Article 2 "Understanding and Challenging Boys’ Disadvantage in Secondary Education in Developing Countries"

Understanding and Challenging Boys’ Disadvantage in Secondary Education in Developing Countries

Nur Shaliha Binti Mohd Kahar

MP111096

ARTICLE REVIEW

            The article of ‘Understanding and challenging boys’ disadvantage in secondary education in developing countries’ was published in 2012 which was written by JyoJyotsna Jha, Shubhashanka Bakshi and Ernesto Martins discussed about the issue of boys’ disadvantage  in developing countries who face the disadvantages in their secondary level of education. Generally, in developing countries most of the boys are lagging behind the girls in learning achievement rates since 1990s. Based on this article, the authors state that there are several issues that have to be given high attention to overcome the issues in developing countries especially.

            The authors has described that there are several issues which are affecting the boys’ advantages in education of developing countries. One of the issues that have been highlighted by the authors is lack or disparity of school participating rates among the both boys and girls which can be easily described by two kinds of disparity. One of them is the disparity starts at early of primary level of schooling and the second type is disparities at the upper secondary stage. By viewing in learning outcomes aspect, most of developing countries have shown that the improvement in girls’ performance in education is greater than boys’ performance. The authors also state that the girls are outperforming better than boys in socio-economic status, wealth, location and ethnicity. Furthermore, boys being pushed to choose vocational subjects at the secondary schools is one of issue that affecting the disadvantages of them in education. The authors also clearly state that the attribution among boys’ in violence, narcotics trafficking, crime and drug abuse are giving disadvantages in education. Besides, the authors have described one of related issue is feminising of teaching force and absence of male role models which are the lack of female teachers skill when dealing with boys and hence leading them to their underperformance.

            From this article, the authors have explained that there are several ways or steps to address or overcome the boys’ disadvantage in secondary education. One of them is de-streaming classes which are executed by not practise to putting all high performing students in one section and the low performing students in another section which may bring negative perceptions and leading them to low performance. Other than that, by reviewing the student’s textbooks and syllabus in secondary education also is one of the steps that could help to address the issues. Besides, the suggestion to modernise and enhancing the skills based on upper secondary in education may help to reduce the boys’ disadvantage should be highly considered. In order to develop the supportive attitude towards both boys and girls, the teachers should undergoing training and practising the discussion and sharing among them. Based on school environment and management aspect of view, approaching the classroom by active learning and respects for students also helps them such practising the mentoring and focus on target setting towards the students. The authors also state that active dialogue and engagement with community also can reduce the disadvantage in secondary education level by developing relationship and getting supports from the community such mentoring and giving the attention to the boys come from poorer, working class background and others so that the community can take action by giving the support to them. Finally, in order to support the student who comes from poorer background, the eliminate or abolition of school fees at secondary level and cash or kind transfer which are the alternative ways to encourage them for participating in schools attendances but the cautions is needed before adopting these alternatives before executing these kind of ways.

DISCUSSION

            In developing countries, the schooling participation by the male students is still low based on certain factors. Unlike developed countries, the living standards are basically low until medium. This is based on the developing countries’ annual income compared to developed countries. Indirectly, this shows that there are more job opportunities in developed countries, where the people are gaining good incomes. Good income has a close relation with a better education. In order to have a good job, the level of education has to be high as well. As for developing countries, the people have to struggle harder in finding a job or making a good income. Hence, the younger generation, which are mainly burdened by the male students, have to find jobs in order to earn extra money for the family. This could disturb the learning process for the younger generation. As a conclusion, the schooling participation by the younger generation in developing countries are affected therefore lessen the participation of male students in schools.

            Other than that, the other challenge faced by the boys is the teaching and learning activities conducted by the teacher. Other than Physical Education subject, the learning process is not as active. It could be said so because of the classroom control by the teacher where it needs the students to be more focused towards the learning process. Boys are tougher to be controlled rather than the girls. Physical Education activates the students to energetic as a lot of physical energy is needed to be used, and clearly the girls do not prefer to these activities. In classroom learning, mental energy is needed as the students have to focus on the lesson taught by the teacher. The usual kinaesthetic intelligence owned by the boys is being managed by the teacher hence making them to be less active to participate in the learning process. Activities that involve the psychomotor skills are preferred more by the boys. As an example, the teaching of languages towards the boys is harder than towards the girls. The reason is learning language needs the learner to have imagination and could not be rigid towards the new language; where the qualities are rarely seen in the male students rather than in the female students.

            Developing countries are still struggling in building road connections between towns to villages, villages and villages or villages to countryside. This has made it difficult for the students to attend schools rather than those in developed countries. Even if the road links are built, it might not be in a good condition, which could be demotivating for the students to involve in the daily learning process. In addition, developing countries might not have a good public transportation such as busses and trains to commute people to a place. Thus, the movement of people from a place to another is less accessible which make the students’ interest to go to school deteriorated. As for ethnicity, the differences between each ethnic in developing countries are more obvious than in developed countries. Thus, the influence of major ethnicity in a country leaves impact to the various ethnic students. Students of a major ethnic will feel more comfortable to learn in a classroom rather than those in different ethnic but in the same class. Hence these types of students could feel left out during the learning process due to lack of attention towards their presence. This could result to insignificance beliefs by these minor ethnics thus making them to avoid the learning process provided.

            Male students in developed countries are very much encouraged to pursue their studies in the vocational or technical streams as these areas of studies do provide a good chance of employability just as those in the science stream. As for developing countries, the opportunities of higher incomes and employability are seen only for those in the science stream rather than the other stream. Thus, the boys are not motivated and supported to further studies in those fields. Other than that, the boys are easily influenced by negative activities such as committing crime and violence. They are easily accessed to the guns and drugs which has affected the boys’ education. Earning good money has made the male students to lost interest to go to school and earn knowledge. They would preferably earn money so that they could use the money as how they wished too before.

Jha, J., Bakshi, S. And Faria, E. M. (2012). Understanding and challenging boys’ disadvantage in secondary education in developing country. Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012, Youth and skills: Putting education to work.