I always thought it was ridiculous that boys were having a 'crisis' because some educational attention was finally being directed to girls. Thanks AAUW.

All my experiences as a teacher disagree with the findings of this report. I taught English and remedial reading in struggling schools and saw again and again that boys were overrepresented in the lower track and special education. When I was a high school student at a large, upper-middle class high school in Texas, the honors track (in humanities, natural sciences, and math) had a clear underrepresentation of boys (like 3 boys in a 27 person English AP course). If we don't buy that gender dictates intelligence or academic interest, these sorts of experiences should be of some concern. For more thoughts: http://www.averagebro.com/2008/05/who-cares-if-tyrone-cant-read-jacob-can.html

*snaps fingers in agreement*
thanks for posting this Jessica. i couldn't agree more.

I know I'm going to attract a lot of shit for this, not the mention that it's sort of out of character, but I have noticed increasingly that discussion and opinion question are used in on tests and quizzes, and every guy I know has a great deal of trouble with these sorts of questions, while my female friends never have any difficulty with them. Opinion and word problems seem to be be challenging to us in a way that don't seem to be to females. I'm not saying the school system should change to accommodate this or anything; I'm pretty sure that it's either an illusionary problem, a result of us males simply not trying, or possibly just us all whining. I'm just stating my experience.

I'm glad this study was published. I read an article in Mensa's monthly mag that spoke of what a raw deal boys are getting in school and the whole thing left me with a foul taste in my mouth.
I've long since believed that gender has little to do with doing well in school and hopefully this study sheds some light on the real issues (socio-economic differences, cultural differences, etc.)

open_sketch -

You do bring up a good point. I don't doubt that taken as groups as a whole, girls and boys excel at different sorts of problems and working situations. It's been said in prior discussions that an emphasis on group work in current curricula has hurt boys, who, as some have argued, are more independent and focused on their own achievements.

Whether or not this is true, I don't know. BUT I do think that group work is part of real life - I do it every day at my job. Discussing a point of view, arguing an opinion, etc. are also skills that are necessary for college and a career. If these aren't boys' strong suits, then perhaps it is good for them to learn these skills, just as it is good for girls to learn more analytical skills.

What is odd, however, is the the women in my classes don't have any problems at all with analytical questions. For the most part, they don't have any problems at all.

It's not just group work, either. It's opinion-based questions, "what do you think about how character x acted" "why do you think person y did whatever" "write a journal from person z's perspective". I pride myself in my ability to memorize and interpret historical and scientific facts, but neither I nor the other guys in the class seem to be able to do these questions well. Our marks on them are uniformly terrible, and as far as I can tell there is no way to study or prepare yourself for them.

Alas open, there is a way to prepare yourself for that sort of question. You have to do a lot of questions of that type. Practice doing that sort of analysis makes doing it much much easier. (It is a much harder sort of studying than you do for memorization and regurgitation questions, but unlike rote learning, working with it in one field is transitive to other fields.

I don't get it. They are a group that "promotes education and equity for women" yet their own research shows no difference between sexes. What is the point of them existing then?

Monte: It showed that the difference wasn't due to sex in this one case. That doesn't mean that there is no need remaining to promote education and equity for women whatsoever.

Girls are doing better in school among every so socio-economic group, at every age. Read USA Today's editorial today. There's something going on, and I know this is a feminist site, but I'm going to stick up for my gender here and say that when women are earning 62% of associate's degrees, 57% of bachelor's and 59% of master's degrees, there's a cultural reason for that, and I think it merits attention. We're raising a generation of male underachievers and it's rather disingenuous to think otherwise.

I take some small offense to the idea that I merely regurgitate what I learn, as I consider myself at least decent at applying my knowledge. That isn't the problem. Opinion and personal feelings of myself or others in the context of history or literature, however, is not something I know how to express well, especially when I don't have feelings towards the subject in terms of agreeing or disagreeing with a character's actions or an Empire's policies.

It's the expectation that I have an opinion on the policies of the Roman Empire beyond how cool I think the legionary uniform was and how fascinated I am with the politics, social structure and history that messes me and my male comrades up. When I'm asked a question of opinion, discussion or perspective, it's usually all I can do to write "hindsight is 20/20, they did what they thought was right" and leave it at that. It frustrates me greatly that questions like that are on tests and exams while fact questions, or "what do you think caused x to happen" questions are becoming a lot less frequent.

My own incompetence aside, can anyone tell me why the girls in my class don't have the same problem with opinion and perspective-style questions?

Really, the American Association of University Women thinks boys don't need help in school, color me shocked. Wouldn't it sort of put them out of a job if they did? Or at least make them like a scholarship for rich white people?

I'd say 60%-75% of the top 10% of my high school class was girls. I don't pretend to know what that was, but it was. I certainly don't think it's a "crisis" but something does seem a little fishy.

In response to other posts:
1. Although this study did not show differences between the sexes, their findings are nevertheless relevent to women because women are more likely to be poor and women of color especially so. Oppressions are often interlinked.
2. It's good that women are earning a lot of degrees, but one must consider the type. Some degrees mean more prestige and income than others. (Trust me, I have a degree in English!)
3. If women are earning more degrees but less money, it may mean that they have assessed the job market and realized that they need more education than a man does to make an equivalent income.
4. This information is valueable to AAUW so that they can direct their energy and money to other sources of women's low status in our culture.

Yeah, I'm pretty horrified by how disingenuous this is too.

It's an entirely fair point that the gap between white and black, and rich and poor, is bigger than the gap between boys and girls. But that used to be true when boys were performing better in education than girls; and they weren't putting out reports then saying the 'girl crisis' in education was a myth.

Those of you who disagree with the study's findings should read the executive summary.

The study does NOT say that there is no "achievement gap". What it DOES say is that the success of girls does not come AT THE EXPENSE OF success for boys.

An excerpt: "Women are attending and graduating from high school and college at
a higher rate than are their male peers, but these gains have not come
at men’s expense. Indeed, the proportion of young men graduating
from high school and earning college degrees today is at an all-time
high. Women have made more rapid gains in earning college degrees,
especially among older students, where women outnumber men by a
ratio of almost 2-to-1. The gender gap in college attendance is almost
absent among those entering college directly after graduating from
high school, however, and both women and men are more likely to
graduate from college today than ever before."

They're saying that, both females AND males have improved in both high school and college graduation and attendence is at an all-time high for both genders, although females have improved more so than males. In other words, when females started doing better, it did not make males do worse. In essence, female achievement got a larger slice of the pie, but that didn't reduce the slice for male achievement. The pie got bigger.

Leah, I don't think people are worried that women were getting ahead at the expense of men. I think the "boy crisis" thing is just a lot of whiny men scared now that women are coming to replace them. Even if there is some bias that makes it easier for women, which I doubt, it seems to me that just means that men need to try harder; that I need to try harder, to learn the right way to do things.

But that used to be true when boys were performing better in education than girls; and they weren't putting out reports then saying the 'girl crisis' in education was a myth.

Having been a teacher once, my tendency is to go back to the parents to explain why girls may be doing better in schools than boys. It may be that it's not the schools that have changed so much, but that parents push their daughters in academics more than their sons, since it is still harder out there for women in the job world.

I really think that parents an make a world of difference in how a student performs, and it would not surprise me that the difference was there.

Boys are failing out of college more and otherwise failing to perform as well as the average female student, but it isn't because of the school or education system. They are screwups before day 1 of class.

My med school admitted its first majority-female class in its history last August. Part of this has to do with the gains among women, but also part of it has to do with increasing failure among boys in undergrad -- again, it isn't because of the educational system. Something else is up.

I do think there's a story somewhere about the New Generation of Failure among under-30s that strikes males far more disproportionately than females. Not sure what exactly it is. Maybe it has something to do with teenage males idolizing the myth of the "Pimp" in music videos and shows like Entourage: guys who do nothing but party and live it up and have everything handed to them for free.

Or maybe not. Dunno.

Open...I get the sense that that's PRECISELY what some people are worried about...that by helping girls you're hurting boys. It's often used as a justification for ending Title IX. Heck, in the thread Jessica linked to about the "feminized" education section a few commenters said precisely that...that if you help out one sex you'll be disadvantaging the other.

Actually, I think this kind of thinking is at the root of anti-feminism and the feminist backlash (and, quite frankly, ALL anti-affirmative action arguments). That if women are given equal status in society, that will mean that whatever gains women get will be at the expense of men. That there is only so much "status" in society and that SOMEone has to have more of it. That raising one person or group's status means pushing down that of others. I

It's not an entirely invalid claim, because in order to achieve equality priviledge must be erased. In essence, males or whites or christians what have you must give up something...that something is priviledge. That something is sexism. That something is racism. However that DOES NOT mean that the one giving up priviledge is now the oppressed. It's just the tendency of the dominant caste to say "Wah! Helping the oppressed takes away from ME! That's not fair! Why don't I get helped like that?" Well, because you don't need the help, bucko. You already have it you just don't know it/willfully ignore it.

Yeesh sorry that got a bit ranty.

Oh and that "you" at the end was general - not directed at anyone in particular.

I don't think that the media has affected men that much. As was stated above, more men that ever get into post-secondary education and getting degrees. Really, the media has always been there to affect people.

Besides, even if it was true, men being lazy just means more positions for women. That such men do badly in school is not a problem; it's that such men are allowed to think they can get away with that sort of behavior that is.

"All my experiences as a teacher disagree with the findings of this report. I taught English and remedial reading in struggling schools and saw again and again that boys were overrepresented in the lower track and special education."

Good point. I've also seen interpretations of this trend which say it indicates girls are being underserved. The idea is that if more boys than girls have reading difficulties and more girls than boys have math difficulties, then having more special ed for reading than for math helps more of the struggling boys than of the struggling girls. Of course, I don't know whether or not this was the case at your school (who took the remedial math classes at your schools? did these schools even hire any remedial math teachers?).

"They're saying that, both females AND males have improved in both high school and college graduation and attendence is at an all-time high for both genders, although females have improved more so than males. In other words, when females started doing better, it did not make males do worse. In essence, female achievement got a larger slice of the pie, but that didn't reduce the slice for male achievement. The pie got bigger."

Exactly! The people who only focus on the percentages miss this (for example, the % of graduate students who are male going down doesn't necessarily mean the total number of graduate students who are male went down).

Sorry, my last comment was directed towards ForbiddenComma. Leah, you're absolutely right, and I'm sorry I made such an uninformed and inane argument.

sepra, I think you're on to something there, about the parents. It matches the majority of my personal experience, although of course I can think of exceptions. I'd love to see a study on that.

No need to aplogize, discourse is good :D

I don't really see why this report should change educational policy. The AAUW isn't an unbiased source on the subject; they have more than a dog in the fight, so to speak. I don't know if there is actually an unbiased source on the subject, though.

I don't really see why this report should change educational policy. The AAUW isn't an unbiased source on the subject; they have more than a dog in the fight, so to speak. I don't know if there is actually an unbiased source on the subject, though.

I don't really see why this report should change educational policy. The AAUW isn't an unbiased source on the subject; they have more than a dog in the fight, so to speak. I don't know if there is actually an unbiased source on the subject, though.

I don't really see why this report should change educational policy. The AAUW isn't an unbiased source on the subject; they have more than a dog in the fight, so to speak. I don't know if there is actually an unbiased source on the subject, though.

"I do think there's a story somewhere about the New Generation of Failure among under-30s that strikes males far more disproportionately than females. Not sure what exactly it is. Maybe it has something to do with teenage males idolizing the myth of the 'Pimp' in music videos and shows like Entourage: guys who do nothing but party and live it up and have everything handed to them for free.

"Or maybe not. Dunno."

Or maybe some of that and some of other factors.

Now I wonder what the tertiary-ed figures look like if one includes trade schools (the post-high-school ones, not vocational high schools, to even the comparison) as well as colleges and universities.

I heard that in the "blue collar" trades the majority-female ones tend to have lower wages and salaries than the majority-male ones. How many of the young men who choose trade school instead of bachelor's degrees IRL would have, if they were young women instead, chosen bachelor's degrees rather than "pink collar" training or trying to break glass ceilings into plumbing, carpentry, etc.?

'bout freakin time! Jeesh, I've had to have so many debates with people either online, or in-person where some mother of a boy brings up this stupid 'boys crisis' nonsense and blames feminism for it. I mean, how stupid can you be?

I am not entirely surprised that the AAUW has come to this conclusion. I'm about as surprised as I would be if a hypothetical group for advancement of boys came to the opposite conclusion--which is to say, what else would a group like this release?

open_sketch,
boys are less likely to do their homework and come prepared to class, maybe thats why you found the word parts of the test to be more difficult? It would make sense that if youre not invested on the same level in education as the girls that it would inhibit comprehension on the test. Its the same for anyone who invests less in school than the status quo - theyre always going to be behind the other students.

Anyways who cares if their was a boys crisis? Less dudes on campus means less misogyny, less rape, sexual assault, harassment, ect....

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that males tend to occupy the extremes on the IQ spectrum. The vast majority of "super geniuses" are male, and the vast majority of "super dummies" are male too.

That phenomenon alone accounts for at least some of the observations of males dominating the "special ed" classes.

Leah, I agree with what you said, but the title of this thread is horribly miscast. If the AAUW is claiming that female gains are not hurting males, then the title/original post should reflect that, instead of saying "there is no boy crisis." Because clearly those are two separate observations: I believe there is a "boy" crisis and I also believe that females rising thru the ranks has nothing to do with it.

Sounds to me like either the AAUW didnt write their summaries coherently and mischaracterized their own assessments, and/or the author of the original article misconstrued what the AAUW report actually said.

What I've noticed while subbing is that in the lower grades (k-6ish) race and income level play a role in how well the student is doing. The schools I sub in put a lot of emphasis on having parents/guardians help the kids with their homework, i.e. reviewing spelling words, reading together, family/group projects like family trees or creative projects like building a castle out of household objects and writing a story about it.

If the kid is from a lower income family, there might not be anyone home to help them out and if they come from a home where the dominant language is anything other than English, they aren't going to get the help they need. The elementary grades are crucial, since it is so structured around base knowledge they will need for just about every other class they take. If they don't have that foundation, later they will sink and fail.

Once puberty hits, though, I've noticed more disparity among the genders than I do among different races and social classes. Just today, the assignment was a straightforward review for the final next week. The vast majority of the girls got right to work and finished. Most of the boys goofed around, acted up and generally wasted the class period. It's a huge generalization, I know, but teenage boys aren't too good at sitting still for long periods and time and probably would benefit from classes that are more open to movement, alternative learning methods and physical tasks. Most of the girls are fine with sitting still because they have figured out they can sit and talk and still do their work. There are exceptions to both, of course.

Freely admitted, I'm cautiously in favor of gender separation in the higher grades, simply because I think it would benefit both sides for various reasons.

I might give a shit about the "boy crisis" if it were not blamed on feminism all the time.
"Ooooh, female empowerment has made the boys look bad! There was no boy crisis when boys didn't have to compete with girls! Save The Males!"
If anything, dismantling patriarchy, and the ways in which children are stereotyped and socialized according to gender, would BENEFIT boys academically.

It's not a zero-sum game.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that males tend to occupy the extremes on the IQ spectrum. The vast majority of "super geniuses" are male, and the vast majority of "super dummies" are male too.

The problem, of course, is that the standard measures of "intelligence" don't actually tell us all that much beyond, in some cases, the presence of a clinically significant cognitive impairment.

"The vast majority of "super geniuses" are male, and the vast majority of "super dummies" are male too."

Where did that stat come from? I wonder because maybe it has always seemed that the majority of geniuses are male simply because men were allowed into the public spector to do things, while women, up until recently, were kept at home. Also, the smartest person in the world is a woman, and many women with mental problems (ADHD, autism) have better intelligence and functionality than their male peers.

Open...I get the sense that that's PRECISELY what some people are worried about...that by helping girls you're hurting boys.

