Lemme just say, as an educator and as a male, that this is a bunch of bunk. School biased in favor of girls? Boys need to be encouraged more? Maybe, maybe. But maybe the boys simply need to get off their dead arses and perform. It's high school, for Faber's sake. And public high school at that. How hard can it be?
Look, I've long been of the opinion that some of the things they do to boost girls' self-esteem would be counter-productive. Self-esteem boosting usually is. In fact, if I had to pick one thing that schools shouldn't bother about, that would be it. Encourage kids, yes. Encourage groups to get all excited about their groupiness, no. Because the end result of shaping boys' esteem isn't going to be improved scores, but excused pathologies. "You don't understand, I'm a guy. I ain't got time for none of that note-taking, book-reading stuff! I'm a rebel! I go where the wind takes me!" Have we really gone, over the course of a century, from "Women cannot think nor write," to its gender opposite?
Anyone who thinks that teenage girls have an easier time sitting still and paying attention than teenage boys has never ever taught teenage girls. Teenage girls never shut up, whine when disciplined, and act as though the world revolves around the particular ephemera they find fascinating. They only perform if they come from families that expect it from them. The same is true for boys.
Maybe it's me, but I've rather enjoyed not belonging to a Designated Victim Group. It meant I had no one to excuse my failures, and conversely, no one to put an asterisk next to my successes, such as they are. That's the creed that millions of men across the country live by: my life, my choices, my results. I really don't care to be turned into another sniveling worm under the lash of the Designated Oppressor.
Because in the end, boys, there's really nothing less manly than whimpering "the girls made me feel bad about myself." Should young gentlemen get outlets for their restless energy. Yes. Should we bring back Dodgeball? Yes. Should we dispense with all the gender-specific ego-encouraging? Yes, yes, YES.
The only way to have sanity in education is to insist on standards and keep to them, and stop making excuses for those who aren't interested. If boys don't wanna learn, indeed resist learning, maybe we should check what signals they're getting about learning from the outside culture.
I begin to wonder if reading books hasn't become a "girl thing" among boys, as it's become a "white thing" in the inner city. Do guys talk about literature and the arts with other guys? 'Course not, only gay guys do that, right? What do men talk about? Sports, music, cars, "guy stuff." Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of guy stuff. But you shouldn't be thought odd because you can discourse cleverly on Neo-expressionist paintings or tell a Shakespearean from a Petrarchan sonnet (and conversely, all the guys who can do that need to stop acting as though being downwind of an understanding of the nickel defense will rob them of their souls). But that notion of male intellect is enforced by just about everything you see in popular culture. Think that message doesn't get through to boys, while schools are saying "You go!" to to the girls?
It's really very simple. When the culture values and promotes intelligent manliness, we'll have some. Until then, enjoy the perfumed air of college graduations.
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