No Child Left Behind = All Boys Left Behind
Let's play a little game of make believe shall we? Let's play "house" - and pretend to be a typical American family about five years from now- say in 2014.
In this scenario, Mommy is a CEO, serves on several Boards of Directors, and had her two kids in her late thirties. Daddy is at home full time, cooks dinner, coaches soccer and helps with homework at night. He dropped out of college, after struggling through high school, and can't find a well paying job to justify their childcare costs.
In our make believe game, there are two children. The daughter is getting all A's in school. She is the teacher's pet, class president, plays sports and is in honor's classes. The son likes sports, but hates most subjects in school, struggles with ADHD, and is fumbling. Both have the same amount of attention and opportunities at home, yet the daughter is going to Harvard and the son is going to Community College.
Now, before you get hot and huffy here about gender sexism, bear with me. This scenario is not far from the truth for our upcoming leaders of tomorrow. Since the 1970's feminism has opened up unparalleled opportunity for women to move forward in education and business. Is it perfect? No, but today's daughters are breaking glass ceilings and blazing trails.
However, there are glass shards and dead end roads being inadvertently left for the men, and the boys. In the past ten years or so, the world of education has changed dramatically. The "No Child Left Behind Act" has been a disaster, and instead has turned into "All Boys Left Behind." Our nation's boys are not just slipping through the cracks, they are washing down the Grand Canyon without a paddle, and something must be done about it.
Peg Tyre is author of the book, The Trouble with Boys, a #1 best seller, coming out in paperback this summer. Tyre spent five years researching the current education system from every demographic. She has a powerful, unrelenting story of how our young men are struggling, and describes a giant education gap that will affect every level of American life, in a very short period of time, as these kids grow up.
Currently, boys are being "expelled" from preschool four times more than girls. They are 60% more likely to be held back in kindergarten, and twice as likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities. Only 43% of young men are enrolled as undergraduates in college, girls are taking more AP classes in high school, and dominating as school valedictorians. In fact, a "dirty little secret" at many colleges and universities is the unspoken "new gender gap." Boys are being admitted to colleges with lesser qualifications than girls to keep the gender balance.
Even though the IQ levels are the same, boys are disengaging from the educational process from their very first moments in a classroom, and steadily falling behind with each passing year. Today 72% of girls and only 65% of boys are graduating from high school.
For struggling families, the child who does the best in school is the one who will be pushed the hardest - nowadays it is invariably a girl. This trend is a massive reversal of forty years ago, where the academic career's of the boys was pushed at the expense of the girls. How can we keep the scales balanced?
Tyre states:
"In some ways its nice to see women on top. But we have to ask who is going to bring up the children and who are these educated women going to marry? In America there are 2.5 million more girls than boys in college, and women tend to marry men of the same level of educational attainment."
If the pipeline that is sending our boys up through the education system is damaged, the catastrophic recession is smashing the other end of the pipe as well- leaving scores of men unemployed, depressed and unsure of where to go next. Statistics show nearly 80% of those losing their jobs from the recession are men. Many of them are helping out at home, and redefining the meaning of "stay at home dad."
Does anyone see the connection here? In our recent lifestyle of 80 hour work weeks, an average father currently only spends 30 minutes a day with their sons. Maybe our struggling boys need their struggling dad's. Maybe both their lives need to be filled with a little more wrestling, games of Spiderman and comic books, instead of endless meetings and boring classroom droning.
Jeremy Adam Smith has written a new book, The Daddy Shift, just released for Father's Day. Smith, a staunch profeminist, spent a year with their infant son as the primary caretaker, and writes a very intelligent and engaging blog called "Daddy Dialectic". He offers a positive spin on the profound importance of men being at home as transforming bread winning into care giving. Check him out on this one minute video:
"Many fathers feel helpless, useless or in the way, when instead fathers can serve as a bridge between the mother and the rest of the world," said Smith. "It is time to come up with a whole new set of rules."
Smith feels that hands-on dads handle stress better when facing issues of unemployment.
"Taking care of my children is the toughest challenge I ever faced, but facing it strengthened me and enlarged my life, and critically, it has helped many of us to survive unemployment,"Smith said.
I asked Smith if he has noticed any differences in how he parents vs. his wife's style.
"Primarily, I think there is not a huge difference between men and women as parents," he begins. "However, I do think father's wrestle more, and while many assume the maternal style is the gold standard, running around playing octopus is how we have fun and relate to each other."
