Archive for Gender Issues

Recently, a library patron challenged (urged a reconsideration of the ownership or placement of) a book called Uncle Bobby's Wedding. Honestly, I hadn't even heard of it until that complaint. But I did read the book, and responded to the patron, who challenged the item through email and requested that I respond online (not via snail-mail) about her concerns. I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009. So I offer my response, purging the patron's name, for other librarians.

Dear Ms. Patron:

Thank you for working with my assistant to allow me to fit your concerns about Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen, into our “reconsideration” process. I have been assured that you have received and viewed our relevant policies: the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read, Free Access to Libraries for Minors, the Freedom to View, and our Reconsideration Policy.

The intent of providing all that isn't just to occupy your time. It's to demonstrate that our lay Board of Trustees—which has reviewed and adopted these policies on behalf of our library—has spent time thinking about the context in which the library operates, and thoughtfully considered the occasional discomfort (with our culture or constituents) that might result. There's a lot to consider.

Read more of library director Jamie LaRue's response from his online blog. LaRue is director of the public libraries in Castle Rock, Douglas County, Colorado.

As women progress in developing nations, so do those countries' economies. New studies show that it's just 'good economics' to promote the welfare of girls. If a developing nation wants to make fast progress, it must educate its girls and give them more equality in jobs and economic opportunities. Decades of international and domestic efforts to speed development in more than 100 poor countries shows that, as the title of a recent study puts it, "Girls Count."

More than just counting, helping girls get ahead and out of the limitations that so many cultures have placed on them for hundreds of years is vital to overcoming poverty and growing prosperity. Even Wall Street, with its interest in international investment, sees this.

"Education, and particularly women's education, is critical" to economic growth, says Sandra Lawson, author of a 15-page paper given clients by the prominent New York investment banking firm, Goldman Sachs. Read the article in The Christian Science Monitor online.

If you were an energetic nine-year-old boy who loved school, did your best but also loved charging about, trying to beat your friends at every game possible, imagine the hell of our currrent state school system where ball games are banned from the playground in case someone gets hurt, there is no outside play in bad weather and you are constantly in trouble for being too competitive because winning is not what it's about.

Sue Palmer is a former head teacher, literacy adviser and the author of the upcoming 21st Century Boys. She says it is a biological necessity that boys run about, take risks, swing off things and compete with each other to develop properly. “If they can't, a lot of them find it impossible to sit still, focus on a book or wield a pencil,” she says, “so their behaviour is considered ‘difficult', they get into trouble and tumble into a cycle of school failure.”

Boys are three times as likely as girls to need extra help with reading at primary school, and 75% of children supposedly suffering from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) are male. “We are losing boys at a rate of knots, particularly in literacy,” Palmer says, “because at some point in the past 30 years, masculinity became an embarrassment.” Read more in The Times Online.

Mrs. Demshur's class of second-grade girls sat in a tidy circle and took turns reading poems they had composed. "If I were a toucan, I'd tweet, I'd fly," began one girl. When she finished, the others clapped politely.

Down the hall, Mr. Reynolds's second-grade boys read poems aloud from desks facing every direction. A reading specialist walked around with a microphone. "If I were a snow leopard, I would hunt, I would run," began one boy. One classmate did a backbend over his chair as he read. Another crawled on the floor.

So went a language arts lesson at Washington Mill Elementary School last month, with boys in one room and girls in another. The Fairfax County, Virginia school, in the academic year that is ending, joined a small but fast-growing movement toward single-sex public education. The approach is based on the much-debated yet increasingly popular notion that girls and boys are hard-wired to learn differently and that they will be more successful if classes are designed for their particular needs. By next fall, about 500 public schools nationwide will offer single-sex classes, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, based in Montgomery County. Read more about the notion in The Washington Post online.

The National Institute for Literacy, a U.S. federal agency, and Mocha Moms, Inc., a national support organization for stay-at-home mothers of color, have launched an innovative partnership to boost children’s literacy skills, and they are turning to local barbershops to kick off their new effort.

