If you’ve been paying attention to education news, you know that boys are falling behind academically. You’ve heard they are lagging in reading and writing, graduating from high school at lower rates than girls, and filling fewer seats in college classrooms.

No doubt you’ve also heard theories about the causes of this phenomenon, from the rise of feminism to the departure of fathers from the home. You’ve also heard ideas about how to reverse it, from same-sex classes to more male teachers.

What you probably haven’t heard is what boys think about it. Until now.More than 540 Maine boys and young men shared their views on schooling in a yearlong research project whose preliminary findings, released at a statewide education conference at Bates last October, are attracting queries from teachers across North America.

The study confirms what researchers suspected — boys’ underachievement parallels a sense of disenfranchisement in their schools — and it offers some surprises. Defying stereotype, for example, boys do care what teachers think of them. When boys have good relationships with their teachers, it has much to do with their love of a class.

“Our boys are saying they want people to connect with them,” says Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro, Bates’ representative to the Maine Boys Network, the consortium of policy analysts, educators, and youth-service professionals that sponsored the study. “They love it if someone — it doesn’t have to be a male teacher — knows and shares their interests.”

The project is significant not only for adding a vital piece to the national discussion, but also for its ambitious reach: Hundreds of boys offered opinions about the teaching techniques that engage them — or lose them. Nigro, with Maren Vouga ’09 of Louisville, Ky., and Erin Bonney ’09 of Sudbury, Mass., conducted a daunting analysis of the discussions, identifying common themes as well as classroom strategies that some Maine teachers are already putting to use.

“That’s where Georgia took the lead,” says Mark Tappan, a Colby College professor of education who performed the data analysis with Nigro and Stephan Derochers, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Maine–Farmington. “She developed a way to critically examine
the interviews. We were so lucky to have her expertise.”

Their findings appear in the October 2008 report “The Gender Divide in Academic Engagement: Perspectives from Maine Boys and Young Men.”

To read the report go to http://www.boystomen.info/ and scroll down to the report.

Children have been at the center of Nigro’s research at Bates. She has studied children’s memory to develop interview methods that improve preschoolers’ recall and resistance to misinformation. She
also developed a project to raise middle-school girls’ awareness of careers in math and science.

Her concerns about boys date to 1997, when she helped to interpret a survey of Lewiston sixth-graders’ attitudes toward school and their future. (The survey had been designed and implemented by Bates students under the direction of Professor of Political Science Douglas Hodgkin, now retired.)

“I was struck by the gender difference,” Nigro recalls. “Twenty-five percent of male students felt excluded in the classroom, that their opinions weren’t valued.”

When the survey was presented publicly to Lewiston residents, however, their attention went to other findings — understandably, since the national focus at that time was on improving girls’ education and career opportunities. “People thought paying attention to boys would take away from the attention that was being paid, and still needed to be paid, to girls,” Nigro says.

The Maine Boys Network study was her long-awaited opportunity. She and students from her “Action Research” psychology course were among numerous facilitators convening focus groups in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges during 2007–08. “The boys were thoroughly engaged,” she reports. “They took it seriously, but they also had fun. They appreciated that someone was asking the questions we were asking.”

Students shared, among other things, their yearnings for a kinesthetic but challenging curriculum; variety and freedom in their assignments; caring, fair teachers; and the same respectful treatment that they thought girls received.

“Sometimes I wanted to go off-script and intervene,” Nigro confesses. “One middle-school boy asked, ‘Why do I have to study science? I want to be a lobsterman.’ I asked him, ‘Don’t you think a lobsterman needs to know what’s happening in the oceans, what’s happening to the fish? That’s science.’ I could have gone on with an entire science lesson, but I stopped myself.”

That exchange was among many poignant moments from gatherings that often stretched to two hours — with students begging for more time. “That boy was getting the message that you’re a nobody if you don’t go on with education,” Nigro reflects. “Yet the somebodies in his life — his father, his uncles, his grandfather — hadn’t gone on in education. It made me see that we have to listen to them and think about how we convey the message that higher education is important.”

“There’s not going to be a single quick fix,” Nigro believes. “It’s not going to be single-sex schools or classrooms. That may work for some boys, but it’s not one size fits all. The teaching the boys want is simply good teaching. It doesn’t have to be tailored to boys. Good teaching embraces a variety of approaches to reach different kids, whatever their needs are. Everyone, boys and girls, benefit.”

The Whitehouse Professorship at Bates was established in 1992 with a gift to the endowment by David C. Whitehouse, a 1936 graduate of Bates, and his wife, Constance, “for the advancement of that character which Bates has consistently exemplified, including a dedication to free enterprise, freedom of religion, educational and moral excellence, and a respect for human dignity.” Constance, a native of Auburn, died in March 2000. David, raised and educated in Auburn, died in early April 2000.

Joining Nigro in the roundtable discussion will be several of her former students who now counsel, teach and advocate for adolescents across the United States. Nancy Bullett, a 1996 graduate of Bates, has worked with the AIDS Coalition of Lewiston-Auburn and has been active in various activities designed to create safer schools for gay and lesbian youth.

Emily Cause, a 1997 graduate of Bates, earned a master’s degree in middle school education from Lesley College and works in the Department of Ethics at the Fieldston School in New York City. The school’s ethics department guides children into becoming principled and caring members of their communities.

Rebecca Colman, a 1993 Bates graduate, worked as a mental health counselor for three years before beginning graduate studies in developmental psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is involved in projects related to adolescent sexual behavior, including a five-year evaluation of abstinence-education programs in the state of Georgia.

Emily Demong, a 1994 graduate of Bates, worked for Teach for America and the National Outdoor Leadership School before joining the Aspen Achievement Academy, which leads high-risk youth on wilderness experiences in the Utah outback.

Lisa Kociubes, a 1996 graduate of Bates, worked as a residential counselor in a Massachussets youth shelter for homeless and at-risk youth. She received her master’s degree in social work from Columbia University in 1999 and now works in the Juvenile Rights Division at the Legal Aid Society in New York City.

“The Whitehouse Professorship is an enduring and permanent symbol of the commitment to keep the finest teachers among us,” said Bates President Donald W. Harward of the Whitehouse endowment. Recipients of the Whitehouse award retain the professorship for a period of four years. Professor Nigro is the second recipient, the first being Professor John Kelsey, also of the Department of Psychology at Bates.

Nigro received the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching at Bates in 1989. She has been a member of the supervisory board for the Maine Court Appointed Special Advocate Program, serving abused children. She also has worked with local agencies on an HIV prevention project, developed a project to raise awareness about careers in math and science for middle school girls, helped to evaluate a sexual-abuse prevention program and assessed Lewiston 6th-grade students’ aspirations for the Lewiston Aspirations Partnership.

Nigro was named one of two 1998 recipients of the Maine Campus Compact (MCC) Faculty Service-Learning Award, one of the most prestigious awards for community service in the state of Maine. She has received the John W. Dallenbach Fellowship from Cornell University and a National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship. Nigro received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University, her master’s degree from Yale University and her doctoral degree from Cornell University.

After graduating from Bates with a degree in economics, Whitehouse earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University in 1938. He joined the Container Corporation of America in 1944, becoming general manager in Boston in 1958, west coast division general manager in 1963 and vice president in 1965. He managed the firm’s headquarters in Venezuela during the early 1970s and retired in 1980. Active in Bates affairs and particularly supportive of the college’s museum and its collections, he served as chairman of his class reunion gift committee and as a member of the College Key, an honorary service organization of Bates graduates.