New research shows Canadian boys not faring well

Canadian boys face many issues, including, but in no way limited to, problems in literacy, says a new report published by Nipissing University researchers Dr. Douglas Gosse and Dr. Steven Arnocky.Since the onset of the new millennium, international interest has risen regarding the difficulties facing boys in school, particularly literacy, in Australia, England, and increasingly the United States. In Canada, efforts to address boys’ problems in education continue to focus primarily on literacy, making invisible the myriad problems many Canadian boys confront.
In their report, The State of Canadian Boyhood—Beyond Literacy to a Holistic Approach, Gosse and Arnocky compare Canadian boys to Canadian girls according to a number of indicators of school achievement and engagement, as well as physical and mental health.
The peer-reviewed report, is published in the November edition of the online academic journal, In Education, exploring our connective educational landscape. The report can be read here:http://www.ineducation.ca/article/state-canadian-boyhood-beyond-literac…
Many factors regarding educational engagement and achievement are highlighted in the report, including:Parental encouragement: A larger percentage of female students (49%) indicate that their parents encouraged them to try their best at school, as compared to 43% of boys.Literacy: Girls outperform boys in school board, provincial, national, and international literacy assessments.Homework: 56% of boys often or always complete homework, compared to 67% of girls. Only 30.3% of boys spend at least 4 hours per week on homework, compared with 41.2% of girls.Suspensions: boys are suspended at 3.54 times the rate as girls, and account for 78% of all suspensions.Dropouts:63.7% of school leavers are male.University attendance: among 19-year old youth, 38.8% of girls attend university, compared with only 25.7% of boys. The average Canadian university campus is 58% female. More women than men obtain both bachelors and masters degrees.
Regarding boys’ physical and mental health, Gosse and Arnocky find equally disturbing trends, including:Risk-factor for premature death. In Canada, suicide, coronary heart disease, drug or alcohol abuse, violence, and accidents pose a significantly greater risk to male versus female youth.Megarexia. 4% of boys in Grades 9 and 10 use anabolic steroids.Gangs. In Canada, an overwhelming majority of youth gang members are male (94%). Formal criminal charges are more likely to be filed against male compared to female offenders.Suicide. Canadian adolescent boys commit suicide at about 4 times the rate of girls.
Gosse and Arnocky articulate some of the impediments to establishing a better understanding of Canadian boys, and offer recommendations.
“The view that males are privileged and victimizers is very common in Canadian culture from movies and television and in our educational, health and legal systems,” said Gosse. “Desegregating the data to better understand which groups and sub-groups of Canadian boys are most at risk engenders anxiety over perceived racism and classism, but that work desperately needs to be done. As well, since Canada’s education system is provincial it lacks a national focus, so effective programs and strategies are not widely disseminated. Furthermore, while Canada has a federal government ministry for the Status of Women Canada, and millions of dollars of resulting research and programs, no parallel infrastructure exists for Canadian boys and men; it needs to be created.”
About the authors:
Dr. Douglas Gosse earned a PhD in Social Justice and Cultural Studies from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He is a Professor of Teaching and Learning, Curriculum Methods in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University, and Chair (Interim) of the Intermediate-Senior Division. He serves on the advisory board of New Male Studies, An International Journal and is a member of the American Men’s Studies Association.
Dr. Steven Arnocky earned his PhD in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour from McMaster University. He is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Director of the Evolutionary Psychology lab at Nipissing University.?