While M.I.T.'s Zacharias and other curriculum reformers tackle today's new knowledge in imaginative ways, most grade school teachers still innocently overlook one of the ageless and most fundamental complications in teaching—the fact that boys are different from girls. One might suppose that the nation's predominantly women teachers would have noticed the difference; yet they continue to handicap boys by expecting them to learn and behave like girls.
The current issue of The National Elementary Principal, a trade journal published by the National Education Association, devotes 47 pages to comparing the sexes. Its articles,...