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28/02/2004: "School: irrelevant and constricting"
The recurring debate on whether girls are better performers at school than boys has received some fresh input with the publication of American researchers William Draves and Julie Coates' Nine Shift: Work, life and education in the 21st century. I was delighted to read about their conclusions.
According to the authors, it is not boys who are the problem but schools. For while boys are developing the skills they will need in the "knowledge jobs" of the future, schools are still preparing students for an industrial age which is passing.
Draves and Coates say boys dropped out of school in huge numbers in the first two decades of the 20th century. Yet it was young men, experimenting with technology, who led America's manufacturing boom, especially in the automobile industry.
They say something similar is happening today: boys are into the internet and computers. They like to innovate and experiment. They "like taking risks, being entrepreneurial, being collaborative - all behaviours that lead to success in the workforce today". 
But while boys are rewarded for their behaviour in the workplace, they are punished in school because they are non-conformist, poor at listening and following instructions, and restless. This reflects my experiences of nearly 20 years of education and the feelings of many of my friends (yes, boys do have feelings).
Schools need to do more to encourage and reward the risk-taking, innovative, technology-oriented bent of the bright boys who find the current curriculum irrelevant and constricting.
At the same time, they need to ensure all boys have the literacy, language and social skills to cope in a complex society in which many jobs will involve something other than tinkering with technology.
