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NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
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From
Newsweek
Sunday, January 22, 2006
The
Trouble With Boys; They're kinetic, maddening and failing at school.
Now educators are trying new
ways to help them succeed.
With millions of parents
wringing their hands, educators are searching
for new tools to help tackle the problem of boys. Books including
Michael Thompson's best seller "Raising Cain" (recently made into a PBS
documentary) and Harvard psychologist William Pollack's definitive work
"Real Boys" have become must-reads in the teachers' lounge. The Gurian
Institute, founded in 1997 by family therapist Michael
Gurian
to help
the people on the front lines help boys, has enrolled 15,000 teachers
in its seminars. Even the Gates Foundation, which in the last five
years has given away nearly a billion dollars to innovative high
schools, is making boys a big priority. "Helping underperforming boys,"
says Jim Shelton, the foundation's education director, "has become part
of our core mission."
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From
The Washington Post
Disappearing
Act; Where Have the Men Gone? No Place Good.
By Michael Gurian
Sunday, December 4, 2005
In the 1990s, I taught for six years at a small liberal arts college in
Spokane, Wash. In my third year, I started noticing something that was
happening right in front of me. There were more young women in my
classes than young men, and on average, they were getting better grades
than the guys. Many of the young men stared blankly at me as I
lectured. They didn't take notes as well as the young women. They
didn't seem to care as much about what I taught -- literature, writing
and psychology. They were bright kids, but many of their faces said,
"Sitting here, listening, staring at these words -- this is not really
who I am."
That was a decade ago, but just last month, I spoke with an
administrator at Howard University in the District. He told me that
what I observed a decade ago has become one of the "biggest agenda
items" at Howard. "We are having trouble recruiting and retaining male
students," he said. "We are at about a 2-to-1 ratio, women to men."
Howard is not alone. Colleges and universities across the country are
grappling with the case of the mysteriously vanishing male. Where men
once dominated, they now make up no more than 43 percent of students at
American institutions of higher learning, according to 2003 statistics,
and this downward trend shows every sign of continuing unabated. If we
don't reverse it soon, we will gradually diminish the male identity,
and thus the productivity and the mission, of the next generation of
young men, and all the ones that follow.
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Breakthrough
Book Gives
Answers Why Boys Will Be Boys
The Houston Chronicle - 10-15-05
Anyone who thinks "boy culture" is an oxymoron never read The
Wonder of
Boys, Michael
Gurian's breakthrough book on the science explaining why
boys do the things they do.
Gurian,
a
therapist and educator from Spokane, Wash., has written other
books in the ensuing nine years, including several on girls and the
differences between boys and girls. His latest, The
Minds of Boys /
Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life, deals
with the
disconnect between boys and the classroom.
Not all boys have trouble in school, he says. But many don't thrive in
schools that want kids to sit still, take notes and write papers.
Gurian
and
co-author Kathy Stevens note that boys:
• Receive as many as 70 percent of Ds and Fs given in schools.
• Create up to 90 percent of classroom discipline problems.
• Constitute 80 percent of high school dropouts.
Their brains make them do it, Gurian
says,
and his book is filled with
scientific research to explain why, along with suggestions for breaking
the cycle.
Gurian
was in
Houston earlier this month to talk about the latest
neurobiological research, how boys learn differently from girls and
what boys need to learn best. His talk was sponsored by the Regis
School of the Sacred Heart, a private boys' school in Houston.
The Chronicle talked with him at the Sheraton Brookhollow.
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From
Newsweek
Gender-based Curriculum
September,
2005
Sept. 19, 2005 issue - Three years ago, Jeff Gray, the principal at
Foust Elementary School in Owensboro, Ky., realized that his school
needed help and fast. Test scores at Foust were the worst in
the county and the students, particularly the boys, were falling far
behind. So Gray took a controversial course for educators on brain
development, then revamped the first- and second-grade curriculum. The
biggest change: he divided the classes by gender. Because males have
less serotonin in their brains, which Gray was taught may cause them to
fidget more, desks were removed from the boys' classrooms and they got
short exercise periods throughout the day. Because females have more
oxytocin, a hormone linked to bonding, girls were given a carpeted area
where they sit and discuss their feelings. Because boys have higher
levels of testosterone and are theoretically more competitive, they
were given timed, multiple-choice tests. The girls were given
multiple-choice tests, too, but got more time to complete them. Gray
says the gender-based curriculum gave the school "the edge we needed."