To me, the question isn't whether boys and men were (in some respects) better off when they had near-exclusive access to education. Obviously, there is an advantage to having unchallenged access to 100% of a limited resource.

Before women's suffrage, men were 100% of the electorate. Afterwards, men were only roughly 50% of the electorate, which constituted a significant dilution of the value of a vote.

Similarly, before girls and women were allowed access to secondary and higher education, boys and men had access to about 100% of the limited seats in schools and universities. Giving girls and women access introduced new competition, and thus reduced the likelihood of an individual boy or man being admitted to a particular institution.

The exclusion of women from wide areas of civil, political, and economic life constituted a sort of subsidy for the male population. Women's progress towards equality has resulted in a significant reduction in that "subsidy".

The question to me isn't whether boys and men were better off in some respects prior to the gains of the women's movement. Obviously, in some respects they were.

The question is whether it is somehow unjust that the value of male privilege has gone down as a result of women's progress towards equality. To me, it is obvious that it can't be unjust.

If I have something that is yours, and I'm forced to turn it over to you, I objectively have less; however, since what I lost wasn't rightly mine to begin with, it isn't unjust that I lose it.

I don't think that boys are doing worse, I just think that girls are doing better.

Boys also may feel like they have more options outside of university in vocational institutions. Instead of going to college they could get certified as a concrete mason or welder. These fields are overwhelming dominated by men.

Women who go the vocational route are more likely to end up as hairdressers.

Of course men can be beauticians and women can be welders, but the actual gender divide in these professions is still stark. And so is the pay difference.

"Instead of going to college they could get certified as a concrete mason or welder. These fields are overwhelming dominated by men."

"Of course men can be beauticians and women can be welders, but the actual gender divide in these professions is still stark."

Too bad, really, as since women have superior (fine) motor skills, they ought to be able to provide some pretty sweet and optimal welds.

"I always thought it was ridiculous that boys were having a 'crisis' because some educational attention was finally being directed to girls. Thanks AAUW."

Yeah, it's funny how they keep bleating about this "crisis", especially in the light of the education APOCALYPSE that lasted for eons for girls, and that still hasn't been fully adressed around the world, including Western society.

IQ tests like the Stanford BiNET are specifically designed to minimize gender differences by weighting fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial and working memory of verbal and non-verbal sections differently so that the average child comes out to 100.

It seems a bit odd that tests in schools don't perform the same treatment. It wouldn't make sense with pure knowledge recall tests, but anywhere where you're asked to apply knowledge could probably benefit.

Then again, you'd be artificially adjusting the passing grade so that an equal number of men and women pass (or fail). This seems wrong to me for some reason not to mention incredibly difficult to do practically.

@ Elise - yes, EXACTLY.

"It's a huge generalization, I know, but teenage boys aren't too good at sitting still for long periods and time and probably would benefit from classes that are more open to movement, alternative learning methods and physical tasks."

I forget which article this was in, but one suggestion I've seen was "save the boys, bring back recess!" The idea was that cutting recess (even when it's cut for gender-neutral reasons) ends up making school harder for kids who need to blow off some steam during the day (even if more of them are boys than are girls).

I'm going to agree with medical student. I doubt it going on out a limb here to say that blaming feminim for the "boys crisis" is stupid but I do see there being a serious issue. Yes men have easier access to trades but when I look at the numbers for high school, college, and post-grsduate I do wonder what the hell is going on. Even if you control for income and ethnicity you still come out with girls getting a disproportionate number of degrees or grsduating. What is causing this? I see a lot of articles trying to pin a lot of it on one thing, culture of laziness/apathy for example, but nothing that comes close to explaining the whole issue. Feminism isnt causing this but I dont know what is. If the numbers were reversed and women were getting 40% or less of degrees and finishing high school in much lower numbers would we not be reading about that at least once a week on feministing? To say there is no boy crisis, even if you dislike the term as I do, seems to be a disservice, again something is going on but no one has yet been able to put a finger on it. Would be interesting to see a comprehensive report on things mentioned in this thread such as if men are getting fewer degrees, perhaps the degrees really are more valuable or prestigious as posted in this thread. I do wonder though, most of my friends with degrees in the soft sciences have jobs that are pretty much non-offshoreable, its my friends with degrees in accounting, architecture, and other similar fields that are really feeling the pinch with downsizing and offshoring, perhaps the male dominated field of computer programming wont be all that lucrative as the competition continues to pour in from around the world. I see less int'l competition in fields like HR which is female dominated though thats just one mans view on it.
As far as boys being most of the special ed kids as well as the super geniuses, well damn, have we found a good explanation for males getting only say 45% of degrees forever due to so many of them being dumb by nature of being male?

Alexandr, yes it was an apocalypse and a travesty how women in education were treated here in the states but does that make what we're seeing happening now 'ok'? Again I just read the numbers and the reports and I have to wonder what the hell is going on and what is causing it.

Even when they're slacking off and fucking up, boys are at an advantage academically and professionally.

Girls now out-perform boys in K-12, and as a reward they are held to higher admission standards at the college level.
They have such superior resumes that colleges/universities have begun to lower the admission standards for boys in order to even out the sex ratio. So even when girls do superbly in school, they're STILL at a disadvantage when it comes to college admissions. We can't fucking win.

Then AFTER college, the underachiever boys earn more money that their female counterparts.

I'm sorry but that is all REALLY frustrating.

"...the smartest person in the world is female..."

Uh. Which kind of smart? C'mon now, that's a pretty baseless claim. I would think most people would subscribe to the theory that comparing different types of intelligence is like comparing apples and oranges.

Me, personally, my ideal of a super-genius would have been the late Richard Feynman... but that's only MY ideal.

SarahMC, it looks good for colleges when they can claim an equal balance of the sexes. College in the united states is an industry after all, presentation is everything. It IS fucked up though, and I'm willing to bet that if they did things fairly, they wouldn't have any room left for men; even as somebody who just got accepted into a university, I can't disagree with that, and if I could switch my place for a women with better marks who didn't get in, well, I always wanted to be an artist.

Well I understand that about colleges, open_sketch. But it sucks that girls are either:
a) not allowed equal educational opportunities
or,
b) allowed equal opportunities but artificially held back because they've surpassed the boys so much.

To those who asked about it being more difficult for boys than for girls to do opinion/word test questions: part of the difference may be socially learned. Girls & women are taught to be extremely aware of the moods and feelings of others, and in some cases this is a life-or-death situation (realizing that a baby is sick, keeping oneself safe in a violent relationship, etc.). Women's interactions and friendships often reinforce the idea that this kind of information about others is extremely important. So it's as if they're (we're) constantly studying up on how to gauge the opinions of others- test questions about the subject aren't "naturally" easier, we've just had a lot of practice. Boys and men are taught to focus on themselves more, or just aren't taught to pay attention to others. It's one of the privileges of being in a dominant class in society. I'd be willing to bet that other kinds of minorities (racial etc) are better than White men at this kind of thing as well. This is at least one possible explanation.

i find it odd that such a claim would come from a woman-based organization; instead of an independent research group.

/\

as if women are so inclined to belittle discrimination in order to say "look over here, WE are the victims!"

Also, the smartest person in the world is a woman, and many women with mental problems (ADHD, autism) have better intelligence and functionality than their male peers.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring people with learning disabilities into your argument.

Autism is quite awful and trumpeting that there are more boys with severe disabling autism as some sort of proof of female superiority is abhorrent.

ADHD is no picnic either and while most people outgrow it, some of us still have to deal with it on a daily basis.

Thanks.

My problem with the "boy crisis" is that most of the complaints are about things that seem to be realistic expectations for the real world. Sometimes, people have jobs where they need to listen to their boss, even if they don't love their boss. Sometimes, people have jobs where they have to work in groups, even if they prefer to work independently. Sometimes, people have jobs they need to understand a client's emotions, or relationships where they need to understand a SO's emotions. The fact that this is being taught in school *is a good thing.* If it's challenging, that's good. That means that they're learning something, on both an intellectual and personal level, which is the entire goal of an education. So I can't really be concerned that boys are being challenged in these ways, because these "discriminatory" areas seem far more pertinent to everyone's personal and professional life than, say, calculus.

"i find it odd that such a claim would come from a woman-based organization; instead of an independent research group."

Uh... surely they can do whatever studies they want - it's their money. If their conclusions are flawed, we should be able to say so on the basis of an analysis of their claims, not just gesticulating wildly and proclaiming "bias!"

Having said that ::

"Anyways who cares if their was a boys crisis? Less dudes on campus means less misogyny, less rape, sexual assault, harassment, ect...."

Personally I'd prepare not to have the degree to which I deserve an education judged based on the fact that I have the same private parts as a group of violent criminals.

"Alexandr, yes it was an apocalypse and a travesty how women in education were treated here in the states but does that make what we're seeing happening now 'ok'? Again I just read the numbers and the reports and I have to wonder what the hell is going on and what is causing it."

Of course not. I wonder, too. Just reacting to the defective, ignorant attention an issue like this tends to get.

"i find it odd that such a claim would come from a woman-based organization; instead of an independent research group."

You know, at first, when I skimmed the page, I thought that this comment below...

"...as if women are so inclined to belittle discrimination in order to say "look over here, WE are the victims!"

...was an on-target, sarcastic snipe and putdown of your first comment preceding it.

Nice one.

First:

I might give a shit about the "boy crisis" if it were not blamed on feminism all the time.

This is a whole group of kids and adolescents who, on average, are not succeeding in the institutions we associate with better life chances. As someone interested in equality, that's a bit problematic. It bothers me if my society's institutions appear to be serving any group of people more poorly than another.

Second:

The executive summary states that girls have simply made gains at a significantly faster pace than boys. When you look at some studies of the race gap, you could say that same thing about white and asian students as compared to black students. Imagine responding to such information with comments like:

"it seems to me that just means that [black kids] need to try harder"

"They are screwups before day 1 of class."

"Less [blacks] on campus means less [theft and violence]."

I apologize in advance if the comparison offends anyone, it's just that as I read the thread, I was reminded of all the excuses people give when shown evidence that students of color are not thriving in schools.

I don't think that feminism is to blame. I don't think feminism's job is done - that's why I read this site.

I think that an attitude that ascribes blame to students rather than the institutions and the adults that run them is unproductive and unfair. Someone responded to my earlier post regarding the disproportionate numbers of boys in remedial reading and asked about there being a disproportionate number of girls in remedial math. Nope - can't say that's the case. If I recall, just about every person in our remedial math course was male.

"The gender gap in college attendance is almost
absent among those entering college directly after graduating from
high school, however, and both women and men are more likely to
graduate from college today than ever before."

Mina nailed it. Without college degrees, it is far easier for men to make far better money than women, b/c heavy labor/male-dominated blue collar jobs pay more. Every college prof I've had has explained the fact of more women going to college than men this way.

Last time I checked though, men were still predominant graduates in most graduate schools, especially the high-paying and traditionally male-dominated ones.

Not to mention, most college administrators and college profs are male -it's hardly like women have control of the upper-educational system, whatever is going on.

I too have heard the arguments about special ed. I've heard that supposedly, students who garner too much attention from peers and act out in class are more likely to be separated and put in special ed, as opposed to those who are quiet but struggling academically. And of course, boys are louder/more active/attract more attention.

Me? I went to a charter high school where both boys and girls were very smart, and succeeded at nearly everything. I am very glad for that experience, and for the (I think, healthier) perspective it gave me on the emotional and intellectual capabilities of both males and females...

It does cause me pause, as a scientist, that there does seem to be a conflict of interest between the group funding the study and the study purpose/conclusions.

HOWEVER, in the course of my PhD training, I have been taught that a conflict of interest does not necessarily mean that the conclusions are biased. It does mean, however, that the reader/evaluator be more careful in dissecting the study methods and whether the data match the conclusions.

In other words, one cannot throw a study's conclusions out of hand just because of a potential or actual conflict of interest. Before doing so, the methods and data must be analyzed. If independent analysis can find no systematic bias in the study design or interpretation, then the conclusion can be trusted.

A long-winded way of saying, before you reject the conclusions, take a look at the methods *with an open mind*. This is good advice for EVERY study you read, no matter WHO publishes it.

Also, I /am/ a big believer in the influence of culture. Growing up I happened to attend a couple of schools where girls did seemed to do equally well to better academically. However, I have heard a friend describe a school she went to (also in the US) where boys seemed to dominate everything, including class conversation and honors. If you can have such disparate cultures in two small school cultures in the U.S., then wouldn't you expect that contemporary U.S. culture also influences how students perform? (Someone mentioned "thug" culture. Especially for lower-income students, where that image has power (as opposed to white suburban males who I think more often view it as simply "play") I'm sure that has an influence. Has anyone read "In Search of Respect"? It's about the male-dominated street culture in New York City -fascinating book.

"A long-winded way of saying, before you reject the conclusions, take a look at the methods *with an open mind*. This is good advice for EVERY study you read, no matter WHO publishes it."

thanks for that leah. I should have said that too.

This report is exclusive and disregarding. If there's a crisis, then it's with Black, Latino, and/or poor kids. Ummm...that is a sizable population. I guess there's only a crisis when it comes to middle class White boys *Rolls eyes*

i want to second what Sociologicalmom said re: girls doing better on problems involving analyzing feelings of characters, and add on that due to socialization in american culture its just plain harder for alot of boys to describe feelings PERIOD. they arent taught the language, they are taught a very limited selection of emotions they can express, they arent supposed to express sadness, pain, weakness, gleeful joy, dissapointment, etc. those things are all alien to the way we define masculinity. how do you recognize something you are taught doesnt or cannot exist inside of you?

as to girls getting better grades and achieving honors more, its again socialization. smart = geek/nerd/loser/teachers pet. boys in our culture are taught to be cool. why be smart if its uncool? sure, girls want to be cool too, but cool for girls is different and you can get straight A's on everything so long as you still try to look sexy and do your best to keep quiet and let the boys be loud and goof off.

while overall our education system needs an overhaul, i dont think it needs to be based around gender differences.

at the same time, if we want boys to achieve we need to change the way we define masculinity so they can express full ranges of emotions and so smart can be cool too.

I have a hard time understanding how this is a "crisis" when men still are overwhelmingly advantaged in our society. If men have more opportunities, get better jobs, and make more money, then how is a slight disparity in boys' performance in education a cause for deep concern and (elsewhere, not here) anger?

If you translate this supposed crisis to racial instead of sexist terms, it looks as suspect as it should: if whites were doing poorly in school relative to racial minorities but were still having more opportunities, getting better jobs, and being paid more, claims of a crisis in educating white people would be seen as the absurd special pleading that it is. So why are so many taking the "boy crisis" so seriously? (And it should be well understood that this typical segues into a more general argument about contemporary men and a more recognizeable "mens' rights" argument.)

I'll tell you why it's taken so seriously: men are still very privileged and they have the influence to make their concerns more important than they otherwise would be.

The only reason that this doesn't fly so much with reactionary concerns about white people is because racism is taken a great deal more seriously than sexism is in our society.

All that said, I'll probably take the unexpected position that what's happening with boys, if it's happening, has a lot to do with feminism. "Blame" isn't the right word, of course. But the fact is that with regard to anti-sexism, the legalistic and institutional successes of the fight have far outpaced the cultural successes. In particular, feminism has not succeeded in convincing men on a cultural level that sexism against women has been a significant problem. The result is that as laws and institutions have changed, and as women's roles have changed because they, themselves, have changed them, men have come to feel confused and, sadly, ironically, oppressed. Since they largely don't see the reality of sexism, the changes that they see taking place seem to be primarily aimed at hurting them. And because they don't see any reason to change their gender role, they are resistant to adapting to the way in which women's roles have changed. I think that, collectively, American men are "depressed".

Mind you, it's their own damn fault in many ways. The French Aristocracy was pretty damned depressed after the Revolution, too. The problem is that men are not making peace with the changes that have occurred around them.

