Posted on 08/03/2006 11:38:51 AM PDT by neverdem
Since I started teaching several years ago, after 25 years in the movie business, I’ve come to learn firsthand that everything I’d heard about the feminization of our schools is real—and far more pernicious to boys than I had imagined. Christina Hoff Sommers was absolutely accurate in describing, in her 2000 bestseller, The War Against Boys, how feminist complaints that girls were “losing their voice” in a male-oriented classroom have prompted the educational establishment to turn the schools upside down to make them more girl-friendly, to the detriment of males.
As a result, boys have become increasingly disengaged. Only 65 percent earned high school diplomas in the class of 2003, compared with 72 percent of girls, education researcher Jay Greene recently documented. Girls now so outnumber boys on most university campuses across the country that some schools, like Kenyon College, have even begun to practice affirmative action for boys in admissions. And as in high school, girls are getting better grades and graduating at a higher rate.
As Sommers understood, it is boys’ aggressive and rationalist nature—redefined by educators as a behavioral disorder—that’s getting so many of them in trouble in the feminized schools. Their problem: they don’t want to be girls.
Take my tenth-grade student Brandon. I noted that he was on the no-pass list again, after three consecutive days in detention for being disruptive. “Who gave it to you this time?” I asked, passing him on my way out.
“Waverly,” he muttered into the long folding table.
“What for?”
“Just asking a question,” he replied.
“No,” I corrected him. “You said”—and here I mimicked his voice—“ ‘Why do we have to do this crap anyway?’ Right?”
Brandon recalls one of those sweet, ruby-cheeked boys you often see depicted on English porcelain.
He’s smart, precocious, and—according to his special-education profile—has been “behaviorally challenged” since fifth grade. The special-ed classification is the bane of the modern boy. To teachers, it’s a yellow flag that snaps out at you the moment you open a student’s folder. More than any other factor, it has determined Brandon’s and legions of other boys’ troubled tenures as students.
Brandon’s current problem began because Ms. Waverly, his social studies teacher, failed to answer one critical question: What was the point of the lesson she was teaching? One of the first observations I made as a teacher was that boys invariably ask this question, while girls seldom do. When a teacher assigns a paper or a project, girls will obediently flip their notebooks open and jot down the due date. Teachers love them. God loves them. Girls are calm and pleasant. They succeed through cooperation.
Boys will pin you to the wall like a moth. They want a rational explanation for everything. If unconvinced by your reasons—or if you don’t bother to offer any—they slouch contemptuously in their chairs, beat their pencils, or watch the squirrels outside the window. Two days before the paper is due, girls are handing in the finished product in neat vinyl folders with colorful clip-art title pages. It isn’t until the boys notice this that the alarm sounds. “Hey, you never told us ’bout a paper! What paper?! I want to see my fucking counselor!”
A female teacher, especially if she has no male children of her own, I’ve noticed, will tend to view boys’ penchant for challenging classroom assignments as disruptive, disrespectful—rude. In my experience, notes home and parent-teacher conferences almost always concern a boy’s behavior in class, usually centering on this kind of conflict. In today’s feminized classroom, with its “cooperative learning” and “inclusiveness,” a student’s demand for assurance of a worthwhile outcome for his effort isn’t met with a reasonable explanation but is considered inimical to the educational process. Yet it’s this very trait, innate to boys and men, that helps explain male success in the hard sciences, math, and business.
The difference between the male and female predilection for hard proof shows up among the teachers, too. In my second year of teaching, I attended a required seminar on “differentiated instruction,” a teaching model that is the current rage in the fickle world of pop education theory. The method addresses the need to teach all students in a classroom where academic abilities vary greatly—where there is “heterogeneous grouping,” to use the ed-school jargon—meaning kids with IQs of 55 sit side by side with the gifted. The theory goes that the “least restrictive environment” is best for helping the intellectually challenged. The teacher’s job is to figure out how to dice up his daily lessons to address every perceived shortcoming and disability in the classroom.
After the lecture, we broke into groups of five, with instructions to work cooperatively to come up with a model lesson plan for just such a classroom situation. My group had two men and three women. The women immediately set to work; my seasoned male cohort and I reclined sullenly in our chairs.
“Are the women going to do all the work?” one of the women inquired brightly after about ten minutes.
“This is baloney,” my friend declared, yawning, as he chucked the seminar handout into a row of empty plastic juice bottles. “We wouldn’t have this problem if we grouped kids by ability, like we used to.”
The women, all dedicated teachers, understood this, too. But that wasn’t the point. Treating people as equals was a social goal well worth pursuing. And we contentious boys were just too dumb to get it.
Female approval has a powerful effect on the male psyche. Kindness, consideration, and elevated moral purpose have nothing to do with an irreducible proof, of course. Yet we male teachers squirm when women point out our moral failings—and our boy students do, too. This is the virtue that has helped women redefine the mission of education.
