It goes without saying that boys and girls are not the same. Leonard Sax, founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, believes, “The kind of learning environment that is best for boys, is not necessarily best for girls”. Physiological and psychological differences between girls and boys require
different teaching techniques at different times. For example, at younger ages, males tend to use a lot of space. If a boy and girl are working together at a table the boy might spread his papers over the entire table, leaving little room for
the girl. This tendency can affect psycho-social dynamics, with some teachers misunderstand this behavior as rude or aggressive when “in fact, they are often just learning in the way their spatial brains require”. A teacher’s knowledge of this
information can assist him or her in the design of the education space in order
to accommodate the male’s use of space, thus improving academic achievement.

Another environmental learning-style difference between boys and girls is
movement. While movement is an excellent instructional strategy for both boys and
girls, boys tend to benefit more from the use of movement. Boys are naturally
always moving and they have a tendency to be squirmy or restless, which can be
perceived as distracting by female students and the teacher. “Movement is natural to
boys in a closed space, thanks to their lower serotonin and higher metabolism, which
create fidgety behavior”. Boys need movement to increase their learning. Movement stimulates male brains and helps to manage impulsive behavior. Taking advantage of the opportunity to offer single-sex home school lessons can make allowances for the
movement learning-style difference so that it will positively impact student
achievement.

Obviously, girls can have the same need for movement and activity that a boy does, however the genetic and biological predisposition of boys are more likely to dictate how he needs to be taught. I am also making the effort to preserve the masculinity of boys in the upcoming generation. At all-male schools, teachers often teach books that speak to the male experience. A class discussion of Hamlet in these schools might involve studying the complicated formation of a young man's identity. In an all-female school, students can read books with strong heroines such as Jane Eyre to understand how women's lives are affected by prevailing attitudes toward their sex and how they prevail in spite of these. Carefully-selected topics can benefit students by speaking to the nuanced experiences of a single sex. In tradition, mixed sex schools, statistics show that boys and girls are often on the same educational learning level, until they approach high school, boys drastically fall behind girls in learning and end up having lower literacy rates than their female peers.

Michael Gurian, author of The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and in Life, and many other authors and educational experts proclaim that we have a crisis in the education of boys in this country. Gurian's book presents statistics that boys get the majority of D's and F's in most schools, create 90 percent of the discipline problems, are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD and be medicated, account for three out of four children diagnosed learning disabilities, become 80 percent of the high school dropouts, and now make up less than 45 percent of the college population.

The answer to this dire problem is dynamic teaching that supports male learning styles. It's important to recognize that our temperment is far different than our boys so including more learning activities that include more movement, acknowledgment of the male experience, and address our boy's needs separately from our girls and even from our own female perspectives and experiences. Too often, I hear the frustration of home-school moms not getting through to their boys and it's so important that you acknowledge his differences, make the adjustments, and create strong men that are confident and free in themselves.