Recently, Guangming Daily, China Youth Daily and China Education News all devoted a lot of space to introducing an educational bestseller named Save the Boys, written by Sun Yunxiao of China Youth Research Center and two other doctors. The book uses a lot of materials and data to prove that boys are in a crisis of academic, physical, psychological and social adaptation from primary school to university. Among them, the academic crisis is the most urgent, so that the author said: "We often pay attention to girls' equal right to education, but inadvertently ignore boys. Boys have become a forgotten group, and their crisis is getting more and more serious. "In the past, it was generally believed that although boys were not as good as girls in compulsory education, they could catch up and surpass them in high school. Now it seems that they will never catch up. Since the 1990s, female students' academic advantages have been continuously expanded and extended, and their academic achievements have caught up with or surpassed those of male students in almost all disciplines and at all educational levels. For example, the most remarkable college entrance examination results, girls have begun to lead by a wide margin. Among the top candidates in Chongqing college entrance examination, the proportion of boys is decreasing year by year, less than 40%. "Champion Lang" is a thing of the past, and "Zhuangyuanhua" is more appropriate [1]. Moreover, the academic backwardness of boys has now extended to the field of higher education, and the academic performance of boys is far behind that of girls. According to the list of winners of national scholarships in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 and the ratio of male to female students in colleges and universities at that time, it is found that in 2006-2007, the actual ratio of male to female students was 1:2.0 1 among 50,000 winners. In 2007-2008, this figure was 1: 1.95. Statistics also show that in 2007-2008, among all 2,287 universities awarded national scholarships by the Ministry of Education, there were 1785 universities with fewer boys than girls, and the scope of boys' academic backwardness was nationwide [2]. On the contrary, there are more and more problem boys, but discipline violation, weariness of learning, truancy, weariness of learning and conflict with teachers have become the norm for most boys. Why is this? Are boys not suitable for school education? Or is the current school education too harsh on them? How to save that boy? This has become a hot topic of discussion among teachers, students and parents in educational practice, but the educational theory circle has hardly given profound exploration and thinking so far.
From the perspective of gender justice, this phenomenon of yin flourishing and yang declining has long been common. As early as 1996, "China Youth Daily" reported the obvious problems caused by the advantage of girls' performance in the college entrance examination with the title "Most top female students are happy or worried". 1998, Guangzhou daily also took "liberal arts looking for men" as the topic, exposing the problem of low proportion of male students in liberal arts universities. Since then, many newspapers continue to report this phenomenon, and today, this phenomenon seems to be more and more prominent. Of course, there are also different questioning voices. Most skeptics are representatives of feminism. They generally don't recognize the fact that yin flourishes and yang declines and need to save boys, and think that individual phenomena are not enough to make a fuss. In their view, women are still in a weak position in society, and girls are still restricted by many unreasonable factors in their studies. It is obvious that they are discriminated against and neglected in the course content and classroom teaching [3]. Therefore, women's status should be improved more in education, and learning resources should be more inclined to them. The strategy is to revise pedagogy, cultivate impartial teachers, and conduct gender review on curriculum and teaching materials [4]. In the theoretical circle, some scholars paid attention to this problem a few years ago. For example, Hu Ceng cited a large number of cases from 1996 to 2002, which proved that there was indeed a phenomenon of yin flourishing while yang declining, which was manifested not only in the acquisition of academic performance, but also in serving as a student cadre and winning various awards, and analyzed some possible reasons for this phenomenon [5]. Some researchers also believe that teachers' rigid view of gender roles is an important reason for the phenomenon of yin flourishing and yang declining [6]. Obviously, after eight years, there are more and more phenomena that men are weak and women are strong, and the yin is strong and the yang is weak, which needs further thinking to arouse the analysis and discussion of the whole educational theory circle and reverse the phenomenon that boys are constantly marginalized by school education.
Second, why boys have been lagging behind: analysis of possible reasons
Boys are constantly being left out in the cold and marginalized. What is the reason for the phenomenon that the yin flourishes while the yang declines in education? How to achieve gender justice? Is it just that some teachers say that boys are more likely to be naughty, spoiled and unwilling to listen? The author analyzes that the reasons why boys are marginalized may be as follows.
1. The proportion of female teachers in primary and secondary schools is too high, and the feminization of schools is becoming more and more serious.
