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Candy Ratliff
English 1010
Mr. Jorgensen
12/04/2014
Boys have it easier I dont think so
I believe boys and girls do not learn in the same way, or at the same rate. There are
biological gender differences, and these differences can contribute to why some boys are failing
in school. The biological differences have a bigger impact in the earlier years of a child
education, and can contribute to why one gender maybe better at a certain subject, while the
other gender will struggle. For instance, girls have better hearing, and they develop their
language skills before boys do. These differences gives girls a greater advantage in school, than
boys do. Parents and teachers, need to start recognizing the biological differences, so we can help
guide boys through some of the common issues their specific gender may struggle with.
Of course some might object to the idea that gender differences is relevant, and we need
to focus on each childs individual differences, instead of worrying about the gender differences.
In a recent interview I had with Katerina Salini, a professor in psychology. She claimed, as far
as she can tell there are very few differences between the genders and parents should not stress
over them when it comes to their childs education (10,2014). She also states, If you are
looking at something like math skills, we find the gap between how boys and girls learn is so
tiny, we cannot assume anything from it (10,2014). She believes the differences happen because
of the way we treat each sex from birth. Parents may not know it, but they are gender
stereotyping their children. While I agree with her that each of our children have unique qualities

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and we should always celebrate them. I would still maintain the gender differences are relevant
when it comes to their education.
Most of us has heard of the gender stereotype that stats, girls are better at reading and
writing, while boys are better at math and science. I never believed this, until my own sons
started struggled with reading, and my daughter struggled in math. Both my sons could add and
subtract double digit numbers, before they could write the alphabet. My daughter was able to
read and write long before she could do simply math. Please dont get me wrong, I encourage my
children to push beyond gender stereotyping. I do not believe my daughter is better than my son.
However, I do believe that my daughter has certain abilities that comes naturally to her, where
my sons have to work a little bit harder to achieve the same success.
There are a large number of differences between the genders, however I am only going to
concentrate on the ones most relevant to their education. Intensive research done by Jane
Cassidy, a professor at Louisiana State University did on 350 newborn baby girls and boys,
found that the girls hearing was substantially more sensitive than the boys (Cassidy,37). This
finding means my daughter hearing is better than my sons. I cannot tell you how many times my
daughter has asked me why is dad always yelling? When really he used the same tone with our
boys. Her hearing is more sensitive, so she assumes he is upset with her, while my sons barely
notice when he is really yelling at them.
The hearing differences that occur between genders, has an impact our childrens
education. Imagine if our boys cannot hear their soft spoken female teachers, they may stop
paying attention due to boredom, and more likely to misbehave. Leonard Sax, who has spent the
last twenty-five years resourcing gender differences, he also wrote the book why gender matters,
claims anytime you have a teacher of one sex teaching children of the opposite sex, theres a

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potential for a mismatch (Sax, 87). He believes, the differences in girls and boys ability to hear
is one hardwired reason why both girls and boys are shortchanged by gender-neutral education
(Sax, 88), so our country needs to really consider having same sex education.
Girls language skills develop at a faster rate than boys. This is one reason girls tend to
start talking before boys do, and have a larger vocabulary as well. A study done by the American
Academy of Pediatrics found the average sixteen month old girl can produce up to a hundred
words,

while

the

average

boy

at

the

same

age

can

only

produce

thirty

words(Healthychildren.org). With my own children, my daughter spoke her first word months
before my sons did. To this day she still is better at communicating with me, sometimes I believe
she will never stop talking. While I have to play the hundred question game with my sons, just to
see how their day went. They always seemed to struggle trying to come up with the right words
to use.
When we rely so heavily on words to communicate with one another, not being able to
communicate properly is a big obstacles boys will have to overcome. Michael Gurian author of
boys and girls learn differently stats, girls tend to have better verbal abilities and rely heavily on
verbal communication, boys tend to rely heavily on nonverbal communication being innately
less able on average to verbalize feelings and responses as quickly as girls (Gurian, 27). My
sons are full of pent up emotions, because they keep everything to themselves. I tried different
ways to get them to open up and communicate with me, but nothing seemed to work. Sax
believes, we should not expect our boys to talk about their feelings, boys brains are wired
different than girls and that sort of talk betrays a lack of awareness of basic sex differences in
the underlying wiring of the brain (Sax, 30). I am going to keep trying to get my boys to let me
in, I just stopped pestering them as much.

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Boys need more physical space to learn, and movement stimulates the male brain. If they
do not get a chance to move around, boys tend to get bored, and boredom leads to misbehaving.
Saxs claims, Boys are struggling in school because teachers expect kindergarteners to sit still
for hours on end. Teachers think the boy who cant sit still, whose wiggling in his chair, and
making noise is being defiant. But he isnt, he cant be quite, it goes against his nature (Sax,
96). This could contribute to why more teachers are the first to assume, a child has a behavior
disorder like attention deficit disorder. According to The National Center for Attention Deficit
Disorder, nine out of every ten children with ADD are young boys.
My youngest son has been struggling in school, and his teacher tried telling me he may
have ADD. Instead of just assuming my son had this disorder, I decided to go sit in on a few of
my youngest sons classes. I discovered, when the teacher taught mathematics, he was engaged
with the class discussion, and was eager to solve the problems. I was wondering what the
problem is, because he seemed to be a model student. But the moment the teacher started
teaching subjects regarding reading, and writing, he started drifting off, playing with his hands,
and not at all trying to do the work. I decided this was because his fine motor skills were not as
developed the way needed for him to succeed.
I hated seeing him struggle, when I know he is a brilliant kid. So I had a discussion with
his teacher, how he is in need of additional help in certain subjects. She agreed with me so we
came up with a plan. The homework she was sending home before was too advance for him. We
decided to going back to the fundamentals would be beneficial for him. I started spending an
hour or more every day after school, teaching him how to sound out, and write the alphabet.
Doing this for just a few months had incredible results. His teacher told me, he started paying
attention, he stopped acting out, and he started trying to do his work. By the end of the school

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year he had caught up to the other children in class. By giving him this extra help, he developed
the skills he was lacking, and found a new confidence in himself.
Children are under a great amount of pressure, from every aspect of their young lives.
Teachers are pressuring them to get great grades, so they succeed in school. Parents pressure
them to always behave, so they grow up to have good morals. If parents know where their childs
developmental weaknesses are, they can help them improve those abilities. Anything we can to
take off even a little bit of that pressure off of them, will make for a happier boy. Like I did with
my youngest son, now he is getting great grades.

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Work Cited Page
American Academy of Pediatrics. Web.
<healthychildren.org>. 2013.
Gurian, Michael. Boys and Girls Learn Differently.
San Francisco. 2013.
Salini, Katerina. Personal Interview.
Salt Lake Community College. 20 October 2014.
Sax, Leonard. Why Gender Matters.
New York. 2005.
Cassidy, Jane. Gender differences among hearing
Journal of music therapy. 2001.
The National Center for Attention Deficit Disorder. Web.
<Healthychildren.org>. 2012.