In this weeks Boys’ Education video blog I am going to look more deeply into the topic of virtues education and what it can offer us as we work with young men. Developing programs for boys and teaching boys in general means we need to stay at the forefront of best practice and this week we have some great content for you.
NEWS
Kevin Chavous article on Single Sex Education HERE
Boys increasingly underrepresented at university article HERE
22 stats that something is wrong with American young men article HERE
TRANSCRIPT
Hi again and welcome back to the Choicez Media Boys Education Video Blog Episode 4
So lets press on with our introductory journey into virtues education and boys education.
You’ll remember from previous weeks that virtues are habits. Things that we can encourage our young men to develop in the concrete moment to moment realities of life.
So this week we are going to talk about the big 4 virtues or what have traditionally been called the cardinal virtues.
Latin trivia 101 – the word cardinal means ‘hinge’ so you can see that these are the hinge virtues around which everything else swings.
First up is the virtue of prudence. Old word but modern ramifications.
You could also call it the ability make prudential judgements. What we want to do is help buys evaluate choices BEFORE they make them using the habit or skill of prudence.
It’s the ability for them to look at choices in advance, use the faculty of reason and evaluate the outcomes of a choice.
It;s the ability to see what is the ‘good’ choice in a given circumstance and then the ability to choose the right means of doing it.
YEs, I know its not always easy but we can help them strengthen this ability.
Steven Covey use to say that the most important space in the world is the space between stimulus and response. Think about what that means for boys?
They can often get easily triggered by stimuli and circumstance but we need to help them step back, get in touch with their self-talk and make better choices.
In the future we need to talk about boys and the pre-frontal cortex of the brain because that will also have an impact on their skills in this area.
BIG IDEA FOR THE WEEK
Ok, this big idea for the week is FEEDBACK LOOPS. Do you have systems in your classroom or school where boys can get feedback on choices they have made. This could be peer-to-peer or just simple class discussion.
We do it in elite sport all the time but rarely in schools.
You can also have a session where you look at current news stories of choices men have made and then discuss them from the perspective of prudence.
I’ll also put a link below the video on where you can get some good info on the bigger concepts related prudence.
News
In the news this week we have three interesting articles for you.
First we have an article from Kevin Chavous who is the executive director of the Amrican federation for children. He draws attention to some recent US research on how single sex education is helping boys achieve better outcomes.
Even if you’re in a co-ed environment there are options for single gender work that you can explore and which might be worth trialling on small scale and evaluating the results.
Next up is an interesting piece from the Independent demonstrating how boys are rapidly becoming underrepresented in university courses in the developed world. 14 UK universities are now running dedicated male recruitment campaigns and officials at the highest levels are actually calling for males to be classed in the same way as ethnic minorities.
That has some big implications for the work we are all doing with young men..
Finally, an article called, ” 22 Stats that prove something is seriously wrong with young men in America.” Its polemical and we don’t need to agree with everything the author says but there are some stats in there worth keeping in mind.
HOMEWORK
This week I wanted to introduce a homework challenge for each of us. Over the next 7 days try and ask two boys , :What is the best thing about being a male.” Then I want you to post your answers in the comment box below.It would be great to see the different answers we get when me meet up next week.