Rating: 
Summary: Closing the Gender Gap
Review: An excellent resource for parents and teachers in understanding the difference in how boys and girls learn. In Elementary grade classrooms, many particle applications are provided. However, I feel that the training sessions through the Gurian Institute needs to trickle down from a Lead Assessor to teach the teachers.
Prior knowledge of Multiple Intellegencies, brain research, and how students learn as they develop from K-12 is required to get the most of this material.Good resource may be Cynthia Tobias's tape series and book entitled "The Way They Learn: Understanding Learning Styles" and a book about Brain research. Brain research is key to this book, but may be very confusing as to how to Apply the learning into the home, classroom and everyday life. Instead of instilling sterotypes Boys vs. Girls, Teachers may refere to students as class, friends, team names if group work anything but "boys and girls." Anything to help remove the sterotypes the teachers, parents and society place on young children since that is how they grow up. Boys play sports, like to be leaders. Girls like close friendships with their peers, fluffy toys, play house, etc. Enjoy the book! I did. I took notes and found that useful towards moving in the direction of implementation of Gurian's suggestions.
DG
Rating: 
Summary: y=x makes perfect sense to me Guian
Review: As a math student in the 90's I had no problem understanding
y=x.Our teachers never said " y is the same as x" and the
girls never had a problem understanding it.This makes me
wonder about the validity of the book and just what the
reason was for Gurian to write it.
Might it be to ride on the coat tails of John Gray and take
advantage of the craze of "gender difference"?
Gurian tells us a girls brain is more complex and active,while
a boys brain is more able to comprehend spatial puzzles,
3 dimensional objects and higher math.After reading the book I
noticed how Gurian weaves through and around the issue of
individuality and the complex mix of intellegence which
resides in everyone.But then Gurian tries to convince the
reader of how girls only use this more complex and active
brain for relationships and picking up on people's emotion.
Your brain is your brain,individual and unique.A girl can have
a spatial brain and a boy a verbal and emotional brain.
To apply brains to gender in a fixed fashion does not
benefit education,rather it limits a child to one style of
learning.Set expectations hinder a child's developement.
The book will lead to confusion for many children.
y=x Gurian ,yes,I'm female but I understand it,amazing!!
Rating: 
Summary: Review of Boys and Girls learn Differently
Review: Educator, Family Therapist and Author, Michael Gurian has put together a great resource for teachers and parents. Boys and Girls Learn Differently goes inside students' brains and tells the reader how and why boys and girls process information differently. The author writes as if he was speaking directly to the reader. The book, which is separated into two sections, is clearly focused on an audience of educators and parents. The first section goes into full detail about the neurological differences between boys and girls and howy they learn differently. In the second part of the book, the author provides concrete examples of how to incorporate the knowledge learned in part one into the classroom setting. Gurian suggests steps that should be taken to maximize learning for all students from Kindergarten through High School.
This book is an exceptionally helpful resource for teachers and parents in understanding the differences in learning between boys and girls and compliments my philosophy on education. The one subject that I would have liked to see addressed is the notion that each and every student is a unique individual and therefore learns in his or her own distinct manner. As educators, it is our responsibility to make the learning environment well rounded so all students are cultivated to their maximum learning potential. I recommend that every educator and parent, interested in learning about how boys and girls process information differently, enjoy this informative and enjoyable book.