And, per a comment I made here a few months ago, I do think that feminism is at fault a little bit for this. (Or did I actually make that comment? Maybe I just considered writing it.) It seems to me that because of an accident of history (a perfectly normal and understandable one), the anti-sexism movement was born and thrived as a feminist movement which, naturally, has focused on advocacy for women and, consequently, means that it's not appropriate for men to be full-partners in that activity. That is to say, the primary force for social change with regard to gender roles and the various issues surrounding sexism has been feminism—and men have not been equal partners in this endeavor. And there has been, sadly, no alternative way for men to be involved in this social change. I can testify as a male feminist for the last 25 years, it's been some difficult terrain to navigate (that's a mixed metaphor, isn't it?).

I do think that men have the primary responsibility to recognize the injustice against women and to involve themselves in the fight against it (and in the process, acclimatize themselves to the changes that result), don't get me wrong. But I think it's an unfortunate accident of history that there's not been any sort of large-scale social movement pushing for anti-sexism and changing gender roles that men could comfortably be a part of. I think that's been a long-standing problem that we're seeing the effects of with the ways in which men are, arguably, just sort of becoming perpetual irresponsible, depressed, underachievers.

Even so, if it's true, it still seems to me like a crisis that will work itself out. And, anyway, I'm still much more concerned with the way in which women lag behind men in almost every other category.

Given the strong correlation of violent crime and education, I think it is everyone's best interest if more boys were properly educated regardless of whether there is a "boy crisis".

Of course it is in everyone's best interest if everyone was better educated considering the correlation between income levels (read: tax revenue) and education.

"Anyways who cares if their was a boys crisis? Less dudes on campus means less misogyny, less rape, sexual assault, harassment, ect...."

W.T.F.

Thanks for stereotyping me because of my genitalia.

As for the "boys crisis", the issue seems to be achievement rates by gender. Yes, more guys are getting advanced degrees than ever before, but the issue isn't sheer volume, because population in general, and college pop. in particular, has been on the rise for a while. It's like saying more people are going to school in China. Sheer population figures from the echo-boom guaranteed this.

The issue is achievement rates, in which women are besting men 60-40 in some areas. If we're to believe that intelligence is equal between the genders then we have to infer that something within institutional education is affecting the performance of boys more than girls. I saw it with my younger brother. Diagnosed with ADHD because he was simply a very active kid. Teachers passed notes to each other about him, leaving a paper trail from year to year.

The end result? He got lucky. We took him off the meds by junior high, and he became himself again. He's very outspoken, to a fault in fact, but he's also very smart, something his elementary school teachers didn't care about. K-6 education seems to be more about order and regimented learning than discovery and creativity, which inherently hinders boys, who mature slower than girls.

" Even if you control for income and ethnicity you still come out with girls getting a disproportionate number of degrees or grsduating. What is causing this? I see a lot of articles trying to pin a lot of it on one thing, culture of laziness/apathy for example, but nothing that comes close to explaining the whole issue"

jamespi,
Its not as bad as if it were happening to women because then it would be due to misogyny. Being that there is no mass misandry in society then boys crap performance IS do to laziness. Its well-known that boys are less likely to do their homework, and come prepared to class. Maybe all you Sherlocks should start there.

urm...crotchfire (ewww),
The worlds highest IQ is held by a woman. My claim is no different than the med student up above claiming that more men are geniuses than women. How do you qualify genius?

I'm for segregated schools as long as they dont incorporate different styles due to ficticious "gender differences." This would have disasterous effects upon girls if we were to enforce old, traditional gender stereotypes, especially since its boys who are fucking up. There problems shouldnt effect the girls. Girls need to move around just as much as boys and if anything it should be especially encouraged in girls. Many parents indoctrinate girls into the traditional passive mold and then "experts" (many with MRA biases)claim its female natural inherent differences to men and try to use that as a base for establishing seperate gender learning styles in schools.

http://www.slate.com/id/2135243/

Funny how a misandrist is saying there's no misandry in contemporary schooling.

Those lazy boys, it's all laziness, sheer laziness.

/sarcasm

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring people with learning disabilities into your argument.

Autism is quite awful and trumpeting that there are more boys with severe disabling autism as some sort of proof of female superiority is abhorrent"

Jordan,
No. Since I'm not doing anything wrong, and you misunderstood my post, your claims are baseless. My claim was that while both of the genders have the same mental challenges, it is girls who report higher IQs and functionality, in spite of having the same mental challenges. Its a medical fact thats being studied, and deserves to be relevant in this discussion. Its also defendable as a response to med student about his claims that more men are known as "geniuses," than women. If he can claim that, then I can report my stat too. It is also especially relevant since it acts as a good point that discredits his former claim.

http://www.slate.com/id/2173028/

this is also an interesting article

dave, jordan,
I just looove you "male" feminists!

"Those lazy boys, it's all laziness, sheer laziness"

dave,
So then, if your sure its not laziness from male privilege (of course you wouldnt want to admit that, would you) then what is it? And since when am I a misandrist, and since when is that wrong? Isnt this a bit of a spoiled opinion by the gender that doesnt have to experience the misogyny on a daily basis dont'cha think?

So Dave am i right in inferring taht your a boys crisis believer?

"He's very outspoken, to a fault in fact, but he's also very smart, something his elementary school teachers didn't care about. K-6 education seems to be more about order and regimented LEARNING THAN DISCOVERY AND CREATIVITY, which inherently hinders boys, who mature slower than girls."

I like how you tried to cover for your sexism torwards the end of that post. Since when is maturity opposed to discovery and creativity. I bet if boys were fucking up because school was too much about creativity and discover (which of course would be attributed to girls flighty effect) you would then claim boys need structure and order which favors boys because theyre too active, or because they like rules and hierarchy. Full o' shit.

I often hear comments (from parents, educators and people who work with children) that yes, boys are more active in classrooms, need more time to move around, use their hands, etc. They can't sit still as long; they can't pay attention as long.

And often times, this is seen as some sort of de facto evidence for a difference between the nature of boys and girls. But seeing as we're heavily socialized form birth onward, it would be remiss to disregard the role of society in creating (or at least exacerbating) the disparity between young girls' and boys' abilities to sit still and pay attention in a situation like school.

Girls are taught from a very young age to be quiet, ladylike, not fight, pay attention to others and be obedient. And although boys are also taught these things to varying extents, they are often given much more leeway in what constitutes an acceptable level of say, obedience or quietude. "Boys will be boys" is still largely ingrained in many parents and care-taking adults' minds, and boys learn from a very young age that they can get away with more acting up/acting out. Girls on the other hand, have been socialized against this, so is it really any wonder that they're typically less disruptive in school? That they actually sit still, even if they want to be running around just as much as the boys?

I'm not saying that educators shouldn't accommodate for these types of differences. In fact, I think all educators should be using differentiated instruction techniques, because it would address more than this issue, it would address the fact that every student is an individual with their own learning style (beyond where their "category" falls on a particular statistical analysis scale). However, I do think it's a little silly to say that it's the structure of school per se, that's hurting boys' ability to achieve. It's a combination of factors that includes the way boys are socialized.

I'm not sure that the study really shows that there isn't a 'boy crisis' - imaging if over the next ten years males improve their performance by 20%, and females improve by only 5% - would anyone here not believe that was aresult of a system that favoured males in education? Would anyone here accept "well - girls have improved too, it's not that boys improvement has come at the expense of girls education"?

I know a few people here have pointed out that womens rising educational levels compared to men is not helping women earn more... which given that in NY and some other big cities where a lot of jobs require degree education men earn significantly less than women seem a bit of a big claim to make

(source http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/nyregion/03women.html)

I'm in the UK where a similar phenomenon is happening, with females outperforming males at almost all levels of education and in almost all subjects. While things might be different in the US a number of issues here are:

Media: Every year for well over a decade whenever results come outthe media goes into a frenzy about how well girls are performing, but the thing is - they do this even for subjects where boys are still doing better. You'll have a headline like "Girls Outpace Boys Again" which *sounds* like girls did better, but means that girls improved more. This media reaction though - I find it hard to believe that telling boys through their entire education that they won't perform as well as their female peers does not discourage a fair few.

Encouragement - At my school there were a huge number of programs active aimed at encouraging female students, ad similar programs exist for getting onto degrees and the like "Women into Engineering", "Women into Science", "Women into Medicine" - the last is odd as at the time IIRC more women were doing medicine than men anyway...

Example - For the first 18 years of a child life the vast majority of their teachers will be female, with the probable exception of the gym teacher. The example this sets is "women are good at academia, men are good at physical work".

Pressure - with all this there is a large impression on boys that education is a feminised (not feminist) field, and social pressures tell boys that they are supposed to be masculine. which I suspect leads to many young boys rejecting education as a 'girls' activity.

I know I've said this before more than once in previous related threads, but isn't it interesting that when girls and women outperform boys and men it's a "crisis", and when it's the other way around it's just "nature"?

I think the term 'crisis' is used now because with (slowly) improving society view on equality people are increasingly recognising that nature is not the reason one gender does better than the other.

In times gone by women did not do as well at school, people believed this was because women were naturally not so smart and therefore assigned it to nature.

Now those beliefs are not widely held (unless anyone here is stating that males are naturally not as smart as females) and so when one gender/group proforms worse than others, or improves much more slowly we have to ask why that group is not doing so well? What is there that is either harming the underperforming group or helping the group striding ahead?

Come on, boys look down on "brains" -- the smart boys are often the most teased.

Many fathers want their sons to be jocks -- not students.

Many dads describe their success as due to "common sense". They speak of "manly pursuits" -- few extol the quest for academic excellence.

In our past, many of the sons of immigrants saw the classroom as a way out of poverty. Now, fathers train their boys to be jocks -- that's the ticket for college.

We have always had an anti-intellectual streak. We also do not want our sons to "stray" -- after all, all this philosophy, and stuff, might give those boys "swelled heads", lead them down "dangerous paths".

We appear to be anti-science as a nation. Evolution and other "new" ideas will weaken our "moral fibre".

There's no "crisis" among boys -- we just don't want them to be too smart.

Or, we want them to be smart -- but be quiet about it. Don't make it obvious.

There used to be a saying about 40 years ago, actually there were two sayings:

"Ginger Rodgers did everything Fred Astaire did, backwards and in high heels"

"Women have to be twice as good and work twice as hard to be considered half as good."

Take those two things then look at other cultural groups of high achievers from oppressed groups. Asians and Jews. There is a lot of commonality among those groups but the main one is that being a grind is important, belief that if you out study and out work you will over come the discrimination be that discrimination racist, cultural or misogynistic.

Then look at boy culture. Book worm boys are considered sissies and girlish, definitely uncool. Perhaps it is the misogynistic nature of the patriarchy that is damaging the boys.

Now a funny thing happened on the way to equality. When I was growing up girls were taught to not show they were smarter than boys, girls were taught they should always lose to boys in games even when they were better.

On the road to equality we stopped pretending to know less and we stopped feeling we always had to lose to boys.

Now it is like when affirmative action opened jobs and schools to minorities white men lost what had been their white male affirmative action that closed out any competition and it often turned out the best person for the job was opf color or female.

Perhaps the boy crisis is that culture is teaching them that stupid and inarticulate is cool and being smart is for nerds and losers.

I think the term 'crisis' is used now because with (slowly) improving society view on equality people are increasingly recognising that nature is not the reason one gender does better than the other.

The timing is interesting, though.

Back before some progress had been made towards eliminating the systemic obstacles to the participation of girls and women in education, we were told that it was just women's nature to perform worse academically and that women just didn't feel naturally inclined to pursue intellectually challenging courses of study.

Now that things have improved somewhat, to the extent that female students are outperforming male students even in some traditionally male-dominated areas, it becomes permissible to look at systemic factors as having something to do with performance differentials between male and female students.

The fact is that we still hear (see e.g., the work of Steven Pinker) claims that girls and women are naturally incapable of high performance in certain fields. The "crisis" seems conveniently to have come about when actual performance statistics stopped confirming this view of "nature".

Thing is, the two things are not unconnected - female students started getting more help and encouragement *because* people started to recognise that a persons gender does not render them dumb. The reason we use the term 'crisis' is also the reason a lot of work has gone into opening up educational opportunities for female studets that were previously closed. A large part of the driving force behind girls improvement is also the reason we recognise that 'nature' is not the reason that boys are not performing as well as girls.

(I( should be clear - I don't think that feminism is to blame, indeed, if (depending on your view of what feminism is) feminism succeeds in eliminating gender roles completely, many of these problems will cease to exist - boys won't feel they have to reject education to appear more masculine, they will no longer resist identifying with their female teacher - instead identifying themselves and the teacher as people, we won't be raising boys and girls with different views of education, respect, dilligence, responsibility, etc. Much of the cause of this is society (IMO) and patriarchial systems still in place.

Thing is, the two things are not unconnected - female students started getting more help and encouragement *because* people started to recognise that a persons gender does not render them dumb. The reason we use the term 'crisis' is also the reason a lot of work has gone into opening up educational opportunities for female studets that were previously closed. A large part of the driving force behind girls improvement is also the reason we recognise that 'nature' is not the reason that boys are not performing as well as girls.

(I( should be clear - I don't think that feminism is to blame, indeed, if (depending on your view of what feminism is) feminism succeeds in eliminating gender roles completely, many of these problems will cease to exist - boys won't feel they have to reject education to appear more masculine, they will no longer resist identifying with their female teacher - instead identifying themselves and the teacher as people, we won't be raising boys and girls with different views of education, respect, dilligence, responsibility, etc. Much of the cause of this is society (IMO) and patriarchial systems still in place.

How could the timing have been any different?

The reason (or part of) why girls are improving is because many people now recognise that peoples mental capacity is not limited by their gender - and so a lot of effort has gone into improving educational opportunities for girls and women. That same recognition is why we realise that when boys are performing much worse than girls that there must be a non-nature cause.

The improvement of womens educational opportunities and the recognition that 'nature' is not why boys are underperforming are both tied to the same cause.

(I should be clear - I don't blame feminism for this - when feminisms goals are achieved regarding gender roles(depening on your view of feminism) and we live in a society where boys don't need to reject activities girls are doing in order to be masculine, or won't find it harder to identify with a female teacher as they will view their teacher as a person, rather than a woman or man then most of the causes of boys doign worse will vanish. Really many of the causes are due to patriarchial systems still clinging on about what boys *should* be in order to be *men*.

The reason (or part of) why girls are improving is because many people now recognise that peoples mental capacity is not limited by their gender - and so a lot of effort has gone into improving educational opportunities for girls and women.

Except that a lot of the people who expend the most wind on the "war against boys" or some such rot are the same ones who still think that girls and women are biologically predestined to do worse at male-dominated fields.

So it isn't that people have suddenly all agreed that it isn't biology. It's just that it's not assumed to be biology when the reality is contrary to the stereotypes; when the reality doesn't match the stereotypes, it's a "crisis"

Yeah - there are those people, and really we (the world) could do with a lot fewer of them.

I suppose I'm more speaking from my own views and of people I know - who recognise that a persons brain is not in their penis or vagina and that therefore if one group is performing better than the other then it's due to factors other then their gender, and girls/women are increasingly outperforming boys/men in almost all cademic subjects. While apparently men have still improved, they have improved by much much less than women over the same time - so unless it is nature then there is a cause, and IMO it is one that people who are aware that gender does not make a person smart/dumb should be concerned about.

But agreed - a lot of noise is made by those longing for a return of the glory days of patriarchy, but just ebcause some idiots are diving on this issue does not make it any less of an issue.

p.s. sorry about the double post/triple post... erm...

RE: tinagrrl and dallassuz,

I so completely agree. Boys have been so socialized to be stupid, lazy, and disruptive that now that it's a bit harder to discriminate against girls, boys are getting their asses handed to them. And yes, Gopher II, it's laziness due to male privilege.