I have great faith that having more men at home can help bring that critical masculine energy back into the nucleus of the family- there may be more sword fighting, squirt guns, and more hours of farting than flash cards. If boys can be empowered by men at home, ideally their ability to perform in school will increase. If more men are paying attention to how their sons are being taught and the obvious deficits they are facing, motivation will occur to take action and address their specific needs.
Let's hear it for the boys. How are your boys faring in school? How are the men out there handling the juggling domestic home front? Let's start a dialogue and your comments are warmly welcomed!
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This article doesn't sit very well with me. I was turned off by the intro where the future typical family is described as mom is a CEO and dad is undereducated failure who has to stay at home. Our culture completely undervalues childhood and the caretaking of children. Success is defined by how much money you make - so the mom in the example is a success and dad is a failure. The assumption that we all would put our kids in daycare if we could is creepy. Sad.
Also, No Child Left Behind is a failure for all children. Just because girls are doing a little better than boys doesn't mean the girls are recieving a quality education. I particularly found alarming the statement about boys being expelled from preschool - why would any child be expelled from preschool? Is it because the early pushing of academics and boys can't sit still as well as girls? Maybe we shouldn't be expecting 4 year olds to sit at desks and preform academically. Maybe they should be playing! And socializing! Getting fresh air and exercise! Learning about the world by being in it and being active! Art and music and skipping rope! We need creative thinkers and our public schools do not nurture that, unfortunately.
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Children from all cultures suffer because of the education system in this country. The majority of young teachers in this country are female and little boys (especially those being raised by single moms) tend to utilize school as a social outlet instead of a place for learning. Many young female teachers straight out of college aren't ready to deal with the abundance of energy that boys have and want to claim they are all ADHD. No matter how civilized we become men don't like women to make more money than they do, men want women to need them and men dislike being disciplined by women, most of the time. Boys exhibit the dislike for discipline the most and are being misdiagnosed because they just don't want to be bothered with taking instructions from another woman in their life. If we can not get men to teach the younger children this only leads to our young men not being related to on a level that they can comprehend and they are lost when they reach puberty. I have seen the difference first hand with my own son and he would excel with a male teacher and challenge the female teachers; causing them to work overtime to receive the same level of respect as a male teacher; and he would do this to the detriment of his grades. It was more important that he let this woman know that she was not the boss of him than what grade he received.
I hope you are exagerrating the issues with your son's refusal to listen to and respect women. If not, he is going to have significant problems adjusting to the real world and all relationships he has with women. I also really hope this isn't a widespread problem with sexism as you've described. If it is, this isn't a problem with education but rather a problem with culture.
I am sorry that your children do not respect women, but that is your problem, not the school system. They had to be taught that at home.
By the way, just because the teacher is a male, he doesn't necessarily command more respect. It isn't about what sex they are.
As I read many of the comments thus far, I became more and more thankful that my two sons attend an all boys school. Although our school is independent, I wonder why the public system doesn't offer single-sex schools at all. Is it a legal issue? We are in Canada, and I don't know of any single-sex publics in our region, but isn't there a blossoming of charter schools in the US? Are any of them single-sex? The public system in Japan offers both single-sex and coed options.
Brown v. Board and another case (if anyone can help me out here that would be cool) basically killed the idea of single-sex schools. Even private schools here can not generally be all male (though they can try to see it works out that way, girls have to be accepted if they apply). Generally those sorts of schools are military schools, which are specifically designed for the purpose of recruiting. Some schools are starting single-sex classrooms, but its the same all female teachers teaching the boys. There is no real way out.
In our experience it is not the same all female teachers teaching the boys. Our all boys school has a higher ratio of male teachers, but more importantly, the women teaching have made a choice to be there and understand and enjoy working with "boy energy."
Kate29th, I agree with you and if you read my blogg on this page I put that out there, for this reason my best friend took her son and put him in a school for all boys and this young man flourished he went from a d student to a b student she asked him why did he start doing better at the all boys school he said, mom I'm with other young boys and I'm getting challenged (wow). You see bloggers I know you all already know this but boys may hear a thing differently than girls and they are hands on people they like being challenged and they are fond of trying to figure out how something works. Men, boys are thinkers.
and there is a short walk from failing in to school to the state penitentaries. 1 in 54 american men will spend some portion of their lifetime behind bars.
