When he was young, my son Cole was an entertaining writer, voracious reader, and so curious he exhausted us with questions. In second grade, he was tested as gifted. Now, at 15, he鈥檚 as likely to be the teacher in our relationship as the student. But with rare exception, he gets terrible grades. Over the years, I鈥檝e been told he鈥檚 learning challenged and so needs special education and medication. I鈥檝e been to every kind of parent/teacher meeting. I鈥檝e tried every kind of school: Montessori, charter, public, magnet, private, as well as homeschooling. I hoped as he got older, this bright boy would be more willing to speak up and demonstrate that his inattention is not incomprehension.
But three weeks ago, as his sophomore year drew to a close, I got a call from a teacher warning me he was unlikely to pass. I had known he was slipping behind. In fact, I鈥檇 removed all the distractions I could from our house — Xbox, cable TV — and even set 鈥渄istraction controls鈥 on his laptop to keep him from wandering to Facebook when he should be studying. Cole and I talked about homework daily. He assured me he was getting caught up and that his teachers were simply not updating the online grading system. His efforts, he insisted with disarming confidence, would be reflected in his report card. But the teacher informed me she had just updated the system. I sighed and took a look. His grades were so low he would have to work to bring them up to Fs. What did he imagine was going to happen when I got that report card?
We’d been here before, but he always managed to catch up at the last minute. This time was different. I sat him down to explain that these grades were scorching his dreams of studying engineering at a good university. He shrugged and looked hopeless. 鈥淲hat are the chances that I鈥檒l get into college?鈥 he asked.
Not ‘fit’ for college?
What happened? How did that brilliant, curious mind decide it wasn鈥檛 a fit for college?
I started troubleshooting. First I called the school guidance counselor to find out what Cole’s options were. Should I let him fail so he could learn from the consequences of his inaction? Was it mathematically possible for him to pass? 鈥淚t鈥檚 possible,” the counselor told me. “But I doubt he can do it. He has dug himself into quite a hole.鈥 These were not easy classes he was failing. No amount of general brilliance would get him through honors chemistry. 鈥淏ut he can retake the classes in the summer. If he does that, these grades won’t affect his GPA 鈥 though the incident will appear on his record. But try and get him to fix it. This is too harsh a lesson at his age.鈥 The counselor agreed to talk to him man-to-man to explain the situation and Cole’s options.
Next, I did what I always do when I feel lost: research. I discovered that what鈥檚 happening to my son is epidemic and has been happening for decades. Boys start falling behind girls in kindergarten and keep doing it right through college. The end result? Colleges that are only 40 percent male and an educated workforce that is increasingly female.
5 reasons boys fail
Dr. Leonard Sax puts forth five possible reasons our boys are failing: boys鈥 dependence on video games, teaching methods that don鈥檛 account for how boys learn, an increasing reliance on when they are older, chemicals in the environment that disrupt hormones, and the devaluation of masculinity in schools that disenfranchise boys.
I inhaled his book . It made complete sense. I鈥檝e long been a believer in encouraging the 鈥渂oy鈥 aspect of boys. Despite the not-so-subtle suggestions starting in kindergarten that I put Cole on Ritalin, he and I refused. But the section on video games seemed to hold exactly the answer I was looking for. Cole loves video games 鈥 a love bordering on addiction.
According to Sax, the video game addiction is an indicator of the 鈥渨ill to power鈥 personality. This term, coined by Friedrich Nietzsche, describes the desire to control one鈥檚 environment. Sax argues that the 鈥渨ill to power鈥 is among the basic, immutable personality traits, trumping other basic impulses like the will to please. In video games, you experience control — often of a vast, complex world that requires lightning-fast reflexes, nuanced decisions, extensive memory, and ruthlessness. In fact, games are one of the few places Cole achieves what brain researchers call 鈥渇low鈥 — where your mind is so engaged you lose track of time.
I had long been responding to this aspect of his nature without having a name for it.
In the fourth grade, for example, his language arts teacher warned me he was failing so I called a meeting. She handed me proof: a test where he鈥檇 been asked to write a response to a prompt. She had given it an F.
It was good — and not just the grammar and spelling: he could write a lead, build suspense, and tell a joke. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 wrong with this?鈥 I asked. 鈥淭his is good writing — even for an adult.鈥
She handed me the rubric she had been teaching from. It stated a sentence had to be six words long. 鈥淗e used a two-word sentence. I am not trying to teach good writing,鈥 she informed me, the irony apparently lost on her. 鈥淚 have to teach him to write to that rubric so he can pass the EOGs (end-of-grade tests).鈥 I pulled him out of this school shortly after.