Yes, there could be institutional issues causing this, but I would guess most of this problem comes from poor parenting. Allowing your children to become well-developed, emotionally capable, and able to be true to themselves doesn't happen often here.

I have a son and a daughter both in primary school and I think that this whole boy crisis thing is bunk. For several years my kids attended public school in Cambridge, Ma where they shared the classroom with people from every race and practically every culture. My daughter's 4th grade class included kids from nine countries my son's included kids from six. Italy, Israel, China, Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Thailand, Nepal...the list goes on. The school was majority African American and included everything from kids on welfare to the kids of Harvard professors. An amazing mix. Success was not determined by gender or race but by parental expectation... regardless of country. The boys and girls whose parents didn't give a hoot floundered. The kids whose parents were involved thrived. Those families that valued education had children who valued education and those that did not had kids that thought school made you a fool.

This boys movement nonsense has created an atmosphere of lowered expectation for boys and excuses their poor behavior. Walk around the campus of MIT and you'll find a ton of Asians, Indians, Pakistanis, etc who can't believe how lazy and permissive our schools are compared to the ones they attended. They sat in classes and went to extra tutoring and did a ton of homework and if you mention the boy crisis to them they get a good laugh.

If you're saying what I think you are I fully agree - the media constantly tells boys they aren't as good at school, parents buy into it and reduce their expectations and also the idea that 'boys will be boys' and so don't push their sons as much academically as they should. (Amoung other things - like being good as school often being *bad* for boys who get labeled nerds for not being 'manly' enough.) But this is not really the fault of the boys (which some seem to be implying) but the parents and society.

I also agree completely with the comments on people from other cultures, I went to a state school in the UK in a poor area where about 90% of the students were from the Indian subcontinent region. The school was great, with a strong academic record and about 10% of my class went to Oxford/Cambridge, another 20% went to top ten universities in the country - to study Medicine, Law, Engineering, Accountancy,Economics etc. Which is no small part was due to many of the parents/grandparents coming from extreme poverty where there was little educational opportunity, and so understood the value of education and made sure their kids did to. I only wish the rest of the UK held education in the same regard.

Sorry to keep beating my drum on this one, but re-reading the executive summary I realised what was bugging me - it's that is pretty much totally dismisses why males are not only performing less well than females but also improving at a slower rate. It almost seems to be saying 'well... Girls are doing better than boys, and improving faster, but that's to be expected.'

Thinking about it - to paraphrase the logic they use in the summary you get:

"Wage improvemnts are not a zero sum game, in which gain for one group results in a cossosponding loss for the other. If mens' success came at the expense of womens', one would expect to see womens' wages decline as men's wages rise. But this has not been the caase. Geographical patterns further demonstrate the positive connection between mens' and womens' wages. In states where men earn good wages, women also tend to earn good wages, and states with low wages for men tend to also have low wages for women.

This puts to rest fears of a 'wage crisis' demonstrating that mens' gains have not come at womens' expense. Overall wage outcomes for men and women have both generally improved. men do tend to earn more, however women are also gaining ground on most indicators."

Would anyone here accept that logic as dismissing the gender gap in wages? Then why are we accepting the same logic in dismissing that male students are falling further and further behind their female peers? The study even says that girls are performing better than boys - surely we should be interested in why, and how this should be fixed rather than simply saying "It's a myth that there's an issue with education of young males"

My claim was that while both of the genders have the same mental challenges, it is girls who report higher IQs and functionality, in spite of having the same mental challenges. Its a medical fact thats being studied, and deserves to be relevant in this discussion. Its also defendable as a response to med student about his claims that more men are known as "geniuses," than women. If he can claim that, then I can report my stat too. It is also especially relevant since it acts as a good point that discredits his former claim.

Sigh. Fine. Care to provide a reference?

I'm a bit surprised you didn't bring up the fact that learning disorders strike males significantly more than females (about 5:1). This includes disorders such as Autism (4.3:1), Aspergers (8:1), dyslexia (2:1) and ADHD (between 6:1 and 9:1 depending on the study).

None of this changes the fact that we should strive to improve education regardless of gender.

"it seems to me that just means that [black kids] need to try harder"

"They are screwups before day 1 of class."

"Less [blacks] on campus means less [theft and violence]."

I apologize in advance if the comparison offends anyone, it's just that as I read the thread, I was reminded of all the excuses people give when shown evidence that students of color are not thriving in schools.

1. You can not compare a priveleged class to a non-priveleged class like this. We are talking about white, middle class boys who are treated much differently than any other group in this country. It's not reverse racism.

2. One of the best lessons I ever learned teaching is that kids are only in school to make friends and get the best grade possible (for them) with the least amount of work.

Given that white, middle class boys have more privelege and get away with more in the classroom, it would in fact make them lazier because they can do less work to get the grade they want. Except... now they actually have some competition, and their parents aren't pushing them the way parents push girls. So they aren't doing as well as girls. It's not a crisis.

As for recess saving boys, or that they need to discover something, that is the biggest load of crap that ever crapped.

As has been pointed out, there are schools around the world with much tougher schedules and requirements than anywhere in the US and those boys aren't having a crisis. You want recess? Try having kids go to school 6 days a week like they do in so many other countries, or taking twice as many classes, plus tutoring afterwards.

These kids aren't lazy, they are just living up to expectations, and clearly we expect less from that group. We adults need to raise the bar.

@Jordan Mendelson

Autism is not awful. Stop listening to Autism Speaks propaganda and start listening to those of us on the spectrum, m'key?

I am happy to see that some people can identify the (ethnic) cultural and socioeconomic reasons for this disparity, instead of limiting it to gender (in either gender's favor). Though it is probably a component, it is not as simple as male privilege or boys as lazy or fuck ups. Nor is it true that "boys and girls have the same mental challenges. From one article by Sara Mead, which DENIES a boy crisis:

http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=378705

Boys make up two-thirds of students in special education—including 80 percent of those diagnosed with emotional disturbances or autism—and boys are two and a half times as likely as girls to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).11 The number of boys diagnosed with disabilities or ADHD has exploded in the past 30 years, presenting a challenge for schools and causing concern for parents. But the reasons for this growth are complicated, a mix of educational, social, and biological factors. Evidence suggests that school and family factors—such as poor reading instruction, increased awareness of and testing for disabilities, or over-diagnosis—may play a role in the increased rates of boys diagnosed with learning disabilities or emotional disturbance. But boys also have a higher incidence of organic disabilities, such as autism and orthopedic impairments, for which scientists don't currently have a completely satisfactory explanation. Further, while girls are less likely than boys to be diagnosed with most disabilities, the number of girls with disabilities has also grown rapidly in recent decades, meaning that this is not just a boy issue.

[end quote]

Sounds like a variety of serious problems with boys to me, not a myth.

As the OP and later posters point out, the real crisis is in improving education for minorities and low income people. While poverty mainly falls upon women and their children (i.e. single mothers), the gender differences between male and female are mainly among minorities or the low income. For example, for high schools:

"In Boston public schools, for example, for every 100 white males who graduate, 104 white females do; a tiny gap. But for every 100 black males who graduate, 139 black females do; a whopping difference."

womensenews dot org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2671

There are also nationwide differences. Even if one assumes comparable academic ability or family income between men and women, guess what these figures mean for representation on college campuses, graduation, and in later careers, particularly among African-Americans? That's right.

As with income, this academic achievement or student ratio disparity needs to be broken down for analysis. A simple 60:40 student body ratio nationwide, for a range of schools is not the whole story. How are their grades? What are they studying? How many graduate? What are people's reasons for not attending college, or dropping out? What are they doing now instead? And on and on.

singlesexschools dot org is a very interesting read, with points both for and against views expressed here. While it recognizes the benefits for both boys and girls in single sex education, they also recognize the differences between boys and girls in learning. There is also a physical component as when Dr. Leonard Sax, MD, PhD claims he has uncovered research the environmental estrogen bishenol A and other endocrine disruptors "may disrupt or delay the onset of puberty in boys; more importantly, these chemicals may actually effect the developing brain in juvenile males differently than they do in females, specifically with regard to curiosity and motivation. In some studies, juvenile males exposed to these substances lost their motivation and/or their curiosity; no such negative effect was seen in the females."

[Interestingly enough, environmental hormones (as found in dioxins and plastics, for example) was considered quite a concern in Japan during the 90s. Some obvious physical effects were seen in underdeveloped testes in (male only of course) river carp. Japanese media and people wondered about effects on humans, with no followup or clear results. Perhaps researchers cited by Dr. Sax have found something.]

According to Sax, though more recently updated, "I haven't seen any media reports which have even mentioned this research." (also at boysadrift dot com)

Sax is one who does believe something is wrong with boys and young men today. From his site:

"In Boys Adrift, family physician and research psychologist Leonard Sax tackles the problem head on, drawing on the very latest research and his vast experience with boys and their families. He argues that a combination of social and biological factors is creating an environment that is literally toxic to boys. Misguided overemphasis on reading and math as early as kindergarten, too much time spent playing video games, over-reliance on medication for attention deficit disorders (much more common in boys than in girls), and overlooked endocrine disturbances are actually causing damage to boys’ brains"

Sax also reports "young men today (age 30 to 35 years of age) will be the first generation of American men to earn significantly less than their fathers did at the same age. They are also the first generation of American men ever to be less well-educated than their sisters. In this age group, 32% of women have earned a 4-year college degree, compared with only 23% of men." Yes, more men AND women are entering university, but fewer men graduate. "Only 30% of men who enroll at a four-year college or university will earn a degree within four years, compared with 39.7% of women."

It is important to note that these sources, at least, deny any conspiracy against boys. I won't read his book, but apparently he doesn't blame feminists or girls, either.

Re: gender distribution and IQ. One of your own sources points out how there are more males at the high and low ends of the spectrum, for test taking. The same holds true of tests which are intended to measure cognitive ability or "intelligence."* This would mean based on IQ, there are more male geniuses, and more males developmentally disabled, than females.

Tellingly, Binet himself "did not believe that IQ test scales qualified to measure intelligence. He neither invented the term 'intelligence quotient' nor supported its numerical expression." Also, "Binet had designed the Binet-Simon intelligence scale in order to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum. He argued that with proper remedial education programs, most students regardless of background could catch up and perform quite well in school. He did not believe that intelligence was a measurable fixed entity." ("Intelligence Quotient," Wikipedia). Interesting. Binet's test was NOT to measure intelligence, but on the contrary, to identify students who needed help. (Did he consider school marks and teacher evaluations?)

Regarding which individual has the highest IQ, other than it being completely anecdotal, perhaps you should read about different methods used for measuring IQ, and when (i.e., age) and how they should be applied or interpreted. A 1937 edition of a test meant for CHILDREN ONLY taken by vos Savant at the age of ten in 1956 is not appropriate for measuring IQ in an adult today. (According to Wikipedia, another IQ test taken by vos Savant as an adult resulted in "186 IQ in the 99.999997 percentile, with a rarity of 1 in 30 million." It is possible there are 22 people on earth comparable to her, and an unknown number (you do the math) who might score better.) Also according to Wikipedia, "It is possible she was administered the [children's] test twice, as there were two forms of the Stanford-Binet at the time . . . " Interestingly enough, according to her school records this 1957 testing yielded a score of 167+. In the course of a few months, her IQ went down maybe 60 points, on two (or possibly one taken twice) versions of the same damn test? This is reason enough to question the validity of testing, or high end results.

A list for the living might go something like this (from The Massive List of Genius):

Physicist / Engineer Kim Ung-yong has a verified IQ of 210
Bouncer Christopher Michael Langan has a verified IQ of 195
Engineer Philip Emeagwali is alleged to have an IQ of 190
World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov is alleged to have an IQ of 190
Author Marilyn Vos Savant has a verified IQ of 186

Who are the "other" twenty odd people who should be at this level? No idea.

Also read about how IQ tests need to be reconfigured to keep the mean at 100 by definition (or re-weight aspects claimed to be gender biased such as language or spatial ability), and the Flynn effect. These people took different tests at different times, at different ages. See speculation on IQ of historical figures (I have seen Jesus claimed to have an IQ of 300 ha ha). See contrary claims by researchers that average IQ has not significantly increased in known human history.

[I for one, do not believe modern humans are "smarter" than in ancient times. Human progress is based upon what came before. Try surviving and spending the rest of your life in the wild without any modern conveniences or prefabricated materials, tools and weapons. You wouldn't do as well as a "caveman." Try building a cellular phone from scratch without a handbook, with only the tools and materials available in 1979. It's easier to go get one from the store for free, assembled in China by someone in rural Hunan province who didn't graduate from high school, is it not?]

Vos Savant wrote for Parade (7/17/05), according to some critics, her most notable (but not most important) achievement as self promoted person with world's highest IQ (Guinness and Mensa have stepped back): "I think intelligence is like this. So many factors are involved that attempts to measure it are useless. Not that IQ tests are useless. Far from it. Good tests work: They measure a variety of mental abilities, and the best tests do it well. But they don’t measure intelligence itself."

One example of how intelligence means more than IQ or test taking: please read (or watch the videos) about Christopher Langan, IQ either 195 or off the scale, a largely self taught man whose career was made up of labor intensive jobs such as "bouncer" after dropping out of college. His social or political views brand him as a freak.

Example:

Langan: People who wanted to have children would apply to make sure they have no diseases. Why do we have to do it through genetic engineering? Well, we have to let only the fit breed…. Freedom is not necessarily a right. It is a privilege that you have to earn. A lot of people abuse their freedom and that is something that people have to be trained not to do.

Interviewer: But who? Who does this training?

Chris Langan: Well, I’d be perfectly willing to do it myself. Just put me in charge.

[I am immediately reminded of the archived writings of Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) by this "fit to breed" concept, as when she explicitly favored forced segregation or forced sterilization of the "unfit" (ethnic, immigrant, unhealthy, feebleminded, insane, criminal, sexworker, poor, etc.) according to the pre WWII German model.* Allegedly coming from the "verified," "smartest man in America/the world" gives me no more comfort to read it.]

*See: "Sanger's Legacy Is Reproductive Freedom and Racism" by Julianne Malveaux at womensenews. Also: "A Plan For Peace" from Birth Control Review, April 1932, pp. 107-108; and "Human Conservation And Birth Control," speech, March 3, 1938.

As onemansblog writes, "If you actually watched all the parts of this, did you come out wondering how someone who scores so high on tests that measure problem solving ability could score so low on ability to relate to humanity in general?"

P.S. Allegedly, I am a high functioning autistic (Asperger's).

Another thing that is bothering me is where some people seem to attributing blame. Many people talkng about why boys are doing worse are talking in a way that suggests they they thing they boys themselves are responsible for the male privilage and because they are a part of a privilaged class...

When a grown woman makes shitty choices as a result of social systems that affect her judgement we tend to recognise that the responsibility lies in part with society, when young women make shitty choices - again we recognise that social systems are affecting their ability to make the right choice. But from the way some people are talking here it seems that when a male *child* makes a shitty choice.... the blame rests with them :S

"Misguided overemphasis on reading and math as early as kindergarten, too much time spent playing video games..."

I guess that's why boys are floundering in Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea...er wait...They have more rigorous kindergarten (as does India) and I don't think they are any less involved in video gaming and yet they are very successful.
Interestingly, India has adopted the former Japanese model (learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorization and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in math and science)while Japan has begun abandoning it. Now Japan has fallen from first to tenth in Math and from second to sixth in science. India is on the upswing.

Dr. Sax says that some of the things holding boys back are, "There's less music, less art, less physical education, and more reading drills, writing drills, and arithmetic exercises."

Now first of all I don't see how these things have a more negative effect boys than girls. Girls, too are affected by these factors and yet manage to succeed. Why?

Secondly, several generations in the US were raised with "reading drills, writing drills, and arithmetic exercises" and managed to do great. That is still the paradigm in countries with the highest academic success.

