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BusinessWeek.com
March, 2009
THE PURPOSE OF
BOYS: Helping Our Sons Find Their Purpose in Life.
Here’s
a guest post by Michael Gurian, a family therapist and corporate
consultant who has written an interesting new book called “The Purpose
of Boys” (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley, April 2009)
As I write this,
my father-in-law, Dean Reid, 85, has just passed away. “I’ve lived a
good life, I’ve done my best,” he said a couple days ago. “Whatever
happens, it’s okay.”
I’ve been married to Dean’s daughter, Gail,
for 23 years. Dean has been a powerful mentor and friend to me and our
family. He has also lived a fascinating life. A bomber pilot in WWII,
he was shot down after a bombing mission to Berlin. Injured, his crew
dead, he limped northward across Germany, nearly made it to the sea for
escape to Norway, but was captured by a patrol of German soldiers. He
lived out the rest of the war in various POW camps, on scant rations,
and in severe hardship.
Dean did all this by the age of 23.
When
I interviewed him for my new book, he said, “I was never trying to be a
hero, just do my job as a man.” When I asked Dean what this meant to
him, he recalled, “I still don’t think too much about it: I just fought
the war, came home, got to work, and raised a family. It’s how I repaid
all the guys who died in the war. They died so I could live and do good
in the world.”
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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 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 therapist, a social philosopher 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 my arms, that I can breathe again,
breathe Light again"). Beth, suspecting that the killer was influenced
by the same mysterious light that gave her psychic powers, searches for
him, hoping to forge a connection with this doppelganger and keep him
from killing again. Gurian
infuses the story with his own ideas about
the nature of the divine and the dawning of a new kind of human being
with spiritual intuition. Some may be turned off by the New Age tone,
but even skeptics will find the murder mystery gripping. Gurian
delicately ups the tension with each successive murder, and the climax
is stunning.
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Booklist
The Soul Of The Child
(November,
2002)
In THE
SOUL OF THE CHILD, Michael
Gurian,
author of The
Wonder of
Boys
(1996) and The
Wonder of Girls, provides parents with advice on
nurturing their children's souls. He defines the soul as the light
within a human being and examines technology--including infrared
technology and PET scans--that offers indications of the electrical
currents within the body, which he claims signify an inner source and
may also be signifiers of the soul. In part 1, Gurian
analyzes
scientific research to explore the dynamics of mind, body, and soul,
and to dispute beliefs that the body and soul are not connected. Citing
Freud, Piaget, Gibran, Einstein, and a range of religions, Gurian
reviews stages of growth in a child's soul and how parents can nurture
that development. In part 2, Gurian
extends his focus to an examination
of the soul in adults and the search for expanded knowledge of religion
and God. Whatever their religious and spiritual beliefs, parents will
appreciate this thoughtful book.
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Publisher's
Weekly
The Soul Of The Child
(November,
2002)
In THE
SOUL OF THE CHILD, therapist and best-selling author of The
Wonder of Boys and The
Wonder of Girls, Gurian
focuses on the spiritual
nature of children, warning parents not to treat their children as
"economic interns, whose primary goal as adults is to make money," but
to spend time tending to their souls. Mingling scientific analysis with
religious philosophy, he argues that the soul and the body are one
entity-that the soul is part of our neurological makeup. Understanding
this can help parents raise their child to become what he calls a "new
human," a healthy, secure person empowered to follow his or her own
divine destiny. Gurian argues that most children are robbed of their
right (and indeed, their innate inclination) to live a life of meaning
and spiritual purpose; he blames the overstimulation of mass culture
and the breakdown of the family (including the extended family) for the
many problems and psychological disorders of today's children....His
vision for a healthy world and nurturing family life for children is a
crucial one, and will no doubt be welcomed by his many fans.
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The
Rocky Mountain News
January 24, 2002
AUTHOR
DESCRIBES WHAT MAKES GIRLS TICK
by Janet Simons
Parents should raise daughters
to both rock
the cradle and rule the world. But perhaps, says therapist Michael
Gurian,
those daughters will be happier in both roles if they
understand how their biological drives affect them over the course of
their lives.
