Who Says the Boy Crisis Is Over?
The Boy Crisis in education, if there ever was one, is over. Or so says a report issued last week by the powerful and influential American Association of University Women. For the last 18 months, I've criss-crossed the country, talking to parents, teachers, and policymakers for a book I'm writing about boys and schools. What is abundantly clear is that there's large and growing group of people who just aren't buying the AAUW's position and that they're not who you might think they'd be. Some of the very same (mostly female) teachers and librarians who helped raise up the achievement of girls over the last fifteen years are now struggling to find ways to get boys re-engaged with learning. And there's a growing constituency of smart, empowered, and increasingly vocal women -- mothers of school-aged boys -- who are intensely concerned about what's happening to their sons in school.
They won't find a hint of their concern in the AAUW report. From the AAUW's perspective, things have never been rosier for all our children -- for boys and as well as for girls. Girls, who traditionally lagged behind boys in standardized tests in math, have all but caught up. Little boys are doing better in reading (the report glosses over the fact that they lag behind girls terribly in middle and high school.) The AAUW report wants to make sure you understand this point: that the "girls and women's achievement ... has not come at the expense of boys." It's race and economics we should be concerned about, not gender.
Racism and poverty do have a strong negative effect on educational outcomes - and those factors cannot and should not be underestimated or ignored. But what the AAUW fails to mention is that when you compare the achievement of boys and girls from similar racial and economic backgrounds, girls are outperforming boys by a wide margin. Boys get expelled from preschool at nearly five times the rate of girls, they get identified as being learning disabled or having behavior issues at four times the rate. They are twice as likely to get held back. They bring home more C's and D's on their report cards and according to the Centers for Disease Control, by the time American boys are sixteen years old, a full 14% have been "diagnosed" with an attention deficit disorder. Currently, there are 2.5 million more female undergraduates then male undergraduates, a gap that is growing by 100,000 every year. Yet here's the good news from the AAUW's report: "Among traditional age students (under age of 24), the gender gap favoring women earning an undergraduate degree appears only among students from low and middle income families." Only?
Even if girls rule in school, the AAUW's position is that it doesn't matters since men out-earn women in the work place. It's ironic but it is one of the enduring legacies of the feminist movement -- and indeed, some of the AAUW's own work -- that this kind of logic doesn't cut it with Americans anymore. These days, whether you make your home in a red states or blue state, most parents and teachers believe that all children -- girls and boys -- should have access to schooling that helps them meet their potential.
Equity issues in the workplace are very real -- and frustratingly slow to change. But nine year old school boys aren't to blame. The environments in our schools and expectations for our children have changed in ways that are bad for many kinds of kids but especially bad for boys. At the same time, a college degree has never been more important. Teachers and parents all over the country are starting to figure that out and asking themselves what they should do. They'll need to proceed with caution. No one wants to take away from the astonishing gains our girls have made or forget that girls still need support in tackling subjects where they still lag: upper level math, computer science, physics and engineering. For boys, there isn't going to be a one size fits all solution. Poor, Black and Hispanic boys need support of a very different nature and magnitude than upper middle class boys in Winnetka and Wilton. But let's stop pretending that boys are doing fine. The facts, and our own eyes, tell us otherwise.
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Men and women are different. They don't use language the same way. They don't form and maintain relationships the same way. They don't perceive the world around them in the same way. If a boy has an absentee father or is raised by a single woman, and all of his teachers and counselors are women, then he is at a severe disadvantage. What if little girls grew up in a world where all the adults were men. Do you think that would be good for them? Boys need men in their life.
The differences between men and women are on an overlapping bell curve continuum.
That is many women are more "man-like" on certain characteristics the many men and the other way around as well.
It's cases like this that show that old school feminism was never about gender equality, but gender advancement. And only one gender need apply.
None of this information is new. Girls have long been ahead of boys in every subject but math and science. They graduate high school in higher numbers and many colleges have a 60/40 female/male enrollment. Boys commit suicide at much higher rates than girls.
But all you hear from feminist organizations like AAUW is how girls are still behind boys on math and science. Inequality is only a problem if it's to the detriment of women and girls, men and boys don't matter.
i don't think this disparity of achievement between sexes fully applies to asian students in california. maybe it does; but i'd need some hard research stats to believe that it does.
it wouldn't exactly upset me to learn that sports has killed black and white adolescent male culture- but i have no research-grounded basis for saying so. i just know that as long we have lots of asian kids in the sciences, we don't need the others. they can do their games and sports life long in that case.
"as long we have lots of asian kids in the sciences, we don't need the others"
I dearly hope that statement was meant as sarcasm.
no. i do not feel asian science students get the respect they deserve at lower educational levels. and, i think they comprise a very important resource for technological leadership despite sports worship and the "no books" hip-hop culture. i think they should be supported and cultivated. if others are hostile to learning they can go their own way. i don't mean punish them- but they can just do other things.
