Schoolboy's bias suit
Argues system is favoring girls

At Milton High School, girls outnumber boys by almost 2 to 1 on the honor roll. In Advanced Placement classes, almost 60 percent of the students are female.

It's not that girls are smarter than boys, said Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old senior at the high school.

Girls are outperforming boys because the school system favors them, said Anglin, who has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys.

Among Anglin's allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys' more rebellious ways are punished.

Grading on homework, which sometimes includes points for decorating a notebook, also favor girls, according to Anglin's complaint, filed last month with the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

''The system is designed to the disadvantage of males," Anglin said. ''From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this."

An international group that examines equity in education called the complaint of discrimination against boys rare. And Milton school officials denied that girls get better treatment than boys. But the female student body president, Kelli Little, voiced support for Anglin's views.

Anglin, a soccer and baseball player who wants to go to the College of the Holy Cross, said he brought the complaint in hope that the Education Department would issue national guidelines on how to boost boys' academic achievement.

Research has found that boys nationwide are increasingly falling behind girls, especially in reading and writing, and that they are more likely to be suspended, according to a 2005 report by the Educational Equity Center of the Academy for Educational Development, an international nonprofit group with headquarters in Washington, D.C.

While school officials said their goal is to help all students improve, the Milton High principal, John Drottar, , suggested in an interview that there may be ways to reach out to underachieving boys. Drottar said the high school plans to reinstitute a mentoring program that will pair low-achieving students with teachers.

While it will not specifically recruit male students, boys are likely to make up a large portion of the students served, he said.

''We're aware of it," Drottar said. ''We're looking into it. On a school basis, does that mean we should look at each classroom and see if we have to encourage boys a little more than girls now? Yeah, it probably does."

Anglin -- whose complaint was written by his father, who is a lawyer in Boston -- is looking for broader changes. He says that teachers must change their attitudes toward boys and look past boys' poor work habits or rule-breaking to find ways to encourage them academically.

Without such changes, many boys now give up, he said.

The school should also recruit more male teachers to better motivate boys, Anglin said. At the high school, 64 percent of the teachers are women, and 36 percent are men, according to the school system.

Anglin's complaint has set off a buzz among the 1,000 students at the school. Little, the student body president, said she disagrees with students who think Anglin is chauvinistic.

Of the 22 students in her honors Spanish class, only one is a boy, said Little, a senior. She also said that teachers rarely ask her for a hall pass if she is not in class, while they routinely question boys walking behind her.

As for assignments, she said, one teacher expects students to type up class notes and decorate their notebooks with glitter and feathers.

''You can't expect a boy to buy pink paper and frills to decorate their notebooks," Little said.

Larry O'Connor, another Milton High senior who supports Anglin, said teachers should do more to encourage freshmen boys to do well in school, because many lack motivation.

O'Connor, who is taking two honors classes and one Advanced Placement class, said he is surrounded by a sea of girls in his classes.

He said he ended up taking high-level courses because an English teacher had pulled him aside in his freshman year and had told him that he had the potential to succeed, and that the school needed more male scholars.

While some of Anglin's concerns appear to be supported by school statistics and anecdotal evidence, school officials say some of the solutions that he offers are far-fetched.

For example, he proposes that the high school give students credit for playing sports, not just for art and drama courses. He also urges that students be allowed to take classes on a pass/fail basis to encourage more boys to enroll in advanced classes without risking their grade point average. He also wants the school to abolish its community service requirement, saying it's another burden that will just set off resistance from boys, who may skip it and fail to graduate as a result.

School official said they cannot give credit for sports and are unlikely to allow students to take courses without grades.

Superintendent Magdalene Giffune said the school system will not consider changing the community-service requirement. ''It's an important part of teaching students to be responsible citizens," she said.

The US Department of Education is evaluating whether Anglin's complaint warrants investigation, said a spokesman, Jim Bradshaw.

Anglin, who has a 2.88 grade point average, acknowledged that discrimination complaints are not often filed by white, middle-class males like himself.

But he said: ''I'm not here to try to lower the rights of women or interfere with the rights of minorities. We just want to fix this one problem that we think is a big deal."

Gerry Anglin, Doug Anglin's father, said the school system should compensate boys for the discrimination by boosting their grades retroactively.

''If you are a victim of discrimination in the workplace, what do they do? They give you more money or they give you a promotion," Gerry Anglin said. ''Most of these kids want to go to college, so these records are important to them."
Schoolboy's bias suit - The Boston Globe

Just to say it explicitly, because sarcasm doesn't type well...

I think this kid and his father are bringing an incredibly stupid complaint / law-suit...

Stupid lawsuit.

However... it really is pretty obvious that the typical American classroom very much favors the learning style of girls.

I don't see what the hoopla is about the shit, the Republicans will take care of the boys, they have Mark Foley on the job!

Joining us now from Capitol Hill is Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida, co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. ...
NPR : Foley on Exploiting Children over the Internet in 2002

Republican policies have made us WEAK militarily, diplomatically, economically, environmentally, and in homeland security and our childrens welfare!

Why not stop being a complete dumbass, and at least TRY to stay relatively on topic.

I think this lawsuit is totally offbase. The reason boys do poorly is because boys are less likely to care about school, are less likely to study, and are less likely to put forth an effort to succeed.

It is not that girls learn differently than boys, it is about motivation. Boys are simply less likely to care.

Each and every recommendation and complaint listed here is offbase.

Trustworthy students should be allowed to walk the halls without a pass if the school decides to allow it.

Notebook decoration will build creativity, and while I would not recommend it counting for credit in a mathematics class, it would be perfectly suitable in an arts class.

Counting sports as school credits will result in our male students learning pretty much nothing while still getting good grades.

Changing advanced placement classes to a pass/fail scale will discourage students from excelling and learning all of the material.

But I must reiterate: the root of all of these problems is that boys in our society learn not to care about their grades.

This exact same situation was present in my high school, and I think in most high schools. More girls are doing the work and doing the studying than boys. That's all there is to it. It is not a matter of boys having a different learning style than girls: boys need to be taught by their parents to care about school.

Sorry, but the overall learning styles of boys and girls is QUITE different.

If you were in education you would know that.

I did not say that boys have the same learning style as girls. I said that the reason boys are falling behind has nothing to do with having a different learning style. It has to do with boys not having the motivation to do well in school.

I admittedly do not believe there is much of a difference in the learning styles of boys and girls, and that the difference which does exist is caused by our culture, not by the makeup of the brain. However, those are different debates, which are not related to this simple fact: boys are falling behind in schools because they simply do not put for the same effort as girls.

Instead of comparing all boys to all girls, we need to compare boys who care about school to girls who care about school. The rates of success will be far more even.

So what you're saying here is that you're contradicting yourself about 3 times.

If you were married, and had raised children of both sexes, you would KNOW that there is a night & day difference between boys and girls - and it's NOT cultural. It is NOT learned. It is NOT environmental. It's inate.

I might as easily claim that you have contradicted yourself 3 times, but if I don't provide any explanation, then my claim is worthless.

If you feel I have contradicted myself, explain where, and I will clarify.

A parent may often see differences in the behavior and learning fashion between boys and girls, but the parent has no way of knowing whether these differences are innate or caused by culture.

Also, as I stated in my previous post, I am not claiming that no learning difference exists, I am claiming that any difference which might exist is irrelevant to boys performing poorly in schools. Boys are performing worse than girls because less boys take their schoolwork seriously.