Boys do better than girls when taught under traditional reading methods

"whole word" vs "phonics"....this debate has been going on for some time. The notion that boys learn best by phonics has been a commonly held belief by most homeschoolers. However, the schools use "whole word" curriculum because that is what they purchase based on their ongoing relationship with the companies that make and sell curricula. It is self-benefiting for curricula companies to have political influence and why they lobby heavily in Washington DC and are huge campaign contributors. The George Bush family has a three generation relationship with curricula and testing giant McGraw-Hill and then guess what , Pres George Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act which requires EVERY public school in the US to test children. Guess which companies benefit from designing the tests and the curriculum that goes along with it? you guessed it, companies like McGraw-Hill, who happen to be good friends of the Bush family.

Even when Pres Clinton was in office he tried to influence curricula and how History books portrayed Democratic presidents.

The old phrase holds true..."the hand that rocks the cradle controls the world". The politicians realize that kids spend an enormous amount of time at school, and if they can influence your kids there, chances are they can steer your children any direction they like.

The best way to break up political influence over how schools teach is to always support local control of schools and fend off any ideas of "national curriculum" or any such things that would have decisions made in the white house or on a federal level compared to a local level. Support charter schools and liberal homeschooling laws that take the government out of the education process. Charter Schools and local decision making allows for the parents (the consumers of education) to influence and decide what methods they want to see in the schools.

I have so much more I could write about this, but I have to go....

However, I will end by saying that I would love to see the Department of Education go out of business like the US Post Office seems to be doing. The US Department of Education is corrupt, IMO.

Essentially I agree with everything you say. I believe we the citizens have the right to teach our values to our children. I also believe that local control results in a better reflection of local values. Washington's values are not everything they're cracked to be. Free people have the right to decide their own values and to live by those values. If Washington DC dictates or mandates our values, we are not truly a free people. The most important rights a human being has are the right to life and the right to decide and live by his or her own values.

If you are now learning about how reading might be gender biased towards girls, then I hate tell you about the new math being taught......

look up fuzzy math (aka "discovery math") which millions of dollars has been spent on the federal level to bring this to our public schools. Girls excel at it. It is all about explanation not algorithms. Basically the more you can explain your answers the better you do. If you cannot explain your answer to a reader in correct sentences and proper paragraph formation then it does not matter if you arrived at the correct answer. Wrong computations do not deduct from your score, but poor writing skills do. Our curricula and testing is now based on this "math".

They also teach this math in a "spiral cycle" as according to our educational "experts" students do not have to master one math skill to move on to the next. They lightly teach one skill and then quickly move on to the next and then later re-introduce past skills. The "theory" is that peripheral exposure to math skills over and over is better than one-time deep exposure (and mastery) before moving on. They also rely on "peer teaching" which is based on communication skills and promoting students to talk and work in groups and basically teach each other. Now in elementary schools desks face towards each other (groups of 4 to 6) to promote this social learning environment (geered more towards the social habits of girls). They are even considering testing math as a "group test" as they put such an importance on communicating.

Since they have introduced this new new math in the USA, for the first time girls are appearing to do better at math than boys. Yet girls cannot compete globally in math related fields against people who have been taught traditional math.

And how are they "helping" boys??? Well since boys are not doing so well with this language and communication based math, the educational "experts" are coming to the rescue by giving the boys more indoctrination into fuzzy math. In my local schools money was received by generous donors concerned about education. With this money they hired tutors to come in at recess. The students with low math scores (boys) were held in at recess so they could work on their sentence and paragraph structure which would then improve their "math" score. (and the restlessness they got from missing recess probably got them an ADD diagnosis. /s)

This new math is one more indication that school scores are based on ability to follow directions and complete assigned tasks, but have very little to do with mastery of academic skills and this is why girls are getting higher scores compared to boys.

That is truly terrifying Kris. One must wonder what the future of engineering and physics will look like with that kind of math at the helm. I can assure you I wouldn't want to live in a building built on fuzzy math.

Teaching methods and schools.....

There is alot of emphasis placed on studies showing how children learn and how they should be taught. I personally take it all with a grain of salt. If you have a child, the only method you care about is what works for your child.

When I started teaching my first son to read I was prepared to use the phonics method (commonly held belief that phonics is best method for boys) however as my son asked more questions, and was catching on, it was quite apparent the he was a "whole word" learner, so I went with that and in a few weeks he was reading simple familiar books at 3 years old, and could read fairly independent by age 4.

My other son struggled a bit and I used both methods as it was difficult to tell what worked, I had to back off and wait until he was ready, which was more at 5 years old. he also has a low attention span and his progress in reading is slow. I could only teach reading when he was in a receptive mood, provide a reward or use some type of game. (Instead of "paint by numbers", I used to make "paint by phonics").

One reason why it is sometimes hard to tell what method is working and/or why school prefer "whole word" compared to "phonics" is that "whole word" methods can be done more independently and "phonics" takes alot of one-on-one time with each child, and I don't think teachers have that much individual time to give to each student.

Also usually companies that make and sell curricula are behind all these studies. Everytime they can convince educators on a new method of teaching (usually done at the federal level as the heads of curricula companies also sit on the president's board of education), they then sell the new method to the US department of education and they make millions in profits as all school districts across the US purchase new books and new teaching supplies. Teachers attend seminars (usually taught by the curricula companies for a fee) about the new teaching methods. it is incredible how about every ten years old methods are dumped and millions of dollars are poured into new methods. This is a huge expense and there are huge profits to be made by these companies and why they spend so much time in Washington DC trying to influence the federal government on new teaching methods (and new testing methods as well, as everything that is tested must be taught to fit the test.)**

With all the new technology such as internet, recording devices, information sharing, ability to download textbooks, etc.; the price for curriculum and teaching should be a fraction of what it was 20 years ago; but have the schools cut their spending budget?....No!. They keep asking for more and more money. Why aren't consumers asking about the price of education? That is just one reason why I say the US Department of Education is corrupt. They keep taking more and more money for a service that should be costing less and less.

** It is Testing/curricula giant McGRaw-Hill (good friends of former Pres Bush) who, while Bush was president, lobbied for preschoolers to be tested across the US! Millions was spent for McGraw Hill to develop the test. Now remember preschoolers cannot read. Each prescholloer had to be tested alone with his/her teacher. What a waste. Please do not ever be fooled by any proposition of adding preschool to the US K-12 educational system. The US educational System needs to be scaled back, not given more control!

As a future math teacher, the arrival of "fuzzy math" infuriates me. It is not fair to take a subject like math, something which can stand almost completely free of language, and make language abilities a requirement. It's incredible how much they do when girls lag behind, but when boys are lagging, .... *tumbleweed rolls by*

Now they're trying to take the subjects boys tend to be better at, and feminize them. I have an idea, why don't we do the reverse? Let's make it so every book read in English class comes with math questions about what happens in the book that have to be figured out. It makes about as much sense as fuzzy math.

I wouldn't want to live in a house based on fuzzy math either!

Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!