This is true, but yearlin most of them that are in the prison system did not grow up with a dad in the home. Most of them were in gangs and this is because boys are looking to bond with a male usually this happens with someone they can look up to most of the time it is (dad). I can speak for some in the african american community on my street alone there were 12 families on my street but my family and two other homes on the street were the only ones with fathers in them. As an african american I can say it made a difference in my life to have my dad around and my friends would tell me that they wish they could have that kind of dad. Men, boys, are different than women, they think different and there are things that a father is able to show a boy child and they need that bonding. My little boy cousin said to his mom when he was two, mama you can't teach me how to pe- I need daddy so I can do it right. Thinkers.
Most of these comments are ridiculous and sexist. Notice that the Indian and Asian parents aren't complaining, even when their children are stuck in crappy American public schools. Think about the culture difference, and then you will realize what the REAL problem is.
How do you what race or nationality any of the commenters on this thread are?
Correction - my comment should have read "How do you know the race or nationality of any of the commenters here?"
Both of my sons were poor classroom citizens. One was known for fidgeting and roaming. Tho other for day-dreaming and reading kids novels. My life situation ,while they were in elementary scool, tied my hands and forced me to follow the child psychiatrists prescriptions. I spent some evenings fighting with my sons to get their homework done and some nights it was just too much of a struggle. The school had them for 6 hours a day and I resented the intrusion homework placed upon my time with them.
I also have a disagreement with ADHA/ Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. When a young boy doesn't sit still and remain quiet for hours on end it is now a disorder. So we force the active curious ones to sit still and learn from the boss of their daytime world and then become balanced adults. If we made litle girls run around and wrestle all day, would we expect them to develope feminine attributes? Of course this is a gross generalization, but it does express a valid perspective.
,I am with you, Merhaba Abi and quite agree about ADHA. Children, and boys in particular, were not made by Nature to sit still for hours on end, looking straight ahead and obeying someone, much less a female. If they are restless and want to play, it's only natural, but society now calls this a "disorder" and gives them Prozac. Also recess time and P.E. are being eliminated. They don't even have a little time to run and kick a ball around. Very sad.
I don't know if any of the purported problems cited by folks as to the academic performance of boys in relation to girls are really responsible for the current state of affairs.
For example, playing online video games isn't really different from my penchant during my youth for spending hours upon hours playing pickup baseball and basketball. But then I would go home and finish the book I was reading from the stack I had brought home from the library or from my dad's bookshelves.
TV has been a babysitting tool since it was invented, too.
I read copiously since elementary school but yet my grades in junior high and high school were lackluster. Some of my teachers even confronted me about this because they knew that by ninth grade I could read at college level. But I just couldn't be bothered to do my homework and I often just tuned out what was going on in class because I wasn't interested. Ironically, I was asked to join my high school's Kiwanis Bowl team, which cracked me up because all the other members of it had 4.0 GPAs. I declined.
I was smoking lots of pot and drinking, too.
College was when I buckled down, graduating with honors and just short of a second BA in the bargain because I enjoyed the college environment and could actually study what interested me.
So different kids have different agendas that aren't served by the factory approach to education.
FWIW.
American public education is little more than expensive baby-sitting. Be quiet, be neat. Stay clean. Here's a pill to calm you down.
And don't forget to CONFORM!!!
Despite the fact that most Americans like to view themselves as individuals we do live in a very conformist country in a very conformist time. It really is a shame that there is very little tolerance for individual differences.
Some of the brightest people I ever met went to a community college. And some of the most incrediblly idiotic stupid people I ever met went to Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Penn and Cornell. And those of us who went to a community college, a mid-major and an Ivy prefer the term "two-year college" rather than "community college."
I love this article and know it's right on point. We are loosing our men child, boys learn different from girls and they are hands on people. Our boys start off so smart and then something happens, I'm wondering how would our boys do if they were in an all male class, boys can get distracted quick and they have to be encouraged to go to the next level and also they get bored easily. If you encourage them and make the classroom intresting they will respond my son does well when we praise him and it makes him want to do better.
I am so happy to see this article and the books mentioned in it. My 23 year old son is a victim of the public school system. He was gifted (and once upon a time very interested) in math & science with test scores that reflected it but never challenged and never encouraged in this by any teacher, save for one male teacher that he had in third grade. Focus was always on what he was doing wrong, such as not writing neatly when he submitted original poems in English class. I did what I could to try to guide & support & get outside support for him. I was also naive & trusted the school but maybe we could have done more...or home schooled.
