Posted on 05/07/2013 12:47:29 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Four years ago, psychologist Leonard Sax (MD, PhD) wrote a well-received book titled “Boys Adrift.” The doctor tried to answer the question, why have so many young males fallen into passivity and indifference?
Dr. Sax had heard more and more parents complain that their boys stayed indoors most of the time, spent hours on video games, and in general seemed to lack the confidence and esprit de corps that had characterized boys throughout history.
“Something scary is happening to boys today,” Sax concluded. “From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically.”
The book’s full title is, “Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men.” Sax lists the five factors right on the cover: “video games, teaching methods, prescription drugs, environmental toxins, devaluation of masculinity.”
It’s worrisome that he seems to like them all. That might be a clue that he has not solved this mystery. Indeed, let’s consider the possibility that none of these theories is the deep answer we want. Let’s start from scratch and consider the things we know for sure.
First of all, critics have often noted that schools seem organized more for girls than for boys. Most boys do not want to be confined to a desk; they would rather be outside playing and competing. Second, not only are boys kept passively inside, they are forced to deal almost the entire day with reading, writing, and arithmetic, probably not their own first choices.
But these factors are historically common. Boys have always been restless at their desks. They have often stared out the window and daydreamed...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
You know, I’m thankful every day that I had a daughter. Because if I had a son instead the best advice I could have given him at 18 would be to get a vasectomy. The whole risk/reward equation no longer pencils out. As a divorced father (no former) smoker, home owner with a day job, I know a thing or two about being a political red-headed step child. Didn’t take long for me to figure out that I and men like me have zero friends in any branch, any level in either party of government. More are figuring it out. A lot of men are refusing to marry and have kids. That stagnant birth rate is a lot of young men just going Galt in their own way.
What I'm saying is "men" can do nothing to improve their standing so long as other men act as useful idiots enforcing the dictates of the female majority.
Part of the problem men have failed to form a united voting block. Instead, they have allowed themselves to be divided and pandered to. The result is that the politicians who pander to their particular group to get their votes also pander to women at their expense to get the female vote.
Until men form a united voting block that makes politicians pay with their jobs for discriminating against them, they will continue to have zero friends in government.
I don’t think that would make much difference.
It’s quite possible the gay/metro-sexuals outnumber the straight traditional faction.
Basically, you’re saying it won’t make a difference because it won’t happen. I’m afraid I agree.
Clearly, America has become a nation of weenies such that being a boy these days is considered either immoral or illegal or both.
That’s what happened.
Really? You expect to be taken seriously by appealing to the very subculture promulgating the injustice?
Alimony? Please!
When child support becomes something other than unregulated cash payments to an ex-wife, you might get some traction with those. other than the useful idiots.
agree.
interesting point.
Well-stated.
“No way, kid - you’ll shoot your eye out.....”
What happened?
It didn’t “happen” it was “done to them”.
They are not ALLOWED to be boys.
If they engage in any age appropriate male behavior at any stage of their life they are punished, banished, drugged, suppressed.
And if when they become men, they happen to act like men in front of the wrong female they may find themselves charged with any number of imagined offenses - some of which may lead to legal trouble.
So can we really blame boys for turning out like they do?
It's from feeding human males soybeans. You heard it here first.
“my favorite toys were a stick”
You had a STICK?
In my day we only dreamed about having a stick.
You must have been one of those rich kids I heard about.
Don't get me wrong. If college Prep students want to compete in testing scores basically aimed for college admissions more power to them. However forcing that aspect onto the VOC/TECH students is as wrong as forcing college Prep students to take Voc/Tech test as a standard that has to be met to graduate. Of course funding is the whole driving force behind Test Scores.
There is no reason beginning in a high school freshman year the curriculum can't be decided and a maximizing of course suited to the direction the student chooses. At that point class time should be 50/50. 50% regular class and 50% VOC TECH with each year dropping a regular class and increasing it in Voc/Tech. Senior year should be 100% VOC/Tech and Co-Op encouraged. My senior year I was working a 44 hour week job during school hours & making money.
In my early 1970's high school years for Voc/Tech students were only required to take basic Math course, basic Science, basic English, and basic History. Teachers were preparing us for the workforce after high school. For functionality I'll put my basic courses education up against college prep high school of today.
As for other aspects? I lacked the abilities for sports and my dad realized it early on. He found what I did like and built on it. How many kids even in the 1970's were capable of spending a month or more camping out alone with boat and motor? I cooked my own meals, set up my own camp, and was basically left to do for myself except food was brought in every few days. That was the way my dad grew up in the 1930's and 40's and he made sure I got to experience the same.
In these times the opportunities I had as a teenager are gone. I was reasonably safe camping and did have a rifle for just in case. Today a teenager camping out alone is prime bait for attracting predators of the two legged variety.
Well, I saw a bunch of great boys this evening at my son’s Little League Game. It’s true, they all play electronic games, but they get out there and do the real thing also. Why? I think it’s because there are FATHERS involved who pass on the love of the game and spend time teaching and training them.
Also, I find that my boy will do old fashioned boy stuff if there is some wild space around and some fellow conspirators. He and his buddies do a lot of sword play and capturing each others’ forts, given the opportunity. But it is not often that you get 6-10 of them together at once with a couple of hours to kill.
LOL...you could tell this made me angry in my posting...I am sure every parent out there is rolling their eyes going ‘yeah, bribery is going to work to keep a boy from watching television” and their eye rolling would be well deserved.
I don’t think I would ban a kid from watching, but I would try to be sure they aren’t just a skull full of mush taking it all in as the gospel truth...:)
63 years old huh?
Welcome to the club of undomesticated males. Back in our day being called a “sissy” was a good reason to knock the snot out of the ass who said it.
Now, the majority of males coming from the past 2 generations have been politically and emotionally castrated by masculine man hating women.
In today’s age anything that comes natural to a “real” male is taken as animalistic behavior and must be cured by either counseling or some other physiological treatment or drug.
With all of that said, no wonder we find ourselves in this world of gun confiscation attempts. Women fear the cold steel of guns (not knives) and the males of today are right with them and think just as illogically as their mothers.
It’s a sad, sad world we now live in.
Every item you listed here, I too did the same. We also put firecrackers in corncobs and threw them at each other. It ain’t estrogen in the water; it is feminized education, the stifling of male behavior, ridiculing masculinity, the blatant favortism shown for females (don’t get me wrong, they all deserve an equal chance), and now—the homosexualization of males—homowood and the old media play a major role here.
We grew up in a good time—things were different and seriously better. Our kids future is in serious trouble and getting worse. The nutjob politicians seek every means of control and ever newer methods to extract money from the working class to buy the votes of those who sit in a cesspool of dependence.
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