How do some people sleep at night? I could not and would not release a report that says academic success is more closely associated with family INCOME than with gender all th e while working for an org whose charter is all about gender. This report is not to be taken seriously.

Yes. It is horrible when an organization dedicated to studying, and who are therefore knowledgable of, the role of gender in society, releases a report saying that in this case, gender isn't the main problem (not that it isn't *a* problem).

Should we give more credence to reports regarding gender put forward by corporate interests? Sensationalist tabloid journalists? Anti-feminist, fundie segregationalists?

The problem is that it doesn't matter whether (white) girls outperform (white) boys in school. Once they are grown-up and out of school, men get preferential treatment over women ALL THE DAMN TIME!

It doesn't matter that girls do better on quizzes and tests because better grades does not mean she's going to get a better job. All one need do is look at the disparity between men and women in terms of who is holding the top positions in both private sector and public sector jobs.

The NYT had a series on this so-called crisis. One of the things they noted was that women have to work twice as hard as men to be given 1/2 the recognition. So perhaps it is true that (white) girls are doing better than (white) boys in school. But what does it matter if, when those girls grow up, they are still impeded by sexism?

So boo fucking hoo to all of you who are so worked up about how supposedly badly our poor white boys are doing in school.

If the facts point you to income, rather than gender, are you supposed to ignore the facts because of who you are?

Perhaps the attitudes shown, the lack of a willingness to follow the data, is one of the reasons for our decline.

When ideology trumps the facts, reality, we are lost.

i want to know where the boys are going if they aren't going to college? Could it be that they are enlisting? Military recruitment efforts I think are at an all time high. Has that been factored into these studies as well?

Without passing judgment on the question of whether or not there is a 'crisis in boys education', I find the structure of the AAUW argument a bit troubling.

They argue;

1. There is a significant and growing difference between boy's and girl's educational achievements as measured by graduation rates.

2. However, as overall graduation rates are going up, the under-performing group isn't in a crisis.

3. In fact, even larger differences are to be found when you look at graduation rates controlled for race and class (last measured by income).

If we substitute 'salary' for 'educational achievement' in this argument, I think many feminists would (rightly) object. It's clear that a gender wage gap exists, and while it's less clear that overall incomes are increasing in real terms, it's also true that there is increasing income inequality along race and class lines.

I don't like their argument. But all the evidence I see suggests to me that what we have is a generation of girls whose parents have greater expectations for them than previous generations. Call this 'blowback' if you will. Fathers in my circle are paying much more attention to the development of their daughter's minds than our own father's paid to our sister's. All anecdote, of course.

It surprises me that feminists would see boys' actions in school as anything other than socialization. We all know boys and girls are socialized differently. Boys are socialized to speak up and act out - in fact, in my experience, boys act up because it consistently gets them more attention, while girls get more attention for not acting up, and it's actually a vicious cycle with both factors contributing to each other. Boys are also socialized to be more vocal, but then punished for it in school.

And I don't think that precludes us from acknowledging the ways that girls are disadvantaged in schools, either. Girls' improved grades aren't necessarily a reflection of better treatment - most of the girls/women I've known worked a lot harder in school and only got marginally better grades - and boys' worse grades aren't necessarily a reflection of worse treatment either.

But I also find it interesting that a thread that starts out on the premise that children of color and low-income children are far worse off than any other commonly-distinguished group has become a thread comparing boys and girls. That's very white and middle class of us (and I'm including myself here too).

I can't speak on the subject of people of color, since I have never been one and have very little idea of what kinds of disadvantages children of color face. But I've been welfare-poor (though not as poor as some people - we at least owned our own mobile home and a car), I've been sort of middle class, and I've been upper middle class. I credit the latter, occurring in some of my most formative years, with the fact that I am so interested in learning. I had a mother who didn't have to work constantly and could take the time to help with homework; I didn't have to worry about food or shelter or utilities or a circumscribed future or lack of social capital. We took a lot of trips to historic and otherwise interesting locations, etc. When my family later became welfare-poor, my curiosity and was already firmly established. But I then lived alongside a lot of families and kids that hadn't had the kind of life I came from, and I could tell the difference even then. Their parents were always working/tired/on drugs/watching t.v. and just generally didn't/couldn't pay as much attention to them as my parents could; there was a despair in their households that I was only newly familiar with, a kind of despair that inevitably fell on the kids too. None of the kids in my trailer park did as well as me, not because they weren't smart (several were very smart) and not even because they weren't eager to learn (I remember teaching one girl in my grade all that I knew about the tadpoles we caught in her yard, and her listening very intently while fishing them out) but there was something radically and essentially different about their social environment that I still can't quite name today. But I still want to talk about it. I want to talk about it until I can name it. So it's rather frustrating that we seem to be skipping over it altogether. (And I imagine/hope that I'm not the only one.)

I also wonder if the data is normalized to population levels...that is to say, women are 52% of the population so there SHOULD be about 4% more women graduating from HS/college then men. One can't look at raw numbers.

"the gender differences between male and female are mainly among minorities or the low income. For example, for high schools:"

Thanks yeah. Again, when it comes to street culture (as in the book I referenced: "In Search of Respect") men are largely in charge, and working is largely preferenced over schooling for a lot of male teenagers.

Even when the first article was published, entitled "The Boy Crisis" /sure/, we /saw pictures/ of white boys, b/c that's what people worry about in this country, but did the report actually say that the big gender gap was between middle-class white boys and girls? I don't know. I would imagine the gap would usually be the smallest in that group.

For whatever it's worth, I would like to say that if we're talking biology, I think young boys are universally /on average/ more active than young girls. In chimpanzees as well, boys are more active than girls, and young girls concentrate better and learn skills such as "termite fishing" more quickly. So it wouldn't be totally surprising to have some of those characteristics carry somewhat into humans. Maybe, all things being equal (and our school system still being what it is, with emphasis on concentration for long time periods) girls /would/ do better than boys. Boys of course did better in the past, even in schools focused on rote learning, b/c girls were not encouraged (and were sometimes even banned) from getting an education. But I would say that for adult humans, there is obviously a lot of overlap between men and women's capabilities, and men in general hold more privliges than women.

And plus, even if boys would tend biologically to not concentrate as well as girls, we know that things like playing video games regularly also leads to worse concentration. (and, I'd imagine boys would spend more time overall than girls with electronics like tv, video games, internet that lead to lowered concentration, though I don't know for sure). At any rate, how do you separate out all those factors?

How do you address a "problem" like that? Yes, a lot has to do with parental expectations, and there are other countries where children perform far better at younger ages. But, is there actually any proof that children who work much harder through school grow up to be adults with greater intellectual and creative capabilites? Another "I don't know" from me on that one...

"If the facts point you to income, rather than gender, are you supposed to ignore the facts because of who you are?"

Sadly for many folks the answer seems to be "yes, ignore." Based on their own report, the unspoken position of the AAUW is that the education of rich, anglo girls is more important than the that of poor, ethnic boys.

Until progressive movements and organizations are willing to monitor, admit, and correct their own narcissism, we are indeed lost. Sometimes someone elses issue are actually more critical than our own. Educational policy based on anything other than need is discrimination.

It is horrible when an organization dedicated to studying, and who are therefore knowledgable of, the role of gender in society, releases a report saying that in this case, gender isn't the main problem (not that it isn't *a* problem).

Should we give more credence to reports regarding gender put forward by corporate interests? Sensationalist tabloid journalists? Anti-feminist, fundie segregationalists?

Posted by: Alexandr

You obviously realize that bias affects results, or you'd not have cited that long list of examples. Why are you unable to see it when it is in conflict your beliefs?

"Based on their own report, the unspoken position of the AAUW is that the education of rich, anglo girls is more important than the that of poor, ethnic boys."

The AAUW is also concerned with the education of poor, ethnic girls, you know? And they need plenty of help. And I would assume that "education" could include postgraduate education, in which again, men have the advantage

"Until progressive movements and organizations are willing to monitor, admit, and correct their own narcissism, we are indeed lost."

You know, you must not know much about the non-profit world, because there is an organization for every cause under the sun. There are many organization which try to help low-income, minority children. Does that make the AAUW bad people for choosing to also care about something else, and do something about something else? I don't think so. I think the progressive movement needs all the causes. They're mostly interlinked, you know...

"Well, the ideal people to come to conclusions are those who have no particular bias towards finding any particular set of results. This is rare, but [shrug] it happens. "

No, it doesn't happen. If you study science or social science in school, the professors beat into you the fact that the researcher always has bias. Since the 1980s, the trend with a lot of researchers doing studies is to try to be open about any bias they might have (not in trying to skew the study, but rather in being open to the reader about the study). People fund things and spend time doing things they care about. If no one cared about a study, it would not get done. There's always a bias, to some extent.

What Nina said. The social scientists (and, arguably, scientists in general) we should be most wary of are the ones that claim that there is no bias in their work.

"Success was not determined by gender or race but by parental expectation... regardless of country. The boys and girls whose parents didn't give a hoot floundered"

You hit it on the head K! How could you do bad at school if you DO your homework and study? The boys must have parents that feel that because theyre boys that they are excempt from doing that.

Its a bit dumb that if a girl in high school runs to her locker which is messy and overflowing with her papers that she just says to herself, "hmmm, I'm a bit of a sloppy student," while the boys who has the same scenario says (as taught by all this boys crisis nonsense) "it must be the system deliberately ruining me, its incompatable with my male nature."

Guys did well with this system when women werent even allowed to attend school, so if the system is so fucked then how come it only supposedly hasnt worked up until now?

"They sat in classes and went to extra tutoring and did a ton of homework"

Yep! Whenever I think of schooling and how its done internationally I always conjure up the cliche image of boys all sitting still under a strict disciplinarian at some all-boys school in the UK. It was done for boys for thousands of years, and worked fine for them then. Is this right EhSteve? Are boys disciplined more in England to sit still and stay in their seats, more than American kids? Europe also has a higher education success rate than Americans.

"Once they are grown-up and out of school, men get preferential treatment over women ALL THE DAMN TIME!"

Exactly. Which is why I'm reluctant to even care.I think its pompous of all these boys crisis-mongers to think women would even give a shit.

I am a bit sensitive on this topic since my kids aren't white and up until recently we weren't middle class. My husband and I are both the first people in our families to attend college (neither my parents even finished high school since they had to go to work instead) and so if I read one more damn thing about how white boys got it so bad I swear my head is gonna explode.

Let me get this straight. This is THEIR system. White dudes envisioned it, built it, nurtured it and thought so highly of it and believed so deeply in it that they were willing to mobilize the gorram National Guard to protect it from change but NOW that they are floundering it's unfair and must be changed? They can only succeed when the deck is stacked in their favor? Tough.

@ Gopher II
Can we step away from the idea that if someone brings up the "boys crisis" they are nessicilarly blaming feminism? Yes, wing-nuts use this term/tatic, but there could be vast improvements made in the educational system.

You say that white men invented and promoted this system and now that they are failing it they want it to change, true some long dead white guys made academia, etc, but I consider myself an intelligent person who suffered alot in the educational system, having ADD. I think there needs to be a major overhall of edu system. I am surprised that so many people laud their positive experences, but I am honestly surprised that there are so many on this tread who (seemingly) think academia/ educational system is as good as it can be.

Also can we stop refering to ADD/ ADHD is some sort of major disability? We are not the lower end of the intelligence spectrum, we have a different type of intelligence, that the current system ignores.

"As has been pointed out, there are schools around the world with much tougher schedules and requirements than anywhere in the US and those boys aren't having a crisis. You want recess? Try having kids go to school 6 days a week like they do in so many other countries, or taking twice as many classes, plus tutoring afterwards."

I lived and taught in Japan for 12 years, in one of those demanding, six day a week, 10 month a year school systems, that based on international test scores, were at the top of the world.

Among people my age in Japan, they grew up learning in classes of 50 students. They learned largely by rote, with little concern for individual learning techniques. In fact, individuality was expressly discouraged. Boys had heads shaved in crewcuts. Girls had hair cut short and straight in "kappa" fashion, as if they had bowls over their heads. Students wore uniforms regulated down to what ornaments, if any, were allowed (such as to tie or clip the hair), or kinds of socks and shoes.

When not learning or studying, they were compelled to participate in team building exercises such as organized club activities or a myriad of school events, such as a schoolwide song competition, where every class in the grade competed to see who could best sing the same song. After school, students down to first grade cleaned the school and classrooms themselves, down to scrubbing the toilets, wiping the tile floors on hands and knees with damp rags, and sweeping even the outdoor halls and walkways.

Their private lives were also regulated, down to what areas of town or what kinds of businesses they could visit. This would be actively enforced by roving patrols of teachers, or chance encounter with adults. At the most extreme, kids from some schools were expected to wear their uniforms even when going to the beach with their families, or even out of uniform, students would not be allowed into coffee shops or department stores in the middle of the city. Students were not allowed to have boyfriends/girlfriends, stay overnight at a friend's, get part time jobs, get drivers' licenses despite being 18, etc. They needed the school's permission (or at least, had to inform the school) to travel during summer breaks.

Those who did not perform well were simply expected to try harder, or looked down upon as among other things, stupid or lazy. There was no recognition of ADD or ADHD, or any other psychiatric learning disorder. (Other learning disorders such as retardation were recognized. Such kids were usually put in completely separate institutions with non academic curricula, with the physically (but NOT mentally) challenged. I have also never heard of anyone with dyslexia in Japan, and am curious about how that would present itself with their language and writing system which includes complex characters printed vertically instead of horizontally). Also read about the problem of "ijime," bullying or other harassment and shunning that takes place in Japanese schools (and larger society), which can result in alienation, suicide, or even murder. Have you heard the saying, "The nail which stands up will be hammered down"? Still holds true to a good degree today. Conformity, even mindless conformity, is still encouraged. People are expected to sacrifice the self for the group.

http://www.crnjapan.com/abuse/en/japanschoolbullyingracism.html

There was little time devoted to creativity or critical thinking. For example, even while I was there in the 90s, tests consisted of fill in the blank or multiple choice. They memorized famous quotes by historical figures, they did not read or analyze the actual books. Essays were along the lines of, report something sad about WWII or the bombing of Hiroshima. Reportedly, Japanese did not learn "the truth" about WWII, for example, until university. Historical or political subjects like WWII were especially sensitive and subject to indoctrination. We have right wingers and President Bush in the US, you may say. No, there is not that kind of dissent among children in the schools. Upon query, they will very likely reply (truthfully or not) that it did not occur to them to question what they are told or expected to do.

For example, it literally took ten years in the district in which I worked, for the rules regarding student hairstyles to be loosened. The kids or parents who originally brought up the issue (or even the teachers or administrators, according to Japanese rotation of personnel) were long gone. At that time, survey revealed that in over three quarters of schools in Japan, boys still had shaved heads. The issues of styled or permed hair, and hair coloring got more attention in recent years, and enforced or not, there are generally still rules against them, accessories like jewelry or piercings or use of cosmetics.

I vividly recall one social studies "class" the entirety of which consisted of the teacher showing students a Korean stamp bearing the face of a man who assassinated a Japanese governor of a wartime province. He then had to explain to them that someone who had shot a Japanese in cold blood was considered by another nation to be a hero. No discussion, no questions allowed, and it really took that long. There was not even time to explicitly delve into the fact that Japan's former enemies have an *ahem* differing opinion of wartime history. Did I mention that this class was conducted under the supervision of every available teacher on campus and members of the administration and school board? Classes of a "sensitive" nature, be it social studies, or even health (as it pertained to sex), had to be planned with the input of the entire faculty, be approved by administrators, and be witnessed and evaluated, with progress reports and meetings before and after. This planning for a single class can take weeks.