In his latest book, THE
WONDER
OF GIRLS:
UNDERSTANDING THE HIDDEN NATURE OF OUR DAUGHTERS (Pocket
Books), Gurian
discusses what his research indicates about how hormones affect female
development and behavior.
The book is a companion piece to Gurian's
1996
bestseller, THE
WONDER OF BOYS. "Once you study female biology, you
realize that it's set up for a staged life," said Gurian,
a
family
therapist in Spokane, Wash., and author of 14 previous books.
"There are power stages, when it's time to go out there, work hard,
head to the top. Feminism fits that stage nicely.
Then,
with the birth of children come hormonal changes that also should be
honored.
"If women with infants and
young children want
to be on a child-care track, then they should be able to do that," he
said. "And society should make it comfortable for
them. We
need to start fighting for a woman's right to take care of
her
children."
During the years since THE
WONDER OF BOYS was
published, Gurian
has been extending his research into the differences
between the way boys' and girls' brains work. In his 2001
book, BOYS
AND GIRLS LEARN DIFFERENTLY!, Gurian
offered different
educational strategies for boys and girls
based on biological, neurological and biochemical variations between
them.
"Although culture changes, human nature
doesn't,"
says Gurian,
co-founder of the Gurian
Institute, a training center for
child development specialists. "We need to base our
understanding
on human nature."
Gurian,
a
father of two daughters, says
he's
trying to create a template for raising girls based on their
nature. "I really believe I'm providing information that will
help inspire parents to draw on what they already know--on their own
intuition about what girls need."
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The Dallas Morning News
(Knight-Ridder News Service)
By Nancy Churnin
"Author: When it Comes to Kids
Learning, Gender Matters"
A tentative author might have punctuated "Boys
and Girls
Learn
Differently!" (Jossey-Bass, $24.95) with a question
mark. A
cautious one might have chosen a period.
But Michael
Gurian, therapist, educator and best-selling author of 14
books, knew an exclamation point was the only way to go with a book
that's subtitled "The Best kept Secret in
Education."
"It all starts in the human body, in the brain," says Gurian
on the
phone from his office in Spokane, Wash. "What
surprised me is just how clear and comprehensive these brain
differences are in girls and boys worldwide.
Gurian
is not
saying we should expect different achievements from girls
and boys. His point is that we need to teach them differently.
One of Gurian's
most controversial findings is that by
teaching
girls and boys the same way, teachers are doing a disservice to one of
the genders. Without reaching out differently to boys and girls, he
believes female teachers, who predominate in elementary school, will be
more in tune with the way girls' minds work, and the male
teachers, who predominate in teaching math and science in high school,
will be more in tune with the way boys' minds work.
The differences in how girls and boys learn start in the womb, he
explains, and increase and accelerate through adolescence.
Among his findings:
- Boys tend to be better at
abstract reasoning.
- Boys do better at learning
mathematics on a blackboard.
- Girls tend to prefer concrete
reasoning.
- Girls like learning math
concepts with objects they can manipulate.
- Boys tend to work silently.
- Boys
also enjoy jargon or coded language. They like symbolic texts, diagrams
and graphs, and they get into an author’s imagery patterns.
- Girls
like to talk things out as they learn and put ideas in clear, everyday
language. They prefer written texts and tend to be more interested in
the emotional workings of literary characters.
- Boys
seem to need movement to stimulate their brains and manage and relieve
impulsive behavior. Teachers should put boys to work handing out papers
and sharpening pencils. Stretch and movement breaks or allowing a boy
to squeeze a Nerf ball in his hand can help.
- Girls don't need to
move around as much while learning and are better at managing boredom.
Warren
Foxworth, head of middle school at St. Mark's School of
Texas, an
all-boys school in Dallas, says he has found Gurian's
ideas
about
how to address the different style of boys helpful not just in terms of
teaching academics, but also in terms of guiding his students toward
making mature decisions.
"It's valuable for us as a single-sex school, but I
think
what he is teaching is valuable for all teachers and parents to
know," Foxworth said.
