I opened my email this morning and received notice of a speaker to appear at a local PTO meeting:

Being a Parent to a Boy;
Being a Parent to a Girl,
Unique Differences
This discussion will look at the unique developmental, educational and relational differences of the two genders, [my emphasis] and how to parent them. A great deal of recent research points to the needs of each.
Dr. William R. Lutz, is a Licensed Family Therapist, State of New Jersey. He was the founder and Executive Director of the Montclair Counseling Center, with an office in Short Hills, until his recent retirement. His education includes a Doctorate in Adolescence, and post-doctoral work in child development at Erickson Center, Harvard University.

It's amazing how it's become accepted to assert there are these deep gender differences--when solid scientific research consistently refutes this notion. Same Difference, a fascinating and exhaustively researched book by Rosalind Barnett, Ph.D., a psychologist at Brandeis University, and Caryl Rivers, a journalist, completely debunks the gender myths that have gained popularity recently.

The notion that girls don't do math, boys don't like to read, or that there is an inherently male or female "learning style" is exposed as pure nonsense by Barnett and Rivers. The authors did a lot of digging and found that the studies that "experts" like Dr. Lutz cite often aren't studies at all, but sketchy anecdotal reports by non-social scientists, like Michael Gurian, author of The Wonder of Boys and other best-selling bunk.

Gurian calls himself a "philosopher"--he has no educational credentials, no doctorate, no training. (A year or so ago, his publisher sent me the galleys to one of his books, and I was stunned that I could find no foot notes, no documentation at all, for the sweeping assertions he was making about boys and girls. Then I looked up his background and saw that he had no educational training or credentials. Just an "institute" that he set up based on his precepts based on god-knows-what.)

Just because something feels true doesn't make it true. Generations ago, it "felt" true that girls weren't as smart as boys, or that they could somehow be "injured" by studying too hard. The "truth" was that when these gender myths were accepted as fact, both sexes were hurt and constrained by them.

Let's stop talking about gender differences and focus on individual differences, so that each kid gets what they need to learn and thrive.

Labels: boys, differences, gender, girls, myths

Stumble It!