Tests scores are up. Discipline problems are down. This year the fifth
and sixth grades at Foust are adopting the new curriculum,
too.
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Reassessing
How We teach Our
Sons
from Washington Post Book
World
October
30, 2005, by Mark Trainer
Lest you think school-age boys have it easier than girls, Michael
Gurian and Kathy Stevens argue that schools are exactly where
boys
are
being most ill-served. The
Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling
Behind in School and Life comes on the heels of a number of
recent
books that look at how "boy energy" is being squandered and discouraged
when it should be harnessed as the driving force of boys' desire to
learn.
The authors -- Gurian
is a social philosopher, family therapist and
founder of The
Gurian Institute, a teacher training organization, and
Stevens is its training director -- blame educational practices rooted
in 19th-century philosophies of education that assumed boys and girls
learned in the same way.
Gurian
and
Stevens provide a tour of the innate differences of the male
and female brains, shedding light on, among other things, boys' greater
difficulty in learning when they're sedentary -- exactly the classroom
posture we ask of our children.
For those with only a layman's grasp of the science, it's hard to tell
if Gurian's
conclusions are as final as he presents. If they
are,
however, his call for a reassessment of how we educate our sons is long
overdue.
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Library
Journal
The
Minds of Boys
August,
2005
In this follow-up to his best-selling The
Wonder of Boys, therapist and
"social philosopher" Gurian,
along
with Stevens, a specialist in
education and child development, makes a strong case for an educational
crisis. The nature of "boy energy" and boys' general needs require
mentoring and hands-on learning, but the typical classroom setting is
still that of a lone teacher lecturing to a large group of students.
This mismatch, according to the authors, leads to a frustrating
educational experience for many boys, overdiagnosis of ADD and ADHD in
others, and even lifelong repercussions for some. Thankfully, solutions
are offered: advocacy and modifications to traditional educational
methods by parents and teachers that in no way threaten the progress
made recently in the education of girls. Gurian
covered similar ground
in Boys
and Girls Learn Differently!:
A Guide for Teachers and Parents,
but this book stresses how boys are lagging behind girls in the
classroom. Logically organized, readable, and meticulously documented,
it would make a useful addition to parenting and education collections
in any library.
— Kay
Hogan Smith,
Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham Lib., Lister Hill
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Boost
Your Son in School
USA Weekend
August 5 - 7, 2005
Contributing
Editor Soledad
O'Brien is
co-anchor
of CNN's "American
Morning."
Parents perplexed by their bright sons who constantly struggle in
school will find hope in a new book, "The
Minds of Boys: Saving Our
Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life," by best-selling
author Michael
Gurian.
In his research at the Gurian
Institute, an
educational
training organization, "I started noticing that more boys seemed to be
having trouble in school than girls," he says.
If your son is struggling in school, it might not be the boy but rather
the way he is learning that needs to change, Gurian
says.
Boys learn
differently from girls and are not as well suited to sit still in a
place like school.
He recommends parents do the
following:
CREATE A PARENT-LED TEAM. Pull together five people (relatives,
friends, acquaintances) who can help you raise your child -- people you
trust. Boys learn better through projects and tasks with a mentor,
whether it's a relative, a coach or a family friend.
DO HOMEWORK TOGETHER. Sit together at the kitchen table every night to
go through his homework. Your son might complain at first, but Gurian
says most boys crave the one-on-one time and attention.
WATCH WHAT HE EATS. The ability to focus is directly linked to
nutrition. Most kids come home from school and have soda and a salty
snack. Move away from sugar and carbs, Gurian
says,
and get your son
more protein (like a tuna sandwich), which will help him concentrate.