Gurian
began
his career focusing on the special needs of boys with the
best-selling & "The Wonder of Boys,”
"A Fine
Young man” and "The Good Son."
He drew on his own difficult childhood for inspiration, he says. He
remembers struggling with depression after being diagnosed with
attention deficit disorder as well as hyperactivity disorder as a
child. He had been labeled a behavior problem at school.
He says he will be forever grateful to his fifth-grade teacher in
Hawaii, who took him under her wing.
"She told my parents to take me off the Ritalin, that
we’d
rather have the normal guy who is driving us nuts than a
zombie."
He appreciates his college English professor, who took an interest in
him and encouraged him along his current path.
"If not for people like that, I don't know what I
would
be," he says. "These people saved my
life."
It may seem ironic that the man who wrote so many books about bringing
up boys has had two daughters (now 11 & 8) rather than sons.
But
that, in part, is what has led him to write his current book as well as
work on his next one,"The
Wonder of Girls."
"The two reasons I do the work that I do is that I had a
difficult childhood and I want to protect my kids," he says. "I'm
trying to help other people do for their kids
what I had to do privately, and I'm trying to create safer schools
and a
safer world for my daughters."
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Educator and author Gurian
(The
Wonder of
Boys) and his co-writers argue that from preschool to high
school,
brain differences between the sexes call for different teaching
strategies. While it's widely accepted that, in general, boys do better
in math and girls in language, the authors claim that, until recently,
society has taken the politically correct but scientifically inaccurate
classroom view that children of both genders learn best in an
"androgynous classroom." Presenting a detailed picture of boys' and
girls' neurological, chemical and hormonal disparities, the authors
explain how those differences affect learning. Although Gurian
et al.
address the problems of both genders, they focus on boys, contending
that they are more difficult to teach and have more learning and
discipline problems. The female brain, Gurian
says,
has a "learning
advantage" because it is more complex and active, although the male
brain does excel at abstract thinking and spatial relations, one reason
why boys do better in math. Drawing on anecdotes contributed by
teachers participating in a Missouri-based pilot program launched by
the Gurian
Institute, the
authors present a variety of methods,
from pairing a language activity with movement for boys, to using role
models to engage girls in academic risk taking. Throughout, the authors
stress the importance of teacher training, arguing that regrettably few
teachers are knowledgeable about this issue. (Apr.) Forecast: With a
seven-city author tour to spark media interest and follows the huge
success of The
Wonder of Boys, this book will be picked up by parents
eager to learn more of what Gurian
has to
say. Most Americans are
intensely concerned about the state of our educational system, so the
book could reach beyond its target readership of teachers and parents.
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Excerpted From USA TODAY
September 20, 1999
Raising Our Sons in the Age of
Columbine
By Karen S. Peterson
USA TODAY
Social scientists looking at the state of moral crisis in this country
today are starting to use the "b-word." Boys.
It is not girls who lead the pack committing murder and related mayhem.
It is boys.
Those who would mold the character of boys do not start from the same
premise or reach the same conclusions. One of the most provocative new
books will be Michael
Gurian's The
Good Son: Shaping The Moral
Development of Our Boys & Young Men.
(Tarcher/Putnam,
$24.95)
Gurian
is a
family therapist in Spokane, Washington, and author of
several best sellers on boys. In The
Good Son,
he calls upon brain
research and psychological and social studies but gets past jargon to
present a year-by-year, cradle-to-college parenting guide. The plan is
based on discipline, spirituality and compassion.
"Morality is and always has been the living human community's code of
compassion," Gurian
writes. "Discipline is the human being's ability to
devote is own physical, mental and emotional drives toward compassion."
His goal is to help parents develop a son's "ten universally accepted
moral competencies: decency, fairness, empathy, self-sacrifice,
respect, loyalty, service, responsibility, honesty and honor." These,
he says, are the "bedrock of compassion."
He sees raising a child "as an immensely spiritual enterprise. I hope I
can suggest to parents as they come to the other end of it, that this
has been their way of connecting with the universe."