Rating: 
Summary: Sexual phrenology for today
Review: Girls are apparently six times more likely than boys to sing in tune - a rare admission of quantification in Michael Gurian's book. Still more striking, boys were forty-five times more likely than girls to get through to be finalists in a US National Geography Bee which attracted five million entrants. Refreshingly, after years of unconcluded speculation among experts, Gurian is able to announce that females are better at 'multi-tasking' (handling several problems at the same time, e.g. babies, mother-in-law and fried eggs) whereas men excel when sustained narrow attention is required (as in solving math, chess and philosophical problems); and males are better at working in hierarchies. Agreeable readers will accept such claims even if wondering how any of the experts cited by Gurian ever proved that "boys can sometimes take hours to process emotively" or that "when it comes to intelligence based in space and place, boys tend to experience more processing." How about the deep-seatedness of the sex differences which Gurian recognizes?. The only approach that interests Gurian is that of finding sex-linked traits to have associations with brain development. Accordingly, readers are advised that girls have better memories (especially for people) because their higher oestrogen levels give them bigger hippocampuses; it is "the male brain" which "gives boys the edge in dealing with spatial relationships"; and "brain-based" research shows it is important to talk to a girl every day and that boys should be taught while walking around in the 'peripatetic' Aristotelian manner. So committed is Gurian to such materialism that he often writes as if the brain and its development yield behavioural results without any kind of person coming in between. Thus it is "the female brain", and not the typical girl, that "responds more quickly to greater quantities of sensory information, connecting it with the primacy of personal relationships and communication"; it is "the early-adolescent brain system", not the adolescent, which "requires strong attachment" and thus a 'homeroom' teacher who is present with the child (or with its brain?) for the whole day; it is the brain, not the child, which "grows in cognitive leaps" with the result that "the young man and woman desperately need a variety of elder, mentoring and instructional personnel" (sic); and it is the brain, not the child, which gets "bored" and finds itself "zoning out." It would not matter that Gurian has been infected with a sloppy form of neurophysiologizing if he could prove the fixity of such brain-behaviour relations. But of course he cannot. Indeed, he is happy to point out that minute amounts of testosterone at critical periods can have big effects, that girls can be rendered more independent-minded and competitive by the use of testosterone therapy, and that "healthy brain development requires a healthy team environment." Gurian tries to pooh-pooh Prozac and Ritalin for being over-used as substitutes for parental affection. Yet he doesn't try using evidence to argue this point out with doctors or with parents of hyperactive children; and when readers see that Gurian's own recipe involves "one-on-one attention" they will understandably reach for the Ritalin. What then are Gurian's educational proposals, and how are they derived from what he has learned from the sciences of brain and behaviour? Plausibly enough, Gurian favours more motoric activity for boys and more encouragement to girls to participate and compete. But, astonishingly, most of his proposals involve no differentiation of the sexes whatsoever. Gurian would like to abolish school holidays but have longer breaks between lessons; and he says his idea is supported by "brain based research." He would like to maintain a pupil-teacher ratio of no more than 8-1 and to have two or three teachers per classroom - except presumably in those cases where 'one-on-one' attention is deemed necessary. He wants the school day to start later in the morning because of the brain's imperious circadian rhythms and to include Saturday classes at least for students with "learning or behavioral problems." Above all, he wants much more "bonding" and "full teacher-student attachment" between teachers and pupils. He complains that the American system forgets to protect "the love teachers and students need from each other." Needless to say, Gurian's apparent call for paedophilic pedagogues to come out of hiding and return to their posts requires no sexual differentiation at all. Gurian is prepared to turn teachers into child-lovers and parents into amateur phrenologists and to back many other reforming proposals (e.g. bringing grandparents into schools) all without the slightest regard for the fact that his book is meant to be about how boys and girls learn differently. He even boasts about the irrelevance of sex differences: he frequently acknowledges, indeed insists that his favoured reforms - e.g. the fashionable 'zero tolerance' and the equally unjust but more traditional punishment of whole classes or of randomly selected children for the offences of undiscovered miscreants -- will work quite as well (quite as badly?) with girls as with boys. Perhaps this book is really two or three books compressed into one. Gurian's allowing two other names on to the cover in smaller print than his own would suggest as much. In any case, it is certainly a book which summarizes the more palatable sex differences, burbles about the brain and proposes major and costly educational changes without managing to achieve more than a superficial linkage between these themes. Weirdly, the key question of whether boys and girls need separate classes or schools is dismissed in just ten lines (p. 179) - with these involving nothing more than a favourable comment by a single teacher from one of the schools that has been persuaded to talk the language of Gurian and co-workers. Gurian has risked having research on sex differences dismissed as pathetic and inconclusive by the liberal-left which today dominates education. Serious sex realists will draw no new strength from Gurian. One can only hope that, despite himself, Gurian somehow manages to annoy some sub-sample of feminists.