Judging from statistical data and intuitive feelings, in primary and secondary schools and kindergartens, almost all teachers are composed of female soldiers. There is a serious imbalance between male and female teachers in many schools. The lower the grade, the higher the proportion of female teachers. Male teachers in kindergartens have long been "rare treasures", and their demands have not changed substantially over the years, but they seem to be getting more and more serious, and there is a trend that women monopolize the teaching staff. This has led to the strong femininity of the Motherly School and the lack of masculinity of the strict father School, which is manifested in gentle breeze and drizzle, good intentions and patient guidance. In the campus environment where female teachers account for an absolute majority, the personality characteristics that are easy to show on men due to physiological influence, such as strong-willed, lively, strong, impulsive, brave and naughty, are easily suppressed, while children with female characteristics, such as carefulness, tenderness, consideration, obedience, understanding, diligence and diligence, are more likely to be appreciated, favored and cultivated, that is, they are strengthened. When a girl acts like an adult, people will give positive reinforcement (reward), otherwise it will be negative reinforcement. [7] Obviously, naughty, hyperactive and aggressive boys are more likely to be negatively strengthened and often disciplined, criticized and suppressed, which makes most boys show inadaptability, disgust and fear to the school, which has obvious negative effects on the academic performance and character formation of most boys, but it is relatively beneficial to girls. What's more, there is a deep-rooted subconscious mind to cultivate "feminine" students in the school culture with obvious femininity. Many teachers always have a soft spot for obedient children. They don't like to "offend" teachers, but they don't like naughty children. They suppress boys' nature and make it difficult for them to become indomitable men. In learning, it is often those obedient children who are good at rote memorization who are more likely to win the favor and appreciation of teachers and win better evaluation, so that many boys hardly show brave and strong character in character formation, but often talk like a "sissy" and behave feministically. The gender ratio of teachers is unbalanced, so it is difficult for children to feel the influence of male teachers, which has a significant adverse impact on the healthy and all-round growth of primary school students.
2. Rigid examination evaluation system
Undeniably, although the slogan of quality education has been put forward for nearly 20 years, the spring breeze of basic education curriculum reform has spread all over the country, and the effect is obvious. Many teachers and students have felt the beauty of school education life brought by the new curriculum, but the disadvantages of exam-oriented education are far from being eliminated in schools. It is very common to "vigorously engage in quality education and solidly engage in exam-oriented education". In this context, the standard answer test focuses on rote memorization and mechanical repetition, while ignoring novelty and innovation. This kind of test is generally beneficial to girls, because they are more likely to form quiet, careful, cautious, obedient and clever personality characteristics due to the expectation of social roles and the cultural influence of girls' early psychological and physical maturity, while the test evaluation is strictly based on rote standard answers and does not like personality and quirks. On the contrary, most boys are lively, active in thinking, like adventure, challenge, argumentative and sports, and don't like repeated exam-oriented training and classes that require correct sitting posture, so they often become targets of teachers' suppression and neglect. Girls who study hard, have excellent grades and are obedient are frequently appreciated and cared for by teachers. In this way, because school education does not conform to the nature of boys, they often regard books as enemies, classrooms as prisons and exams as enemies, and their academic performance is often at a disadvantage. Of course, exam-oriented education is actually bad for both boys and girls, but compared with girls, boys are more likely to be victims of exam-oriented education.
3. Monotonicity and discipline of teachers' teaching mode
Although the curriculum reform has always advocated the teaching mode of dialogue, inquiry, cooperation and interaction, it is obviously far from becoming the natural behavior of teachers' teaching. Influenced by many factors, such as the lag of evaluation reform, the tacit resistance of schools and teachers, etc. Single teacher teaching and students attending classes are still the first choice for most teachers. It is obviously not good for boys to confine their study to books and equate teaching with oral indoctrination. Different from girls, boys are more inclined to learn by exercising, operating experiments, using computers, participating in experiences and cooperating. Michael, a gender education expert? Gurion believes that boys' brains are more dependent on action and spatial mechanical stimulation than girls' brains. Compared with monotonous language stimulation, boys are naturally more receptive to the stimulation of charts, images and moving objects. Similarly, in the face of teachers' endless lectures, boys' brains are more likely to feel bored and distracted than girls', and they are more likely to show drowsiness or fidgeting [8]. The consequence of inadaptability is that teachers don't understand what they say and then don't want to listen. Learning has become a burden they have to endure. In addition, teachers and parents often criticize and attack inappropriately, and gradually lose their self-confidence and enthusiasm in learning. Excellent academic performance has become the extravagant hope of "the moon in the water, the flower in the mirror". It is often said by many teachers that some boys can't sit still in class, always like to ask questions to interrupt the teacher's lecture, and their homework can't be completed according to the format prescribed by the teacher. Therefore, they are often criticized by teachers and laughed at by classmates at school, and they are more and more easily marginalized, leading to a sharp decline in their weariness of learning and their grades. These reflections contain the information that many teachers' teaching concepts and behaviors have not been fundamentally changed. It is expected that students must completely obey the requirements of teachers and school management, so that students can become "docile lambs" who dare not think, question and take risks. You can imagine the consequences of treating children with teachers' dignity, compulsory discipline, criticism and severe punishment!
