What is the best way to learn - through theory or through practical experience? It may be wise to ask: who is doing the learning?
In the recent book, “The Minds of Boys: Saving our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life,” authors Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens add their two cents to the question of whether genetics or culture/environment is the major force shaping children, and more specifically, whether the two sexes take different approaches to learning on the road to adulthood.
The authors present compelling evidence that men and women think differently. Using PET scans and MRIs, the researchers found that when males and females do the same task, different parts of the brain light up with differing levels of brain activity. Similarly Nancy Forger, psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts, reported that, “At least 100 sex differences in male and female brains have been described so far. They keep cropping up in animal and human studies.”
Words or Actions?
Research has shown that girls have up to 25% more corpus callosum (connective tissue between brain hemispheres), which helps them to excel at multi-tasking (which requires cross talking between hemispheres). Indeed, upon testing, girls on average are better at multi-tasking.
Girls' frontal lobes are more active than those found in boys and develop earlier. Boys have more dopamine in their bloodstreams. Both factors contribute to boys exhibiting more impulsive behaviour than girls. In the days when formal classroom education did not exist and education was more of an outdoor activity, being impulsive contributed to learning. But inside the four walls of a confined classroom, less impulsive behaviour leads to more effective learning.
Girls have stronger neural connections in their temporal lobes. As a result, girls are able to process more detailed sensorial memory storage and are better at listening. Boys, relatively speaking, pick up less of the spoken word and require more sensory tactile experiences in order to light up their brains.
Girls develop the Broca and Wernicke areas of the brain earlier - these are the main language centers located in the frontal and temporal lobes. Hence girls use more neural pathways and brain matter for word production and expressions of experience through words.
This is your brain on testosterone
Activity tends to be compartmentalized in boys' brains and they operate with 15 percent less blood flow in the brain than girls. Therefore boys in general tend to do better focusing on one task where deeper learning takes place and in general do not perform as well when required to move from task to task.
Finally, the male brain needs to recharge and renew itself between tasks by entering what Ruben Gur, neuropsychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, deems a rest state. Since females have greater blood flow in the brain, they recharge and renew without deep rest states. A girl can be bored in class but still keep her eyes open whereas a boy would likely doze off. Brain scans of girls at rest show much greater activity than brain scans of boys.
During puberty, boys receive five to seven spikes of testosterone in their brains per day. This hormone increases right brain development. Since boys have up to 20 times more testosterone than girls, it is no wonder that boys exhibit more aggressive, spatial mechanical development. At puberty girls experience a rush of estrogen and oxytocin - both left frontal lobe-enhancing hormones that again promote verbal development.
Failure to sit still
It comes as no surprise then that in the modern day parochial school setting, where children are taught to sit still and listen passively in class, boys receive the majority of Ds and Fs; boys make up 70 percent of the disciplinary problems in schools; boys are diagnosed with 70 percent of the learning disabilities in schools; and boys make up 80 percent of high school drop outs. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that boys are approximately one and a half years behind girls in reading and writing skills. Girls are behind boys in math and science, but to a lesser degree.
Boys were once educated as apprentices, under tutelage conditions and through practice. Learning took place on the farm, in marketplaces, even in the jungles or on the plains. Sitting still at desks was unheard of. To this day it gives girls a distinct advantage in the classroom setting. They're wired for it.
As Bernice McCarthy, educator and founder of About Learning, Inc., states, “For a more accurate whole-brained evaluation of student learning, educators must develop new forms of assessment that honor right-brained talents and skills.”
In brief it would appear that boys benefit from more practice-based learning whilst girls are generally superior in classroom settings studying theory.
|
Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
