Educating Boys II

What are some of the keys to educating teenage boys? How do we activate their sense of adventure, risk-taking and questioning in such a way that it leads to wisdom?

I use the word wisdom, not learning, for a specific reason. All education is about the gaining of wisdom and, as Thomas Merton suggests, more happens outside the classroom than in it. Wisdom is the capacity to engage, evaluate and assimilate events, experiences and knowledge so that one lives a life that values and is valued by others.

Teenage boys behave chaotically, dangerously and impulsively yet can be thoughtfully, compassionate and engaged. Yet the capacity to do so requires a different pedagogy than is generally employed in schools. What does that look like?

When I was in Gethsemane Monastery, the home for 27 years forThomas Merton, I pondered how this educational institution took men, barely out of their teens, often with little education and life experience and produced writers, academics, astronomers, civil rights activists and leaders. How did that happen? How did a self-possessed young man such as Merton, who ran away from the world, became the leading Catholic author, activist and interfaith communicator of the 20th century?

As I sat in the chapel and watched the monks say the daily offices beginning at 3.15am, I began to discover the key to their success. The rule of St Benedict sets out the parameters, the monastery practices mirror this ancient rule. What happened in the chapel had not substantially changed since 1848 when the monastery began. What happened in the silence, work, learning and rhythm of Gethsemane hadn't changed substantially over that time either.

The key to working with young teenagers I believe can be found in a daily routine giving energetic young men space and boundaries to discover self and others:

• Silence & Solitude 
• Education
• Repetition
• Work
• Community - Prayer

In subsequent posts I will look at each of these separately and suggest how they may be incorporated in the modern educational offering.

Educating Teenage Boys

Recently I put my class of 13 and 14  year olds through a growth mindset quiz with interesting results using the research of Carol Dweck. What I found asks hard questions of how we do education, particularly with teenage boys.

It was anticipated that the good students in the class, primarily the girls, would score higher than the troublesome students, mostly boys. That makes sense. The good students, concentrate, work hard and get better results. Therefore it is logical that they have more of a growth mindset than the 'naughty' boys.

Wrong.

The 'naughty' boys outscored the the good students at every level. They were the ones with a high growth mindset, even though their academic scores failed to show it. Why?

My thesis is that teenage boys are risk takers, possibility thinkers and curious. They want to know what is possible and what they can do. They take risks in the social and emotional aspects of their lives. They push the boundaries, try new and sometimes dangerous 'things' and, generally, are resilient. They bounce back. They are impulsive and find themselves trying stuff they didn't think possible. They are growth mindset thinkers.

The good students have a more fixed mindset because they are committed to getting right, making sure they give the right answer, do the right thing and behave appropriately. They engage their logical thinking system 2 (Taleb) before acting.

But it is interesting to see what happens as boys progress into years 10-12. In my class these are the students who yell out, argue, comment, offer answers and get involved. Sometimes they are chaotic and create chaos but they are there, taking risks and being heard. When they get further along they have learnt that this is not appropriate for 'good' students and close down. They know they are not good academic students and therefore simply withdraw. The very tools that helped them to learn, their risk taking chaotic spontaneity, is shut down. Their growth mindset becomes a fixe mindset - 'I can't do this.' And I would add, 'I can't do this like this'.

So what do we do?

We stream classes so that we allow the boys to have the freedom to engage their teenage risk taking in a learning environment. Now, I know that goes against the prevailing attitude, but after some 30 years working with teenage boys, I believe it is an appropriate strategy. It allows the 'good' students to develop their own specific approach to learning with out them being impinged upon by the chaos of a shared class room.

I will continue to explore this and would like to know what others think.

Typical Man

Is the following story typically male or what?

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An elderly man who went out to fetch a morning newspaper ended up driving nearly 400 miles after getting lost and taking a wrong turn onto a major Australian highway, police said on Wednesday. The man, 81-year-old Eric Steward, eventually stopped and asked for directions after driving for nine hours, from the New South Wales country town of Yass to Geelong in the southern Victoria state.

Steward, who did not know where he was, eventually approached a policeman at a petrol station and asked for help late Wednesday.

"This little old man came up to me saying he was lost. He handed me his mobile and asked if I could speak to his wife," said Victorian Police Senior Constable Clayton Smith.

Steward, who was reunited with his family on Wednesday, said he took the wrong turn and just kept on going.

"I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful drive," he told reporters, adding he did not need a satellite navigation device as he'd only been lost once.

Doesn't everybody take 9 hours to get the paper?

No need for a GPS when all you want is a nice quiet drive!

Celia Lashlie @ South Sydney High

On Tuesday evening I went to hear Celia Lashlie, author of 'He'll Be Ok: Growing Gorgeous Boys Into Good Men' speak. I had read the book and wanted to hear her in person as I wondered how she would speak the truths regarding mums she rights about publicly. Would she revert to a politically correct position or would she really say out loud what she says in her book?

What a speaker and what honesty. I wonder if I spoke the same way to a room full predominantly of mothers would I have been listened to or lynched? I fear the second. She spoke about the role mothers play in the lives of their boys, the need to understand the communication differences between men an women and particularly teen boys, teen boys pragmatism (only doing what affects them personally), the physiological changes and their impacts and the modeling of relationships between fathers and mothers.

She talked about the need for mothers to step back out of the lives of their boys and fathers to step up, the importance of being a parent and not a friend and that much later in life they will be your friend but now you are a parent, about not doing for them what they can do for themselves and so much more.

She also highlighted the traits we men bring to the relationship with our wives which are similarly to the behaviour of our boys and how that infuriates our wives but also the way women communicate infuriates us the way it does our children.