Finally, girls' excellent academic performance, male weakness and female strength may also be related to girls' own objective factors. For example, girls are more likely to feel the gender unfairness in society. When they realize that men are still in a dominant position in society and women are vulnerable to more cultural discrimination and institutional obstacles when achieving social success, they tend to be more diligent. However, under the existing examination-oriented education mode, hard work is a necessary condition for achieving excellent results. For another example, at the same age, it is generally believed that girls mature earlier than boys in thinking and personality, wake up early in hard and independent study, and often pay more attention to learning. At the same time, their strong image thinking ability, memory ability and diligent and careful personality make their learning foundation more solid, and it is easier for them to be far ahead in their achievements.
In a word, boys are more in the predicament of academic crisis and maladjustment at school. The core reason is that the existing exam-oriented education teaching model does not pay attention to the physical and psychological characteristics of boys, but only focuses on cultivating excellent exam-oriented skills, which goes against the real connotation of education and is far from the educational pursuit of cultivating perfect people, leading boys to learn to be honest, obedient, disciplined, study hard, memorize by rote and imitate mechanically under the value-oriented exam-oriented education, thus maintaining good academic performance. Or gradually marginalized, placed, ignored, suppressed, and become problem students with poor academic performance and need to be saved. Of course, due to the complexity of the problem itself, the above reasons can not be directly restored to different students in different schools, but only a general and general explanation, aiming at further arousing educators' thinking about gender justice in education, paying attention to problem boys with various learning difficulties, consciously improving their marginalization, promoting their learning awakening, and escorting their all-round free and healthy development.
Third, the boy crisis is outstanding. How do we deal with it?
As for strategy, I don't want to waste more paper. The answer is already in the cause analysis of the problem. I just want to emphasize that although women in today's society are still vulnerable groups in society and many reasonable rights demands are still not satisfied, in school education, due to the above analysis and many undiscovered reasons, boys do have more common academic obstacles and development difficulties, and they have become a new marginalized vulnerable group in education! The crisis of marginalization is mainly the responsibility of schools and teachers, which requires educators to study boys more, care about their growth and provide more opportunities for free choice that meet their own growth and development requirements. At the same time, we should adapt to the requirements of quality education and curriculum reform as soon as possible, change the exam-oriented education mode of compulsory indoctrination and mechanical repetition, build a democratic dialogue between teachers and students, pay attention to the cultivation of masculinity, teach students in accordance with their aptitude, pay attention to the cultivation of children's creativity, seek differences and seek differences, and build a relaxed, democratic and free campus cultural ecological environment so that all children, including problem boys, can feel the harmony and beauty of school education. Although parents may be spoiled, spoiled and lack of fatherly love, they need to cooperate with the school to save boys, but it is not the main reason for the crisis in boys' education.
refer to
[1] Educational thinking behind the boy crisis https://www.ellipsis/content/10/0327/01004969 _ 20421806.shtml.
[2] "boy crisis": an educational phenomenon that needs urgent attention https://edu. Ellipsis/zhuangti/zhengjiunhai/zuixin/200912/1265438 _ 9771_1538.
[3] Jassamyn Liu. Education in China from the perspective of feminism. Contemporary Educational Science, 2006(5).
[4] Gao Desheng. The era of moral education. Beijing: Education Science Press, 2008.
[5] Hu, et al. A brief analysis of the decline of Yin in China's education and its causes. See Zhong Qiquan et al.' Reflections on Education in China'. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2007.
[6] Xu Si 'an, etc. Teachers' view of gender role: an important reason for the phenomenon of yin flourishing and yang declining. Journal of South China Normal University (Social Science Edition), 2007(4).
[7] Sun Baie. Gender differences: a new perspective of educational equity. Teaching and Management, 2008( 12)
[8] The boy crisis. (https://baike。 Omit /view/3074243.htm? fr = ala 0 _ 1 _ 1[EB/OL]. 20 10-3-28。
(The writer is a doctoral student at Nanjing Normal University. )
(Editor Fu Yijing)