Boys are in crisis...
Margaret Wente has a good column in today's Globe & Mail on the crisis facing boys. Many researchers in the US are trying to deny that boys are now facing significant problems in school, but Wente presents some arguments on why boys need help:
You've heard all the arguments why boys are falling behind, so I won't repeat them. But consider your average high school. This is a place where adolescents are required to sit for hours at a time without squirming, where compliance, neatness, rule following and politeness are rewarded, where males make up the smallest percentage of teachers in 40 years, where adult females drone on about subjects that have no relevance to your daily life, where good literature is anything by Toni Morrison, where normal male competitiveness is interpreted as deviance and horseplay as sexual harassment, and a sizeable percentage of the male inmates have been labelled special ed or behavioural from an early age -- i.e. deficient. Is it any wonder so many boys think school is hell?
posted by GayandRight @ 7:11 PM
7 Comments:
As a mother of two boys and two girls in public school -- this is absolutely true.
The effort to try and negate inherent male traits is invading the workplace as well.
She's right. And Toni Morrison's books verge on the incoherent, one must strain to read a page - if possible.
Someday there will be a backlash against these attacks on the male gender, but it probably won't come in the form expected.
Bunch of crap.
School was always dull, and reading Julius Caeser as much a pain in the ass as Toni Morrison. Doing mathes was even worse. I have no sympathy for today's boys, and I think Conservatives who feel that school was once alot more interesting than it is now are dreaming.
And turning school into a kind of play camp for boys is a typical Conservative fantasy. They'll learn traits like Manhood and Freedom Lovingness but won't be able to spell their own names. This'll prepare them for the Keg Parties of tomorrow.
Meanwhile cultures that still reward knowledge and hard work get ahead, and our leaders become airheaded dropouts like George W.
BCL - So it was cool to change the entire education system to help girls that were struggling but now that our fixation on femininity has left the boys behind there is no need to do anything about it?
jeff, my son,
The education system has not change that much, believe me. It never was much fun and you always had to read books you didn't like. If conservatives think turning grade school into a kind of boys adventure camp (which is what most of their positive contributions to this debate amount to), then they've gone mad. I would just tell the boys of today to straighten up and fly right and do their damn home work. That used to work for my generation. Yours apparently discovered Conservatism and Victimhood.
BCL - since the 70's there has been a concerted effort to change curriculum, teaching styles and rewards to encourage greater success by females. Well, now it appears that females are out-performing the males. Is is so wrong and astounding to you that some people might want to try to discover why this is? And that they might want to offer some help to the struggling boys? You'd think this would be a no brainer for a liberal, what with your undying quest for 'equality' and all.
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