I used to think that all children were blank slates, with everything, from their gender identities to their personalities, still to be written. By giving them Barbie dolls or trucks I could determine who they would be. Then I actually had kids. When Rebecca was a year and a half old, I was pregnant, sick, and I couldn’t have found my make-up if my life depended on it. My favourite clothes were maternity sweat pants. And yet this little girl, who had no role model for "pretty", was constantly reaching into her closet to get down her one white frilly dress. I couldn’t understand it.

My friend Barb had a similar experience. She had three boys, and then along came Annie. Annie didn’t want to play with any of the boys’ toys, even though the house was riddled with them. She wanted her dollhouse. The boys, to be fair, liked the dollhouse, too, but they liked it because of the neat sound effects they could make as they shot the dolls through make-believe cannons.

Boys and girls are simply different. Obviously not all boys like weapons and not all girls like dresses, but things tend to go in these directions. It seems like that blank slate isn’t so blank after all. Yet in many ways, schools still function as if we can, and should, shape kids’ personalities. The way schools seat students, the games they play and the stories that they read all show that they value peace-loving, cooperative, loving and friendly behaviour. Schools tend to emphasize teamwork, talk about feelings, and try to avoid too much competition. Many even have "student of the week" awards to reward kids who have been nice to others, rather than to reward those who have made the biggest improvement in math.

These are all very admirable qualities. But there’s one serious flaw. All of these things, without exception, tend to be associated with "feminine" traits rather than "masculine" ones. (Again, I’m not saying all girls are peace-loving and all boys aggressive, but the norm tends to fall in this direction). But if we hold up feminine traits as the ideal, at some level we’re telling boys they’re not good enough.

Yet many masculine traits are also very useful in learning. Studies show that boys tend to value independence, competition and success, and all students could benefit from an injection of these values. Instead of viewing these things as useful in their place, though, we’re trying to teach the boys to be more like girls.

This was a common refrain in the replies I received to my column asking "do schools fail boys?". One mother complained that her son simply didn’t learn with paper and a pencil. He’s very concrete, and would rather learn measurement by going outside and picking up sticks that are 5 cm, 10 cm, or 20 cm long, rather than drawing lines on paper with a ruler. Another mother reported that her son doesn’t respond to his teacher, who is very passive. He needs someone with a firmer hand, who won’t be afraid to raise his or her voice every now and then (a recent study found that many boys tried harder if they were spoken to harshly when they misbehaved). Nevertheless, as a society we’ve tied teachers’ hands by threatening to sue if they raise their voices even a little, or if they so much as touch our little darlings while these kids roam around the room making fun of kids who are actually working.

Our schools are not working for many boys. They stress teamwork and seatwork, but at the same time prevent teachers from performing almost any kind of discipline other than a "time out" or a suspension (both of which many boys see as rewards, because they get excused from the very activity they were trying to avoid in the first place). Let’s acknowledge that these boys need a whole different approach to learning. Our future depends on helping everyone to be the best they can be. That won’t happen if we try to deny important parts of who boys are. There is no one size fits all approach to education, and maybe we should stop pretending there should be.

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