The notion of male ethical inferiority first arises in grammar school, where women make up the overwhelming majority of teachers. It’s here that the alphabet soup of supposed male dysfunctions begins. And make no mistake: while girls occasionally exhibit symptoms of male-related disorders in this world, females diagnosed with learning disabilities simply don’t exist.
For a generation now, many well-meaning parents, worn down by their boy’s failure to flourish in school, his poor self-esteem and unhappiness, his discipline problems, decide to accept administration recommendations to have him tested for disabilities. The pitch sounds reasonable: admission into special ed qualifies him for tutoring, modified lessons, extra time on tests (including the SAT), and other supposed benefits. It’s all a hustle, Mom and Dad privately advise their boy. Don’t worry about it. We know there’s nothing wrong with you.
To get into special ed, however, administrators must find something wrong. In my four years of teaching, I’ve never seen them fail. In the first IEP (Individualized Educational Program) meeting, the boy and his parents learn the results of disability testing. When the boy hears from three smiling adults that he does indeed have a learning disability, his young face quivers like Jell-O. For him, it was never a hustle. From then on, however, his expectations of himself—and those of his teachers—plummet.
Special ed is the great spangled elephant in the education parade. Each year, it grows larger and more lumbering, drawing more and more boys into the procession. Since the publication of Sommers’s book, it has grown tenfold. Special ed now is the single largest budget item, outside of basic operations, in most school districts across the country.
Special-ed boosters like to point to the success that boys enjoy after they begin the program. Their grades rise, and the phone calls home cease. Anxious parents feel reassured that progress is happening. In truth, I have rarely seen any real improvement in a student’s performance after he’s become a special-ed kid. On my first day of teaching, I received manila folders for all five of my special-ed students—boys all—with a score of modifications that I had to make in each day’s lesson plan.
I noticed early on that my special-ed boys often sat at their desks with their heads down or casually staring off into space, as if tracking motes in their eyes, while I proceeded with my lesson. A special-ed caseworker would arrive, take their assignments, and disappear with the boys into the resource room. The students would return the next day with completed assignments.
“Did you do this yourself?” I’d ask, dubious.
They assured me that they did. I became suspicious, however, when I noticed that they couldn’t perform the same work on their own, away from the resource room. A special-ed caseworker’s job is to keep her charges from failing. A failure invites scrutiny and reams of paperwork. The caseworkers do their jobs.
Brandon has been on the special-ed track since he was nine. He knows his legal rights as well as his caseworkers do. And he plays them ruthlessly. In every debate I have with him about his low performance, Brandon delicately threads his response with the very sinews that bind him. After a particularly easy midterm, I made him stay after class to explain his failure.
“An ‘F’?!” I said, holding the test under his nose.
“You were supposed to modify that test,” he countered coolly. “I only had to answer nine of the 27 questions. The nine I did are all right.”
His argument is like a piece of fine crystal that he rolls admiringly in his hand. He demands that I appreciate the elegance of his position. I do, particularly because my own is so weak.
Yet while the process of education may be deeply absorbing to Brandon, he long ago came to dismiss the content entirely. For several decades, white Anglo-Saxon males—Brandon’s ancestors—have faced withering assault from feminism- and multiculturalism-inspired education specialists. Armed with a spiteful moral rectitude, their goal is to sever his historical reach, to defame, cover over, dilute . . . and then reconstruct.
In today’s politically correct textbooks, Nikki Giovanni and Toni Morrison stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens, even though both women are second-raters at best. But even in their superficial aspects, the textbooks advertise publishers’ intent to pander to the prevailing PC attitudes. The books feature page after page of healthy, exuberant young girls in winning portraits. Boys (white boys in particular) will more often than not be shunted to the background in photos or be absent entirely or appear sitting in wheelchairs.
The underlying message isn’t lost on Brandon. His keen young mind reads between the lines and perceives the folly of all that he’s told to accept. Because he lacks an adult perspective, however, what he cannot grasp is the ruthlessness of the war that the education reformers have waged. Often when he provokes, it’s simple boyish tit for tat.
A week ago, I dispatched Brandon to the library with directions to choose a book for his novel assignment. He returned minutes later with his choice and a twinkling smile.
“I got a grrreat book, Mr. Garibaldi!” he said, holding up an old, bleary, clothbound item. “Can I read the first page aloud, pahlease?”
My mind buzzed like a fly, trying to discover some hint of mischief.
“Who’s the author?”
“Ah, Joseph Conrad,” he replied, consulting the frontispiece. “Can I? Huh, huh, huh?”
“I guess so.”
Brandon eagerly stood up before the now-alert class of mostly black and Puerto Rican faces, adjusted his shoulders as if straightening a prep-school blazer, then intoned solemnly: “The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ ”—twinkle, twinkle, twinkle. “Chapter one. . . .”
Merry mayhem ensued. Brandon had one of his best days of the year.
Boys today feel isolated and outgunned, but many, like Brandon, don’t lack pluck and courage. They often seem to have more of it than their parents, who writhe uncomfortably before a system steeled in the armor of “social conscience.” The game, parents whisper to themselves, is to play along, to maneuver, to outdistance your rival. Brandon’s struggle is an honest one: to preserve truth and his own integrity.
