Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys (UK)

About The Program

Choirmaster Gareth Malone teaches in a primary school in Essex for one term. It is a school like many across Britain, with a significant gap between girls' and boys' achievement in literacy. Last week we saw Gareth and the boys tree-climbing and sharpening their speaking skills with a debate. This time Gareth faces a new mission: to get the boys reading.

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Daughters financially better off than mothers, but sons... (USA)

Are young people better off than their parents? At least when it comes to income, the answer depends on gender. Today's young women make $1.17 for every $1 their moms earned back in 1980. Young men, however, are earning 10 cents per hour less than their fathers did 30 years ago, new research shows.

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Involved Dads Give Kids an Edge (Canada)

September 15, 2011 — New data from a long-running study of Canadian families suggest that fathers play a key role in their children's intellect and behavior.

Compared with children with absentee fathers, children whose fathers were present and actively involved in their lives during early and middle childhood had fewer behavior problems and higher intellectual abilities as they grew older, even among children of lower socioeconomic status.

"Regardless of whether fathers lived with their children, their ability to set appropriate limits and structure their children's behaviour positively influenced problem-solving and decreased emotional problems, such as sadness, social withdrawal and anxiety," first author Erin Pougnet, a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, noted in a statement.

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Too many mums exclude dad from bringing up kids (UK)

I’ve always been keen on dads, even when there were no stats around to prove just how crucial they are to the healthy all-round development of a child. And this is particularly true with boys.

I have even gone as far as criticising absent or negligent dads for ignoring the needs of their children.

But now it would seem that it’s not errant dads who are the critical factor, it’s mums who don’t want dads around.

There is a new generation of women who choose to be a single mum and exclude dad from bringing up their child.

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Working with Young Males in Psychotherapy: Implications of the Findings of Boyhood Studies (USA)

Boys are now among the most challenging groups with whom we work as psychotherapists. During the past two decades, boyhood has received special attention, and with good reason: boyhood is being radically redefined. As a result, the number of vulnerable boys who require our attention and care has increased significantly. Some of them are just entering kindergarten; others are graduating from high school or college and manoeuvering their way in a world of work that has increasingly fewer places for them; a decreasing number are in graduate school. Ever more are disconnected, disaffiliated and adrift.