Summary Paper over Getting Real in the Classroom by Ellen Goodman - Essay Example

Getting real in the room is an article dealing with the issue, which, as it turns out, has been disturbing the American society during the latest six years. It is the so called “boy crisis”. Numerous studies have shown that boys tend to fall behind the girls in academic study. Goodman reports that the issue became of concern six years ago after Christian Hoff Sommers’s publication of “The War Against Boys” (I wonder, who declared that “war” – teachers?). Since then everybody has been preoccupied discussing this vital problem: physiologists and sociologist, scholars and ideologues.

As Goodman puts it, they offered “a horror story” of the boys academic fall, presenting various incontestable evidences. Actually, the problem is that boys fall behind girls. This has given ground for discussion of the issue from the prospective of feminism and sexism, brain studies and genetic biology, all of them proving that something is wrong with males in this country. As a result Doug Anglin, a senior from Milton High School in Massachusetts, even filed a lawsuit against sex discrimination in the whole system.

Goodman does not agree with Anglin’s claim. The author of this paper supports him with both hands. It is a well known fact that boys face problems in learning, while it is against their nature to sit still listening carefully and following all the teacher’s demands. Females are too timid to violate rules. Males often abandon some subject for the sake of their special individual interests. For instance, some of my male classmates were interested in electronics and cars, others in politics, history or physics, and those interests were pursued instead of learning the academic program.

As the result, when graduating males usually possess knowledge making them specialists in some field and enabling them to earn money, while females can do almost nothing but fulfill teachers’ and academic requirements. Teachers often curse their male students instead of paying special attention to their personalities. Perhaps, the problem is not in students, but in grown-ups teaching them. In respond to all the disturbing studies, Washington carried out a crisis intervention claiming that, in fact, those are not boys who are doing worse, but girls who are doing better.

The boys have shown better results recently. The report also informed that girls tend to score higher in reading and writing, while boys are better in math and science. Yet, Goodman finds danger in these facts. Girls close their math gap faster than boys close their writing gap, worries Goodman. The question is, whether you have heard of many female mathematical geniuses. Goodman continues showing the consequences of “boy crisis”: 57 percent of those who get the bachelor’s degree are female students, 100 white males graduate for every 104 white females, and only 100 black males graduate for every 139 black females.

There are two things to be argued against these figures. First of all, it is necessary to remember that the number of females has always tended to overcome the number of males. What was the proportion of females vs. males in your class? In my school most of classes had more girls than boys. It is a norm. Further, Sara Mead fairly noted the SES side of the issue: males from poor districts and minorities have to earn their living. Hispanics and African Americans are the two groups in this category.

Goodman fears that being smart is not considered to be masculine. But who said that better academic scores serve as the evidence of being smart? Those are still males who move the science and technologies ahead; those are males who are developing management and business. To be smart doesn’t mean to sit still and learn everything you are demanded. It is something about inventiveness and keenness. Our system does need a more individual approach to students, but this approach doesn’t suggest stuffing male students with universal knowledge.

The article is really very controversial. On the one hand, the author highlights the major points of the “boy crisis”. On the other one, it is difficult to agree with Goodman’s attempts to find the way out of “boy crisis”. Boys have always been more “focused”. Their academic scores suffer for their individual interests. Besides, many of males have to earn their living. Boys do differ from girls, whatever science says. Otherwise God wouldn’t have created two sexes. The Creator must have had something on mind.

So why should we worry?