Catherine Hatton, a Sturgeon Falls, Ont., high school teacher, has taught drama for years and she knows the gender splits can be formidable. In a class of 27 this year, she’s got just six boys.
But when she gets around to doing the casting call for the annual school play, Ms. Hatton has no intention of mounting a production of Seven Brides for Two Brothers. Rather, she’ll go out and lean on the boys to audition, targeting both the jocks (whose participation helps make drama acceptable for other boys) as well as kids who may be shy, un-athletic or simply in need of “a bit of a push.”
Does that teacherly tap on the shoulder make a difference in participation rates? “Oh, absolutely,” she replies. “I had one boy who was hesitant all through, and this year he’s directing his own play.”
Nipissing University professor of education Douglas Gosse, himself a long-time English teacher, observes that such school-based extracurricular activities confer all sorts of long-term benefits on kids, including public recognition, leadership, communications and problem-solving skills, and even clues about where a student’s future career interests may lie.
In fact, student achievement and participation in such programs “are very linked,” he observes. “We need to provide boys with ways of engaging in more extracurricular activities as a normal part of their school experience and social development. The costs and logistics of doing this far outweigh the costs of many boys continuing to feel disengaged, dropping out of school, and choosing not pursue post-secondary education.”
But there’s plenty of evidence, anecdotal and statistical, to suggest that many boys aren’t getting involved after the bell rings.
At the elementary level, activities like talent shows and music programs can be heavily skewed in term of boy-girl participation. And a casual scan of school yearbooks will reveal that outside of sports, the membership of many clubs, student associations and extracurricular arts activities tend to have more girls than boys.
Indeed, a 2004 study for the U.S. National Centre for Educational Statistics found that girls were much more likely than boys to be involved in every category of extracurricular activity except sports teams. Those gender skews, the study found, haven’t shifted much since the early 1990s.
The reasons, as with so much of education, are complex. Access, for instance, can be a significant impediment, Prof. Gosse notes. For some low-income or single-parent families, school clubs and other after-school programs are not an option because of fees, pick-up times and other obstacles.
But prevailing attitudes – among boys, faculty and within the school generally, can be an equally significant barrier. “You can offer a whole range of extracurricular activities but will boys participate if they don’t fit into the dominant culture?” says University of Western Ontario professor of education Wayne Martino. “School culture plays a big part in this.”
Indeed, rote promotional activities, like the annual club sign-up fair or announcements on the PA system, may not be sufficient, according to some educators, who believe it’s crucial for schools to do more to reach out to disengaged boys directly and, in effect, market these programs more aggressively, both to students and their parents or caregivers.
Of course, much depends on the willingness of individual teachers to put in the extra time, and recognize that there’s a fairly clear connection between how kids do in class and their participation in after-school activities.
“First and foremost, the teacher needs to go out and get them,” says Ms. Hatton. “It has to be an effort on the teacher’s part to find the kids and work around their schedules.”
