Boys are falling behind in school because teachers do not teach to their nature.

As a retired mental health professional, I am unable to agree with your editorial stance on Feb. 6 that the solution to improving education for boys won’t be gender-based. I have read 20 well-known books, some best sellers, that point the way to teaching boys much differently than girls. Many of them encourage boys to be in separate classrooms from girls starting in kindergarten, and taught separately throughout the public school years. This will enable schools to help boys and girls achieve academic potential and more maturity.

The Michael Gurian Institute in Missouri has, within the past eight years, successfully changed how thousands of elementary school teachers teach boys and girls. His success has persuaded hundreds of school districts here in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom that boys must be taught differently than girls. Scientists have determined there are 100 significant gender differences in the brain; logical when our respective brains evolved starting six million years ago performing quite different tasks. Hunting predators for meat is far different than raising children.

One particular elementary school in Missouri had been regarded as the least effective school in that state. After Dr. Gurian worked with the teaching staff, the school now ranks in the top three throughout Missouri. What is really impressive is that discipline under this new program is no longer an issue.

Maine leads the nation in the number of young boys ejected from pre-K programs.

This new way of teaching is based on the nature of boys and girls. A simple example is that boys do not hear as well as girls. If a young boy sits in the back of the room and the teacher is soft-spoken, he may never really hear what she has to say. Rather than raise his hand, he will tune her out. Boys do not like lectures. They like to focus on what they have to learn and need to walk around the room thinking while doing. Boys cannot sit still for hours. Movement is very disruptive to most classes, thus more boys are referred to special classes because of this “hyperactivity,” and drugged with Ritalin, the most over-prescribed medication in the world.

One of the most significant gender differences is that boys have much more difficulty learning to read than girls. Girls are endowed with much more blood flowing through their larger Carpo Callosum that connects the right hemisphere with the left hemisphere; thus girls read easier, write better and are much more verbal than boys. The greater capacity lasts well into adulthood.

I highly recommend reading “The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life,” by Michael Gurian. Its bibliography has one of the best lists of profound and life-changing books in America today. Newsweek’s “The Boy Crisis,” cover story for Jan. 30 cites this book. For some reason, Maine cannot seem to grasp how serious this problem of boys falling far behind girls has become.

In addition, boys suffer from physical and mental handicaps far more than girls; 70 percent of all special education students are boys; 80 percent of school dropouts are boys; men are 98 percent of prison inmates; boys commit suicide seven times the number of girls; 40 percent of high school graduates are illiterate.

When boys enter puberty, the great wash of male hormones flood their bodies from 13 to 17. This accounts for most domestic violence and juvenile crimes. If our educational system starts when boys are 3 and teaches them in accord with their nature, we could change a lot of those horrible demographics. In addition, with 75 percent of our families without a father, boys need mentors.

What is lacking is leadership to change how we teach.

Donald A. Nicolson, a former assistant administrator for a community mental health center in the Pittsburgh area, is now retired and living in Farmington.