A Demographic In Crisis
Dean
There is a group in America that is:
1) Chronically lagging their peers in reading skills and grades in school, from primary grades all the way through college 2) Far more likely to flunk out or drop out of high school than their peers 3) Far more likely never to go to college at all, and more likely to drop out if they do go to college 4) Far more likely to wind up in jail than their peers 5) Far more likely to wind up substance addicted than their peers 6) Far more likely to be unemployed than their peers 7) Far more likely to commit suicide than their peers 8) Far more likely to suffer work-related fatality than their peers.
What group am I talking about? The poor? Minorities? Immigrants?
Nope. Details here. I suggest reading the whole thing, it challenges a lot of preconceptions.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Forgetting Fathers
- More on Boys and Education
- Boys and Education: Crisis Worsening
- A Demographic In Crisis
Isn't that the point of the whole modern feminist movement? At least, that's what I thought. It's no longer vogue to be a guy in America.
On a positive note, this should turn out to be a fairly interesting social experiment. Civilization is built upon masculinity. Let's throw out millenia of history and give the ladies a whirl in the driver's seat! What's the worst that could happen? I mean, didn't men invent war, hunger, poverty, racism, sexism... ?
Kevin, I trust your tongue was firmly implanted in your cheek when you wrote that.
War: invented by evolution. All organisms compete, and most compete even against their own kind.
Hunger: invented by entropy. You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't stop playing. The best you can do is take advantage of the rules here and there.
Poverty: entropy wins there, too.
Racism: invented by evolution. (Too busy to explain at length. Short summary: discerning differences in your surroundings is a vital pro-survival ability; same with defending against the different and protecting your own; iterate enough times, and you get to racism. It's a sign of positive moral growth that we can even contemplate stepping outside those bounds.)
Sexism: this might be one you can blame on men; but since the feminist movement is awash with sexist females, I doubt a female-dominated system would be any better.
I'm not sure this is entirely true; I believe that for much of history and many societies women have been far more powerful than we give them credit for.
I'd be more inclined to blame the downplaying of competition (the author mentions this briefly), the lack of interest in the concept of excellence while so much attention is given to bringing everyone up to the same mediocre standard, possibly the insertion of reading-and-writing tasks into all arenas of schooling (great thread on this recently on misc.kids), and maybe just a little bit the sad truth that any field that females can excel in, males tend to regard as less prestigious. When girls didn't shine in academia, it was a worthy field of combat for boys, but now... Probably other factors as well, and I'd tend to think that they have more to do with how much boys see education as a masculine pursuit, less to do with how hard it is for them. In other words, I see this as less a cause of the diminishment of male identity and more an effect.
Maybe single-sex education really is the answer, although on a personal level the idea makes my skin crawl. (Girls' school? Oh thank heavens I'm done.)
Regarding Civilization is built upon masculinity.
Well, yes and no. Lee Harris has pointd out that historically the greatest danger to any civilization is young men with nothing to productively harness their inherent military energies, which otherwise naturally lead them to use violence to seize power; civilizations from Rome to Sparta to America that have persisted have found a way to do this. In Sparta, there was a pederastic society built on inculcating a young man's loyalty to his cadre; in Rome, it was loyalty to the state and the office; today in America, loyalty to an idea (our Constitution).
Unfortunately, that model may change as students advance into the higher grades. and it's not true in every school, or every classroom.
And the author is precious short on solutions. So the "industrial" classroom needs to get the boot. Then what? Are you prepared to spend the money to put students in smaller, more interactive classes?
High quality education is a lot like most things in America. We want something for nothing. (and before anyone jumps on me, I'm not saying this to defend the edutocracy, just making an observation).
Civilization was a joint project. And I'll stop here before I get really politically incorrect.
This may be part of it, although there's another way of looking at it. Young boys instinctively seek to distinguish themselves competitively, and an instinctive part of this seems to be an urge to impress girls. Defeating the girl blows the whole thing.
I would tend to agree that some boys would do better in all-boys' schools. That thought really offends some people though.
I would tend to agree that some boys would do better in all-boys' schools. That thought really offends some people though.
Well, it doesn't offend me. It's just that I'm not a very girl-like girl and most of my friends at every age of my life were male, so I get the heebie-jeebies at the whole idea of splitting up the boys and girls because I would have been WITH THE GIRLS! That's a personal problem though, not a value judgement.
And we wonder why boys aren't much interested in more institutional learning once they finish with 12 years of school.
I have to think that simply relaxing a bit - taking a huge chill pill and letting boys be boys for a while each day would solve a world of problems pretty quickly.
When I was growing up, there was a pretty simple dynamic: the boys compete against boys -- the winners get the best girls.
The feminist movement altered this equilibrium -- some for the better, some for the worse. Myself, I was fine with the old order, but adapted well to the new order.
But, whenever, there are abrupt societal changes, there's always large segments of collateral damage, ie, those folks who don't get the memo.
I'm fortunate, I guess. I gotta nice wife, who's been a great Mommy, and who earns a nice income, so I'm a little detached from current, societal Zeitgeist.
H Barnes
Indeed, much to my joy, it turns out that like his father he is an advanced reader. His teacher tells us he is far and away the most advanced reader she has ever encountered at this grade level. I was the same way as a kid. Unlike him, my grades didn't reflect it.
Last night to my joy I started reading Charlotte's Web with him. I'll read a chapter aloud, and he'll read a chapter aloud. That's a great book but it's filled with advanced words like "salutations" and "trough" and "felicitous" and he could even read most of those, and the few he couldn't, he only had to be told once how to pronounce them and then got them perfectly. He only just turned 8. I'm so proud.
Reading books early is a damn good sign, Poppa! You should be proud!
Also, ADD is mostly bullsh$t, so good for you for bein' skeptical.
As for my kids, Well, I'll probably send 'em to military school:)
Barnes, Hank