Sociologists believe that the majority of boys underachieve compared to girls because of the processes involved in school.
The processes in school are that teachers may negatively label a student preferably in this case a male student and their self-esteem decreases and they eventually make that label true and become a self-fulfilling prophecy; as well as only 16% of teacher are male so the male gender lack male role models and that leads to them not picking a certain subject just because it’s a girl teacher they may think the subject is feminine. Moreover the laddish sub culture plays a large role in the fall behind of boys in education because some boys think they will be liked if they mess around in lessons and don’t bother with school; also boys may worry over the lack of industry jobs that were/are associated with males and may not bother with going to school because they know that there are no jobs outside of school that will suit them; Furthermore GCSE coursework has an unfair advantage to females because girls are more methodical than boys who are more laidback as proved by Miitsos and Browne (1998 ). Finally primary schools don’t help with boy’s natural traits such as Competitiveness and leaderships because instead of giving the winner only a prize they give every participant a prize so that the participants will not try and win because they know that they will always get a prize.
However the processes that occur in school are not the only problems. The processes outside of school also cause a large affect to the boys being left behind in school education too. The processes outside of school are that boy’s hobbies mainly lack literacy based skills unlike girls who are more common to read whereas boys would prefer to do something more active; also boys lack a male role model if they are in a single parent family that is led by the mother; furthermore boys are less likely to be read to at bedtime.
In conclusion both outside and inside school processes have an indefinite effect on boys education compared to girls, but there are more processes in school that cause a problem with the male gender than processes outside of school.