On June 21 from 3-5 p.m., the Institute and Mocha Moms will unveil a reading nook at Campbell’s Barbershop, 5703 Dix Street N.E., Washington, D.C., complete with more than 250 books for boys and free publications for parents that support the development of reading and other literacy skills at home. The new book nook is part of Boys Booked on Barbershops (B-BOB), a growing national initiative launched in 2004 that takes advantage of naturally occurring opportunities in the community to foster a love of reading. B-BOB reading nooks have debuted in more than 100 barbershops across the country, from Florida to Illinois.

Through their new partnership, the Institute and Mocha Moms are also planning a wide range of national campaigns and activities, including a “Take Your Child to the Library Day” to increase the number of children and families in communities of color who obtain library cards and who read for enjoyment.

For further information about the participating organizations, visit the National Institute for Literacy website and the Mocha Moms website.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Yemen's Ministry of Education launched an extensive campaign Monday, May 26, 2008, to raise awareness of girls' education. The campaign has been launched through a UNICEF initiative— Business Partnership for Girls' Education—formed in 2006 with private sector partners.

According to UNICEF, Yemen is facing a serious challenge to bridge the education gender gap: 63 girls for every 100 boys were in primary school in 2006. Abdul-Salam al-Jawfi, Minister of Education, said at the launch ceremony: "Females represent 51% of Yemen's 21 million population and 75% of the population live in rural areas. By looking at these figures we understand that girls' education faces a lot of problems." Al-Jawfi said his ministry needed the support of donors, the private sector, local councils, and civil society organisations to bridge the education gender gap.

He added that educated women could help tackle Yemen's development challenges, which include water shortages, population growth, poverty and deteriorating health conditions. Read more in IRIN News online.

A new study to be released today (May 20, 2008) on gender equity in education concludes that a "boys crisis" in U.S. schools is a myth and that both sexes have stayed the same or improved on standardized tests in the past decade.

The report by the nonprofit American Association of University Women, which promotes education and equity for women, reviewed nearly 40 years of data on achievement from fourth grade to college and for the first time analyzed gender differences within economic and ethnic categories.

The most important conclusion of Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education is that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender, its authors said. Read more in The Washington Post online.

To continue the discussions initiated at the 5th Annual WE LEARN (Net)Working Gathering and Conference on Women and Literacy, Mev Miller and Kathleen King are editing a book of writings and artwork by adult basic education educators addressing women’s literacy issues. They are inviting practitioners working in adult basic/literacy education—classroom teachers, educators, tutors, administrators, and researchers—to make a proposal for what they would like to contribute to this exciting venture. For more details on the book, visit their website.

For years, Andrew Bassett struggled in classrooms that he believed were geared to girls. English class was all about flowery essays, there was too much rote seat time, and his teachers just didn’t like his swagger. “All we read were romance novels and I suggested science fiction,” said the senior at Elsie Allen High School in Santa Rosa, California. “I was just saying, ‘Broaden the range here.’ ”

Bassett eventually conquered his academic ennui, finding his place in an advanced English class and gaining admission to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a 4.38 GPA. But not all boys are faring so well. In Sonoma County and statewide, boys consistently score lower than girls in language arts in every grade tested—second through 11th grade. In seven of the grades, the divide last year between boys and girls in Sonoma County was greater than the gap statewide. And the divide widens as boys get older. Read more in The Press Democrat online.

Sahar Zeidan Abdel Wareth, who helps her father on the land, could not attend school until she was 12 when a “girl-friendly” school was built near her home in Assiut Province, some 375 km from Cairo, Egypt.

There are thousands of girls like Sahar in poor areas who do not attend school for numerous reasons, including lack of nearby schools, poverty, child labor, perceived low financial returns from education, traditional perceptions of a girl’s role in society, early marriages, and the priority given to boys’ education.

