I discovered that the behaviours of classrooms with boys only are very different from mixed classrooms. Introduce young teenage ladies into the mix, and the boys' behaviour improves immediately.
Yet, the boy (spoken about in a previous post) which enjoyed his own smell did so in a mixed classroom. However, the girls responded with , the boys with , and the male student himself was known widely for a degree of nastiness to others. I heard, for example, when she handed him his coffee and he found it did not have the sugar he wanted in it, he threw the hot coffee into her face. How did I learn that? Murmured to me by a student, privately. I once reported some poor behaviour to the Year 12 Co-ordinator only to be told that if he met the lad on a pathway, he would be the first to move across to walk in the gutter. In other words, he was not prepared to confront him. I got what he was obliquely telling me.
Interestingly, no other male student in that class ever purposely engaged in smell creations within my classroom. Only this single student. They had more respect for others, including myself. Says it all, really.
I have worked in two all-male students' schools. Hence, I experienced first hand the difference, early on in my public school teaching "career". Fortunately, my "career" began late in my working life and was voluntarily truncated earlier than most other teachers. I can't even imagine how people stay teaching for 40 years or so, particularly in the public sector.
Ergo - males behave in a socially acceptable manner when women are present. Women are needed in males lives, but the reverse does not make women feral.
, the boys with