His life, and our lives have been negatively impacted due to the attitudes and practices described in this article and the war on boys had only just begun when he was in elementary school. Exactly as you described he "disengaged from the educational process" and we could never get him back on track. He has made some positive strides but the current situationis not so rosy. Maybe he needs to find a nice middle class career girl who's looking for a house husband & baby caretaker? I pray that things can change for boys coming up, especially boys coming from disadvantaged backgrounds - the prognosis is even worse for those boys as you can well imagine.
Sadly, in my son's case the damage has already
I've read most of the comments here. I am mostly disappointed - not surprised.
most comments questioning the conclusion of the article either don't have sons, or their sons have done well in the system or believe that parents are to blame or it's girls' turn or .... Here is the point that seems to be missing - when any child fails to reach their educational potential they are not the only ones to suffer a consequence - we as a society suffer. THAT is the point.
We as a society need to have educational models that encourage, support, prod each and every child to identify his and her gifts and talents and interests and feed their capabilities. Our schools are NOT automats where a child goes puts in his or her time and receives the meager offering. Teaching is a title that means aiding learning.
I am a teacher. If a child does not get it then I have failed along with that student. If a child testing in the 80th or 90th percentile is at the bottom of the class then I have failed.
When large numbers of children, male or female, are not functioning at their academic potential something is wrong with our schools. Period.
My son was in the 97th -99th percentile depending upon the subject. He passed his elementary grades because of test scores. Spent half of junior high suspended and dropped out of high school. He's getting As at the local 2-year college. I taught him the Greek alphabet (verbal and written) while he was under suspension in 7th grade and to this day we can discouss the Pelopenesian Wars and the lessons learned too late buy the Athenians because I got him to study something that captured his interest as only Animorphs previously could.
I think there's two separate issues here:
1. A changing classroom culture:
Discipline has become stricter (sit, down, shut-up, no recess, 12 minutes for lunch, no toys to school) followed by Afterschool Care/Sports teams with much the same rules
-Boys have more energy and trouble following rules so this is harder on them
2. A changing perception of women:
Females are now valued for being smart, so boys and girls compete in the classroom
-Until 90's being an intelligent woman was not actually a good thing, often it still can make you an outsider.
In my opinion, giving kids more time during the day to play might help. Parents spending more time with them might help too. But that won't do anything for teenagers and college age kids. Right now men still have the lead in graduate school, but I don't think they'll keep it, because I said, they aren't competing (woman feel like outsiders when they get pHds). Maybe women are inherently better at school.
OK, I don't have a lot to say on this subject, because I don't have children. But it boggles my mind that many schools have no recess! Are you kidding me??? Show me one 9 year old kid that doesn't learn better after running around and blowing off steam for 15 minutes!
Sure thing. This is such a no-brainer. And they're eliminating recess and Phys. Ed.to save some more time for boring stuff.
The #1 missing ingredient: PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT! Having children should be never be done because it's a societal norm, some God-given right, or the by-product of irresponsible recreation. It should only be undertaken because you WANT to devote your time and resources to the raising of your child(ren) and (b) have SOME CAPABILITY of doing so. Today's disrespectful, poorly educated, sociopathic, obese, self-absorbed, underachieving children are the direct result of lack of parental involvement. Letting video games and TV babysit your kid rather than listening to him, engaging him in games, or taking him somewhere (ball games, museums, parks, zoos, shows, movies), you are demonstrating a lack of caring and he will turn to friends//video games/TV or even substance abuse for entertainment. If you can't/won't give him attention, involvement, guidance, discipline, and caring, birth control is your best option. Studies have shown that too much TV from ages 0-5 promotes a lack of neural network development needed to excel in academics. Of course, schools and some teachers leave a lot to be desired, but ALL of that can be overcome by an INVOLVED parent. Yes, it's HARD when you work and you're tired. But if you don't like challenge, don't have kids! And of course boys will be boys. That's why we have sports and other activities. If your boy isn't involved in something constructive that he enjoys that absorbs his attention and uses that energy constructively, you are going to have discipline problems!
Let me guess. You're a public school teacher? The teachers who want to wash their hands and absolve themselves of all responsibility are always preaching about PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT (in all caps no less). Teachers have a responsibility to our children, they don't get to absolve themselves of that responsibility by pointing fingers at parents who ARE involved and who are doing the best they can. Our children are in the custody of the schools for the major part of a day - what happens there is IMPORTANT and all the parental involvement in the world cant change or counteract a consistently negative school environment - unless PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT means pull your precious babies out of the clutches of callous uncaring teachers' classrooms, run like the wind and never look back.