Rating:
Summary: a book with an agenda to keep the status quo
Review: Gurian has an agenda to keep the status quo intact.The premise
of boys being more able at spatial and mathematical ability
comes from an old pop science notion.He is simply The Marsvenus
of Education,and Marsvenus is losing ground and someday so will
Gurian's books.
All of the highest paying jobs involve spatial and mathematical
ability,from physics,engineering to economics.I'm not surprized
that Gurian hands over the most wage winning attributes to boys
and least wage winning to girls.He passes off pop psychology as
undisputable fact,his writing is a means to glorify his
"Institute" and to make a little cold hard cash on the side,since
he knows how obsessed especially American society is with
gender in quote "differenes".Canada isn't far behind in this
obsession and people flock to book stores to get the latest
provacative taste of sexism aimed at education.
If children are seperated into distinct learning styles by
gender,it will cause nothing but confusion.Try teaching a
spatial girl with verbalage and she'll be lost,same goes for
the verbal boy whom will not respond well to graphs,diagrams
and hands on techniques.The result will be confused children
not developing their own indivdual abilities to their fullest.
Because many parts of the world no nothing of these books,
the girls of other culture far out perform girls in the States
and other western states,merely because of this engrained
sex bias previalent in the western world.
The book will only spell disaster for girls and cause them to
not aspire to engineering,science and careers demanding
spatial ability.I've read all of Gurian's books and only one
book was needed because all say the same things over and over
again.
Also his reference to "bridge brains" implies this belief of
emense structural differences between brains,wired,when infact
we develope our brains.A girl who plays with dolls will have
very different brain connections in comparision to girls
involved in sports and spatial producing activities.The
structural differences are caused by experience and not hard
wired into the brain.
I get a hunch that Gurian does not want girls to be explorers
on the world but rather passive standers by who merely
compliment men and no not in any way have the same wants,needs
and abilities of men.In short,he wants women to graciously
throw in the white towel and surrender their exisistance to
dependency,relationships and emotions.The emphasis on emotions
of girls indicates that the writer wants young women and all
women to wallow in emotion and see it as "natural" rather than
to view it as a HUMAN trait and GET OVER IT.
He is obesessed with the notions of hormones playing a part in
learning,and influencing fetal brain tissue before birth,thus
limiting either sex to a narrow set of abilities.Boys too are
limited.What if a boy is emotional and verbal,I guess Gurian
would label him a "bridge brain" as well.
The main reason writers write these sexist books is to make a
buck,plain and simple.The truth wouldn't be provocative and
controversial enough to rake in the sales.Let's face it,the
whole "gender difference" is a fad,and a fad which needs to
die out fast.
Rating:
Summary: can't educate by sterotyping
Review: How can our children be best educated if behavior and
learning styles are sterotyped? No! It's impossible to educate with narrow minded beliefs about our sons and daughters.
I home school and my kids do not fit the patterns Gurian
sets out as "normal" In the mix of individuals I have as students,it evens out.
Gurian is preachy and arrogant in his views.I have the feeling if you don't believe him then you're less informed or educated
than he is.Wrong!
And the 'bridge brain' is only a disclaimer.Of course you will
find exceptions to his rules,it's called indivdual talent!
I can't tell you how many girls I've taught learn by doing.
Just as many boys are sitting still and reading.
Gurian's books are dangerous to our society.He is selling an
idea which will keep children in shackles.
Gurian's writings have nothing to do with day to day real life.
They have everything to do with sexism and keeping young women
in low paying jobs,self hate and low self esteem.
Rating:
Summary: Astounded
Review: I'm truly astounded at the ignorance of the reviewer cc, who clearly has an agenda of her own (just click on her profile).
