The Next Big Idea 10 concepts that could - University of Toronto ...

1993, he co-founded a program called Boys2Men, through
which at-risk boys are assigned a male mentor who helps tutor
them and acts as a role model. The program now boasts more
than 70 chapters located in schools across the province.
In fact, strengthening the fragile state of boys’ education
has become Spence’s abiding passion. In general, girls now
outperform boys on tests of reading and achieve equal results
in mathematics and sciences, resulting in a marked gender
split by the time students reach university; in Canada, there
are currently three women for every two men studying at the
post-secondary level. Spence is not alone in his concerns: in
the bestselling book Boys Adrift, psychologist and physician
Leonard Sax bemoans a culture in which many males now
live at home well past boyhood, confused in a world in which
traditional notions of masculinity have lost their meaning,
and where many boys grow up without fathers.
Experimental all-boys classes have been offered by the
school board for years; Spence taught several of them himself.
He thinks the time for a publicly funded all-boys school
is long overdue. “Anything that we do really has to be driven by
the data,” he says, “and when you look at who we suspend or
who’s underachieving, it’s boys.” (Records from the Toronto
board show that male students receive 77 per cent of all
suspensions.)
As a teacher of an all-boys class, Spence’s methods were
extremely personal and decidedly old school. “I wouldn’t let
the students come into the classroom until I’d shaken their
hand,” he says. “I’d say, Ricky, I believe in you. Today’s your
day. I really need you to focus in period two. Next guy: John!
How was your evening Hope you have a great day. Let’s do
lots of learning today. It took 10 seconds. But it demonstrated
that whatever happened to them yesterday, that was yesterday.
Today was a new day.”
Research does suggest that boys and girls learn differently,
and a casual observation bears this out. On a September
morning at Lord Dufferin Public School in Regent Park,
I observed a select group of middle-school pupils in unisex
classrooms. Both groups were focused and attentive, but the
girls were much more static – “I should see some movement
here,” admonished their teacher, urging them out of their
desks to fetch equipment. They also appeared more consultative,
asking each other “what do you think” when working
on a group activity.
In the boys’ math class down the hall, things were different.
Small groups working on a problem were more hierarchical
in nature, and the boys’ apparent need to move around was
not discouraged. One boy stood while figuring out a problem,
another lay on the rug and yet another sat hunched over his
desk, kicking his heels together.
But both groups were equally well-behaved: it is a myth
that boys naturally descend into Lord of the Flies savagery when
deprived of the “civilizing” influence of girls. Lord Dufferin
principal Gary Crossdale says that in single-sex classes, “the
boys are more calm,” since they don’t feel the need to show
off. “Teachers can talk directly to the boys about proper
interaction with girls,” he says, “and really make it part of the
learning. Sometimes we assume kids just learn these things,
but we can’t assume anything.”
In spite of the evidence supporting him, Spence has met
with opposition from those who do not buy his vision. A 2007
report by the provincial government’s Literacy and Numeracy
Secretariat suggested that if anybody benefited from unisex
education, it was actually girls, not boys. And certain trustees
on the board are firmly entrenched in their opposition. “To
say that boys are fundamentally different than girls runs counter
to our core philosophy, and is something that will damage
all our schools,” says trustee Howard Goodman. He attributes
differing success rates for boys and girls to things such as
student-teacher interaction and school quality. Goodman also
cites a recent northern Ontario study, which showed that
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