You're right, but people don't want to hear it.
The idea that school doesn't give enough recess, that boys' energy isn't being released..
I'm not advocating a return to that hellish treatment, but the idea that our poor boys aren't doing well because girls are being catered to is just nonsense. First of all, girls like to play too. The sexual stereotypes here are making my head spin. Girls don't all love sitting down and playing princess games. And guess what? Lots of boys (most) aren't very good at sports and want to be involved in other (sit down type) activities.
If anything, this jihad against the schools and the underpaid, underappreciated teachers is just a convenient place for angry men and disappointed parents to pass the blame.
"It's boggling my mind. In the 60s and 70s, we sat ALL DAY in my Catholic school classrooms. We even ate lunch at our desks, in the classroom!"
Really? wow.
I went to Catholic school in the 60's and 70's myself. We went home for lunch, walking home under our own steam All students in both public & private schools did.
Moms didn't work back then.
The only students who didn't go home for lunch were those who took a school bus and lived too far away to walk home. In fact, my neighborhood public school was still sending kids home for lunch in the late eighties, well after the rosy old days of stay at home moms had ended.
We did not have daily recess at the Catholic school I attended but we did have recess about twice a week weather permitting, we also had time to run around and play in the schoolyard when we returned from lunch if we got there before the bell - our lunch period was an hour long. Although strict, the nuns always treated us with dignity, and they had high expectations for our academic success. Most of us rose to their expectations. Few of the public school teachers I've come into contact with as a parent can hold a candle to even the "worst" nun from my Catholic school days.
Holding teachers and schools accountable to those they serve is not a "jihad" - aren't you being just a bit melodramatic?
And finally, the main point of the article is not that a lack of physical activity in school is harming boys - maybe re-read and grasp the full meaning.
I really do agree with you.
I think the example of obesity you brought up is relevant: 1/3 of US kids are now classified as overweight or obese. The schools didn't do that - home environment did - and those numbers signify lack of family involvement in the kids' well-being. Schools do what they can, with paid employees, many of whom care, but cannot fix the problems of disinterested, incapable, or absentee parenting. Perhaps things really began to change around the time the US economy changed and it became harder to have a single income family, and divorces became more common. But in the end, if you're not able to devote the time, resources, caring, and intelligence to raising children - whether society dealt you a bad hand and you're one of those who has to "work 3 jobs to make ends meet" (as someone said below) and thus can't be present for kids; or don't have the interest in making your kids' well-being a primary focus of your life for about 15 years...th
Yeesh, is the air thin up there on that pedestal?
I hope you never have to deal with a real tragedy - you seem ill prepared and judgmental about others that have struggled.
For the past two years I have watched as my wife finished her requirements for her teaching certification. I read her textbooks, helped her with assignments and brainstormed with her for many of the requirements for her degree. I am a lawyer with 25 years experience in the courtroom. One of the problems with education is the way teachers are taught. The language of education consists of an overuse of jargon that is sometimes simply comical. You don't learn math to be a math teacher. You learn "education", this odd abstract of "modalities" and "syntheses" where you don't "discuss" a topic you "synthesize" it , where you are not in a group of students you are in a "cohort".
I also fly airplanes, build things, repair and restore cars, coach sports, and lots of other guy things. If the instruction manuals, training materials, parts lists, tool catalogs, I use in my life were written by education professionals, nothing would ever get done as I burned every one. I see the irony of a lawyer crabbing about jargon, but we have been eliminating it from our profession for years and it is nearly gone. Teachers need to do the same.
Teaching is now completely dominated by women. This is not a good thing for boys. There is evidence in the results. And for video games, my son will drop his as soon as he has something more interesting to do. And right now, that is certainly not school.
Teaching has almost always been dominated by women; that is not the issue. Being involved in WORK, something that children until recently certainly did, will make a difference. Boys and girls both need this -- plant the school garden, paint the walls, build robots, anything that doesn't involve sitting in rows and filling out worksheets.
But I certainly do agree that the education a teacher receives is a joke. It's all jargon. An MBA without the networking. That's why the Teach for American program is so successful -- bright, enthusiastic, well-educated students from top colleges spend a few years teaching in the worst schools imaginable, with more success than those who have been trained as teachers. This is important because the data show that the single greatest determinant of kids' success in school is the teacher. So it's important that we learn to identify teaching talent, and figure out how to develop it.
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