Any mother who has a son and a daughter CLEARLY understands that you can put a doll in a little boys hand for the rest of your life and all he will do with it is twirl it around by it's hair or launch it in a rocket blaster.
I too believed that nonsense of nurture when I learned that in college and encourage my first born son to play with all types of different toys. My son was obsessed with balls from day one, in fact, his first word was ball, not mama or dada. Any doll was quickly ditched for a chance to throw something, build something or bulldoze something.
Having my son start kindergarten was an eye opener for me as well. Schools are set up for girls, not boys. My son does not want to sit still all day, my son does not want to sit and read books like my daughter will do all day long. My son wants to be physical, wants to conquer, wants to be busy doing... he wants to learn by doing. Unfortunately, schools want him to sit and act nice. Teachers at this stage in education do not understand the differneces and consistantly recommend drugging boys well into adolecence to get them to "behave". My son is a perfectly well adjusted very sweet kind young boy. He does not have any emotional problems, he just wants to do other things that girls do not want to do.
I praise Gurian for writing the books that he has. They have given me tremendous strength and wisdom to know what's "normal" for a boy. And yes, boys and girls are different. I don't believe that is politically incorrect to say. It's a fact.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect gift for an educator.
Review: If you know an inovative teacher who tries new startegies to reach all students this book is the perfect gift. Michael Gurian describes how 'brain based research' has been combined with practical teaching, mentoring, and parenting techniques and applied in classrooms over a two year period in Missouri. Chapters 1 and 2 clearly describe how male and female brains differ depending upon hormonal, biological, developmental, and structual change. Once this premise is accepted, practical techniques for educating both boys and girls within the ultimate classroom are explained complete with documented annecdotes. Chapters 4-6 delve into specific grade levels from pre-school through high school graduation. Yes, boys and girls learn differently. Yes, we can use this difference to our and their benefit. An educator will enjoy reading this very practical book.
Rating:
Summary: The danger from within is Gurian
Review: Many of my friends and I have read the same book.We come to the same conclusion of this book having an agenda to dogmatize our
country with meaningless gender bias.In my opinion there is nothing more dangerous to a country and the world as to limit
our children's ability to wether the child is male or female.
Gurian does not offer any proof as others have stated in the
reviews as to how these differences come about.He says it's the
hormones,the brain structure.I have read other matierial which has disclosed findings which condradict his so called research.
If he were correct in assuming hormones then I would be much more drenched with testostrone than my half brother since I excell at math and he at lanuage.Brain structure varies from person to person,something I doubt he would like you to know.
Instill independence and individuality in all your children
by seeing them as people rather than sexes.
I cannot think of anything worse than leading your child down the wrong "learning style" road,simply because of their sex.
People tend to want to agree with anything they read and be
a good follower.It's better to think for yourself and be a
good leader and helper in your child's life by giving them room to grow the way they want to and without trying to controll
their interests or believing they will only show talent in small sterotyped boxes.Terrible book written by someone
who is trying to distort your child's life to make $$$$$$.
Rating:
Summary: this writer needs to go BACK to school!!!
Review: So sad we live in a world with so many labels and
sterotypes.
Any teacher who applies this ...book to
the experience of a true life classroom is making a ...
mistake.
First off,we develope connections in our brains by experience.
A girl who plays with dolls will have vast differences in her
brain organization when in comparision to a girl who played
with in sports involving spatial ability and boys toys involving
the turning of objects around in their heads.
My cousin was inferiated when a councelor at a women's college
suggested she be in the Learning Disabled group when the
councelor found out she had D's in language classes.
All because the councelor assumed that any "normal" female would
be naturally better at languages.
The root of all this junk science is keeping women in "their
place" To make them feel inferior and different when actually
people are individuals and guess what a boy might learn
verbally,and a girl spatially. This has got to stop,or society will distroy the true meaning
of freedom.Freedom of a person to explore and to use their mind
and not have it labeled "male" or "female".
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