However, thanks to a government and UN-sponsored drive to build over 1,000 “girl-friendly” schools in seven provinces (partly in response to the UN Secretary-General’s Initiative on Girls’ Education launched in October 2000), the situation is changing. Read more in IRIN News online.

On an unseasonably cold day last November in Foley, Alabama, Colby Royster and Michael Peterson, two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes.

The walls of the boys’ classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer, as per the instructions of Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author and advocate who this May will quit his medical practice to devote himself full time to promoting single-sex public education. Read about the concept in The New York Times online.

Just because you play rugby, shave your face and have a deep voice doesn’t mean you'll get a job at a Taranaki primary school in New Zealand. Primary school principals contacted in Taranaki February 5, 2008, were in broad agreement a shortage of male teaching staff would not mean men got an easy run into primary teaching jobs.

The comments were in response to research which found many primary school principals wanted “real men” as role models in the primary sector and not “wussy, ineffectual or homosexual” males. The findings, to be published in the Gender and Education journal, were gleaned from the results of a survey first sent to 250 primary school principals in 2005 and come amid repeated calls to raise the number of male teachers in primary schools. Read the article in The Taranaki Daily News online.

The boys yell as a classmate swings a broom handle wildly in the air. When one boy connects with the tennis ball and runs around the makeshift bases, another reaches under a car in the parking lot to retrieve the ball.

Gym class? Boys blowing off steam after school? No, these boys are participating in the second year of the Boys’ Book Club at Scott Highlands Middle School in Apple Valley, Minnesota. After discussing a book about baseball, they trekked outside and learned how to play stickball.

Across the metro area, schools, libraries and even the juvenile justice system are looking into why boys fall behind girls when it comes to reading test scores and how they might kindle a love of reading in the boys. In some cases, a decreasing number of male teachers has led to situations where female teachers are left searching for books they think boys will like—about gross stuff, action, sports and creepy-crawlies. Read more about their quest at StarTribune.com.

To improve girls’ education, West African governments must adopt national policies addressing all aspects of violence against schoolgirls—who face rape by teachers, verbal abuse by male students and forced early marriage by parents—a grouping of policymakers, teachers’ unions and civil society organisations has said. “For all girls to go to school, the question of violence against girls must be solved,” said Victorine Djitrinou, international education, advocacy and campaign coordinator for ActionAid International, which organized a conference in Saly, Senegal, on violence against girls in school December 1–3.

West Africa is home to most of the countries with the worst educational gender disparities in the world. Across the region, there are more than eight million girls out of primary school—a figure 1.6 million higher than that for boys, according to the 2008 Global Monitoring Report of the Education for All movement. Read the article in IRIN News.

Education specialists in Iraq are worried about how few girls are attending school. “The fear of losing their children through violence has led many families to keep their children at home but the number of girls kept at home is higher because in addition to the security problem, they are being forced by their families to assist in household chores,” said Sinan Zuhair, a media officer for the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. “Many families have lost their fathers or mothers and girls are asked to stay at home to help to cook, wash and clean. They are the ones paying the price of the violence since they have to forget about their future to be able to help the lives of their brothers,” Zuhair told IRIN. “The problem is worse in the rural areas where religion is being used by fathers as an excuse to justify why their daughters no longer attend school.” Read more at IRIN News.

Teachers and educators working in Pakistan’s Swat valley have expressed concern over growing insecurity in the area, after a fresh round of violence hit the once idyllic valley in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). In a massive bomb attack against a security forces convoy near Mingora on October 25, 2007, as many as 30 people were killed, mostly members of the security forces. Scores of people were injured, many civilians.

Much of the violence is directed at eradicating women’s already very restricted public space. Educational institutions were instructed to remain closed October 24-25 due to expected unrest. Ongoing reports of parents pulling their children out of schools, particularly girls, highlight residents’ concerns. The Swat Youth Front (SYF), a local NGO running 39 community primary schools for girls is already reeling from the crises because its focus is on girls’ education in the area. Read more at IRIN News.

