- “It’s easy to see how these sex differences are relevant to education. Girls will do the homework because the teacher asked them to. Boys are more likely to do the homework only if it interests them. If it bores them, or if they think it’s “stupid,” they are more likely to ignore it. Researchers have consistently found that girls are significantly more likely than boys to do the assigned homework,25 in every subject.26 Even the highest-achieving boys are significantly less likely to do the homework than the comparably achieving girls.27 Girls at every age get better grades in school than boys do, in every subject—not because girls are smarter, researchers have found, but because girls try harder.28 Most girls would like to please the teacher, if possible. Most boys don’t care much about pleasing the teacher or about getting straight A’s—and boys who do try to please the teacher and who do care about their grades will lower their status in the eyes of the other boys.29 Girls are more likely to assess their work as their teachers do. Boys are less likely to care what the teacher thinks of their work. That divergence leads to an enduring paradox: at every age, girls do better in school, but are less satisfied with their achievements, compared with the boys.30 In 2006, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reported that girls’ greater self-discipline and self-control—perhaps deriving from their greater motivation to please the teacher—appears to be a key distinguishing factor that has enabled girls to survive and thrive in the accelerated world of twenty-first-century education.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men(Leonard Sax) Page 26
- “One in four white boys with college-educated parents today cannot read at a basic level of proficiency, compared with only one in sixteen white girls.47 To repeat: • Fourth-grade boys are doing slightly better in reading and writing than they were twenty years ago. • Twelfth-grade boys are doing worse in reading and writing than they were twenty years ago.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 37
- “You know that one in four white boys with college-educated parents can’t read proficiently. That means one in four white boys in high school won’t be able to read your article saying how well white boys are doing.”Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 39
- “If time spent on video games is crowding out time spent with friends or time spent on homework, then clearly too much time is being spent on video games.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 58
- “The virtual world is fast-moving, interactive, collaborative, and fun. The real world of homework and textbooks can’t compete—not, at least, for the boy who is motivated by the will to power.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 60.
- “Time: No more than forty minutes a day on school days, one hour a day on other days—and that’s only after homework and household chores have been completed.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men(Leonard Sax) Page 7
- “Family comes first; schoolwork comes second; friends come third; video games are last. If your family is one of the fortunate few in which most family members still sit down to share a common evening meal, then sitting down to dinner with the family is more important than playing a video game, more important than talking on the phone with a friend, more important even than finishing a homework assignment. Homework is more important than talking with friends or playing a video game. Taking a phone call from a friend should be a higher priority than playing out a video game, though.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 72