Great Post!
More and more, all I see around me is tribalism. People find ways to divide ourselves based on religion, race, gender, and any other thing that makes one person somewhat different than another.
It's really sad that some of these women are more interested in promoting their own "tribe" rather then furthering the well-being of all. It's like they enjoy the fact that young boys (who have had nothing to do with all of this country's historic ills) fall behind and become unable to secure a place for themselves in society.
Can we all start thinking about what's best for the entire human race, and stop being such angry and divisive tribalists? The AAUW sounds like they're desperately trying to prove their relevance - even if it comes at the expense of our innocent children. Shame on them!!!
This isn't the kind of post that I would expect for this site but thank you for it. It really reminds me of my childhood and how common it was from my female peers to be outperforming my male peers. Certainly myself and some of my other friends did well but overall, boys in my school did not have the same standards/
The AAUW is smoking crack or purposefully engaging in gender warfare. They don't seem to care that their victims are little boys who have nothing to do with the current and historical inequities at the workplace.
I think we should seriously consider seperating boys and girls classes.
Hmmmmm....
"just because we value penises more than vaginas"
The world's oldest profession proves you wrong.
When the day dawns that a woman can make just as much money being fabulous in bed, (LEGALLY,) as an abject evil idiot can make in the whitehouse, (ILLEGALLY,) THEN you'll have an argument. Vaginas are "owned" by someone/something other than the person who hosts them, otherwise women could do whatever they wanted to with them, including sell them. Men can do whatever they want with their penises...
Checkmate.
Oh great. So no matter what the problem, it's still all the fault of men.
No, it's not all the fault of men, and that is not what I said. Women contribute to this problem by letting their sons get away with a laziness they'd never accept from their daughters. Men contribute by either being absent or not standing up for their rights as men and as FATHERS. If a son has a strong father figure he'll follow him. If men refuse to stand up for their rights as fathers and "let" their wives or ex's tell them how things will be, then boys are at a HUGE loss. It's sad for the dads, too!
I do believe boys get a pass in terms of education in many ways but I think you are misdirecting your displeasure. I don't think we value boys more than girls but we value certain attributes of girls and boys differently. I am guessing you are a woman and don't know what it is like to be a little boy. When you see a little boy playing video games, playing sports or watching a lot of TV, these activities seem devoid of value to you but I can assure you that whether they know why or not, little boys gain a great deal of social value from these activities. Little boys are ruthlessly teased when they don't demonstrate skill in sports and video games and are respected when they do. Boys are expected to be charismatic and capture the attention of their peers with good story-telling. In today's society, part of being a good story-teller, especially when you are young and lack experience is to relay stories you have seen on TV. Girls simply aren't expected to play in these spheres. Some girls are good at it but it isn't expected of them. These social goals of young males aren't pointless though. They are practice for the future. Male or female, I have noticed, in my limited work experience that social status, does impact future promotion and success in one's career. Just doing a good job, doesn't cut it.
Cont'd...
I wouldn't say that there is a glass ceiling but women do have to work harder to push through to a certain point. The reason that often happens though, is that they don't understand that they need to play the game more. The women that have been successful in my peer groups are better at playing the game (same goes for men). So, we need to teach boys to focus less on their social status and girls to focus more on it if we want girls to win under the rules to which we are all subject and boys to respect learning more.
I hope that makes sense and I wish you could measure your anger. Bias and fury won't help. Evaluating the differences between men and woman and the social structures they are subject to will.
On The Cusp. My remark was *from the hip* and not thought out. I can see how you might have taken offense and I apologize. I attempted to do a better job of conveying my meaning above. You seem to have a lot of anger towards boys. I hope you will direct that anger at grown men (like me) and not at helpless little kids.
I don't have "anger toward boys." I feel sorry for them. It's not their fault that the world is flat now, and that they no longer have the free passes that American boys have traditionally had. They are the ones who are going to have to GAIN the conciousness for themselves and their children (that was not given to them by the current generations) that they are not superior to blacks, girls, or anyone else on the planet because the are American boys. They'll have to get hip to that fact and ride hard to catch up to the rest of the world, and it won't be easy. As adults, we aren't making it any easier for them by letting them idle away with video games (where they will experience the only power they will ever know unless they get up off the couch and get to work.)
I didn't take offense...
BTW, why can't we reply to any of "research's" comments..
Surprised? For the last eight years, boys have been taught by the white house that toughness trumps intellect. So they bought pickups and took construction jobs while we shipped engineering jobs overseas. Lawyers and accountants, to keep up with manliness went out and bought 'luxury pickups' too.
in the meantime, the schools have turned their minds into foie gras by stuffing prozac and ritalin down their throats to try to turn them into girls.