Terming education, particularly of females, as a panacea to all the problems in Pakistan, Anne W. Stone, an American entrepreneur and activist, has said that everyone in the country should push the government for promotion of education. “If you have education, you would have a stable democracy and sustainable economy,” she said while delivering a lecture on Women’s Perspective in Political Mobilization to students of the University of Peshawar in Pakistan. Read more at The International News website.

Book covers aimed at girls are discouraging boys from reading stories they might otherwise enjoy, according to an article by Alexandra Frean appearing on the Times Online website. "Publishers are getting the covers wrong," said Wendy Cooling of Bookstart, a charitable program that encourages children in the United Kingdom to read. "Some stories are perfectly attractive to boys, but they are needlessly put off."

For further information, read the full article.

School strategies to boost boys’ attainment and close the gender divide with girls are “divisive and counterproductive,” according to a report to be published this week by the British government’s Equal Opportunities Commission. The underachievement of boys relative to girls at school has become a recurring theme of educational debate. Although there has been a slight narrowing of the gender gap in this year’s exam results, girls still outperform boys across the board. But in a highly provocative assertion, the Equal Opportunities Commission suggests that “playing up the difference will exacerbate such difference.” Read the article at TimesOnline.com.

India’s President Pratibha Devisingh Patil said women’s literacy and education should be treated as a “priority,” at the International Literacy Day Celebration in the capital on Septermber 8. “India is home to the world’s largest number of illiterates and this is a matter of great concern. India accounts for 20% of the world’s out–of–school children and 35% of adult illiterates. When such a large number of the population remains outside the pale of literacy and education, it makes the task of development more complex and daunting. She added that “Women’s literacy and education has to be made a priority. If we make women literate, they will be self–reliant and the beneficial impact on society will be manifold.” Read the article at Gulfnews.com.

Chris Saltalamacchio had all female teachers at his Long Island, New York, elementary school until he reached the fifth grade. “I was kind of freaked out about the idea of having a male teacher,” he remembers. So Saltalamacchio could understand why one of the first–graders he now teaches at Cecil Manor Elementary School in Elkton, Md., had her mom call the school office this summer after she saw his name on her class assignment. Nationally, only about 16% of public elementary school teachers are men, according to 2004 figures from the National Center for Education Statistics. Read about the shortage of male teachers at The News Journal's website.

Aisha Al–Gilany remembers the struggle all too well. For four years she fought with her parents to allow her to attend university. “My sisters all went to grade five and then dropped out,” recalled the 23–year–old from Al–Fars Rajam village, two hours outside Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. Though her parents wanted their five daughters to be literate, female education was never deemed particularly important in her village. “Women in Yemen are supposed to stay at home and clean,” Aisha said. The government says the gender gap with regard to education is “considerable.” While national illiteracy rates stand at about 30% for men, they exceed 67% for women, it says. Read about the plight of women in Yemen at IRIN News.

Four years after the successful launch in Wilmington, Delaware, of a private school to help disadvantaged boys reach their academic potential, a group from Ursuline Academy is trying to launch a similar program for middle-school girls. Members of a steering committee at the mostly girls Catholic school said they are driven by social conscience because girls often have fewer opportunities to better themselves through education. The school would be similar to the all-boys Nativity Preparatory School of Wilmington, which threw a lifeline to low-income, at-risk boys when it opened in 2003. The proposed girls' school would be modeled after Nativity Prep and the nationwide NativityMiguel Schools Network that focuses on urban students, providing discipline and individual attention. Read about the school at delawareonline.com.