"The brain does better when it has the right nutrition."
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Boys, Girls Learn in Different
Ways:
Parents, Teachers Hear How to
Reach Each Group
By
Janet Sugameli / Special to
The Detroit News - September 20, 2004
BLOOMFIELD HILLS — Michael
Gurian,
a social philosopher,
therapist and author, will give two presentations on Oct. 6, courtesy
of the Birmingham Bloomfield Families in Action.
Gurian's
research in neurobiology and how the brain works in
both
genders will be the topic of his discussions: The Wonder of
Boys
and Girls: Understanding the Hidden Nature of Our Sons and
Daughters and What
Could He
Be Thinking:
Understanding
the Nature of Our Boys.
The discussions are intended to teach professionals, as well as
parents, how boys and girls learn differently and how to better bond
with each gender. Prevention of substance abuse will grow from
understanding how to communicate with the different genders, said Gurian,
author of The
Wonder of Boysand The
Wonder of Girls.
Right now, a lot of prevention is generalized, like the DARE
program, he said. I want to enhance that to show
what
specifically works for girls and what specifically works for
boys.
Gurian
also
noted many differences in the way that boys and girls
digest information.
For example, for boys, don't sit them down and
verbalize and lecture them for 10 to 20 minutes, he said. The male
brain doesn't take in as many words as the female brain.
Girls have twice the verbal centers as boys do. So boys don't
process as much being lectured to. The boy brain needs to reset
itself.
Girls, on the other hand, make a more emotional connection to mentors,
he said.
Some area schools, such as Everest Academy in Clarkston, separate boys
and girls to hone in on their different learning styles. The Rev.
Alfonse Nazzaro, executive director of Everest, says his school
separates boys and girls in third grade when they become more
conscientious of their differences.
"Not only do we split the genders, but we also try to give
them
role models so that they can strive to be the same way as the
teachers," he said.
It's not about what you teach, it's how you teach
it, Nazzaro said.
The curriculum and the textbooks are the same;
it's just
different in the way the materials are presented," he said. "For the
girls, we are concentrating on self-respect,
self-esteem
and self-confidence. And with the boys, it's about keeping
their
principles and never lowering their dignity."
For Cranbrook Kingswood math teacher Jane Williams, teaching middle
school girls allows her to pick strategies that her students can relate
to, she said.
"They feel very comfortable in the classroom, and what I
think
helps them the most is that they are not afraid to
volunteer,"
Williams said.
Alex Park, an eighth-grader at Derby Middle School in Birmingham, says
she isn't taking any segregated classes but understands there
is a difference in how girls and boys interact.
"The boys that I know talk very different as compared to me
and
my friends," she said. "I joke around a lot with my
guy
friends as opposed to my girlfriends — we have deep
conversations. I don't think I've ever had a deep
conversation with a boy."
"If parents and teachers understand the differences between the
genders, it would be a lot easier to work problems out," she added.
Birmingham resident Leslie Benser Luciani plans to attend both sessions
to gain insight on why boys make certain choices.
"I read "The
Wonder of Boys," and I found
it very interesting and helpful for me as a mother raising three
boys," she said.
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Brain
Science Reveals What Men
Are Really Thinking
From
Reuters & CNN -
(October, 2003)
It's the universal question on many women's lips.
"What
could he be thinking?" she shrieks, or sighs or sulks at her husband,
boyfriend or son.
What is it with men and cars? Why doesn't he
notice how
much housework needs to be done? Why does he need to keep a grip on the
remote control? And the most bewildering one of all -- why won't he
just talk to me?
The answers, says social philosopher and
author Michael
Gurian,
lie not in laziness, sexism or sheer pigheadedness but
in profound differences between the male and female brain -- and
scientists now have the technology to prove it.
"What
Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's
Mind Really
Works," combines two decades of neurobiological research with
anecdotes
from everyday life and Gurian's experience as a family therapist to
present a new vision of the male psyche.
