Male Underachievement Case Study

Analysis Of Data

In this study on male underachievement, as shown in fig. 2, the majority (67%) of participants’ grades was less than 59 % and notably no participant obtained more than 90% on average. Of the total sample, most males (87%) attend school often enough for their attendance to be considered acceptable by a school’s standards. Of the remaining 13% of students that did not attend often belonged to single parent families. This implies poor grades are linked with single parent households. When participants were asked to describe their standard of living (see fig. 5) they mostly gave one word answers such as “normal” and “high” as if attempting to get over the question as quickly as possible. Notably the students who answered “high” were usually the ones with poor attendance. As shown in fig. 6, 70% of the participants agreed that bad behaviour among boys is likely to occur in the presence of a female teacher and they also stated that 68% of their teachers are female. This suggests that when

These social issues included poverty; gender socialization and the type of family the individual belonged to, which by in large are the causes of male underachievement. The consequences of male underperformance, however, only included intermittent aggression towards peers and small fights among classmates with only one anomaly which was a stabbing incident. None of these incidents had any serious repercussions. In an attempt to find a solution to male underachievement, it is suggested by the results that male teachers as role models are needed to enhance young males’ academic performance since there are very few male teachers and very few boys look up to the male teachers currently present. It was also found that counselling and encouragement to study will most likely be effective in dealing with the male underachievement