If only we would have listened...

A new report by the Washington Times states that schools need to do a better job of teaching boys:

First lady Laura Bush and a growing number of physicians, educators and psychologists say Americans need to wake up and see that boys lag far behind girls in school, and then demand that something be done.

Mrs. Bush, mother of two grown daughters, speaks at conferences and in interviews about the declining status of boys in today's learning environment. She has charged that boys are being overlooked.

William Pollack, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, agrees.

"Boys are suffering. They are sitting in classrooms where they can't perform at the same level as girls and so cannot compete with girls," he says. "As a result, they have lower self-esteem. The bottom line is that they are suffering both academically and emotionally."

The article continues on to state that boys

-- Receive the majority of D and F grades given to students in most schools, as high as 70 percent.
-- Create 80 percent of classroom discipline problems.
-- Account for 80 percent of high school dropouts.
-- Represent 70 percent of children diagnosed with learning disabilities and 80 percent of those diagnosed with behavioral disorders.

From my understanding, it has been realized for quite some time that boys learn differently than girls, thus demanding a need to educate in different ways. I don't know that much has been done about the situation--this article is a case-in-point.

Lest you think I am plodding down the road of psycho-analyzing people and stop reading, please note that the purpose of this post is to point out the fact that God has already identified this as a problem!

Consider Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." This verse is often understood as referring to the content of the training. Thus, if a parent trains his/her children in the proper religious (for sake of discussion) ways, then the child will hold to that training for the rest of their life. Two issues arise here. One, a proverb is something that is generally true, not always true. Thus, whatever the verse may be saying, it is not claiming that it is true at all times and in all places. Unfortunately, many Christians have been hurt and their trust in God has waivered because they thought taking their kids to Church and Sunday School and Awana would keep them on the straight and narrow. While those things help, and are beneficial and good training, God never promises what many claim this verse is saying.

I would like to challenge the normal thinking regarding Proverbs 22:6. While the standard has been that this verse is referring to the content of training, I would suggest to you that it is referring not to content, but to methods. Thus, God would be informing us that children learn in various ways -- some by lecture, some by experience, some by words, some by pictures, and some by illustration. Training up a child in the unique way that he or she learns will raise significantly the prospect that they will not depart from either what they have learned, or how to learn.

Remember what Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes? "There is nothing new under the sun...." If only we had listened to God, perhaps we would have understood long ago that children need to be taught differently.