How the Schools Shortchange Boys

How the Schools Shortchange Boys

By: Gerry Garibaldi

The story “How the Schools Shortchange Boys” is about how boys are different when it comes to school. Girls are more engaged in school than boys and how girls are more calm and pleasant and they succeed through cooperation. The author compares boys to a moth and how they pin you to a wall to receive a rational explanation to everything, and boys slouch in their chairs and stare out the windows and beat their pencils. Girls will turn their paper in two days before its due and how they hand in the final copy in neat vinyl folders with colorful pages. Boys will say, “Hey you never told us ‘bout a paper! What paper?!” (Garibaldi 537).  The author also noticed that a female teacher who has no male children that they find boys’ to be challenging to classroom assignments.  The author also talks about how some boys are diagnosed with a learning disability and they look at it as an easy way out.  Garibaldi goes on to talk about boys in special-ed and how he notice they sat at their desks with their head downs or just staring off in space. The boys enjoy the special-ed boosters like their grades start to rise, and the phone calls home stop.  The author goes on to say how they feel isolated and outgunned and how boys who get a ride on the special-ed train take the ride to its end without looking out the window.

I agree with the author on how girls are more engaged in school than boys in school, and how we are more pleasant and we succeed through cooperation. Boys are just lazy and how they just ask questions about why we got to do this assignment, and also how they are slouch in their chairs and just day dream. I do believe that boys take the easy road out by using a learning disability to make it through school so they do not have to work as hard. They just feel like they can hop on the special-ed train because they know they are going to pass regardless due to their disability.

Citations

Garibaldi, Gerry . "How the Schools Shortchange Boys." Trans. Array The Longman Reader. Judith Nadell, John Langan and . 9th Edition. New York, NY: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2009 - 2010. 515-517. Print.