Is there is something inherently wrong with a large chunk of one the sexes—or are primary schools simply letting boys down? Experts say girls brains are more wired up for communicating and reading emotions, while boys like moving, doing and solving practical problems. Elizabeth Morris, principal of the School of Emotional Literacy, a professional development organization based in Scotland, says: "Boys like doing things for a purpose and having things that are concrete and relevant to deal with. Girls will be happier with discussion, relationship building, team activities and reading." Read more about the different learning strategies for boys and girls at BBC NEWS.

“I do not want to go to school,” 12-year-old Maryam told her father in Sadaat in the central Afghan province of Logar, where gunmen recently killed two schoolgirls. “I am afraid,” the traumatized girl begged her parents. “I will not let anyone harm you,” Maryam’s father said. Maryam witnessed the slaying June 12 of two fellow students in front of her school in Sadaat village, a suburb of Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital of Logar Province, some 30 kilometers west of Kabul. The incident has sparked widespread worries among many parents who fear for the safety of their daughters. According to provincial officials, many female students have been absent from school since the shooting occurred a week ago. Read the complete article at the United Nation news website.

Ghazala Shaheen, 12, and her father have visited five schools in Peshawar today, June 7, and in the hot, mildly humid weather of Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s rugged North West Frontier Province, they are now both thirsty and hungry. "We live in the Swat Valley, in Malakand Agency, but now that there are so many threats to teachers and girl pupils there, we are planning to move to Peshawar," explains Ghazala's father, Jan Muhammad Khan. Radical clerics like Maulana Fazlullah insist that a woman's place is in the home and that girls should not be sent to school at all. At least four girls’ schools have been bombed over the past 12 months. Read the article at IRIN news.

Hawa Aden Mohamed was motivated by her own experience to establish the Galkayo Education Centre for Peace and Development 700 kilometers north of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Starting as a teacher trainer at Lafole College, Mohamed rose to become a senior officer in the Somali education ministry before retiring to set up the center in 1999. "We started with 120 girls after a survey showed that very few girls in Galkayo were going to school," she said. "At the time, all schools were fee-based. Only families with money or those who were getting help from the diaspora were sending their children to school—and it was always the boys." Read the article at Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) online.

The length of children's fingers could point the way to their future school tests and exam results, researchers said in a study due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology. Those with a relatively long fourth, or ring, finger are likely to be better at math than English, a difference particularly striking in boys. But girls whose ring fingers are smaller in relation to their index finger are likely to be stronger in literacy. Read more at the Guardian Unlimited website.

A list of the top 160 books for teenage boys has been published by England’s Education Secretary in an ambitious attempt to encourage boys to read more for pleasure and keep up with girls at secondary school. The list has gained as much attention over the authors who have been left off (no Dickens, no J.K. Rowling) as over those who are included. Read more about the list, and see all of the titles, in this article from The Times of London.

Saudi organizers of an education exhibition in the conservative kingdom closed a Canadian booth because it was staffed by women, Canada's embassy in Riyadh said Monday. They said organizers told them women would be allowed to staff the booth promoting Canadian universities at a Middle East Education and Training Exhibition in the city of Jeddah last week. "The closure of our booth was an unjustified, unprofessional act that damages the image of Saudi Arabia internationally," a statement issued over the weekend said. The organizers, the Al Harithy Company, could not be reached for comment. Read more at TheStar.com.

Maryland’s top education official is recommending that Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse start sharing the limelight with classic fiction in classrooms throughout the state. Teachers have long seen comic books peeking out from a backpack or the corner of a desk or tucked between the pages of a textbook. Bringing them into the light, Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick hopes, will grab the imagination of boys and give teachers another way of enticing reluctant readers into good literature. Read more about this approach to reading in this article from The Baltimore Sun.

When pre-teen boys hang out with their dads and other guys, what they most want to do is—read. That’s the hope behind a new father and son reading club that Calderstone Middle School in Brampton, Canada is launching. Read more about a program that brings literacy and character education together in this article from The Brampton News.

