Plan B Forum

Women teachers are holding back boys by reprimanding them for typically male behaviour, according to a study out today.

They are reinforcing stereotypes that boys are ‘silly’ in class, refuse to ‘sit nicely like the girls’ and are more likely to indulge in ‘schoolboy pranks’.

Women teachers may also unwittingly perpetuate low expectations of boys’ academic achievement and encourage girls to work harder by letting them think they are cleverer.


Schools should avoid dividing pupils into ability groups because the practice often results in girls dominating the higher-achieving tables, concluded the Kent University research.

The study of primary schools in the county suggests that under-performance among boys in most national exams could be linked to lower expectations.

The research mainly implicates women teachers, since nearly 90 per cent of primary school teachers are female. It warned that school staff find boys’ play, such as wielding toy guns, ‘particularly challenging and difficult’.

Boys are punished and urged to conform to a more feminine style of play instead of being taught how to play responsibly with their preferred toys.

Bonny Hartley, the study’s lead author, said: ‘By seven or eight years old, children of both genders believe that boys are less focused, able, and successful than girls – and think that adults endorse this stereotype. There are signs that these expectations have the potential to become self-fulfilling in influencing children’s actual conduct and achievement.’

Girls as young as four think they are cleverer, try harder and are better behaved than equivalent boys, her study found.

By the age of seven and eight, boys also believe that their female classmates are more likely have these qualities.

For the study, 238 children aged four to ten were presented with a series of scenarios such as ‘this child is really clever’ and ‘this child always finishes their work’.

They were then asked to point to a picture of a boy or a girl to say which they thought was being talked about.

The findings show that from the first year of school girls said their sex was more likely to record better conduct and achievement.

From the age of eight, boys were also more likely to say that girls had better performance, motivation and effort, self-control and conduct.

In the second part of the study – being presented today at the British Educational Research Association annual conference at Warwick University – the children were asked if adults believed boys or girls were cleverer and better behaved.

From an early age, girls believe grown-ups think girls have better conduct and achievement.

Boys develop the same beliefs around the age of eight.

The study drew no distinction between the beliefs and classroom practices of male and female teachers.

Further research by the same team will consider the specific gender stereotypes held by teachers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... sroom.html

Scooter wrote:What is this "typical male behaviour" for which boys are being inappropriately reprimanded?

It warned that school staff find boys’ play, such as wielding toy guns, ‘particularly challenging and difficult’.

The Hen wrote:M'eh. Live with it. I believe we are just coming out of a few hundred centuries of chauvinistic behaviour. Tis time for a little 'right'-siding.

Joe Guy wrote:
They had too many women teachers when they were growing up.

Guinevere wrote:

The Hen wrote:M'eh. Live with it. I believe we are just coming out of a few hundred centuries of chauvinistic behaviour. Tis time for a little 'right'-siding.

What Hen said.

<insert BigRR comment about reverse gender discrimination here>

we have far to go in how we recognize and respect differences, yet still treat everyone with equal rights and equal dignity.