Masculine Energy in the Classroom.

Just woke up from a nap: 8:30pm - 1am.

Sleep schedule = fucked.

Not the only negative consequence, I'm late for Monday the 14th's Blog. As per usual I'm time-shifting the post-time here to pretend I'm not late, and carrying forward.

Today it's Valentine's Day, but believe it or not I'm not going to talk about that now. It wasn't the most prevalent thing on my mind.

Today in class we started off by watching a few videos form edutopia.org. Great. One of the videos showed man, who started teaching later in life and at first hated it, came into his own and found a career he loved by starting an all-boys math program at his middle school. The teacher used things like mild competition and time constraints for time (using a hockey-style scoreboard as a countdown-clock) management

The class was asked for comments, and to my surprise there was some negative feedback about this teacher's approach.

I have a beef with the way schools have been run for the past, oh, 20-30 years. Feminization. Call me a believer in nature over nurture, but boys and girls are different - fundamentally. We learn differently, and respond to different stimuli for motivation. back in the 60's/70's, girls weren't doing as well as boys in areas like math and science, and so many initiatives began to change this, and they were successful. As far as I know, girls now equal or exceed boys in all areas of high school. Not only that, but the amount of boys dropping out has skyrocketed. In some places, even in Canada, about 50% of boys drops out of high school because they just don't see the point.

Classrooms have become a place where masculine energy has been demonized, and it began with the elimination of competition. Competition is seen as a dirty word by many educators, including my special needs teacher in this particular class, but I say that competition, especially in an all-boys class, can foster a huge amount of positive energy unmatched by currently suggested methods of instruction and classroom management.

Themes inlcuding honesty, bravery, achievement, competition, setting one's 'personal best', responsibility, taking 'right action', loyalty, comradery, mentorship, stillness, consideration, and directed/deliberate action, are tools we shouldn't shy away from cultivating and harnessing, with masculine energy, to energize and help educate boys in the classroom.