Time to tackle boys’ problems

Congratulations are certainly in order for Danielle Stewart, who got the highest scores in the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination. Danielle’s school, St Gabriel’s RC, must also be commended for grooming eight students who placed in the SEA’s top 100. Out of that 100, the girls outperformed the boys, with only 23 males placing in the top 100. This has been the norm now, not only at SEA, but at the CXC and tertiary levels. And it is high time that the education experts begin to take action to deal with this problem. There are, of course, those who will question why this gender disparity is a problem now, and not when boys used to outperform girls. The answer lies in two aspects of human nature.

The first aspect is that women tend to choose as mates men who are equal or superior to them in status. That is, the average woman prefers a romantic partner who has the same or higher educational level and earning power. There are exceptions, of course, but this is a general truth about women. The second aspect is that men are more prone to violence than women, and the most violent men are those with low status in society - i.e. those with little or no education and, as a result, low earning capacity. The poor performance of males in schools is reflected in the labour force statistics. Although there is a 75 percent male participation rate in the labour force, as compared to a 47 percent female participation rate, the percentage of women in higher-paying jobs is greater. In construction, agriculture, craft, and elementary occupations, men are in the majority.

But women outnumber men in the fields of service workers, clerks, and technicians and professionals. Only at the highest level (legislators, senior officers, and managers) do men hold a slight majority. These figures suggest what gives rise to the myth that there are three women to every one man in Trinidad and Tobago. The statistics show that the ratio between men and women is, in fact, pretty much 50-50. But, if we judge by income, there are fewer eligible men than women in the population. Why is this a problem? Because many of the violent crimes that males commit have to do with trying to get status, since without status a man finds it difficult to get a mate. This is a primal drive of human nature.

So a definite programme to raise boys’ educational performance could help reduce the crime situation in the long run. But, for this to happen, changes in the curricula and teaching methods will have to be put in force. It is quite possible, for example, that the poor showing of boys in the SEA has partly to do with the creative writing component, since males are innately less verbal than females. Males, however, tend to do better at spatial and abstract reasoning than females. The classroom and the examination must take account of these traits.

Most importantly of all, though, is the need for schools to concentrate on weaker students. The tendency, as shown even by the attention paid to the top 100 scorers, is for teachers to groom the bright students to bring glory to the school. And, too often, this is done to the detriment of slower learners — who tend to be boys. The result of this approach is demonstrated all too clearly by the dismal examination results of the majority. Ensuring that this majority does well in school should be the focus of our education system, rather than the minority of bright children who will perform well anyway.