determine eligibility for the program, the observation [...]
No Child Left Behind requires that schools report student test scores by subgroup. This reporting requirement was intended to prevent schools from publishing only school-average scores while hiding the lack of learning in subgroups: race, ethnicity, socioeconomic group, special needs, and English-language learners. Richard Whitmore at Why Boys Fail asks why gender isn’t one of [...]
Jay Mathews makes a candid confession at Class Struggle: He didn’t think there there was much to the claim that schools are short-changing boys, but reading Richard Whitmire’s new book changed his mind. Mathews is a breath of fresh air compared to Wellesley College’s Susan McGee Bailey, who argues stubbornly that this is not a [...]