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 Boys falling behind? 
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I just read this article about boys falling behind in school and I found it to be very interesting. I have never noticed that less boys graduate than girls and that many more boys are held back than girls. In my graduating class the top four speakers were two girls and two guys. I did notice that there were a lot more female honor graduates than males, but there were a good amount of guys that graduated. The article mentioned factors that might be the cause of boys falling behind and they were such things as: not having a male figure to look up to, being lower class, or coming from a family or neighborhood where drugs, abuse, and alcohol might be present. I was just wondering if anyone else has read anything or has an insight on the thought of boys falling behind in studies.

I linked the article with this post just click on the word article in the first sentence!

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Heather L. Heath


Wed Feb 25, 2009 2:05 pm
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I have read that article as well and completely agree with Heather in that I had no idea of some of those facts in the article. I had not really thought about guys in school, or lack thereof, until this article. Now that I sit here and think about it, I did notice in high school that some of the AP classes were 2/3 girls, but then in our graduating class, in the top 20 in the class were mostly boys. So, I guess that the level of class difficulty is a factor in the number of boys that are in them and the number that eventually drop out.

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Laura Davis


Wed Feb 25, 2009 9:24 pm
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I had never heard of this situation and find it very interesting! I tried to relate the article to my high school and now that i think about it alot of boys dropped out my senior year. The cases i know of was because they either had to get a job to support a baby or themselves or because they were not goingn to college so they did not see the point in staying in high school. This is very interesting research and I hope that teacher take this article into consideration when teaching in the classroom.

The real question is how can we help boys to stay in school?

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Katherine Gray Nelli


Thu Feb 26, 2009 8:37 am
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I have never heard of this article/situation either but now that I think about in my high school our graduating class was about 2500 and most of my high school came from the same background and economical standings. However, now that I think about boys seemed to not be as interested as girls in school and couldn't wait to get to gym or weight training. A good amount of boys graduated with me but were far less than girls in where they were ranked, and quite frankly many of them just wanted to graduate, and make those D's and C's in classes to just get out of high school.
This is a really interesting topic to discuss and figure out what schools can do to push boys along and have them as equals as the girls in the school.

Casey Gill


Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:43 am
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I haven't heard of this situation either and I agree that it does make you think back to your high school. I knew plenty of guys in my high school that dropped out but most of the guys that did graduate, graduated with honors. I think this situation is different depending on a number of things including income, family situations, and just boys either wanting to be in school or not. I agree with Katie Gray that teachers should take this into account and think about what we can do to help boys stay in school.

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Angela Nicole Sain


Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:01 pm
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Well this does not really relate to high school, but maybe they have a higher tendency to drop out is because of things that started from the beginning of school. We discussed in one of my classes that boys are more interested in reading nonfiction books such as biographies and informational books while girls are more interested in fiction books such as stories. Think back to when you were in K-2, most of the books that were read aloud and discussed were story books. If boys are not as interested in story books then they are now beginning to not enjoy school. If they begin school and hate it, they are probably just going to continue hating school until they are able to drop out.


Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:49 pm
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After reading this I also thought back to my high school. I know that more boys dropped out of school than girls did but I definitely did not notice a significantly higher amount of girls graduating than boys. I would say the numbers were about even. As far as grades go, I think it just depends because we had boys in the top of our class and lower half. I agree that the real question should be how do we keep boys in school and see to it that they do well while there.

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Kimberly Marie Isidori


Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:09 pm
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I also agree that this article was very interesting and I also didn't really think much about this until reading this article. In my high school, I noticed like others that there were more girls than guys in upper level classes but I didn't really notice that more girls graduated than boys. I think one thing that would help to answer the question of, "how do we keep boys in school?" would be to have more male role models in the school, more male teacher, principals, etc. I think that it is also important for any student, both male and female, to have somewhere to get involved in order for them to stay in school.

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Leslie Sheppard


Thu Mar 19, 2009 10:39 am
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I'm currently reading a book for one of my block classes and it is about boys in schools. One of the big points of the book is that schools are for the most part feminine environments. Teachers are predominately female, especially during the primary grades. On top of that, the majority of boys are different types of learners than girls, who are fortunate to fit better into the traditional classroom. Boys are also developmentally behind girls their age by about two years. With all this working against them, some boys fail to adapt to schools and drop out.


Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:48 pm
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I always thought that boys and girls have an equal chance of falling behind. Honestly, at my high school it seemed equal and a lot of times the boys were so competitive that they would fight to be number one. I understand that boys are faced with these issues of home life but girls live in the same neighborhoods and are faced with the same issues. I wonder why boys are so prone to falling behind and girls aren't.

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Katelyn McMillan


Mon Mar 30, 2009 1:32 pm
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