The challenge of boys' brains ...

At Chavagnes we place great store by daily sport and think it's important for boys to 'keep moving'. The teaching style of male teachers teaching boys typically involves: speaking in a louder voice, moving about the classroom, using comptetive quizzes ... all of these are less popular (or effective) methods with girls.

The bottom line, however, is that for a teacher in a single-sex setting, it almost comes naturally to gear one's teaching, discipline and pastoral styles to the boys or girls in the school.

The challenges facing teachers in mixed schools are much more nuanced. In all sorts of subtle ways there has been a feminisation of school (partly because there are so few men teachers these days). I have been impressed by Peg Tyre, the US journalist who has drawn attention to this issue in a very balanced and convincing way. Here is a clip from Amercian television, dealing especially with approaches to PRE-SCHOOL, a time when boys and girls are getting the first experience of schooling in a formal setting.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here is a link to her book, The Trouble with Boys

Educational Site for Parents of Boys

http://www.boysandschools.com/index.php Just came across this site which could be of interest, especially for parents not contemplating boarding school, but keen to keep up to date with the latest thinking on the way boys learn and develop.

It is produced by a coalition of US parents who campaign for single-sex schools in the public (state) sector.

Bring back Grammar schools

The Provost of Eton argues that it's time to call time on the Comprehensive school experiment, for the sake of all the children ...

"There are three problems with our schools. We are failing to give an excellent education to cleverer boys and girls. We are failing to give a sound basic education to less able pupils, especially in deprived areas. And we are failing to stimulate the social mobility that good education makes possible. Your educational chances, and your life chances, depend too much on where you live."

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Join the Great Conversation : Summer course on the Great Books

Discover The Great Books of western civilisation at a summer school to make your brain cells sizzle.

Le Professor Anthony O'Hear take you on a whistle-stop cultural tour of the minds that made the west, based on his book The Great Books: From "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" to Goethe's "Faust": A Journey Through 2,500 Years of the West's Classic Literature.

This is what the press has been saying about O'Hear's historical and literary grand tour:

"O'Hear's range is extraordinarily wide and he has a rare ability to explain complex ideas in a straightforward fashion." Sunday Telegraph

'Impassioned and impressive' John Gray, Independent
'Salty and addictive' Daily Telegraph

'Fascinating' Alain de Botton, Observer

Now you can join in: ten days of intellectual formation and stimulation, with great company, good French food and wine, and daily cultural entertainment. it is going to be a literary house party to remember for anyone who wants to discover, or rediscover, the roots of our culture and participate in the 'great conversation' with the minds that forged our civilisation.

About Professor O'Hear's book:

Anthony O'Hear presents a personal tour of the most impressive, influential and era-defining books mankind has ever produced. "Paradise Lost", "The Canterbury Tales", "Don Quixote": great literature can be read by anyone, with a little help. Anthony O'Hear leads the way with this captivating journey through two-and-a-half millennia of books as dark, powerful, erotic, thrilling, politically astute and awe-inspiring as any modern bestseller. We begin with Homer, whose poems of epic struggle have made him the father of Western literature. After Greek tragedy, Plato, and Virgil's "Aeneid" comes Ovid, whose encyclopaedic "Metamorphoses" is an inexhaustible source for European art and literature. Via St Augustine we reach Dante, the author of "The Divine Comedy", a sublime, terrifying tour through "Hell", "Purgatory" and an ecstatic vision of "Paradise". Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Pascal, Racine and finally Goethe complete the cast list. In each case, O'Hear patiently draws out themes, focuses on key passages and explains why they are important. Personal, passionate, painstakingly researched and beautifully illustrated, this is a grand work of reference. But it is also a narrative history shot through with a love of literature, and a deeply-held belief in its power to shape everyone's world.

More information on the Great Books summer course: 26th July to 4th August 2009 in France.

Buy The Great Books from Amazon.