There was a lot of laughter but laughter sourced in the identification with the story, with the way we are and the way we experience life within our family. If you haven't read the book read it or purchase the cd of her talk off her website http://www.celialashlie.co.nz/live.html. I will have copies of the CD available next month.

And if you ever hear she is speaking in Sydney or wherever you are, do yourself a favour go and see her. You won't regret it.

Violence - The Biff Goes On.

In the Melbourne age today Dr Jerry Rosenfield, frustrated by the consequences of violence he sees in his patients 'comments' on street violence ''Is it a problem with education? A lack of respect … Are they divorced from spiritual connections, are they not getting adequate education about how to behave in school and from their parents?'' (''Young men's mindlessness starts at home: surgeon'', The Age, 31/8).

http://www.theage.com.au/national/young-mens-mindlessness-starts-at-home-surgeon-20090830-f3ye.html.

If we add it to the responses from those involved in the Mullimbinby incident we begin to get a picture of a generation who externalises and not internalises the reasons for bad things happening. A young man involved in the Mullimbimby incident says words to the effect, it's no-ones fault it just happened. And the parents blame the school for not dealing with it.

Houston we have a problem and we need more than ground control to fix it.These are the things I talk about at Bloke's breakfast and in the parenting seminars I run at St Jude's Randwick. I have being doing this stuff for some 20+ years and the problem hasn't changed, what has changed is how we parent (noticed on Sunshine Channel 7 this morning a section on how to negotiate your 2 year old to eat vegetables for example), parents want to be friends to their children (they need to be liked by their children), parents encourage the externalisation, discipline is an old fashioned word and parents, in seeking their kids to be friends, help them to grow up way before their heads are ready for it and much more.

Jerry Rosenfield is on the money and asks the questions we are afraid to answer, and while I agree with Dr Carr-Greg that how we deal with alcohol needs review we are only masking the problem if we stay at that level (the same with law enforcement and court responses). It is to be noted that the other recent violent situation in a NSW school did not involve alcohol.

Michael goes on to say that the ‘risk factors for violence also reside within the individual, their peers and the community’. I agree. Individual sin (old fashioned word for thinking I am the centre of the world) is grown in the fertile ground of community that focuses on individualisation, blame and instant gratification.

It is not what goes in that is the problem, although it may make the problem worse, but what resides with in us and is expressed that is the problem. Its seems to me after some 30 years of working with young men in particular, that the issue has to do with anger, frustration and lack of mentoring in how to handle a range of issues impacting on men, and young men in particular in ways that work for men. It has to do with how we parent, how we fail to allow young men to take risk in positive ways, how we offer or do not offer them opportunities to be valued and valuable in society, how we as parents try and make life safe and protect them from the consequences of their actions and much more.

A debate is needed as to what constitutes common sense parenting, what are the roles of experts and statistics, what is my responsibility in life,what is the role of parents – friends or those with the responsibility to train their children how to live in society with respect for themselves and for others. It is a debate we need but won’t get as those of us old enough to take part are part of the problem – we drive too fast, drink too much, give the finger to the car which cuts us off and more – all in the presence of our children, and then wonder why we get what we get.

Men's Group, the movie

Went and saw the movie, ‘Men’s Group’ last night. What a great movie! A confronting, hard hitting realistic view of Aussie Blokes dealing with the stuff of life which bends them out of shape.

A confronting movie not for the faint hearted but rewarding and revealing. As you watch it you identify with the characters, recognising them in others and in bits of yourself.

At times harrowing, at times embarrassingly stereotypical and other times close to home it is, in the end, a hopeful movie. Hopeful for the characters in the movie as they discover that as you confront the pain in your life there is a way forward, not matter how difficult and faltering the path may seem.

It is hopeful of blokes in that it shows us how blokes deal with stuff and can support one another meaningfully and deeply without talking about sex and football. It looks at language and how we use it to cover up stuff, how we present our selves to the world, it deals with fathers, touch, image, relationships and shows that stuff like that impacts each of us regardless of age (the age of the actors extends from late 20’s to somewhere in the 70’s).

After the movie I rang home and said I would be a little late as I needed time to process some of the stuff. I stood next to the car at Rozelle and looked up, the moon was hidden by a black cloud and against the night sky only the faint glimmer of light said the moon was there. As the clouds moved the moon glowed larger and came into view, except because of the time in the moon’s cycle, it wasn’t perfectly round. It was bent out of shape, a little off kilter. Yet it shined brightly and lit up the night sky.

That, to me is the message of 'Men’s Group', the movie. No matter how blokes are bent out of shape there is hope that we can come out from the dark cloud of brokenness and shine.

For more click on link

Boys Read If Dad Does

A study by Killian Mullan, a research associate at the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW, shows in two-parent families the boys who read the most have fathers who also like to read a lot. And the girls who read the most have mothers who read. The definition of reading is 50 minutees a day and it must be visible to the children. It doesn't matter if it's the paper or books. Go here for more
http://www.smh.com.au/news/lifeandstyle/parenting/a-chip-off-the-old-book-boys-read-if-dad-does/2008/11/30/1227979844800.html



Children learn by what they see us do.

Here is the great power of example at work. If we want our boys (and children in general) to develop positive life skills then it behoves us to model these consistently and visibly to them.

The anti-drinking tv ad which shows the progress of a a family of male drinkers uses this concept in the negative. The first father is drinking with his mates around the BBQ and asks his son to get him a beer, the next frame is that son grown up doing the same, and it moves through several generations of one family and the behaviour continues.

Children learn by what we model for them.

It's a challeneg for us to stay the distance and help them develop good habits, because bad habits die slowly, if in fact they ever really do.