Our drive home from the orthodontist today turned into an impromptu art class.
For some inexplicable reason, Boy #3 brought along some modeling clay. He crafted a bullet out of his clay and showed it to his brothers, who promptly told him everything that was wrong with it ("it doesn't even have a primer pan"). They, of course, declared they could do better. Soon, all three of them were crafting projectiles out of clay.
Boy #2 made a shotgun shell. Boy #1 created a musket ball, which he deemed the most realistic, since musket balls WERE essentially round balls. Not to be outdone, I promised to blow them away by crafting a .22 when we arrived home. (Yes, I simply made a "22" out of clay. They did not appreciate my humor.)
The whole incident got me thinking about boys and the many ways our society restricts boy behavior. Would my boys have been allowed to create clay bullets at school? I doubt it. For understandable reasons, schools no longer allow weapons of any kind -- even in play. Boys who write stories with violent themes are referred for psychological counseling. Games such as King of the Mountain are disallowed.
Boys, though, are drawn to these things. Most boys have an innate fascination with weaponry and most boys have a desire to test their strength and courage against other boys. Boys have a natural tendency toward competition. Boys think, wonder and fantasize about war.
That doesn't mean that the boys in question actually want to blow each other's heads off; it just means that they're learning how to make sense of those impulses. It means they're exploring ideas. It means they're growing.
What do our boys lose when we forbid them from all expressions of violence? When we tell them what their stories can and cannot be about? Do they not learn that there's something wrong with them, at the core?
Today, I was glad my boys were home, free to craft in clay.
Showing posts with label fine motor skills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fine motor skills. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Teaching Boys to Write
I haven't blogged in awhile. The holidays are partly to blame (how much free time do you have over the holiday season?) but so, frankly, was a lack of motivation.
Today, though, is a New Year, and in my determination to start the year out fresh, I spent some time deleting news messages from my inbox. One story caught my attention and I knew it was time to blog. The headline? "Three-year-old boys should be made to write to stop gender gap."
Officials in the UK, well-aware of the academic achievement gap that continues to exist between boys and girls, particulary in the area of writing, are recommending that three-year-old boys do more writing and drawing. Never mind the fact that three-year-olds are the most stubborn creatures in the world. I could hand my three-year-old son crayons every day of the week, but unless he wants to write, I can guarantee he's not going to write. He might fling the crayons. He'll very probably eat some of them. And he'll absolutely peel the paper off every single crayon. But write? Probably not.
Don't get me wrong: At three, he's showing a definite interest in letters, and he knows that we use marks on paper to represent those letters. When he's in the mood, he'll scribble something and tell me it's an "A" (or a "T" or whatever). Occasionally, he'll let me hold his hand as we create words on the paper. (He particularly likes to do this as we wait in the line at the grocery store.)
That kind of teaching/learning, in my opinion, is age-appropriate. That kind of teaching/learning respects biological differences (did you know that the area of the brain that handles language matures, on average, six years later in boys than in girls?). That kind of learning is a loving, caring adult responding to a child's request for information -- not a government imposing expectations on little people so the government's educational system will look good.
Perhaps -- just perhaps -- that stubborn gender gap is there because there are some very real differences between boys and girls. And perhaps -- just perhaps -- learning more about boys and how they grow, develop and learn will help teachers and parents close that gap.
The new recommendation, in fact, seems to ignore previous research cited by the same government. A literature review commissioned by the Office for Standards in Education notes that "Two longitudinal studies, one in America and one in Portugal, report that children who learn in child-initiated, active and free play environments made stronger progress in reading and writing than their peers in formal skills based environments...Too much focus on writing as transcription affects younger children’s perceptions of what writing is and what it is for. Letter formation may be started too young, and boys whose motor skills are less developed may experience early frustration with writing that looks, and is, less proficient than girls’. Since transcription is an area in which weaker boys have difficulty, they make early associations of writing with activities in which they struggle."
I've argued before that in the early years, we should focus on helping our boys Write, not write. The government of England obviously has a different opinion. What's yours?
Today, though, is a New Year, and in my determination to start the year out fresh, I spent some time deleting news messages from my inbox. One story caught my attention and I knew it was time to blog. The headline? "Three-year-old boys should be made to write to stop gender gap."
Officials in the UK, well-aware of the academic achievement gap that continues to exist between boys and girls, particulary in the area of writing, are recommending that three-year-old boys do more writing and drawing. Never mind the fact that three-year-olds are the most stubborn creatures in the world. I could hand my three-year-old son crayons every day of the week, but unless he wants to write, I can guarantee he's not going to write. He might fling the crayons. He'll very probably eat some of them. And he'll absolutely peel the paper off every single crayon. But write? Probably not.
Don't get me wrong: At three, he's showing a definite interest in letters, and he knows that we use marks on paper to represent those letters. When he's in the mood, he'll scribble something and tell me it's an "A" (or a "T" or whatever). Occasionally, he'll let me hold his hand as we create words on the paper. (He particularly likes to do this as we wait in the line at the grocery store.)
That kind of teaching/learning, in my opinion, is age-appropriate. That kind of teaching/learning respects biological differences (did you know that the area of the brain that handles language matures, on average, six years later in boys than in girls?). That kind of learning is a loving, caring adult responding to a child's request for information -- not a government imposing expectations on little people so the government's educational system will look good.
Perhaps -- just perhaps -- that stubborn gender gap is there because there are some very real differences between boys and girls. And perhaps -- just perhaps -- learning more about boys and how they grow, develop and learn will help teachers and parents close that gap.
The new recommendation, in fact, seems to ignore previous research cited by the same government. A literature review commissioned by the Office for Standards in Education notes that "Two longitudinal studies, one in America and one in Portugal, report that children who learn in child-initiated, active and free play environments made stronger progress in reading and writing than their peers in formal skills based environments...Too much focus on writing as transcription affects younger children’s perceptions of what writing is and what it is for. Letter formation may be started too young, and boys whose motor skills are less developed may experience early frustration with writing that looks, and is, less proficient than girls’. Since transcription is an area in which weaker boys have difficulty, they make early associations of writing with activities in which they struggle."
I've argued before that in the early years, we should focus on helping our boys Write, not write. The government of England obviously has a different opinion. What's yours?
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