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ASSOCIATED
PRESS
October 11, 1998
FEATURE STORY
NEW BOOK HELPS PARENTS
& OTHERS NURTURE ADOLESCENT BOYS;
Boys
Movement Leader Says
Youth Violence Is Avoidable
Nicholas
K. Geranios
Sit still. Don't cry. Stop hitting your sister. Turn off the TV. It's
not easy being a boy --especially at a time when America's adolescent
males are in crisis, says author Michael
Gurian,
a leader of the
emerging boys movement.
The most dramatic and visible symptom is the recent series of deadly
school shootings, all committed by boys. But, Gurian
says,
millions of
young males are missing out on the nurturing they need.
Gurian,
now
40 and a psychotherapist, knows about tough boyhoods. When
he was 10 he was sexually abused by a physician. And his family moved
so frequently that he had trouble bonding with other children.
"Every kid has sufferings," Gurian
says,
speaking from his Spokane
home. "I wanted to do something in my adult life to make
sense of what happened to me as a kid."
His best-selling 1996 book "The
Wonder of Boys," clearly struck a nerve
with its insights into a boy's early years. Now, he has followed with
"A
Fine Young Man," which explains ages 9 to 21 and suggests the
violence they commit is predictable and avoidable.
Statistics from recent federal studies of boys and girls make it clear
that boys are in trouble, Gurian
says.
A sampling:
* Boys are four times as likely to
commit suicide as girls.
* Boys are 15 times more likely to be
victims of crimes than girls.
* Boys are twice as likely to be
diagnosed with a
learning disability and four times as likely to drop out of school.
Though the reasons are complicated, Gurian
believes many parents fail
to provide boys with proper emotional support, role models and
supervision.
He cites a range of factors, including divorce, lack of extended
families, and time pressures on dual-income households.
Boys, he says, need more male mentoring, especially after age 10 and
especially if their parents have divorced. Divorce often
isolates
boys from the only male mentor they have, Gurian
says.
Divorced
fathers, he says, must work to stay in their sons' lives.
He also sees problems with court battles to allow girls in formerly
all-male institutions. "Boys need to bond with other boys." Gurian
says. "We're wasting a lot of our cultural time trying to integrate
everything."
The boys' movement arose after a flurry of attention to the girls
prompted by Mary Pipher's 1994 book "Reviving Ophelia." That work
detailed forces in society, including media pressure to be beautiful
and sophisticated, that can transform lively pre-teen girls into
unhappy, unhealthy adolescents.
Boys also are under pressure to conform to society's expectations -
pressure, Gurian
says, that can create confusion and, in extreme cases,
clinical depression.
Trouble can arise when boys are left to sort out those expectations on
their own, often relying on media or video games for their ideas about
manhood with little input from fathers or other male mentors, the
author says. Many hide that struggle behind bluster,
aggression
or sullen silence.
And boys who are emotionally hurt tend to respond by lashing out, he
says. Several of the boys involved in the recent school shootings were
struggling with family problems or peer-group humiliations.
"One-third of adolescent male students nationwide carry a gun or other
weapons to school," Gurian
notes.
It's no surprise to him that boys are the primary consumers of video
games, most of which concern a quest or hunt. But playing such games
for long periods increases boy's tendencies to isolate themselves and
tune out the rest of the world, he says.
"Video games can be dangerous," says Gurian,
noting that graphic
violence can desensitize boys. "We are training this
generation
to be better killers than we've ever had before," he says.
But boys also can be damaged by efforts to curb natural
rough-and-tumble play, Gurian
says.
Millions of years of evolution as
hunters are behind their love of games involving balls and other moving
objects but some boys are punished or medicated because their
high-energy conflicts with parents longing for order and quiet.
Grim statistics aside, Gurian's
books are upbeat, hailing the joys of
boyhood while offering practical advice.
Gurian
has
two more books out early next year, both aimed at young
people. "From Boy to Man" is for boys ages 10 -14, and "Understanding
Guys" for girls ages 14 -18.
"I feel one of the best things we can do for girls and women is to
improve the life of boys," says Gurian,
the
father of two daughters.
Indeed, he and Pipher conduct joint seminars, and she wrote a
cover blurb praising Gurian's
book
as "filled with stories and
practical advice."
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