The Pig Skull Book Club has two important rules: No sissy stuff and no girls allowed. Both traditions are designed to appeal to fourth-grade and fifth-grade boys because this club, above all else, involves books boys like in a boy-friendly atmosphere. Read more about one library’s method for getting boys to read in this article from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Schools in Afghanistan will open their doors to more than six million pupils at the start of the new academic year March 24—almost double the number of the past five years. Girls comprise about two million of all students who will start school Saturday. During the Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001, girls were deprived of any formal education. More than three decades of conflict and conservative customs have restricted female education, with the result that about 80 percent of Afghan women are now illiterate, according to UN agencies. Read the article at the IRIN website.

Every secondary school in the UK should have a bookshelf of “boys’ stories” to try to encourage them to read and close the literacy gap with girls, education officials said. Education Secretary Alan Johnson said working class boys in particular were falling behind in English lessons. They should be encouraged to read with action and spy stories and to learn by fast–paced, practical lessons, he said. “We need a boys’ bookshelf in every secondary school library in the country, containing positive, modern, relevant role models for working class boys,” Johnson said. Read the article on the BBC News website.

In a report for the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers in the UK, a team of researchers say their study of seven and eight-year-olds found the gender of their teachers was not important to them nor did most students see their teachers as role models. Nonetheless, Chris Keates, general secretary of the union, says literacy teaching has been changed to encourage boys. Short extracts rather than whole texts have been introduced to compensate for boys’ short attention span, there is more focus on “adventure” texts to appeal more to boys, while extended analysis has been replaced by multiple-choice questions. Read the article at the Guardian Unlimited website.

In a region of Pakistan south of Peshawar, shots ring out constantly as weapons are tested by buyers of guns at shops in Darra Adam Khel. Guns and munitions of all types are manufactured by the people who live in the region. Now those weapons are being targeted at schools for girls. Over the past two months, at least two schools in the area have been bombed. The attacks bode ill for girls in a part of the world where the literacy rate for women is about 10% on average. Read more at the IRIN website.

Child rights advocates in West Africa are facing the dilemma of how to boost the number of girls getting an education while reducing sexual violence in school. Sexual violence at school is much more widespread in the region than previously thought because families and education authorities often hide or tolerate the problem, a UNICEF official said. The worst abuses occur in secondary schools, where enrollment of girls is less than 10 percent in some countries. Read more about the problem at the IRIN website.

As a result of two decades of war and economic hardship, Iraqi schools have fallen into disrepair, enrollment has dropped, and literacy levels have stagnated, agencies say. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates literacy rates to be less than 60%, or 6 million illiterate Iraqi adults. Only 37% of rural women can read, and only 30% of Iraqi girls of high school age are enrolled in school, compared with 42% of boys. Read more at the IRIN website.

A joint initiative is being launched by the United Nations, the Zimbabwean government, and civil society to address the legacy of girls being sidelined from education in the wake of last year’s mass forced removals. The National Girls Education Strategic Plan, scheduled to run until 2010, is intended to redress a wide disparity in school attendance by boys and girls. Get details at the IRINNews.org website.

The United Nations, in collaboration with the Nigerian government, has launched an ambitious girls’ education program to boost gender parity in primary schools. The program is focusing on the northern region, where girls’ enrollment is very low. Learn more at the Voice of America website.

A cover story by Michael Gurian in the October 2006 issue of the American School Board Journal tackles the topic of "Learning and Gender." A separate article by Kathleen Vail addresses the following question: "Is the Boy Crisis Real?" For further information about these and other articles in the issue, visit the American School Board Journal website.

Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel Prize laureate and great influence on other Middle Eastern writers, has died at age 94.

Almost a third of boys leaving the New Zealand school system do not have the option of further skills training because their literacy skills are so poor, says National Party Education spokesman Bill English. Across all schools, 31% of boys failed level 1 literacy credits, the minimum prerequisite for entry to an increasing number of pre-apprenticeship courses. Find details in Scoop.