If it is true that there is no "boy crisis" in Japan, among other things, one reason is that both boys and girls were CONDITIONED since the 19th century, to learn and study like this, with teachers as the sole authority figure, overriding human rights or even parents within the boundaries of the school. Only in the past two decades have Japanese really encountered problems with children and parents who question or rebel against school authority on a wider scale. They have dubbed the problem "classroom breakdown," when disruptions down to the early elementary level become so bad, that class actually cannot be conducted. This is considered a problem because even teachers in metropolitan and rural areas, with up to decades of experience, are finding themselves with children, or even classrooms of children, they are unable to manage. (Note: corporal punishment is now illegal, though it was not previously, and occasionally slips through the cracks. Perhaps abuse and terror were among methods used to control children.)

Poor parenting among the generation(s) of people who grew up after the war and certainly about my age and younger, are considered to blame in Japan. This may also be true in the US. My parents used to go on about how problems seen today did not exist in their day, or at least not in the same magnitude. Crack? Powder cocaine? Heroin? Crystal meth? Nationwide gangs? Guns and shootings in schools? Are you kidding? (Pregnancy was of course, something simply swept under the rug or "solved" by sending girls "to their aunts'" until it was taken care of, however that meant.)

Ah, but I have not even touched on the gender issues yet. While by law (it is part of the Japanese Constitution, unlike ours), equality is guaranteed for men and women by the 14th Amendment (stop laughing)*, this by no means protected children from sexual harassment or stereotyped gender roles. Boys were mainly conditioned to be white or blue collar workers to support the economy. Girls were still expected to take time off or quit whatever jobs they had if any, to get married and have children. (Men were also expected to be married by about 30, if they wanted to gain meaningful promotions. For example, in the postal system (which doubled as Japan's largest financial institution), it was assumed that a man with a family would not embezzle funds and run off the way a single man might, therefore higher ups should be married men.)

* "Article 14. All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin."

Oh, did you notice I use the pronoun "men" in "meaningful" jobs involving responsibility and opportunities for advancement. That's because that's the way it was, and largely, continues to be in Japan. Japanese girls were not expected to go on to four year university, or to study "difficult" subjects like science. "Junior college," used to be about 97% female. Western style feminists would not enjoy themselves in Japan, unless they were there to do research or start a campaign. (The issue of how completely irrelevant one's later employment and career are to one's major (unless eg, one trained to be a clerk at "junior (= women's) college") is another matter.)

Schools (or society) in the US have not been quite like this for perhaps 50 years. We have witnessed among other things, an increased recognition for human rights, and a need for individuality and creativity. There are different methods of teaching and learning. We have also seen some young people test authority and the limits of their freedoms in unfortunate ways be it "only" depriving others of learning opportunities, to downright felonious activity. Is a return to the idyllic days of our parents or grandparents what people really promote a return to? ""The nail which stands up will be hammered down." The days of pressed shirts/blouses/trousers/skirts, yes sir, no sir, June Cleaver, Leave it to Beaver, and paddling? The days of washing kids' mouths out with soap? The days of teachers'/clergy's/dad's (or mom's) word being law? Neighbors and strangers in the community keeping tabs on kids, depriving them of privacy and a good deal of fun? Try asking your parents or grandparents what was involved in keeping a school or a society full of young people, under control. You do not want US schools to be like Japanese schools (or US society to be as controlled as Japanese society). People like Elise who seems to have experienced Japan as an adult, and a well educated one at that, should have some opinions about that.

I do not deny that many boys and men exhibit poor self control, are criminal, or are by mainstream standards, simply lazy or fuck ups. But it is not that simple, nor are behavior and personal choices themselves the only factors. As some have pointed out, parenting and lowered or static expectations are also involved. Gender differences are supposed to be the result of socialization, I though was the view here, unless you accept essentialism.

And thank you for the often seen who gives a fuck? attitude, just because it is yet another problem involving the behavior or (lack of) achievement of males, while females are performing well or better. These problems affect girls and women, too, as when they are victimized, or subject to greater scrutiny by admissions offices. Do you want a real competition with males who do achieve, or do you want continued victimization? Or do you simply want women to leave men behind and women to establish themselves in a better position in the workplace and society if women's achievements are fairly judged?

I have seen the male as defective female view before. Why not see females as well conditioned or well behaved males, instead, as when recognizing girls now have higher expectations placed on them, or are encouraged and motivated to do better? Is it any surprise that many males like yes, the "Glenn Sacks fan club" (they are mild - try the admins and forum on antimisandry dot com, they are not "MRAs," many of them simply hate women: discrimination? rape accusations? Who gives a fuck?) have the same who gives a fuck? attitude about serious problems which affect women, and they simply deny, such as involving marriage, domestic abuse, divorce, child custody, or other socioeconomic issues which affect women, if not in fact considering themselves the victims? Who should give a fuck about the menz? People who give a fuck about what happens and will happen to women as a result of this aberrant male behavior if it is encouraged or ignored.

There I go again. The short of it:

You don't want a well controlled system/society like in Japan.

Who should give a fuck about the menz? People who give a fuck about what happens and will happen to women as a result of this aberrant male behavior if it is encouraged or ignored.

At the age of 38, I was diagnosed with alleged ADHD, based on personal reflection and 13 years of teacher evaluations that went back to kindergarten at the age of four. It got me put on two forms of amphetamines that made me act manic and sleep as little as two hours a night, or stay up for two days.

Personally, why did I act up/be bored, and get poor to middling grades in elementary school, despite good standardized test results, and on an alleged IQ test I never recall taking? Because I was one of those bored boys. What was I supposed to do when other kids were learning their ABCs, when I could read since I was three, taught by my grandmother the professional teacher who also served as daily childcare? (Because of my Japanese wife's efforts, my son could read Japanese and English before two, and as a toddler did math four years or grades ahead of his age.) Why did I have to color within the lines and with conventional colors, when I was perfectly capable of drawing on my own and could imagine a world which looked differently? Connect the dots? (Resulting in blocky, crude and ugly pictures with few if any smooth curves.) Trace? Fill in the missing part of the picture? You must be kidding.

Did I need more recess to blow off steam? No. I don't like physical activity or sports. I'm perfectly happy to sit for hours or all day or all night with material that interests me (like books or this blog). But I could have used breaks (I was taught as a teacher just last month that children have a one minute attention span for each year of age. i.e. while it may have been the old way up to the time I went to school in 1972, do not expect even ordinary kindergarteners nowadays to simply sit on their asses like angels throughout a 45 or 50 minute class during instruction or monotonous activities. (Another failing of modern parenting or education, in the opinion of my mother, who suddenly quit teaching after 33 years of service. She did not consider it her job to have to make science and chemistry interesting to 1990s kids or adapt to their desires for easier testing (or follow publishers' new standard of prepared exercise sheets and prepared multiple choice exams which could be graded easily - she was of the old school who wrote their own tests, wanted kids to show all their work and calculations, and have the proper amount of significant figures: if you do real math or science, there's a reason for it. You input crap into a calculator or computer, you'll get crap back, and you may not recognize it or how it happened.).)

P.S. I made an error last night. There are about 220 people (not 22) who are expected to be at Marilyn vos Savant's level (I don't know how many better), as adults. Who are they, how many are male, and are their achievements on par with their cognitive ability as indicated by a standardized test, e.g., they are not best known as "bouncers" or advice columnists for a weekly newspaper insert magazine? I don't know.

I could have also used a more individualized teaching plan, or have classes broken up by ability or needs. It was completely inappropriate to stick me as a kindergartner in a 2nd grade reading class. Teachers and my mother report the teacher had to hold me in her lap because I was shaking, which was unfair to that teacher, and the 2nd graders she should have been focussing her attention on. Yes, including girls. This is why one should give a fuck about the problems of boys, or the alleged boredom of boys. Eventually, they gave it up, and sent me back to kindergarten, where I continued to languish in a class not segregated by level. They did not allow me to skip grades, either. Note: in special education, students have PERSONAL teaching plans, specially tailored to EACH student's abilities and needs, for their growth and success at school. Not so for your ordinary kids.

Teachers and some parents today recognize how personal maturity is as/more important than mere academic performance. (Note: I am also alleged to have Asperger's disorder which precludes normal socialization even in adulthood. No, it is not as simple as exerting self control in social situations or keeping myself on task.) My son is a year older than his US born classmates (kids start school a year later in Japan, another reason they may be "more mature" or better behaved/better socialized than kids in the US) and doing fine. My daughter who began kindergarten in the US is just fine with kids her own age, and also performing very well. They are conditioned to do their homework and get their asses out of the house to play until dusk, with a maximum of one hour of TV a day. We try to limit the amount of crap they eat, and they don't drink carbonated drinks. Partly due to personal choice, they play video games a few times a month. It used to be up to an hour a day, though that ended after I forgot to put them back after I took them on a family trip.

My carelessness, unlike in many modern nations, the current Constitution of Japan has not been "amended." The Japanese Constitution consists of 103 "Articles."* The public fears and immediately assumes modern amendments will mean Article 9 of the Constitution will be altered to legally allow Japan to be involved in war, at best putting Japanese citizens at risk abroad, or at worst a return to the era of military aggression.

*Which in theory, grants Japanese citizens (and citizens only) a greater deal of freedoms than people in the US. Not so.

Anyone who wants US schools to emulate Japanese schools or American kids to live like Japanese students should reconsider. Those too young to recall the days of Leave it to Beaver would probably not even want that kind of life for yourself. Yes, boys would be better behaved. Now consider the controls placed upon even well behaved girls under the same system.

Wow, a male. Verrry looong posts filled with some unnecessary rantings and incoherent points. Your posts are more likely to be read if they are short and to the point. The points that many of the posters have elaborated on concerning international school systems is simply to show that there is no legitimate need to have a gender stereotyped school system that is supposedly based on biological differences in the two genders. If the anti-feminists claim boys have special needs seperate from girls and that they need more movement and less 'passivity' (as they misogynistically label it) then how come it doesnt effect boys in other countries who have a higher demand placed upon them to sit still and for longer hours. Their claims are quickly exposed as simply a way for them to blame women by using present societal inequality to slander them, while preserving their privilege and denying personal responsibility. No one says America should copy the school system of Japan. Western Europe is more of the kind of example I think would fit within the American model if we were to compare school systems. Dont you believe that if a student does their homework that theyll get good grades? Boys are less likely to do their homework and come prepared to class which is probably due to the parents spoiling him simply because hes a boy (also known as privilege). Boys have succeeded in the same school system here in America since its inception, so there is no reason why the current model should not still work. Its the students fault, not the systems. I say, drop the privilege, and simply DO THE WORK.

Also, instead of assuming educational systems such as in Japan are successes to be emulated based simply upon international standardized test results, conditioned student behavior, or even the national economy, recall what happens to people who do not make it in such a highly competitive "pass or fail" society:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

Hikikomori are a special problem. They (male and female) are not simply fuck ups or lazy, though the ignorant may consider them weak individuals, who may live as virtual or actual hermits cooped up in their bedrooms at home with mommy and daddy for decades at a time, not even interacting with other household members. What will happen when this entire class of people are cut off from their familial sources of care or income in decades to come when their parents die, or they get too fed up with their adult children?

Be informed that there are millions, even tens of millions of others, who are not considered mainstream successes in Japan. You didn't make it into the right college, or the right company? You didn't go at all? You don't receive regular raises or promotions? You don't receive favorable transfers or postings? You don't have steady employment? You got laid off? You didn't marry well, i.e., someone with a "good" job, or of good social standing? You (or a family member) have been arrested (or even accused) of a crime? You have a suicide in the family? Any mental illness or other conditions like HIV or AIDS? Physical challenges or visible deformities? You live or come from the "wrong" neighborhood (which may be professionally investigated by potential employers or mates)? You have tattoos or piercings other than one per ear (or at all, for some women)? You are not considered physically attractive? You are "too old"? You are a woman? You are not Japanese by citizenship or blood? You don't socialize (i.e., attend parties and drink) like your peers? You may be well screwed, possibly for life.

Who gives a fuck what other people think about you, you say? You need to learn more about Japanese culture and group think. It's bad enough that people on this blog look down upon the poor for daring to have children (or those who stay at home to raise them), or are underachievers in school or life (there are are also female underachievers or delinquents, recall - 68% of women do NOT graduate from university according to that 2005 story, and about 20% fail to graduate high school - how many blame men? Do you fault men for this?).

"I say, drop the privilege, and simply DO THE WORK."

Spoken from a place of privilege by someone who was conditioned to make it into university. What's your excuse for or, what do you have to say to millions of women each year who do not graduate high school, nor make it into or graduate university or junior college? Do you, like Margaret Sanger, or a man with an alleged verified IQ of 195, look down upon the "unfit" and promote reducing their numbers?

How about this, Gopher?

"Who should give a fuck about the menz? People who give a fuck about what happens and will happen to women as a result of this aberrant male behavior if it is encouraged or ignored."

You want boys and men to simply control THEMselves without taking external influences into account, or to exclude men? You think that is realistic? You think the US of the 1950s, or the educational systems of Asia, the UK or Europe sprang up suddenly, because the KIDS (particularly these problem boys) felt like it? At the very least, policymakers and administrators had to come up with those systems, and parents and teachers had to go along with it. These highly achieving American young women simply personally felt like it in recent decades, WITHOUT support and encouragement, or conditioning to be strong and ambition? So why didn't the majority of women (recall 68% do not graduate university despite getting in) simply perform like that before?

A Male, this really is a wildly inappropriate place to post your dissertation.

It would be great if for just a little while the use of the words 'Japan', 'Hawaii', or 'nursing' would automatically send a post off to a special moderation queue.

"Spoken from a place of privilege by someone who was conditioned to make it into university"

Yeah right! Yeah, as a
woman I'm so damn privileged in this society. So you dont think that if a boy does his homework that he will do good?

The piece was about boys and girls with the same means, which showed boys doing worse. Their parents were no different than the girls parents, and were within the same environmental background. Second, since when is conditioning to attend university somehow a negative? My mother came from an economically struggling household, got all A's, and earned scholarships to attend university - all in the 70's when women were supposed to be staying home and making babies. Is she wrong to ensure that her daughter do the same? Is she wrong to guide her daughter to walk the path that will provide for me best? She wasnt "given" her degree, as if it was some sort of unearned privilege, and I'm not simply receiving my degree from some unseen magic privilege! Anyways, who says I didnt struggle to attend school by focusing hard and succeeding at it? How do you know my skin color, income status, or social background - oh thats right, you dont, youre just making assumptions.

By 'drop the privilege and do the work' I mean that boys and their parents need to quit thinking their so damn special and do their work. You took it out of context. Are you trying to distort my words so you dont have to debate on an open level? There is no reason a boy of the same means as a girl should be doing worse on school as the system is not fucked. Your gender privilege is getting in the way of allowing you to see that. You think youre special because your a male and if boys are doing shitty in school it must be the schools fault, not you. You believe crappy performance is a sincere foundation for exposing something "unfair" in the system, when in fact the only thing unfair is your gender privilege and the excempt illusions it gives you. Grow up.

Wow.... my spelling IS crappy! Chaulk it up to sleep deprivation!

or perhaps...

(snicker) it must be the schools fault!!! I'm a victim of the 'girls' crisis!

A male, I only skimmed what you said (I really need to go to bed) but there are two things I want to say in reply.

1. It's not either/or. There are more than two kinds of school systems. In fact, I would suggest you look up the Montessori methods.

2. Your description of the Japanese school system actually sounds similar to the American system in many ways. I too was bored from a very young age, being way more advanced than almost all of my peers, and I too was usually told basically to sit down, shut up, and do the same work everyone else was doing, which I could have done in my sleep. When I was 15, I taught myself how to do complex math problems in my head but the lack of calculations written on my homework made them think that I was cheating, so they told me I had to write it all out; I lost the ability to do that because of it. And rather than giving me extra homework or finding other ways to challenge me, teachers often instead required me to help them teach (which, I would add, I don't think they would have done if I was male instead of female); while teaching can often help a person understand what they are doing better, I already understood it so well (and don't have much patience with people who are slower to understand anyway) that I usually just let people copy and did something else that was actually interesting. So while the Japanese extreme of nailing every hammer down that you describe is not replicated exactly in American schools, it still occurs, and to both boys and girls.