It's a vision that Gurian
hopes
will
help promote a
better understanding of men and reverse what he sees as the dangerous
assumption born of the past 40 years of radical feminism that men have
simply become redundant.
"As a culture, we've made profound
mistakes in the
last few decades by assuming that men were unnecessary. Many people
have even gone so far as to negate or dismiss what is at the core of a
man," Gurian
writes.
Gurian,
author of the 1996 groundbreaking
book "The
Wonder of Boys" and its follow-up "The
Wonder of Girls," is no
anti-feminist. He is married with two daughters, and his book mines the
field of brain science to help improve relations between couples.
Culture plays a part, but Gurian
argues
that biology matters much more than previously realized.
"The science has been crucial. Wherever
I go, I
start by showing PET scans and people can see for themselves the
differences between the male and female brain. I think that alters life
and marriages," Gurian told Reuters.
The
Science Part:
Such are the advances in technology and
understanding that
PET radioactive-imaging and MRI magnetic-imaging scans can now show
whether a man and a woman are truly in love by measuring the amount of
activity in the cingulate gyrus, an emotion center in the brain, Gurian
says.
Like a guide through a secret forest, his
book leads
the nonscientist through the complex world of brain science and relates
it to some of the most frustrating sources of conflict between men and
women in long-term relationships.
The male brain secretes less of the
powerful primary
bonding chemical oxytocin and less of the calming chemical serotonin
than the female brain.
So while women find emotional
conversations a good
way to chill out at the end of the day, the tired male brain needs to
zone out all that touchy-feely chatter in order to relax -- which is
why he wants the remote control to zap through "mindless" sport or
action movies.
His brain takes in less sensory detail
than a
woman's, so he doesn't see or even feel the dust and household mess in
the same way. Anyhow, the male brain attaches less personal identity to
the inside of a home and more to the workplace or the yard -- which is
why he doesn't get worked up about housework.
Male hormones such as testosterone and
vasopressin
set the male brain up to seek competitive, hierarchical groups in its
constant quest to prove self-worth and identity. That is why men,
paradoxically (from a hormonally altered new mother's point of view),
become even more workaholic once they have kids, to whom they must also
prove their worth.
Back
to Nature:
Gurian
says
his book is aimed mainly at
women. "Men
get this already. They are living this brain but they don't have the
conscious language to explain it. Women are not living it.
"If they are relating to a man, I hope they will
be
touched, informed and entertained and will have a new vision of the way
they can make their relationship work.
"I beg people to go back to nature, look
at the PET
scans, look at the brain differences and see if it makes sense."
If it does, the consequences are profound for a
generation
of "liberated" women brought up to believe it is men who have to
change, and men who must respond to a female way of relating in order
for marriage to succeed.
Gurian
says
men can learn new skills and
alter their
behavior but they will not be able to meet all of women's expectations.
"Popular culture focuses so much on
trying to get
people closer. Most people believe that marriages break up because men
and women are not close enough. But what I am learning about the brain
leads to the idea of intimate separateness, in which the brain seeks
less intimacy at times," Gurian said.
"People want to love each other. If we
can learn who
we might be -- not what IS he thinking, but what COULD he be thinking
-- then I am optimistic."
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Publisher's
Weekly
(May, 2003)
"The Miracle"
Psychotherapist Gurian,
the bestselling author of numerous parenting
and psychology books (The
Wonder of Girls; The Soul of the Child), has
written a riveting supernatural suspense novel that tracks the efforts
of a psychic to find a serial killer in Spokane, Washington. The novel
begins when a clairvoyant, cancer-stricken boy is run down by a car. At
the accident scene where he dies, an other-worldly light hovers over
his body and suffuses the neighborhood. Soon afterward, his nurse, Beth
Carey, has visions of children being murdered. Her hallucinations turn
out to be premonitions; a serial murderer who calls himself the Light
Killer begins to terrorize Spokane, killing several children and
sending letters to the local paper explaining his garbled philosophy
("The Creator inhales darkness and exhales light. This is how I feel
when I hold the [dying] child in | | | | |