At home, Cole looked at the test and shrugged. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 care what she thinks,鈥 he said. 鈥淪he calls adjectives 鈥榮parkle words.鈥欌
鈥淚t鈥檚 not writing,鈥 I agreed. 鈥淎nd she鈥檚 not half the writer you are. This is a word game. And these are the rules.鈥 I handed him the rubric. 鈥淚 thought you were good at word games. She thinks if you can鈥檛 play this game you won鈥檛 be good at the EOGs either.鈥
He glanced at the rubric and nodded. I left it at that. And he went back to his computer game. But he got A鈥檚 after that — and top marks on the EOGs.
He may not be interested in pleasing teachers, but he鈥檚 always up for winning a game.
School is for girls
鈥淲hat should I do?鈥 I asked Sax.
鈥淭here is only one solution,鈥 he told me. 鈥淓nroll him in an all-boys school where the teachers know how to handle this personality.鈥 Not only are the schools he endorses same-sex, but the teachers at the boys schools understand that boys respond to competition and sometimes need to lead. They get the concept of will to power and use it as a teaching tool.
Unfortunately, there is no such school where we live and I can鈥檛 afford boarding school. I pointed this out.
鈥淵ou will have to move,鈥 he answered without hesitation. I could hear him typing and looking up the school closest to us, which turned out to be three hours away — and full. I thought he was joking, so I laughed. There was an awkward silence.
鈥淭his is your son,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 moved so my daughter could go to the right school. You have no choice. If I thought there was another way, I would not have founded the National Association for Single Sex Education.鈥
I have changed Cole鈥檚 school a half-dozen times without success. Although the debate on the pros and cons of single-sex education continues, I鈥檓 willing to believe Sax might be right about my son. But Cole likes his school 鈥 in no small part because there are girls there 鈥 and none of us want to move. I made a note of this idea as a possible last resort. But I searched on for a solution that fit our lives.
Richard Whitmire, author of , saw no easy solution either. 鈥淚 hate to say this about your son,鈥 he said. 鈥淏ut, at this point, he is not likely to achieve his dream of studying engineering at a good school.鈥
鈥淚 dropped out of high school,鈥 I countered. 鈥淏ut I went on to a good college — after a semester at a community college — and have achieved most of my dreams.鈥 I explained that I went to an experimental high school designed like a college. It lost funding in my junior year and closed but I couldn鈥檛 face the prison-like atmosphere of my only other alternative. So I got a GED at 16.
Whitmire listened with interest to my story. But he insisted, 鈥淵ou didn鈥檛 want to study engineering. And you didn鈥檛 have the experience your son is having. He is learning that he can鈥檛 do this. It sounds as if your journey had the opposite effect.鈥
Whitmire has spent years examining the appalling number of boys who don鈥檛 do well in elementary through high school and then go on to do poorly in college, if they go at all. This trend has been going on for decades. At this point, in some colleges, he told me, girls outnumber boys by two to one.
The problem, he says (along with Sax and many others) is that academics have been pushed into children鈥檚 lives earlier. Kindergarten is what first grade used to be. Girls are often ready to read at this age. Boys? Not so much. So from his very first school experience, a boy senses school isn鈥檛 for him, a feeling that worsens as the years drag on. Schools, which once left girls falling behind in math and science, have been revamped to be more verbal. This has helped girls. But boys aren鈥檛 as verbal and tend to tune out when there鈥檚 too much talking. Homework is another problem: in general, girls do it, boys don鈥檛.
In fact, it was the failure to turn in homework that accounted, for the most part, for Cole鈥檚 current grades.
Don鈥檛 push the homework button
Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, a clinical psychologist, wrote 聽because it was the book he wished he鈥檇 had when his son was in school.
鈥淚magine Pavlov鈥檚 dog,鈥 Goldberg told me. 鈥淧avlov taught the dog to salivate to a bell by using positive stimulation. And they teach rats to push a button the same way. But you can also teach the rat not to push a button with negative stimulation. That鈥檚 what we are doing to these boys (and girls) with homework.鈥
Some students are fine with homework. But for others this nightly ritual is hell. Maybe they didn鈥檛 pay attention in class so they don鈥檛 know what the homework is or how to do it. Perhaps they have trouble sitting still again after a long day in school. Some have a low-level learning disability, which leaves them disadvantaged when it comes to processing information that鈥檚 spoken out loud. (Boys are much more likely than girls to have one of these.)
Whatever the reason for the student鈥檚 difficulty with homework, it鈥檚 a big part of school. So concerned parents spend hours on it every night. We lose family time, pleasant after-school activities, and the harmony of family life. It becomes a war between parent and child to get this essential work done.
鈥淧eople work in containers,鈥 Goldberg says. 鈥淲e go to school for five hours. We go to work for eight. But a homework-trapped student has to do homework until it is done or everyone is too exhausted to care.鈥
I thought about all the fights Cole and I have had over the years about homework. It seemed pointless — and cruel.
