At age five, a third of poor boys in England can’t write their names, compared to a sixth of poor girls, according the report described in the Guardian. In truth, this is just another indicator of the slow start boys everywhere get in verbal skills, which is why education reforms that have pushed intensified verbal skills into the earliest grades have impacted boys more than girls.
What I find interesting about the British coverage of this issue is that the boy troubles are accepted as fact. The only debate is what to do about them. In a recent posting about the college gender gaps one political party was blaming the other for the gaps, which places the gender gaps into the same basket as unemployment, debt or crime. What are you going to do about it?
The United States is years behind England and Australia in dealing with the issue. Here, we pretend the problem doesn’t exist.