2min chapter

The Gray Area with Sean Illing cover image

Men and boys are struggling. Should we care?

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

CHAPTER

Starting Boys in School a Year Later Than Girls

There's a huge gap between boys and girls in terms of their developmental age. So by starting boys in school a year later than girls, you could leveling the playing field developmentally. And to the extent we're still clinging to models of masculinity that are incompatible with say that guy staying home as a dad and raising his kids, he says. It's a huge political failure.

00:00
Speaker 2
It's a huge political failure. And to the extent we're still clinging to models of masculinity that are incompatible with say that guy staying home as a dad and raising his kids, to the extent we're still holding on the models of masculinity that forbid that that actually is toxic and it should be blasted off into space, never to be seen or recovered. Yeah. I mean, another idea you have, which boy, this is coming at the right time for me and I really think you're on to something here. My wife and I were considering doing this before I even encountered this. But I feel better about it now. And that is this idea of starting boys in school, a year later than girls. Do you want to say why you think that's a good idea?
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's because we decide to put kids into school at a certain age based on an assessment of their development at that age and what their development is going to be at later ages. And as we discussed earlier, there's a huge gap between boys and girls in terms of their developmental age. There's a big gap at five. There's an even bigger gap at 15. And so the relationship between chronological age and developmental age is not the same for boys and girls. So by starting boys in school a year later than girls, and there's a number of ways you could do that. You could start girls a year earlier, start boys a year later, you could hold them back at various points. I like the idea of just by default, actually just putting the boys in a year later. And it's partly because it will help them at the beginning and mean that they're not behind all the way through, but more because 10 years later when they're in high school and trying to turn in their chemistry homework, they're not surrounded by girls who just developmentally or at least a year or two ahead of them. And so I see it as leveling a playing field developmentally.

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