Samms-Vaughan

Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughan is rejecting research findings published by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) implying that gender-biased child-rearing practices might be contributing to learning and mental disabilities in boys.

According to the findings presented in UNICEF's 2007 Situation Analysis on Gender Disparities in Jamaica, a continued practice by parents - especially mothers - to treat their daughters with greater care than their sons, might be accounting for the wide disparity.

Some of these practices include less breastfeeding for boys, as well as cheaper health care, more neglect and more physical punishment.

Small sample

But Samms-Vaughan, chairperson of the Early Childhood Commission, says the population sample used by the researchers was too small, hence the findings were flawed.

"It is not true. I have never observed that parents tend to care for their young children any different from the other at that stage," she told The Sunday Gleaner, following the Editors' Forum at the company's offices in downtown Kingston last week.

She says different treatment, in her experience, is not meted out to boys and girls by their parents until adolescence.

Of children with disabilities enrolled in formal special-education community- and school-based programmes, UNICEF noted that boys outnumbered girls by 11 per cent. Of the total population, 64 per cent are boys. The gap widens to 68 per cent when cognitive disabilities are taken into consideration.

Reason not known

However, Samms-Vaughan says while more boys are identified with cognitive disabilities than girls worldwide, the actual reason for the disparity is not known. But she adds that the methods of assessment in school, which are heavily skewed towards girls, might be an issue.

It is an issue that special educators like Dr Polly Bowes-Howell have identified. She says while the content of the curriculum itself is neutral, teachers, who are mainly female in the educational system, utilise teaching activities that emphasise learning. She says more male teachers are needed in the classrooms to create a balance.

"Unless we can pay male teachers and attract them - but we don't have the money - then we are going to have a problem," Bowes-Howell says.

She adds: "What is happening is that the [female] teacher is left alone to determine what choices she is going to make in terms of delivering a topic."

"Boys learn differently from girls," explains principal of the School of Hope, Christine Rodriguez. The school, located in east St Andrew, caters exclusively to children with special needs.

"Women are not as hands-on and do not need the same kind of strategies for them to understand the math and science," Rodriguez says.

gareth.manning@gleanerjm.com