The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life by Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens

A teacher's review

Published in 2005.

More informative than Boys and Girls Learn Differently, The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life is a fascinating look into the specific reasons why boys are doing so poorly in school nowadays. Very, very awful if you did not know - Boys are the overwhelming majority of special education students, are more likely to drop out, and are much less likely to attend college.

Gurian's strategies to help come off as a bit vague - few concrete solutions are offered. As a teacher, I want to know what a 'boy-friendly' classroom looks like. Precious few good examples are provided. But, enough information is provided to at least alert the teacher that there is a problem and that he or she needs to be on the lookout for struggling boys. I would imagine, like most things in education, the answer is not simple and it requires quite a bit of individualization, which is difficult if, like me, you see upwards of 200 kids in the course of a day.

Read as a companion to Christina Hoff Sommers The War Against Boys. It lacks her hard edge but it is very informative.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life.

Reviewed on July 27, 2006.

Boys and Girls Learn Differently!: A Guide for Teachers and Parents by Michael Gurian

A teacher's review

Published in 2001.

I found Boys and Girls Learn Differently: A Guide for Teachers and Parents to be a useful and fascinating introduction to the general strengths and weaknesses of males and females in the classroom.

Some may laugh or poke fun at the relatively old ideas that Michael Gurian is presenting as new in the areas of male/female brain differences. These may be old ideas in the biology lab, but someone needs to walk over to the schools of education across the country and inform them because the 'tabula rasa' theory (the mind is a blank slate and gender differences are entirely a product of culture, not nature) is alive and still kicking hard.

The only complaint I have is that Gurian refers a lot to seminars and ongoing experiments in school designs that will be helpful in teaching to the strengths and weaknesses of girls and boys. However, he comes up a bit short in providing concrete examples of how to help both boys and girls.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on July 27, 2006.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Boys and Girls Learn Differently: A Guide for Teachers and Parents.