“I spent a year as a high school teacher. I was shocked to discover the cleverness and ingenuity of the dumb boys.” These words come from Redford (pseudonym), a remarkable young man I interviewed in September. The “dumb boys,” of whom his math classroom was chiefly composed, were those who had disengaged from their studies years earlier and no longer applied themselves with any real effort. In his classroom, he maintained, they came alive.
It is no secret that by high school, many boys (and some girls too, of course) feel little self-assurance in the classroom. They may be confident elsewhere, such as on a sports team, yet, toward schoolwork, they have become indifferent or dismissive. They find instruction an imposition and become unreceptive to it. Many conclude their teachers dislike them and have even given up on them.
Many factors contribute to these attitudes, and I’ve written earlier about the debilitating effects of early education and the felt absence of compelling reasons to invest or work hard. But whatever the reason, for many boys, school is boring, conflictual, alienating.
Even for the estranged, however, as Redford’s experience illustrates, classrooms can become places of vibrancy and connection. In terms of what inspires and invigorates students, it is fair to say the actual curriculum plays only a secondary role. The real factors are resonant interactions, both among the students themselves as well as with the teacher.1 There is no formula for this, but Redford’s unorthodox experiment suggests three approaches that can promote engagement.
Spontaneity
Teachers often recognize that the curriculum and especially its rigid enforcement can get in the way of learning. They lament how the obsessive focus on student achievement metrics has led to a high-surveillance, low-trust, and intensely programmed school day. Under this regime, education can get reduced to little more than the transmission of facts and skills. It isn’t rewarding for educators and “for a lot of students,” said one teacher in a National Education Association publication, “It’s like boot camp.”2
Redford’s school required a weekly plan “that accounted for every minute of classroom instruction time.” While he prepared basic instructional outlines, he allowed considerable spontaneity in class to take advantage of opportune moments when something different, something life-giving, was clearly needed. With some frequency, he “tossed the curriculum aside for important things, such as ad hoc debates, arm-wrestling competitions, and walks outside.” If it was “just a beautiful day,” he said, “we’d go outside and do something there.”
Unconventional Methods
The educational research literature documents the general tendency of girls to try harder and be more compliant in school than boys.3 While acknowledging that pattern, Redfield saw an even bigger differentiator in the “physicality thing” for boys. Unlike girls, boys expend a lot of energy just to contain themselves, to stay seated, keep their bodies still, and remain quiet. So, Redfield loosened the strictures. Students could get up, and at times, he said, as much as half of his class would be standing in the back of the room, where, generally, they were not disruptive and followed instructions—with exceptions, “obviously.”
Another significant boy-girl difference is in attitudes toward competition. School administrators strongly discourage open competition, seeking to keep achievement individual and private so that no one “feels bad for losing.” While girls had their own ways of distinguishing themselves, Redford observed, they were “not really interested in finding out who was better than who at various tasks.” The boys, on the other hand, craved competition even when they were “not very good at the thing they were trying to compete at.”
To make a place for this need, Redfield held various contests, such as in-class “arithmetic competitions.” He also assigned students to teams, with an incentive to collectively score the highest on each test. “Usually the prize would be, like, a pizza or something.” The kids responded and encouraged one another not to be a “straggler” and “drag down” the total.
Cooperation and Accountability in Competition
Team competition enhanced motivation and prompted the boys to cooperate as a group. There is, Redfield thought, “a kind of internal politics that emerges among boys that are trying to compete in a group setting.” Educational researchers have noted that “boys’ [disruptive] conduct is particularly responsive to negative peer effects.”4 But peers working together can also engender creative interactions and greater self-assurance.
Education Essential Reads
It is one thing when students are only answerable to teachers and parents, another when they feel responsible to one another. Boys, Redfield argued, may not care about pleasing the teacher or about grades or even the subject matter, but they don’t want to “disappoint their comrades” and “can hold each other accountable in ways that he [the teacher] can never do.” Then, the outcome is not just about them as individuals. For the sake of the team, “you have to start performing,” Redfield observed, “you have to pull your weight.” And “that’s a very valuable skill to learn.”
Cooperation built community. To track students’ whereabouts, Redford’s school had an AI-powered surveillance system. Since the cameras kept account of how long students were gone from the classroom, and Redfield did not enforce all the rules on attendance, he invited his seniors to see if they could “fool the system.” As one sign of their cleverness and ingenuity, they invented all sorts of “crazy” and inventive ways to move about undetected.
The boys also used their cleverness and ingenuity to devise elaborate schemes to cheat on tests. Initial efforts failed, and they suffered the penalties. Undeterred, they kept trying. As they got better, it turned into “an implicit game” with the teacher. Could they outwit him?
Redfield put into place what he called “abnormally high testing security.” It didn’t work. After one class, in particular, when the scores came in “abnormally high,” Redfield was confused. The boys must be communicating, he concluded. But how? Suspicious, and being a longtime radio hobbyist, he came to the next test equipped with a “spectrum analyzer,” a device that can detect radio signals. Sure enough, although he could not specifically identify which boys were involved, some were operating a network of Morse code transmitters.
Rather than being disappointed or angry, Redfield was impressed with their cooperation and cunning. For many boys, he said, there would be no “catching up on algebra via dutiful studying at the kitchen table.” But some, at least, “had to know the answers and transmit them to other students.” And, frankly, “under what other circumstances would a teenage boy who checked out of math class 5 years ago learn Morse code?” Together, faced with risk and uncertainty, they found a way to a good grade via collective action, even if resorting to illicit means.
School Response
Redfield’s experience suggests several recommendations, especially if implemented early, before boys have become alienated and withdrawn: that team competition and “stakes beyond the individual be invited back into education,” that room be made for “spontaneity and male passion,” and that schools recognize more fully that, as Plutarch said, “children are not vessels to be filled, but torches to be lit.”
Unfortunately, creating a more vibrant classroom in this way tends to run counter to schools’ regulations and focus on narrow performance metrics. A cooperative administration is also required. According to Redfield, his relationship with the principal was “chummy,” and he was friendly with the other teachers, at least some of whom liked what he was doing. But his methods were a professional bridge too far. His contract, too predictably, was not renewed.
