There Be Dragons

Conventional public schools can't give boys what they need.

I pulled my sons out of public school this year.  There be no dragons, you see. 

Both boys did well in public school. Too well. They were bored out of their minds. My boys help their neighbors. They are friendly. They’re well-behaved. They don’t talk back. They eat their vegetables and do their chores.

But they kept getting in trouble in school for socializing. 

Well, yeah. 

When the assigned work is something they can finish in ten minutes, why would they start immediately? When I said that to my elder son’s 3rd grade co-teacher, she was incensed that I dared to question her ability to differentiate lessons. That wasn’t my intention, and I don’t blame her, but lady, he’s a boy; you’ve gotta give him a dragon to slay. 

I’ve had the pleasure of teaching hundreds of boys aged 13-18 over my 20-year career. I don’t mean to be reductive, but they demonstrate an innate need to build things, especially their own competence. They want to compete. They want to see how strong they really are. They also want to help others, even if they don’t want their kindness to be too obvious. There is magic in boys, and magic needs dragons.

My own boys are hockey-playing, mountain-biking, science-experimenting reading machines who are fast-becoming warrior poets. Okay, maybe not poets; they’ll choose the medium, but I’m not here to raise conformists. 

And that’s all school can produce; there be no dragons. To be fair, they haven’t existed at school for a long time, but they’ve been driven to near extinction by well-intentioned teachers and administrators who want everyone to feel safe, who want everything to be equitable, who want to protect kids from failure, as though that isn’t the most important dragon a boy — any child, really — can face. 

So many boys are locked in the world of screens, where there be dragons. But, in my experience, they don’t really want to be locked into games. They want to be with other boys, competing, mocking, working on a project, defeating something. But in our sit down, pretend-to-listen, pretend-to-work, pretend-to-care, Safety First classrooms, those outlets are lost to them, so out come the devices, a poor simulacrum for a dragon. 

My eight-year-old scores in the 98th percentile on state math and English tests which is unsurprising given he reads voraciously alone and beautifully aloud and throws math problems at me from the back seat all the time. But the books at school were boring, unappetizing. Safe. The math was so easy he didn’t bother.  I had to buy him Challenge Math to keep him practicing.

At home, his library (a tall Ikea bookcase) has Treasure Island, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Way of the Warrior Kid: Field Manual, the Dangerous Book for Boys, The Lonesome Gods, and so many DK books I’ve lost count.

At school, he had easy readers about vanilla topics any knowledgeable, dangerous warrior kid would reject as pablum.

There be no dragons. 

My 12-year-old is a friendly, happy-go-lucky aspiring comedian who writes clear, concise prose and has an astonishing vocabulary. He loves math too, but he blew off the homework. Checking Aeries frustrated both of us because I’d see a wall of red boxes, he’d tell me everything would be fine soon, his father’d lecture him about discipline and hard work and then we’d ground him and send him to bed because we got home from hockey practice at 9. 

Then he’d take the test. 

He’d get 100%. 

His grade would go to an A. 

There be no dragons. 

My boys figured out how to find dragons on their own. They found them in backcountry hiking, at the ice rink, in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in logic puzzles that make my eyes cross, in science experiments, in figuring out how to get friends off their devices and outside, in swimming out to the farthest buoy, in landing a skateboard trick, in riding a long Hawaiian left. 

And by taking them out of school, I’ve given them the freedom to find more dragons, fight them, lose, fight them again, and know, forever after, that they are dragon-slayers. 

As I was writing this, my 12-year-old reminded me that there’s one place where you can still find a dragon at school: on the field in unsupervised games and play. 

For any teachers reading this, invite dragons back into your classrooms. Allow boys to compete. Keeping tabs of great answers and intellectual risks taken in class is a great way to engage boys. Inter-class competitions really get them going. 

Reward amazing performances. Reward them when they take on challenges. Pat them on the back. Refer to them by last name only, English public schoolboy style. Put the top grades for tests and quizzes on the board.  Chastise them gently when they perform below expectation — they won’t next time. 

Boys need rules and structure, but once you’ve laid down both, give them choice to tackle something they’re really interested in. Give them hard things to read, centered around a question about what makes a man (a human). They’ll surprise you with their insight.

If you give them the space, they’ll show you how brave they are. 

When they fail, coach them with corrective feedback. Talk to them side-by-side, not face-to-face. Warriors fight shoulder to shoulder — facing a boy is a challenge.  Let him know you’re fighting with him, by his side.  

Because there be dragons.