Educators seeking ways to close the performance gap between boys and girls on standardized tests of reading and writing are apparently having more success than anyone could have hoped. An article in the Hartford Courant quotes a Connecticut reading teacher as saying, “One thing that interests boys more than girls is reading informational texts.” Go figure!

Budding women writers have completed a month-long short-story writing program in Saudi Arabia under the tutorship of the celebrated Saudi writer Zahra Musa Al-Naser. Organizers say that the aim of the program is to educate Saudi youth about different social and human rights issues. The best stories will be collated at the end of the year and published in book form. Find more information at Arab News.

The "boy crisis" in education, which has been widely covered in the media this year, is overblown, according to a new report titled "The Truth About Boys and Girls," released today by the Washington-based think tank Education Sector. For further details, read the full news story by Jay Mathews in The Washington Post.

A new advocacy brief from UNESCO Bangkok highlights the importance of women teachers in girls’ education. The report addresses issues that hinder efforts to recruit more women teachers — among these, the need for a broad gender equality perspective when developing policy and programs for women teachers. Download the brief at UNESCO’s Education for All Web portal.

The European Union has pledged to fund 200 new “girl-friendly” schools in Egypt, in a joint bid with the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) to work toward a greater inclusion of females in education. Find details at All Africa.com.

There has been a flurry of articles this year in various media about how boys struggle with education in the United States. One of the latest articles, written by Olivia Goldberg and appearing in the Auburn (New York) Citizen, provides another interesting perspective on the problem. Click to read the full article.

Education researcher Paul Baker has caused a stir by claiming that the achievement gap between boys and girls in New Zealand schools is largely the result of teaching, assessment, and curriculum that favor the way girls learn. The best way to address the gap, he argues, is to change the way boys are taught.

In response, New Zealand Education Minister Steve Maharey has told a major secondary school teachers’ organization that the government rejects Baker’s approach and plans to “continue our focus on effective teaching for all students.”

While some in the US debate the existence and extent of the “boy crisis” in education, a number of Canadian provinces are actively pursuing solutions. In Ontario, efforts range from “hosing the entire field of literacy with money” to the “mushrooming phenomenon” of boys’ book clubs. Find this story in the National Post (Canada).

There's been lots of coverage in the media lately about the "boy crisis" in education in the United States. An article by Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnettt in the April 9 edition of the Washington Post suggests that the crisis is more myth than fact. For further details, read the full article.

“It’s not that boys aren’t reading. It’s just that the things they are reading — comic books, video game manuals, sports magazines — aren’t valued by schools.” This article in The Philadelphia Inquirer offers a slightly different view of the gender gap in reading.

Teachers are becoming more confident about using information and communications technology (ICT) in the classroom, a new Dell survey reveals. An added benefit: ICT is making it easier to maintain boys’ interest. Find this article in The Guardian (UK).

One mother decides to ignore the conventional wisdom and discovers that boys can be surprisingly eclectic regarding the sort of books they'll accept and enjoy.

The number of male primary teachers will continue to decline into the next decade, according to a snapshot of first-year teacher enrolments at Melbourne University, Australia. Get details in The Age.

 IRA Author William G. Brozo’s book To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader is featured in a newspaper article that offers tips on raising boys to read.

Learn more about Brozo’s view of the issue in an IRA news release.

Despite nationwide efforts to attract more male teachers for the middle and upper grades, four out of five newly-recruited teachers at Korean middle and high schools this year are women. This article appears in The Korea Times.

Although South African law says that no student should be denied an education and that impoverished students should be exempt from paying fees, children’s advocates say that schools often do not understand or follow these regulations. Across Africa and in other developing regions, organizations such as UNICEF and the World Bank, along with children’s rights groups, worry that school fees are keeping hundreds of thousands of children — particularly girls — from school. Read more of this story at the The Christian Science Monitor website.