"Yeah right! Yeah, as a woman I'm so damn privileged in this society."

You had to overcome whatever obstacles you faced, to get into university. You can now look down upon those who have not, for the simple fact you are in university. Do you believe you got into university completely on your own? You were not conditioned during your upbringing to be the person you are? Even if you were surrounded by poor role models, you learned to be different.

"So you dont think that if a boy does his homework that he will do good?"

If boys study properly, and they have a certain aptitude, and they were properly conditioned at home and in school, they are definitely more likely to do well. It's not a guarantee, particularly if they really do have some condition like autism or ADHD. Note: I believe the ADHD diagnosis for one, and the medications for it, are seriously overused. One could diagnose my kids with ADHD according to the DSM-IV, if I ever brought them in. My psychiatrist and psychologist have both asked to interview my children, based on my concerns (and the great likelyhood ADHD has a genetic component. Unless it presents itself as a serious problem (even more serious than I experienced as I got older), I'd rather not. I appreciated a little adversity.

How do you believe people should motivate these underperforming boys and also girls, who are not among the many who have not achieved as much as the ones we mention? Try imagining yourself as a teacher or parent, though you may have no desire to come one.

My wife and I simply consider ourselves fortunate that our children do not face challenges such as poverty, risky living conditions, poor nutrition, poor health, or physical or mental challenges. At my kids' school and in the community, there are even resources to help them if they were underachievers or faced certain obstacles, eg, they SERIOUSLY spoke English as a second language, as great an obstacle as faced by many other recent immigrants.

My kids did not overcome the language barrier in a single year simply because they felt like it. As a matter of fact, they protested speaking English because it was "too hard." I credit the teaching staff at their school for helping them overcome this barrier with sensitivity and through play activities. I have spoken almost 100% English at home, (my wife used to speak English only with me) but I take no credit for their language skills. I do, however, make them do their homework before turning on the TV, and I make them play outside for an extended period before allowing them to watch TV. They also learned to make friends rather than sticking together or only hanging out with the one or two other kids from Japan. That didn't occur spontaneously, either. It took some time. They had to get to know kids in the neighborhood, from school, through my wife, or from temple.

"Wow.... my spelling IS crappy! Chaulk it up to sleep deprivation!"

I admit, your recent change in spelling, use of punctuation, and grammar led me to question whether or not you are the same person who has been posting in recent weeks, or are the same person who first slapped me down last year.

"or perhaps..."

"(snicker) it must be the schools fault!!! I'm a victim of the 'girls' crisis!"

Both are quite possible. Do you believe that you went to decent schools growing up? Other people by the tens of millions are not so fortunate, including other women, and have additional barriers to overcome. If you went to public school, you probably got into that district through birth or where you and your family lived or commute, not only your own efforts. Or perhaps you grew up in surroundings that did not promote achievement, and something made you grow up different. You can't expect so many other people to be like you, simply because they are not you. American kids are not Asian, British or European kids, either.

It is also quite possible you are/were part of the girl crisis, or have faced adversity for being female. Good for you for getting where you are. I look forward to seeing what you do after graduation. No snark involved.

- It would be great if for just a little while the use of the words 'Japan', 'Hawaii', or 'nursing' would automatically send a post off to a special moderation queue.

You have not noticed my lack of posting for weeks at a time. Also, I have personally communicated with Ms. Valenti about my behavior. She can handle it or me, however she wishes.

"Your description of the Japanese school system actually sounds similar to the American system in many ways."

Not as I recognize or have experienced it growing up. There have been considerable changes in the past two decades while I have been away. A pity, and ironic. Some in Japan wish to emulate the more open model to promote individual expression and development. Some in the US wish to emulate the Asian model for purely quantitative results or to control discipline. I don't believe I have ever heard of the Montessori method being applied nationwide in the public school system. It would be nice, but it would take some effort to change minds, get funding, and retrain millions of teachers. Even simple phonics, which I like, does not get enough respect. I was never taught phonics. I had sight words. Never questioned it, as some adult teachers might today. I was just lucky I had good teachers, and I learned to like books because of my imagination. My son reads about a thousand age appropriate books a year, or even a freaking stack of 10-20 a day. That's extreme. Though there are thousands of books in our house, no one explicitly encouraged him to read or like books. My daughter is also an avid reader. I have tried to get them onto more lengthy or difficult (yet age appropriate) books like Harry Potter or the Chronicles of Narnia, with no success. They are simply not to their tastes.

I am glad to see that you believe in individualized learning methods. Children are not adults in small bodies, yep. They can't be expected to behave as we might, either. Note: even returning to school at the age of 35 revealed that adult students aren't too well behaved either. They eat and drink in class, they text, they surf the net on laptops, they chat, they get up and walk in and out of class, etc. This would never be tolerated in schools for kids. And the, do the minimum to get the best results also largely held true in the nursing program. Scary. People entrust their health and lives to myself and my schoolmates. We also open ourselves up to malpractice and liability, partly because of such shortcuts.

You also have discovered that teaching is the most effective way of learning. I had to explicitly be taught that just three years ago. My way to "study" to the present day consists of mainly reading assigned readings. And cramming. Notetaking? Using the margins of my notes to ask myself questions to develop insight? Highlighting texts (how disrespectful to my expensive, pristine textbooks, or risking future sale as used books)? Flashcards? Study groups? Multiple drafts and revisions? Practice tests? Online supplemental materials or those in the lab or library? Actually using study guides from the textbook publishers? My parents and teachers never taught me "how" to study, and gave me little help explaining my homework. Nor did I seek help. My pride leads me to muddle through things according to my own methods or ability. Sometimes successful. Sometimes not. Now I am mature enough (and have been explicitly taught through workshops or nursing school) to recognize there are more effective learning methods, but 34 years of poor habits are difficult to overcome.

I now recognize that I personally have a choice, but it was not so when I was younger. What kept me from getting myself into more trouble, like openly disrespecting teachers, getting into fights or harassing or assaulting women? I don't know. Too introverted and shy, I guess. I didn't consciously decide not to. Decent parenting, going to church, and hanging out with the kids who were assumed to be heading for college, whose greatest offenses were driving fast, smoking and underage drinking off campus, I suppose. I was most similar to them. Drugs? None. Gangs? None. Weapons? None. Contraband? One or two personal stereos I saw in four years, ooooh. Violence? Other than verbal harassment, none I heard of.

Other kids male and female, are not and were not as fortunate as I or my classmates. The other public high school just ten miles away has a very poor reputation. Mine was the "town" high school. My nursing schoolmates (even those without children, geez) or other adults say they will not allow their kids to go to that school, because behavior and rumors are so bad. Gang brawls, mm-hmm. Also, grades K-12 are on the same campus. Why don't the kids just buckle down and behave/achieve like those in my high school, or better yet, like "good" schools in Honolulu or well-to-do districts of California? It's not that simple.

Gopher - why do you hold young boys responsible for societies conditioning of them? You tell them to 'drop the privilage' and to 'stop being lazy' - which is true, they should not be lazy or believe they are privilaged. But this is not something that are doing, but more something that has been done to them by their parents, teachers and society in general.

When girls were underperforming because society told them not to think, not to be ambitious and that their function in society was to look after men and children - would you go back and say to them "drop the lack of ambition", was their lack of academic success their fault? Or was it societies fault for raising them that way?

So why when male *children* are underperforming do you place the responsibility with them rather than with society and the system?

Some of your posts you almost sound as though you're holding these boys responsible for their forefathers actions in generations gone by... which seems a bit harsh. I thought we did away with "the sins of the father will be passed to the son for seven generations" a while ago.

"It was done for boys for thousands of years, and worked fine for them then. Is this right EhSteve? Are boys disciplined more in England to sit still and stay in their seats, more than American kids? Europe also has a higher education success rate than Americans."

The UK education system is a joke, with the exam boards continualy lowering standards which result in 'better performance' every year for the last 20 years or so, removing content from every subject and lowering the difficulty of the questions. It's pretty shameful. When my brother came to do his A-Level (16-18yo) math I gave him my text book from 4 years before - he could not use it as about a third of the content had been removed, none had been added.

My school was about 90% Asian (India/Pakistan/SriLanka etc) and so the parents and pupils had a slightly different attitude to the average White UK parents/pupils.

Anyway - on this race/gender thing - Girls in the UK of almost all ethnic groups outperform boys in the UK of almost all ethnic groups (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3517171.stm). So a similar condition exists in the UK too. So - is this an issue? Should sciety be looking at the way it raises boys? Would it be beneficial to society if they raised boys to be studious rather than layabouts? Is it the fault of male children if their parents/teachers/society condition them in a way that leads to poor school performance?

"And plus, even if boys would tend biologically to not concentrate as well as girls, we know that things like playing video games regularly also leads to worse concentration."

That depends on which video games, right? For example, Quake tends to demand faster reflexes than SimCity does...

"But, is there actually any proof that children who work much harder through school grow up to be adults with greater intellectual and creative capabilites? Another 'I don't know' from me on that one..."

That would also depend on what they're working harder *at*. A kid whose parents and teachers push all rote memorization all the time and a counterpart whose parents and teachers encourage learning to work in groups too may not have exactly the same capabilities later.

"Some of your posts you almost sound as though you're holding these boys responsible for their forefathers actions in generations gone by... which seems a bit harsh. I thought we did away with "the sins of the father will be passed to the son for seven generations" a while ago."

No, I need to agree with feminists on this point. This is what the patriarchy and male privilege are about. Men today are part of it, whether they want to be or not, because of the thousands of years of history behind it. Not every single male is privileged, in all situations (eg, in jail), but it's there. And I can certainly understand why concerned people would want to completely remove disruptive boys (or girls) who do prevent others from learning, or for wanting to create safe spaces for women (and everyone else) at eg, universities (or this blog), by restricting the numbers of men, or creating single sex institutions.

The only real disagreements I have on this thread are, education is not one size fits all. Your choice of public or private school, single sex or coed, or where you want to go to college are obvious examples. Also, other people are not you, and probably don't think or behave like you; given a choice, they might not make the choices you would; and American kids are not kids from other countries, nor are they American kids from 50 years ago.

"You can now look down upon those who have not, for the simple fact you are in university"

I think you have distortions about students who attend university and make irrational assumptions about their character. You are very anti-university which is a stupid position to have, and out of place to argue it on a feminist forum under the topic of 'boys' crisis.'

"If boys study properly, and they have a certain aptitude, and they were properly conditioned at home and in school, they are definitely more likely to do well."

Duh. Most parents condition their kids to do good. Do you think that middle class boys aren't conditioned to do well in school? Do you think that their parents sit home and tell their boys NOT to do their assignments? That's a completely irrational position to have. Boys are not being conditioned to do poorly at school.You're mixing privilege with oppression. If the boys were being conditioned to dismiss school, it's only because their parents believe school is below their precious boys, and teach the boys that, as long as you have a phallus, you have the keys to the world. They teach them to gain admission into any facet of life simply by flashing their VIP penis card. As someone mentioned further up on this forum, boys do worse in school, but still end up making more and getting preferance in promotion. Girls go to school and learn about "great MEN," more likely than not they also have a MALE principal, and deal with sexism in school by MALES - but still succeed.

"How do you believe people should motivate these underperforming boys and also girls, who are not among the many who have not achieved as much as the ones we mention?"

I suggest drop the sexism boys are conditioned to express, along with the bullshit privilege that accompanies it. As for the girls, I suggest sending her to an all-girl's school that doesn't reinforce old gender norms where she won't be brought down by the boys and their delusions of supremacy. If boys aren't as likely to do their homework, or come to class prepared, I'm sure you don't have to be Sherlock to figure that this contributes to their lower grade scores. Their dismissal of homework is simply an aspect of privilege. There is no reason to rewrite the whole educational system because some boys have a smaller percentage of success than girls. Boys simply think they're exempt from doing these things because they're boys. There is no discrimination or any other condition other than their own laziness you can blame it on.
The article by slate.com titled, "Snips, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails" elaborates on that by showing studies where girl's school performance increases when boys aren't around.

"It is also quite possible... have faced adversity for being female"

Duh. Who hasn't faced 'adversity' for being female. If you succumb to the misogyny, you can't change it, now can you?

The question is, how is boys sucking at school such a negative? If he sucks at school, but still gets further than the women, then why should anyone care, especially femalekind? Why should women give a fuck? If hes failing due to privilege and not discrimination, (as there is no case to be had for claiming the environs are anti-boy) then why should I endulge in the exaggeration of this stupid issue? Where do you think boys crappier grades come from?

Eh,Steve,
Boys are doing worse, (even though it's not that dramatic of a difference to warrant much worry)because of gender PRIVILEGE. When women achieved less at school, it was because they were prominently encouraged TO DO WORSE, because to succeed in education which prepped you for the running of the world was a male's place, and the society of her day stated she had no right to be having it. She was forced by society to be a homemaker, and so college became unnecessary and therefore achievement in high school became redundant. Boys are not forced by unjust laws and societal forces to be complacent servants like girls were in the past. You simply cannot make the comparison between girls of yesterday and boys of today. As a matter of fact, just the opposite is going on with boys. Boys are told that they dont need to study because its redundant anyways, because they have the Almighty Penis, and thats all they need to achieve anything.

"why do you hold young boys responsible for societies conditioning of them?"

They benefit because of misogynistic society. Misogyny benefits only men. Being told that even if you suck at school, you'll get the job over the woman who got better grades, is saying that no matter how much a woman succeeds, a man will still hold a position open for him because he has a penis. I hardly see where they're suffering. If anything, this would only reinforce the idea that they dont have to succeed and they still get the job.

About the UK school system....but they are still made to sit still and study longer than American boys, right?

Exactly how do you define “dramatic difference"? These results are from the UK but it seems that about 35% more girls are getting grades A* or A than boys, and about 15% more girls got 5 or more Grade A*-C than boys. Which I think is a pretty dramatic difference. Though it's pretty shameful the education system, even with results fudging for 20 years or so, can't even manage to get two thirds of its pupils 5 A-C grades.

(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3597490.stm)

I'm not sure exactly where you're getting that boys are told that they can be lazy because they are male. From my experiences in the UK throughout my schooling the media was full of how I could not compete with girls as I was male, that males just aren't good at school. Hell even my teachers joined in with several assemblies where we were told (in as many words) that the future was for the girls, and that the guys may as well give up. We were also told repeatedly that "boys don't do well on coursework". I've seen trials where women were given a math test, and half were given a lecture beforehand about how women aren't good at math - those who were told this did much worse than those who were not. I don't see any good reason why repeatedly telling boys that 'boys don't do well in coursework' would not yield the same results.

As to the idea that men still do better - I saw this a while ago. It seems that the men who came through the education system behind women are now in their working lives coming behind in pay too:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/nyregion/03women.html

I'm still not sure why you hold male children responsible for society. You seem to be saying that because other, grown, mature males tend to hold positions of power in society that means that male children should be held responsible for societies actions upon them, but female children should not.

I mean - it's clear that society is conditioning these boys to do poorly in school (unless you hold that males just aren't as smart) - and if that's the case why should we not address this issue?

"About the UK school system....but they are still made to sit still and study longer than American boys, right?"

I'm not sure where you got your ideas about the British school system from... Having spent a fair bit of time in the US and the UK, the US seems much more study orientated. In the US there seems to be a very strong "You must go to college to get a good job"; in the UK the idea is more "You should go to university to experience the student lifestyle and for the life experience". High School classes in the UK are 1 hour long, which I think is the same in the US, and a lot of that hour is the teacher giving the lesson with some Q&A in too.