Boys who get a compartment on the special-ed train take the ride to its end without looking out the window. They wait for the moment when they can step out and scorn the rattletrap that took them nowhere. At the end of the line, some, like Brandon, may have forged the resiliency of survival. But that’s not what school is for.
I like Henty for what he is (boys' books that are a little heavy handed in the dialogue but lots of history and action); another similar writer that is very pleasant to read is Horatio Alger -- and although I don't care for Westerns as a general rule L'Amour is the best, except for Owen Wister.
Interesting sidelight to the Harry Potter stories. I may approach them from a slightly different angle, because I am a big fan of British children's literature.
From the point of view of someone who has read the "Jennings" series, the "Chalet School" series, "Stalky & Co.," and other British school stories, Harry Potter is essentially the British public school story with a little magical window-dressing.
The same themes recur . . . the idea of sending your kids off from the age of 8 to boarding school is pretty wild to Americans. Even Kipling saw the danger in it . . . especially the children who were sent from India back to England (as he was). He mentioned with some disgust in his autobiography a boy who became a snob in public school, and dismissed his mother as "not quite our type, donchaknow . . . "
That was my take, too. Behind the "magic," it's a totally secular worldview. Police procedurals have more spiritual content!
I like the "school" stuff, and I guess my kids do, too, because we don't have to experience it!
Phoop on Hellenism. Up the Maccabees! Armed Jews Rule!
If you haven't read Kipling's Stalky & Co., give it a look. It's based on his own experiences at the United Service Colleges in Devon.
I have missed "Stalky and Company." It is not in the library, and I'm going to have to pay money, and I hate that!
It's not the same as holding a book in your hands, but it's cheaper than buying it. If you like it, it's available in a Penguin paperback.
I have to disagree with you, Greek culture was the foundation of the Hellenistic civilization although under the Ptolemies there were influences from Egypt. Egyptian influences were probably stronger in the archaic Greek world as seen in the pre-classical artwork of Greece.
Hellenistic Egypt under the Ptolemies had more of a direct influence on Western Civilization as it was directly involved with and became a province of Rome. Anciient Egypt's impact on the Near East however is undeniable.
Understanding the position held by Serbia from medieval times onward can provide an insight into the current clash of cultures between the Western World and Islam. Also, understanding the later Turkish occupation of the Balkans and parts of Eastern Europe will provide insight into the later antipathy between groups in that region.
I understand. Certainly the history of eastern Europe is becoming more important (especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain.)
"Misandrist" is already in use.
Main Entry: mis·an·dry
Pronunciation: 'mi-"san-drE
Function: noun
Etymology: mis- (as in misanthropy) + andr- + 2-y
: a hatred of men
- mis·an·drist /-drist/ noun or adjective
It is appalling that more people don't know and use this word to describe such a commonly encountered form of bigotry. "Misandronist" is also used, but far less often.
I only do paper books! But I suppose I could print it out, a chapter at a time.
I agree with you to a point on Hornblower. His personality is annoying (more in the books than in the TV series.) However, the action, the use of language, the development of leadership skills are outstanding.
I found Owen Wister a bore. Louis L'Amour is having fun, even if he dangles a modifier, misplaces an antecedent, and allows a subplot to fade off into the mist without resolution, on occasion.
Do you think Severus Snape is Draco Malfoy's father? My kids think I'm nuts (naive creatures that they are ...). It's obvious that he's head-over-heels about Narcissa, and he HATES it, but I think it's been and gone and he's the dad.
It's not as black and white as that. If we leave it up to the student to decide what is interesting, then Harry Potter books will be about the extent of that teenagers reading.
When I was growing up, one of my teachers "forced" Jack London's Call of the Wild upon me. As I read the first chapter, I couldn't believe what a stupid antiquated book it was and if it was up to me, I would have discarded it on the spot and gone back to my Mad Magazine. A story told through the eyes of a dog who "didn't read newspapers"? Ridiculous! And what the hell is a chinese lottery anyway?
But as I read on (only because I was forced to and had a book report to write on it), I started to get into the story and when I got to the last few chapters, I couldn't put the book down. I then went to the library and looked for other books by this Jack London.
It was that book that made a lifelong reader out of me but I never would have known about it had I had not been "forced" to read it.
Have no opinion on that point (I lost interest after book 3 -- no particular reason, just other things to read.)
Oh, well. You don't have an all-night baby, so you can have Standards :-).
I've not yet encountered anyone who's prepared to address the fatherhood question ...
I've checked out Marryat novels on occasion, but none of the children has picked up on it. Patience, etc.
The Sharpe novels on the Napoleanic Wars might catch someone, eventually. I read them to Anoreth when she was a baby, but there's been no indication that it hit home, thus far. On the other hand, I read her the "National Review" and "American Spectator," and now she wants to be the next Ann Coulter.
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