Militants battling U.S. and Afghan government forces in the south have launched attacks on educational institutions, resulting in the deaths of a number of teachers and students. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has condemned these attacks and called on the government to ensure the safety of teachers, pupils, and school premises. Read more of this story at the IRINnews.org website.

In the "What's hot, what's not for 2006" survey by Jack Cassidy and Drew Cassidy that appeared in the December 2005/January 2006 issue of Reading Today, "gender issues in literacy" ranked as a cold issue among the literacy experts contacted. It's hot enough in the popular media, however, to merit the cover story in the January 30 edition of Newsweek.

The Newsweek article cites research showing that gender differences between boys and girls are biological, developmental, and psychological as well as cultural. It points out the learning gap between boys and girls and describes some ways educators are trying to help.

Noting that, when it comes to reading, teen and preteen boys may be teachers' toughest students, the International Reading Association published a book in 2002 by William G. Brozo titled To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader: Engaging Teen and Preteen Boys in Active Literacy. The book offers a wealth of ideas for using literature with positive male figures in order to motivate boys to read and to capture their imaginations. To find out more, visit the Books, Brochures, and Videos section of the IRA website.

Despite a remarkable increase in anti-poverty expenditures in the past fiscal year, Pakistan made no real progress in reducing the literacy gap either between the rural and urban areas or between the two genders in both areas. This is the conclusion of a report issued this week by the Ministry of Finance. Get details in The News International (Pakistan).

More Zambian girls are attending school after government interventions such as allowing teenage mothers back to school and waiving fees and required uniforms. Get details at IRIN News.org.

The Chinese newspaper The Hebei Daily reports that social prejudice has prevented an increase in the number of male teachers in schools. Society tends to look down on primary teachers, especially male teachers, and few parents or students see teaching as a desirable career. Read more at the China View website.

As a result of the success of an innovative illiteracy eradication campaign launched last year in a poor district of Jeddah, the Education Administration for Girls in Jeddah is expanding the campaign to include three other districts beginning next week. Read about “The Enlightened Neighborhood” program in an article from Arab News (Saudi Arabia).

Tests show that boys have fallen further behind girls at primary schools. Does this mean that they are “underachieving”? Children are individuals who develop at different rates, argues Margaret Morrissey, spokeswoman for the English National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations. Read Morrissey’s essay at the Education Guardian (UK) website.

Saudi Arabia’s Department of Girls’ Education has listed seven goals to achieve this year. At the top of the list is raising the standard of teachers through various on-the-job training programs. Find details at Arab News (Saudi Arabia).

2005 was one of the target dates of Education for All. By the end of this year, the UNESCO-led program was to have raised the number of girls attending schools worldwide to equal that of boys. New data shows 94 countries have missed the gender parity target. Of the 100 million children not enrolled in school, 57% are girls. Get details in a report from the Global Campaign for Education.

Seventy-five percent of the estimated 1.4 million children between the ages of seven and 14 in southern Sudan do not have access to education, according to the Sudan Millennium Development Goals Interim Unified Report. Read more at the IRINNews.org website.

In war-scarred Liberia, getting an education is a top priority for many young people — and especially so for girls. But with unemployment estimated at 85 percent, sending a child to school is beyond the means of an average family. A study by British-based charity Save the Children reveals the price that many are forced to pay to achieve their dream. Learn more at IRIN News.org.

Computers are widening the gender gap in schools, as boys spend their spare time playing games while girls use them for homework, new government research has found. Learn more in an article in The Guardian (UK).

As Pakistan prepares for a new school year beginning this month, getting more girls to attend school is very much on the agenda, and a national campaign to boost primary school enrolment is being launched. Read more in an article from Dawn (Pakistan).

Nearly half the boys who took this year’s English writing test for 11-year-olds have failed to reach the standard required for a youngster leaving primary school. Boys’ writing scores have actually fallen in the past year, with only 55 per cent reaching the level expected of them, national curriculum test results show. Get details in an article in The Independent (UK).