Boys and girls are different by nature; their brains are different, and they learn in different ways.

But that’s no reason for parents to rush out and switch their kids from co-educational to segregated schools, or vice-versa.

The key lies in teaching their teachers about the differences, says American educator Michael Gurian, keynote speaker at a conference this week at Newcastle University in NSW.

The parenting and family expert said the old “nature versus nurture” argument was over.

“What we really need to do is nurture the nature,” said Mr Gurian, founder of the Colorado-based Gurian Institute for training and researching how gender affects learning.

“New brain scanning technology clearly illustrates differences in the ways boys and girls react to stimuli, activity and rest, and debunks talk that these differences are simply the result of nurture.

“Studies on spatial awareness show that by four days of age, girl babies hold eye contact with their care-giver for longer than boys, while boys are already responding to movement and activity…

Mr Gurian said both boys and girls started out with natural tendencies, then a combination of nurture and culture expanded on those tendencies.

“Thus girls get more practice being directly empathic and using words to connect with feelings, and boys get more practice in aggression/competitive hierarchies and non-verbal affection…

“Since boys biologically start out at a verbal disadvantage,” he says, “it can be especially debilitating to boys if they are not read to and conversed with at young ages.” …

Source: Sydney Morning Herald
http://tinyurl.com/2zekc3