The Teaching of Boys

I’m slowly making my way through Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys. Parts of this book are heavy to digest, but so far I’ve found it helpful.

Wild ThingsThe book is broken down into three parts. The first is called The Way of the Boy, in which the authors break down boys by age and describe where they are developmentally. For example, they call boys ages 2 to 4 “Explorers” and boys ages 9 to 12 as “Individuals.” The lumping together of age groups helps to define whether the boy is in a bout of curiosity and extreme energy versus a time of real reflection and grappling with his own identity. I found most of the descriptions (so far) to be mostly accurate for Jeremy and semi-accurate for Jackson.

The second part is called The Mind of a Boy and it’s currently the section I’m reading. Here the authors discuss how a boy’s brain works, having different learning styles from girls, educational challenges, and how to handle disappointment. It’s important to note that the authors don’t say, “All boys are this way, and all girls are that way.” They use terms like generally, most, many, etc. There are always exceptions and I’ve found many exceptions to be true with Jackson, particularly the part where they talk about boys excelling in spatial challenges. (Spatial awareness is an area where Jackson struggles tremendously.)

The third part is titled The Heart of a Boy and it’s this section that I’m terrified to read, particularly as it pertains to rites of passage, the specific roles mothers and fathers play in a boy’s upbringing, and all the hot topics that scare me to death. I don’t even have to list them because y’all know what they are.

But back to The Mind of a Boy. I’m meditating on this subject specifically because we are about to start the school year. This is what I read this morning:

The model of education that has been in place for the past one hundred years or so is known as compulsory schooling. If you do some research into the history of education, you will find that the compulsory model was birthed out of the Industrial Revolution. The academic calendar and the very structure of school (length of day, amount of time spent in class, etc.) were designed as a means of fashioning great factory workers, not students. They weren’t designed with the cognitive and emotional development of kids in mind. And they certainly weren’t designed to correlate with the developing brains of boys. If they had been, physical education would happen four times a day, and boys would be at school only three or four days a week for four or five hours at a time. Boys would spend the other days engaged in apprenticeships or internships, learning and utilizing skills. (emphasis mine)

Please know the paragraph that follows offers suggestions on how to work with your child’s educator and school administration and is not a lecture about homeschooling. I have yet to come across any information about homeschooling but have found lots of advice for parents on working with their son’s teacher, offering supplemental instruction to boost their son’s strengths, and so on.

But, as a homeschooling mom, I completely resonate with this paragraph about compulsory schooling. Our school week is set up so that we have four days of instruction followed by one day of testing (math and vocabulary). And by “day,” I mean about four hours, and not four hours straight. We start, then stop, they go outside, we start again, then stop, they goof off, etc. School work happens all over the place – they change rooms, go outside, stretch out in the middle of the living room floor, sit at the kitchen table, lay on their beds, etc. The testing on Fridays lasts about thirty minutes and then we paint or watch a documentary or do something else outside of a textbook. When they get attitudes, they either need to eat, run laps outside, or get some alone time in their own space.

So far, it works really well, and the insight from this book suggests that we’re headed in the right direction when it comes to cultivating sharp minds. THAT DOES NOT MEAN that I think boys in the traditional school experience will not excel in their own ways. I’m merely referencing my own children and their development. I absolutely do not want to portray some image that what we’re doing is right and what everyone is doing is wrong. Let’s be clear on that.


Here are other random bits I’ve underlined in the book:

Boys ages 5-8:

“Unfortunately most early childhood educational environments are not designed to help boys succeed… Much of the current research on boys and school recommends that boys wait to start first grade until they are six and a half. There’s a real maturity lag in young boys in this stage, compared to girls, and this is an obstacle to boys having a successful school experience in the early elementary years.”

“We can’t emphasize enough how important routine is for boys at this stage of their development. They behave and learn best by repetition and consistency.”

Boys ages 9-12:

“For those who care for boys, this can be a season of grieving as we watch the last remaining evidence of their childhood begin to pass away.”

“Feelings like sadness, hurt, fear, and loneliness are all expressed as anger.”

“Throughout their middle school years, boys get better and better about disguising their feelings and denying their emotional and spiritual sensitivity.”

“He wants to make his mark on the world and to discover who he is as a man. In order to do this, he needs to find ways to stand out from his peers and separate from his parents.”

“Because of a boy’s tendency to experiment at this stage, it’s also a time when his caregivers must increase their level of observation.”

“You want to stay ahead of the changes that are coming. He needs for puberty to put in a physical and spiritual context.”

All ages:

“We cannot nurture a boy’s brain and shame him at the same time.”

“As boys develop, they learn primarily in three ways: visually, spatially, and experimentally. Schools, on the other hand, are mostly auditory, sedentary, and intellectual.”

“If you’ve ever asked a boy (or a man) what he’s thinking about and he said, “Nothing,” odds are he was telling the truth.”


I could go on, but at that point I might as well photocopy the whole book and post it here. If you are raising boys and you’re feeling troubled by one or more issues specific to boyhood, I recommend Wild Things. Although, please know this book is written from a Christian’s point of view so at the core of nurturing a boy’s heart is some level of spirituality. It’s not overly weighted, but it’s something you should know up front.

This isn’t a full review since I have about 150 pages to go. I’m not at all excited about reading the parts on sexuality.

Not. At. All.

But I press onward.

error: Please, no copying.