"High School classes in the UK are 1 hour long, which I think is the same in the US"

Keep in mind that the US has thousands of public school systems instead of a national school system. In my first year of high school, the classes were 51 minutes each. In my last year of high school, the schoolo system changed the schedule and most classes were 40something minutes each apart from a few double-length periods.

the general consensus on this thread is that males preform worse than females.

However, on standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT, males score on average slightly higher.

For those of you unfamiliar with the SAT and ACT, they are college admission tests taken by virtually every college-bound high school student.

what my point was in using that statistic is that:

college-bound, college-motivated students preform about the same.

EhSteve,
Alright, first I'm doing away with the long as hell dissertation pieces....and also simultaneously succeed at debating this issue all without going beyond a small compact square of a post.

Next, I'd like to point out that the report says girls achievement has not come at boys expense. The report notes that in states where girls do well so do boys, and the states where girls have lower test scores, so do the boys. The report also states that the rate of graduation for boys both from high school, and colleges is at an all time high. There is almost a complete balance between the rate of boys and girls entering college that come straight from high school. It also reports that test scores for both boys and girls have improved overall, and boys outdo girls on math and verbal equivalents on the SAT test. They only noted that educational disparity exists for certain races who face financial difficulties - which is nothing new.

You noted that boys are encouraged to fail in school, but what do you think girls face? A BBC headline ran a title stating, "Men Cleverer Than Women," in 2005, and girls see this and deal with it everyday - but still succeed. Surely, youre not suggesting boys are encouraged more than girls to fail. That would make society misandrist and place discrimination against boys at a higher rate than girls, which is simply stupid.

"Hell even my teachers joined in with several assemblies where we were told (in as many words) that the future was for the girls"

EhSteve,
Could you elaborate on this? I have no clue what this is. Could you add a little more detail.

Also, even though you may have some women getting more money in their 20's doesnt mean that once the babes start coming that it wont fall back down due to discrimination, or because excess stress placed on the mother (due to unequal house duties) which makes her abstain.

Ach...my spelling! This should improve in a month when some of my projects will be over!Stress, and sleep loss....

I realise that it says that girls achievement has not come at boys expense, however the exact same comparison can be made with pay:

In states where men are paid highly women are paid highly.
In states where men are paid poorly women are paid poorly.
Male wages have increased over the last 30 years, so have female wages.

Using the surveys logic there is no issue with gender pay discrimination.

"Surely, youre not suggesting boys are encouraged more than girls to fail. That would make society misandrist and place discrimination against boys at a higher rate than girls, which is simply stupid. "

I don't think it's intentional, or even that a lot of people know what they're doing to kids. I mentioned a number of things that might discourage boys from doing well - stupid definitions of masculinity which are thrust upon children of both genders, a wave of media attention, a lack of male teachers, and in the girls favour there are a huge number of programs aimed at getting girls into further education.

We both seem to agree that boys themselves are also not working hard enough, and I agree with you that a part of that is that they are also raised to pay less attention, be unruly and overly cocky - the point I disagree is that you seem to be holding the boys responsible for how they are raised, rather than the parents, teachers and society. I hold that children do not bear the responsibility for their raising - and that those who do should do their best to raise the kids well.

"Could you elaborate on this? I have no clue what this is. Could you add a little more detail."

The main one that sticks out is coming back from summer break when I was 17, the school head did the first assembley where he read out about a dozen headlines from papers about how boys don't do as well at a school, then carried on to talk at length about how the furture was for the girls to take as they were naturally brighter, then about how boys simply can't compete (I was thinking 'huh? I'm top of all my classes, thanks') and how they may as well just give up and step aside. We had two assemblies on this theme early on in that year.

"Also, even though you may have some women getting more money in their 20's doesnt mean that once the babes start coming that it wont fall back down due to discrimination"

Agreed, but I don't see this as a good justification for ignoring a massive (and growing?) gap in educational achievement. It is an issue that need to be addressed too - society needs to change so that it is acceptable for a man to stay at home and look after the kids too. And so that men do their fair share of housework.

I should note again - I'm not blaming feminism for this in the slightest, the vast majority of the blame falls at the feet of current patriarchial role models that tell boys to shun education.

I'd also like to make clear that I don't believe it is as simple as gender, despite some clear implications that learning disabilities in various forms such as autism or ADHD seem to affect boys and girls quite differently.

As the OP says, one (the) important factor is family income. Well, there is also race/ethnicity/culture, there are differences in quality of education between regions and even between individual schools within regions (eg, California has some highly praised high schools - so why are their overall figures so average or poor?).

nces [dot] ed [dot] gov/programs/coe/2007/pdf/24_2007.pdf
ed [dot] gov/nclb/accountability/results/progress/index.html

Browse "Mapping Educational Progress 2008" by any state you wish (try California). Please confirm that ethnicity (particularly if Hispanic) and low income are the largest predictors of poor performance according to those criteria. OMG, about half of all schools in restructuring (fucking up according to No Child Left Behind) in the entire country (1013 out of 2302) are just in California. This despite a 56% increase in NCLB funding since 2001. Check out those % proficiency figures! 10-16% proficiency figures in math and reading among blacks, hispanics and low income!

Are they just lazy? Are these tens of millions of California kids fuck ups? Or are the poor and coloreds to blame for dragging California's stats and averages down? Why don't they buckle down like students in Nebraska, huh? (Tops US in high school graduation rates, 2002-2003: 87.6%, US average 74.3%; also 77.5% white) What's wrong with kids in Nevada? (57.4% graduation rate, 44.6% white - oh)

Also, there are factors other than gender that affect college admission rates. Which is the most important? I don't know. Who here claims to be better qualified at 17/18 than these students rejected by their schools of choice? Who's willing to accept what admission officials say (I note they are both women) about increased competitiveness?

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/19/0419perfect.html

Perfect college entrance exam scores don't help student who dreamt of the Ivy Leagues
By Laura Heinauer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, April 19, 2008

Things were going, well, perfectly for Navonil Ghosh up until several weeks ago.

The college-bound LBJ High School Liberal Arts and Science Academy senior racked up more than 400 hours volunteering in local hospitals and libraries. He plays the piano, is a first-degree black belt in Kung Fu and got a perfect score on both the SAT and ACT college entrance exams. Ghosh had mailed out all of his college applications and was just waiting for the acceptance letters to come pouring in.

But the letters that began filling his mailbox were of a different kind.

[end quote]

Holy shit, about the "rejects" interviewed for this story. In the good old days, all one needed (male or female) was decent grades, decent test scores, letter(s) of recommendation from teachers, and some extracurricular activities like joining a club or playing sports. No admission essays. No self promotion. It was let your record (and your recommendations if necessary) speak for themselves. What's all this Mother Theresa/Miss America crap? Worst story I ever heard in 1986 was our valedictorian being rejected by the UC system. His letter of rejection claimed that there were already enough qualified applicants just from within the state of California, so they weren't seeking more.

Mind you, this guy had spent the first 11 years of his life in the California education system, only moving out in mid 10th grade. He later went on to become valedictorian of my state university's college of business. That's right. He did better than all the kids from the "good" Honolulu schools and advanced placement programs statewide, and all the kids who'd come in from across the nation, and around the world. (Hawaii gets a high proportion of Asian students. Ethnic Chinese foreigners made up about a quarter of business classes. And they as a rule, kicked ass academically, and were multilingual as well - Mandarin/Cantonese/English and what the hell ever else. UHM was known for Pacific Rim business.) And UC rejected this guy, despite 28% of their students not graduating within six years. Somebody most likely took his spot. And he came from a well to do white family which owned some hardware stores in California.

Who gives a fuck about the menz? How about people who give a fuck about the women? What about millions of women who aren't as well qualified as the male and female "rejects" in this story? What about the women who are part of the 73% of students rejected by the University of Chicago? What about the ones who are among 93% of students rejected by Harvard?

What about the millions of women who never graduate from high school, or don't make it into college or four year university at all, each and every year?

Single sex education you say. Well, the same sources I've seen that say single sex education is better for girls say it also improves progress for boys. A significant increase in single sex education will only INCREASE the level of competitiveness. I really feel for these contemporary and future men and women who expect to get ahead in life.

"Holy shit, about the 'rejects' interviewed for this story. In the good old days, all one needed (male or female) was decent grades, decent test scores, letter(s) of recommendation from teachers, and some extracurricular activities like joining a club or playing sports. No admission essays. No self promotion..."

...and far fewer other 17 and 18 year olds applying for nearly the same number of spaces in the schools one was applying to.

"It was let your record (and your recommendations if necessary) speak for themselves. What's all this Mother Theresa/Miss America crap?"

I got the impression that the number of 17 and 18 year olds, and the percentage of them who apply to colleges and universities in the U.S., and the number of older people who go back to school (a.k.a. "nontraditional students"), are rising faster than these schools are increasing their capacity for undergraduates. Hence the schools asking for more info to decide who to admit when they don't have room to admit every applicant with perfect records and recommendations.

"What about the women who are part of the 73% of students rejected by the University of Chicago? What about the ones who are among 93% of students rejected by Harvard?"

I heard those two haven't significantly increased the size of their first-year classes lately, and that no counterparts of them have been founded lately...

That's exactly what the admissions officers are saying, Mina. That's why being passed over for someone with "lesser" qualifications is not only about gender, though I have read articles where schools/officials explicitly admit to regulating gender ratios.

So what was the killer for that guy? Being Indian? Having an "unemployed" dad driving him around? Having no mother worth mention? Having a FIRST degree belt in kung fu or not studying "realistic" mixed martial arts? Doing only 400 hours community service? Helping the wrong folks? Playing only the piano? Being fourth in his class? Being nerdy cuz he was interested in biomedical engineering and medicine? Being too emotional, as when he was "devastated" by his first rejection, unable to continue studying or sleep? Having a life of insufficient "adversity" for Harvard?

"That's why being passed over for someone with 'lesser' qualifications"

...or passed over for someone who had "greater" qualifications at 17 or 18, and who crashed and burned at 20 or 21 for some other reason...

"So what was the killer for that guy? Being Indian? Having an 'unemployed' dad driving him around? Having no mother worth mention? Having a FIRST degree belt in kung fu or not studying 'realistic' mixed martial arts? Doing only 400 hours community service? Helping the wrong folks? Playing only the piano? Being fourth in his class? Being nerdy cuz he was interested in biomedical engineering and medicine? Being too emotional, as when he was 'devastated' by his first rejection, unable to continue studying or sleep? Having a life of insufficient 'adversity' for Harvard?"

The "killer" for him seems to be none of the above. Instead, it seems to be who he was competing with. I bet that if he had been applying with all his very good qualifications 10 years ago he would have been accepted.

It's only going to get even harder for each applicant in the next few decades, unless

a) a whole bunch of the top schools (for whatever one's idea of top school is) significantly increase their capacity

b) Harvard et al. backtrack on their recent financial aid increases (thus attracting fewer applications than they do now and having to admit a higher percentage of the applicants they still get)

c) a lot of new colleges and universities get founded

d) far fewer families encourage their teens to apply to college and/or university

e) more birthrates plummet

f) far fewer older people go back to school and take up spaces in colleges and universities themselves

Personally, I'd much rather see schools add new dorms (and not just for housing a higher % of their existing students on campus) and new schools get founded than go back to "if high school was good enough for me it's good enough for you" and "no you can't go back to school after having kids."

BTW, you've seen the commercials:

http://oedb.org/rankings/graduation-rate

But in reality, ITT Technical Institute only graduates 41% of its students within six years (with 35.60% acceptance rate). The University of Phoenix only graduates 6%, acceptance rate unknown. National American University - 100% acceptance rate, 8% graduate. Ow. Even if the school takes on anyone with the money, an Internet connection, and a pulse, 92% don't make it within six years. So what's keeping them from doing the work to make it into universities like yours?

Oops, I should have been clearer here:

"...or passed over for someone who had "greater" qualifications at 17 or 18, and who crashed and burned at 20 or 21 for some other reason..."

Crashing and burning isn't the only reason to not graduate within 6 years. For more examples:

Doing great in one's classes but not being able to enroll in all the requirements in time at an overcrowded school with enrollment caps on some of those classes

Realizing the school is a bad fit for whatever reason, and transferring out

Choosing, or being forced, to have a child and/or get married, and to "put family first" by putting academics on a back burner

Running out of money after not getting enough financial aid

Meanwhile, their applications at 17 or 18 can't be used to fully predict who will have those situations and who won't.

"So what's keeping them from doing the work to make it into universities like yours?"

Universities like whose?

Only the AAUW Would Report on the Boy Crisis by Examining "Where the Girls Are."
Ah yes, the "boy crisis." The AAUW released another study attacking the "boy crisis," much like the Educational Sector's bankrupt report by Sara Mead, which concluded that there is not a boy crisis, and that the disproportionate performance of girls is not bad news about boys doing worse, but good news about girls doing better, and that boys are doing better than ever before. The Washington Post and other news media has passed along this garbage with no critical analysis.

Of course, these arguments are ridiculous. To argue that boys are "doing better than ever before," both the Education Sector and AAUW base their arguments on absolute numbers. That is to say that more men go to college now, than say in 1950. The argument is bankrupt, easily destroyed by arguing the absurd. For instance, say that today 100,000 people are going to college, 60,000 girls, and 40,000 boys (60/40). All of a sudden, the next day, the college population doubles to 200,000 people, 150,000 girls, and 50,000 boys. The argument can be made, "Well, boys are doing better than ever. Now we have 10,000 more boys going to college." But in reality, whereas yesterday we had a distrubtion of 60% girls, and 40% boys, today, we have 75% girls and 25% boys. When exactly does it become a crisis? When 80% of college classes are are made up of women? 90%? Ever? With this argument, we can get rid of affirmative action because blacks are doing better than ever before. Silly.

In 1992, when the AAUW came out with its polemic report that girls were being screwed in schools, the AAUW supressed evidence that girls had already surpased boys in almost all subjects and almost all measures. That trend has condinued. Today, with 57% of colleges made up of women, the disparity continues to grow.

When women were the ones outnumbered at colleges, we blamed the schools and passed Title IX. When boys are getting screwed, we blame the boys and largely ignore the problem. Anybody who has studied the situation knows that both the Education Sector and the AAUW's recent reports are attempts to make lemonade out of lemons, by putting a gloss over that which has become abundantly clear; boys are getting metaphorically raped by an education system.

What has happened is that women's organizations, in an attempt to mitigate any call for the fair distrubtion of resources, have played the race card and said, "Oh, don't worry white middle America, your sons aren't doing that much worse that white girls, its only the blacks and Latinos who are woefully behind -- no problem here." The argument is racist and patently untrue on both the interpretation of the research and the actual facts. Boys -- ALL BOYS -- regardless of income or race fare worse than girls, a reversal of fortunes that has specifically been ignored by both the media and academics, because boys are not as sypathetic as girls. The race/class argument has not, to my knowledge been used when arguing comparative disadvantage of girls.

Both the Orwellian language used in their arguments by opponents of helping boys, and the repeated attempts to disprove the obvious, betray the notion that girls progress has been not come at the expense of boys. This is a fight about resources. Thank God for the women who are mothers of boys.

It is also rather scandelous that Title IX, a gender neutral statute, has been interpreted by the bureocratic establishment as not benefiting anyone but girls. The enforcement has been corrupt.

It's not all bad, of course. It turns out that women are earning 77 cents per dollar a man makes. This is not bad news about guys earning too much, it is good news about women. Women are earning more now than ever before. Nothing to see here.

Mina said:

"the general consensus on this thread is that males preform worse than females.

However, on standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT, males score on average slightly higher.

For those of you unfamiliar with the SAT and ACT, they are college admission tests taken by virtually every college-bound high school student."
___________________

Even the AAUW report admits that the takers of the SAT/ACT are self selected, with significantly more women than men taking it. A fact by itself would cause one to wonder what's going on with the men. Secondly, as the report states, in states where all kids are required to take the SAT/ACT, the boys advantage disappears.