During the 1960s it was commonly believed there were no significant differences between males and females. The only real differences accepted were in a few aspects regarding the basic plumbing. As this thinking went, the perceived differences in abilities, interests and needs between the sexes were only social constructions, probably instituted by the “patriarchy” to maintain their dominance and to keep women in their place. These constructed views were seen as part of the oppressive and rigid thinking from the past that had to be torn down and abolished so women could take their place as true equals.
For years, all right thinking people believed this as accepted fact. Then, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, a watershed event occured, Time Magazine published an issue heralding recent brain research that showed conclusively that there were significant differences between the brains of females and males. That Time Magazine needed to make such as issue about this research showed more than anything else how ingrained the uni-sex thinking was. I still remember the shock waves this pronouncement made. Comments ranged from a gasp to shock. “You mean our parents might have been right about something?” “Will this kill the women’s movement?” ….and so forth.
Well, yes our parents were not dumb bunnies and did know a few things that were forgotten for a time as various ideologies held sway before finally bumping up against reality. And, No, it didn’t kill the women’s movement, which has accomplished much since then, and probably even more since it became based more on reality than some wishful thinking ideology.
The fact of the matter is over the last couple of decades, brain research has clarified the differences between male and female brains with advantages to both. One of the advantages is the trend to get away from pursuing a mythological happy medium in elementary and secondary education to try to appeal to both males and females at the same time. Just a simple awareness of the differences can better inform the teacher’s overall strategy, and single sex classes are becoming an option that sometimes is needed. Therapeutic schools and programs learned long ago that for some children, single sex classes at times is by far the best approach. At other times, coed classes can utilize and cross feed from the different perspectives. Losing ground is the rigid perspective that virtually all school activies must at all times be coed.
The source of the main difference is the result of the hormone bath each child receives shortly after conception. The Estrogen bath as a general rule produces girl babies with a brain hard-wired toward communication facility and oriented toward social interactions. The testosterone bath produces male babies who are as a general rule more physically active and oriented toward individual actions. This plays out in competitive vs. collaborative activities.
An example from the elementary school playground comes to mind. For girls, even though some girls are very competitive, they usually act within some team or collaborative activity, maybe striving to be at the top of the pecking order, to use a common and perhaps controversial metaphor. For boys, King of the Hill comes to mind, with every boy competing for himself against all the other boys, though occasionally a few will collaborate to gain an advantage over the others.
While of course there are many individual exceptions, these generalizations tend to be backed up by years of research, largely brain research, and this is the point. We have to get out of the uni-sex mentality to approach our students in the way they can best learn. Taking into account the differences between male and female brains is a major step toward teaching to the child rather than to some mythical happy medium.
My recent interview with Jane Samuel and Elizabeth Guamaccia from Auldern Academy for Girls in North Carolina on LATalkRadio was very enlightening on the implications in growing and educating adolescent females. We spent an hour talking about educating the female brain, with numerous implications as to what is important to adolescent girls, how bullying among girls is different from bullying among boys in how it can impact each (negative in both cases of course). To listen to the whole interview go here.
For the full archive of all articles published by Woodbury Reports since November 1989, go to StrugglingTeens.com.