We saw this happening where we used to live, and moved to a school district with a 50 / 50 ratio of male to female teachers, and a 4-year college placement rate of 96%. What a difference, especially in the boy culture.
It doesn't stop there, either. We then suffered through the horrors of what passes for financial aid to make sure our kids got into good schools, not a athletics-dominated megastate university, or a middlin' college. Just about killed us financially but our son and both our daughters, all recently graduated, have thrived.
I totally agree with the author. Hardly from getting over, I think the boy crisis is just beginning. This is really not a man or woman issue, but a common issue for all. I am the parent of a boy and a girl and while I love them both equally and wish only the very best for them, I can see the struggles my boy is going through academically, and I actually worry more for him. I wonder how many members of the AAUW are mothers of boys, for if one is a parent it is so much easier to notice what is happening, rather than take the narrow feminist view.
During the bulk of human history in which boys outperformed girls in educational settings (if the girls were allowed in them at all), strict rules of behavior were followed for both genders. There was no boisterous running around in the classroom. It was, "sit in your seats, open your books, and don't speak without being called on." The difference then was that girls were discouraged by society from emphasizing education beyond a certain point, and instead were encouraged to focus on relationships in order to assume their "proper" roles as wives and mothers.
Now, since that form of sexism has broken down, and girls are succeeding in educational settings, the norms of masculinity have adjusted by assuming that anything that girls are good at boys need not be. Boys are thereby encouraged to emphasize physical pursuits in which most women cannot compete on equal basis. Boys are to buid their bodies, not their intellects.
Well, there is nothing either masculine or feminine about intellectual pursuits. They are human pursuits, and the world needs the intellectual abilities of both males and females to solve the many critical problems that exist.
The problem is with our altered definition of masculinity, which now largely excludes the intellectual as a proper focus for males. This argument that males are "naturally" phsycial and must be indulged in this at all times is only making matters worse.
Women are clearly superior to men. The reason for this is simple. Men are modified women. Women are not modified men. Doubt it? Then ask yourselves (men) why do you have nipples or what is that seam (scar) running down the middle of your ballsack all about?
I really hope you are joking. Even if men are modified women, who is to say that those modifications are not an improvement.
We all start out the same way. When the second X or the Y chromosome get their chance to work on us when we are in the womb, Male nipples do not progress to the point of funtionality and yes, what would have been our labia fuse and a penis and testicles develop. The stage before all of that happens is neither Male nor Female. It would be inefficient for all fetuses that haven't gotten to the gender determination stage to have a penis and then lose it if they had two XX chromosomes so we all start with nothing and then go from there. Seriously, there are so many things that make women and men different that in no way could follow your flawed reasoning. Do men start out with a female brain first? Try putting that argument together.
Obiter dictum.
The nature of the problem is so difficult and complex i dont think any cute answers will do. This crisis of male underacheivement is going to hit us hard in the comming years. We cant keep writing off large blocks of our socicety and assume there are on consequences. Males do have aggressive and violent tendencies. Males have always been a high risk group. The feminist ignore the plight of males at there own peril because they very male shunned may be the male fathering your daughters child. There need to be an all out effort to "GET THE MEN TOGETHER" , to bring these boys out there funk and structure a social enviorment that is safe and non violent. Too much violence and hostility takes place in schools under the noses of teachers putting boys into a tribal war of twisting alliances for there own defense. Boys need saftey from other boys, they need support from there teachers even if they are made of puppy dog tails.
Wow, I can't believe someone would say this issue is over. I teach at an inner city high school and it seems to me that this very serious issue has not even been addressed much less solved. Girls attend college at a rate of 5 to 1 at my school. The AP classes are full of girls and the Special Ed classes that I work in are full of boys. While girls are expected to get an education boys are expected to get a job. As a result many of my boys end up in the penal system.In fact, it seems the school police are on campus mainly to put boys in the system.For example fighting now results in criminal charges rather than detention as it did in my day (Class of '81). Even the possesion of a ciggarette lighter can result in criminal charges (there were smoking areas in my high school).Sh
That is worse then I thought. I got in fights, skipped classes, brought a knife to school, but also excelled at arts and sciences Thank God I wasn't sent to prison!
Hear! Hear!
Oh Lord. What about the menz?
It is not "about the menz" Hattie...i
Thank you for setting me straight!
As an AAUW member I must say that this article and just about all the comments here terminally annoy me.
Go to the AAUW site. Read the studies.
If boys are under constant supervision of women, at home and at school, they will be stammering morons for sure. Boys need grown men and organized activities with other boys.
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