Are Boys and Girls Really Different?
By Troy L Parrish

A basic premise of Boys Behavior is that boys are indeed different from girls and that it is these differences that need to be value and shaped as well raise our boys. The debate has more significance than simply one's belief but touches on important aspects such as emotional development, socialization, expression of gender and education to mention a few. The long held beliefs that boys and girls are different has been receiving question and challenge for a few decades now and there are special interest groups that undoubtably would like to have affirmed the notion that people are androgenous and that any gender differences we see are a result of socialization driven by preconceived and erroneous traditional assumptions.

While the question of diffence has been getting some attention in serious research, no place is this more true than in education. With significant resources going into education each year as well as the cost associated with poorly educated students and adults, the outcomes of education are truly very important. The research is yeilding results that support the notion that boys are different from girls. Specifically, girls and boys respond differently to certain tasks and these differences can be seen in brain activity. What these results suggest is that boys and girls actually do learn differently from one another on certain tasks. They also suggest that males and females respond differently to the same stimuli in some situations.

The research into the learning of boys and girls is yeilding interesting and helpful information. "New brain imaging technologies confirm that genetically templated brain patterning by gender plays a far larger role than we realized. As one teacher wrote,

For years I sensed that the girls and boys in my classrooms learn in gender-specific ways, but I didn't know enough to help each student reach full potential. I was trained in the idea that each student is an individual. But when I saw the PET scans of boys' and girls' brains, I saw how differently those brains are set up to learn. This gave me the missing component. I trained in male/female brain differences and was able to teach each individual child. Now, looking back, I'm amazed that teachers were never taught the differences between how girls and boys learn."¹

What, then, are some of the qualities that are generally more characteristic of boys' brains?

• Because boys' brains have more cortical areas dedicated to spatial-mechanical functioning, males use, on average, half the brain space that females use for verbal-emotive functioning. The cortical trend toward spatial-mechanical functioning makes many boys want to move objects through space, like balls, model airplanes, or just their arms and legs. Most boys, although not all of them, will experience words and feelings differently than girls do (Blum, 1997; Moir & Jessel, 1989).
  
• Boys not only have less serotonin than girls have, but they also have less oxytocin, the primary human bonding chemical. This makes it more likely that they will be physically impulsive and less likely that they will neurally combat their natural impulsiveness to sit still and empathically chat with a friend (Moir & Jessel, 1989; Taylor, 2002).
  
• Boys lateralize brain activity. Their brains not only operate with less blood flow than girls' brains, but they are also structured to compartmentalize learning. Thus, girls tend to multitask better than boys do, with fewer attention span problems and greater ability to make quick transitions between lessons (Havers, 1995).
  
• The male brain is set to renew, recharge, and reorient itself by entering what neurologists call a rest state. The boy in the back of the classroom whose eyes are drifting toward sleep has entered a neural rest state. It is predominantly boys who drift off without completing assignments, who stop taking notes and fall asleep during a lecture, or who tap pencils or otherwise fidget in hopes of keeping themselves awake and learning. Females tend to recharge and reorient neural focus without rest states. Thus, a girl can be bored with a lesson, but she will nonetheless keep her eyes open, take notes, and perform relatively well. This is especially true when the teacher uses more words to teach a lesson instead of being spatial and diagrammatic. The more words a teacher uses, the more likely boys are to "zone out," or go into rest state. The male brain is better suited for symbols, abstractions, diagrams, pictures, and objects moving through space than for the monotony of words (Gurian, 2001).
  

These typical "boy" qualities in the brain help illustrate why boys generally learn higher math and physics more easily than most girls do when those subjects are taught abstractly on the chalkboard; why more boys than girls play video games that involve physical movement and even physical destruction; and why more boys than girls tend to get in trouble for impulsiveness, shows of boredom, and fidgeting as well as for their more generalized inability to listen, fulfill assignments, and learn in the verbal-emotive world of the contemporary classroom.² Other studies have demonstrated this gender difference, such as the study that demostrated that boys and girls showed differences in their verbal and fantasy play, even at the preschool age,³ or the study that demonstrated that boys score differently on intelligence tests that girls do.⁴ Boys have a tendency to have a greater distribution of scores meaning that there are fewer girls in the extremes (the very low and very high scores).

These sex differences are not exclusive to boys or to education. Recall the study we discussed in March 2008 that reported that the brains of males (men in this study) react differently than the brains of women when playing video games.⁵ Men experienced greater reward while playing the game which helps explain why boys are drawn to the electronic devices far more than girls are. Another study reveals that when people are under stress the brains of men and women repond differently. When the scans were completed, neuroscientists consistently found differences between the men's stressed-out brains and the women's. Men responded with increased blood flow to the right prefrontal cortex, responsible for "fight or flight." Women had increased blood flow to the limbic system, which is also associated with a more nurturing and friendly response.⁶

All of this support the reality that boys and girls are different. With brain imaging ability and the capacity to watch what is happening in an active brain our capacity to see how boys and girls really are different will continue to grow. Consequently, the way boys are should be celebrated and encouraged. Such moves as all boy class rooms is gaining in popularity and understanding that boys need to be motivated differently as well as accomodations for the wiggles all help in teacing and parenting boys more effectively. While there are many boys who are doing just fine, there are a number of boys who are really struggling, far more than girls. Men make up the majority of the prison system and boys overwhelmingly populate the special education programs in our schools. Traditional masculinity is certainly in flux and in some corners is outright being attacked. This has the danger of leaving boys without role models. For those boys at the struggling end of the spectrum, this could spell disaster.

Unquestionably, human behavior is complex and is not the by-product of any one single influence. Does socialization play a part in how boys turn into men? Of course it does, and our predispositions influence how we socialize our children. But to make this socialization the only influence that makes boys and girls different is to ignore both time honored wisdom (not tradition, wisdom) as well as hard science that demonstrates these differences through real measures.

 

1.With Boys and Girls in Mind. Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens Education Leadership November 2004 | Volume 62 | Number 3 Closing Achievement Gaps   Pages 21-26 http://www.ascd.org/authors/ed_lead/el200411_gurian.html

2. With Boys and Girls in Mind. Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens Education Leadership November 2004 | Volume 62 | Number 3 Closing Achievement Gaps   Pages 21-26 http://www.ascd.org/authors/ed_lead/el200411_gurian.html

3. Sex differences in verbal and play fantasy. Phebe Cramera and Katherine A. Hogan aWilliams Coll Developmental Psychology Volume 11, Issue 2, March 1975, Pages 145-154.

4. Sex differences shown by 2,544 school children on a group scale of intelligence, with special reference to variability. Luella Winifred Pressey Journal of Applied Psychology, Volume 2, Issue 4, December 1918, Pages 323-340.

5.Video Games Activate Reward Regions of the Brain in Men More Than Women.  Stanford School of Medicine.  http://med.stanford.edu/news_release/2008/february/videobrain.html

6.Men Are From Mars. Neuroscientists Find That Men And Women Respond Differently To Stress. April 1, 2008