Fear-mongering…
I just had a chance to look through USA Today, and came across this article.
Girls are taking the nation’s colleges by storm. They’re streaming to campuses in greater numbers, earning better grades and graduating more often. The same phenomenal success shows in high schools, where girls dominate honor rolls, hold more student government spots and rake in most of the academic awards.
Quick, Martha! Git the shotgun, there’s girls comin’ over the ridge, headed right at us!
Impressive. But the real news is tucked into the deeper, darker corners of the report. Boys are doing miserably, and nobody knows quite why. On measures ranging from writing ability to the likelihood of needing special education, boys are flat-lining — or worse.
(Over the sound of a flat-line on the monitor screen.) “Doctor, I can’t get a beat!”
The impact could hardly be overstated. College-educated people earn twice as much as high school graduates. If boys can’t get to the good-jobs starting line, which these days is a bachelor’s degree, they won’t get a chance to use their natural competitive skills in the marketplace.
Because, you see, girls don’t actually have any natural competitive skills. (Unnatural ones, maybe.)
And when fewer men earn college degrees there are fewer partners whom educated women find desirable to marry. That’s a debilitating social phenomenon African-American women have struggled with for years.
Be afraid. Be very afraid…
The article concludes that the problem is most likely not in the education system but societal, with girls leading boys in the currently more coveted verbal and literacy skills (as they always have). The solution suggested is that school teachers should take courses on the biological differences between how boys and girls learn.
The final thing that precipiated our son’s removal from school was the special education resource teacher’s repeated use of, “Boys like him…”. Our school, you see, was terribly progressive and knew all about how boys fail. They knew all about the different ways boys and girls learn. They looked at our son and saw a cranky child who hated to write and they boxed him right into to that box called, “Boy.” He was headed on a nice course of occupational therapy, single sex classrooms (full of “boys like him”), a reading program structured around Captain Underpants (because everyone knows those are the only kinds of books boys like), and lowered expectations. I appreciate all the kind intentions, but thank you, I’d rather not have folks trying to remediate my child for the misfortune of having been born a Boy.
Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease!
4 Responses to “Fear-mongering…”
 Comment by Rikki December 10th, 2004 at 2:43 pm |
For a long time now it seems to me that there has been a disturbing trend to ‘de-boyify’ boys. Everything they want to play, do, write about, draw pictures of, or read has been banned cause it’s not flowers and sparkles and squishy bunnies. |
 Comment by darby December 10th, 2004 at 3:10 pm |
Yes, when my daughter was a toddler I bought her some plastic people in fat little cars. She pulled the people out of the cars and they all stood around and had conversations. When my son was a toddler, I gave him the same toy. He threw the people away, turned the cars over, and sat there spinning their wheels with a look of pure bliss on his face. Biological difference? Maybe. However, I think our attempts to define boys has narrowed things a lot for them. Particularly in our schools boys get only ONE definition of masculinity, and they get a whole lot of rules about what they are and aren’t allowed to like. A boyish girl is admired. A girlish boy is nothing but an object of ridicule. Boys are at least as constrained in their choices today, as girls were in previous generations. I’ve been homeschooling my son, and as he gets older I’m noticing that missing the school social scene really HAS made him a little clueless when it comes to the social expectations of boyhood. He’s in theatre and dance shoes are required. Ballet shoes are cheapest. His seven year old friend was on the floor pitching a fit because he didn’t want to wear “girly” shoes. My son, OTOH, was tiptoeing across the room saying, “Look at me! I’m a fairy!” That’s nice, son… When his friend was screaming over getting his hair cut, my son pulled out all of his sister’s My Little Ponies and began doing them up with hairspray. “See? I’m doing their hair, too! Aren’t they pretty?” I don’t think his friend was impressed. 😉 His favorite book of all time is Alice in Wonderland. He wants a real sword and shield for Christmas, as well as a meditating Buddha statue (not the fat, funny one). He adores Spongebob cartoons, but he also got really excited this morning when he discovered Mozart on a CD in his cereal box. “I love this guy!” Raising a boy a little outside the system is proving to be very interesting. I hope it will give him more confidence and security in the long run. |
 Comment by Joan December 10th, 2004 at 4:44 pm |
It sounds like the article is saying, “If we don’t solve this problem, women may someday close the wage gap! Alarm! Alarm!” |
 Trackback from LAmom December 10th, 2004 at 6:37 pm |
This article got me a little steamed. |