Because boys generally have more acute vision, learn best through touch, and are physically more active, they need to be given "hands-on" lessons where they are allowed to walk around.
Researchers from Brown University found that a network in the left hemisphere of the brain "remained more active" than the network in the right side of the brain.
Yet against this gloomy backdrop emerges what US marketers Eric Greenberg and Karl Weber have called "history's most active volunteering generation" - or "generation We".
With Hareton the resemblance is carried further: it is singular at all times, then it was particularly striking; because his senses were alert, and his mental faculties wakened to unwonted activity.