The solution? 鈥淪et a fixed amount of time for homework — ten minutes per class is a good amount,鈥 says Goldberg. When the time is up, he鈥檚 done. The idea is that over time you鈥檙e changing how your child approaches and feels about homework. Eventually, says Goldberg, Cole will be able to complete all his homework without the usual strife. (Ideally, you work with the teacher to devise a homework solution that works while you鈥檙e retraining your child to approach homework differently.)
Would this solution work? And would we get cooperation from the school? We鈥檇 have to see.
Let鈥檚 make a deal
I would like to give up on this system that鈥檚 teaching my son that he can鈥檛 succeed and enroll him in a virtual school at or — or move so he can go to an all-boys school. But Cole wants to stay in this school. So we settled on a plan to get him caught up: if he fails, I get to choose.
I printed out a list of all the missing assignments and tests. He grabbed at it, gratefully. He hadn鈥檛 been paying attention and had no idea what was missing.
Then I asked my mother to stop by every afternoon after school. She has never been part of the homework battle, so I thought she might be a more effective person to help him get through it all. She read while Cole plugged away online at the , quickly getting up to speed on chemistry and algebra. In Salman Khan (at the Khan Academy), Cole discovered a math and chemistry teacher he could relate to, as I thought he might.
He also did his best to impress his grandmother with his dutiful attention to work. Though she didn鈥檛 do much but sit observing, occasionally she鈥檇 gently redirect him back to his studies if he strayed. She stayed for one hour. Once she left, homework time was over. He could do more work if he liked, and sometimes he would. But that was up to him.
One thing was clear: this new method was working. Suddenly, homework wasn鈥檛 something Cole put every ounce of his intelligence and effort into avoiding. With a hard stop at the end of an hour — and a lot of work to do — it was easier just to do it.
Cole started turning in piles of homework. He started to look less hopeless. One Sunday when my mother was visiting, he came out of his room, hugged her, and said, 鈥淭hanks to you, I got the highest grade in class on my chemistry test yesterday.鈥 His familiar look of failure was starting to wash off. Three weeks later, we got Cole鈥檚 report card: Three C鈥檚 (math, chemistry, and civics) and a B+ (creative writing, previously his lowest grade.)
He passed. But his GPA will never recover — unless he goes to summer school, retakes those classes, or switches to a virtual school.
We sat down together to look at his bittersweet victory. I made it clear that we were all impressed by what he had accomplished. 鈥淟earning honors chemistry in three weeks is no small feat,鈥 I told him. 鈥淣ot many people could do that. If you had started sooner, you might have made the honor roll.鈥
He nodded. 鈥淚 lacked initiative,鈥 he told me. 鈥淏ut I learned my lesson.鈥
Did he? 鈥淗e鈥檒l be fine,鈥 Tisha Green Rinker, senior manager of school counseling told me. 鈥淚鈥檝e seen pregnant kids who dropped out at 15 come to us, get a high school diploma, and go on to college. Cole has something none of those kids — or many of the 鈥榥umbers鈥 your experts are looking at — have: you. You care. You believe in him. And you are willing to do what it takes to help him figure it out.鈥
She鈥檚 right. When I dropped out of high school, I could easily have become a statistic used to support a theory. Many of the experts I spoke to would probably have predicted an unhappy outcome for me. Still, my mother encouraged me to follow the path that was right for me. Finding my way to college by going outside the box may have been one of the most important lessons I learned as a student.
As the parent of a struggling boy, though, it鈥檚 not always easy to feel so sanguine. Faced with so many disheartening statistics about failing boys, no parent can afford to sit back and have faith that their care will be enough to pull the kid through. I still don’t know if Cole will achieve his dreams — or anything at all — but I choose to believe in him. It鈥檚 not even really a choice. I refuse, am unable, to see him as one of these dire statistics. Not today. Probably not ever, however things turn out.
I鈥檝e learned a few things in all these years of helping this boy survive school: even when he seems not to be, he is listening. Even when he says he鈥檚 got it, he needs help finding a solution he can鈥檛 see or a way to reach a goal he鈥檚 given up on.
But the biggest lesson I鈥檝e learned is that people who tell me what this boy can鈥檛 do are usually wrong.
I鈥檝e been told he can鈥檛 take tests. (He aces them.) That he can鈥檛 pay attention without medication. (He鈥檚 fine. Pick up the pace!) That he will bring down the class EOG average. (He often gets the highest score.) And that he can鈥檛 handle the workload. (Honors Chemistry and Honors Algebra 2 in three weeks! You try that.)
So here鈥檚 what I say to 鈥楬e won鈥檛 achieve his dreams鈥: how about we wager some money on that?
