A lot has changed since 1960. If Connie Francis were to sing “Where the Boys Are” today, she would not likely be talking about Ft. Lauderdale. And she probably wouldn’t be talking about college, either. This is because, in a decades-old phenomenon, boys have increasingly been stumbling academically.

Colleges have taken note of this and, in certain cases (mostly private institutions), have actually been favoring boys in the admissions process. It’s an interesting, albeit unofficial, twist on affirmative action. But this, in turn, has been noted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, inspiring it to investigate whether colleges discriminate against girls by admitting less qualified boys.

It’s tempting to delve into the double standards evident here. When politically favored groups underperform, quotas are virtuous; when other groups do — such as boys — quotas are a vice. There is also Title IX, which has been used to ensure that the number of female student athletes in a school is proportional to girls’ percentage of its student body, despite the fact that far more boys are interested in sports. Yet Big Brother doesn’t apply this principle to other extracurricular activities, most of which are dominated by girls. Even more outrageously, when colleges voluntarily institute something approximating proportionality in the most important sphere, academics (to keep the male/female student ratio fairly close to 50/50), Big Brother investigates them. Yet I don’t want to devote too much ink to this today, because boys don’t really need affirmative action. They need correct action.

Stories about boys’ academic malaise will no doubt surprise some, yet the statistics are staggering. Treating the issue in the Wall Street Journal, Richard Whitmire writes:

Nearly 58% of all those earning bachelor's degrees are women. Graduate programs are headed in the same direction, and the [sex] gaps at community colleges — where 62% of those earning two-year degrees are female — are even wider.

...The numbers are startling. This summer the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University published the results of a study tracking the students who graduated from Boston Public Schools in 2007. Their conclusion: For every 167 females in four-year colleges, there were 100 males.

But the die for this is cast early, with the gap already manifesting itself in elementary school. Moreover, writes Alex Frasca at American Thinker:

By now we know that boys lag girls in almost every sort of school performance measure: grades, honors received, participation in student council, honor societies, school newspapers and debate teams, and college enrollment. Many more boys than girls are suspended from school, forced to repeat a grade, and drop out prior to graduation. Boys are more than three times over-represented in special education classes.

And providing anecdotal evidence in a sister piece on the topic, Frasca writes:

Our 9th-grade son attends a California public high school where the ratio of boys to girls is roughly 50/50. The latest edition of his school's parent's club newsletter honors the students who are achievers in various categories of academic activity. Of the first place finishers in the regional science fair, 9 out of 11 are female. The winner of the Rotary Club and Lions' Club Speech Contest are mentioned, both female. The school's Mock Trial championship team comprises 15 members; 11 are female.

It wasn’t always like this. In 1972, college enrollment numbers were reversed — 60-40 in boys’ favor. Boys also long performed better on exams; in fact, male aptitude in the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), inspired educators to make it more “girl friendly” in the 1990s (makes one wonder if a new question might be: Who did Justin dump Cindy for? A. Elizabeth, B. Amber...). And when I attended elementary school in the 1970s, the best students in my class were usually boys. So what changed? Have the lads suddenly taken a stupid pill?

In seeking to answer these questions, there are two prevailing explanations. One of them, which finds favor among the Right, blames our feminist spirit of the age and was recently articulated by the intrepid Phyllis Schlafly, who wrote:

Elementary schools are not only ruled by females — they are dominated by feminists who make school unpleasant for boys from the get-go.

...Elementary school teachers used to understand that boys will be boys, but teachers now look upon boys as just unruly girls. Feminists manifest hostility to males and to masculine traits such as competitiveness and aggressiveness, and instead reward typical female behaviors such as non-assertiveness and group cooperation.

Schools cannot make gender go away by pretending that boys do not have an innate masculinity, or by trying to suppress it with ridiculous zero-tolerance punishments, banning sports such as dodge ball and tag, and allowing only playground games without winners.

I would add that this anti-male bias completely permeates our society. Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best have been replaced by inane sitcoms such as Everyone Loves Raymond (except me), in which men are routinely portrayed as bumbling boobs overshadowed by dominant, thoroughly competent women. This is reflected in commercials as well, where wives are shown treating husbands like children. We see this bias in products, such as the “All Men are Bastards” knife block and, more egregiously, t-shirts and other products marketed to young girls with messages such as “Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them,” “Boys Are Great. Every Girl Should Own One,” and “Lobotomy: How to train boys.” Now, when I was little, it certainly was a cute rite of passage to say you “hated girls” and for the lasses to perhaps say boys were “icky” (except for me). But shouldn’t such things be left in childhood? Should adults be rubber-stamping anti-boy messages just to make a buck?

Then, it’s said today that portraying women in traditional roles reinforces “harmful stereotypes.” Thus do we find ridiculously masculinized female television characters who are not only smarter than the male ones, but also tougher. And the old show Amos & Andy is verboten because it’s said to stereotype blacks. But if we really believe that entertainment can so devastate people’s self-image, why are we consistently exposing boys to negative portrayals of their sex through it?

Having said this, while our society’s misandrist tone is destructive, when cited as the sole cause of boys’ woes, it’s also a distraction. But then, what is the cause? Is it a “mystery” as Whitmire avers in his Journal piece?

This brings us to the second prevailing explanation, something briefly mentioned by Schlafly when she wrote, “Five- and 6-year-old boys are not as able or willing as little girls to sit quietly at a desk and do neat work with pencil and paper.” This reflects the now common idea that boys just can’t learn in a highly structured school setting, that they require an action-oriented learning environment. It’s popular with both the right and left because it combines the boys-will-be-boys traditional understanding with a psycho-babbly, new-age approach. It has something for everyone — except the truth.

And the reason why girls aren’t hurt as much by this lack of structure has to do with differences between the sexes. Girls are inside-the-box thinkers while boys are outside-the-box thinkers; girls are more likely to follow society’s path, right or wrong, while boys are more likely to beat their own path, right or wrong. This is why virtually all revolutionaries — good and bad, from Thomas Jefferson to Vladimir Lenin — are men, and why they always will be.

Related to this is that boys have a tremendous amount of what I’d call “creative energy.” For example, think about how boys may immerse themselves in an endeavor (e.g., model rocketry, a sport, computers, etc.) with a single-mindedness and zeal rarely seen among girls. This energy can be focused constructively or destructively, but it will be focused somewhere. It’s just a matter of whether boys will design airplanes and buildings or destroy them. And how do you focus this energy? Discipline. This is why boys so often thrive in a military-school type environment.

So while there are secondary factors (I treated the issue more comprehensively here in one of the more important pieces I’ve written), I don’t think boys’ academic woes are a mystery — I think we fear the solution. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Men invent new ideals because they are afraid to attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.”

We need the rod, not Ritalin; faith, not more funding; and old tradition, not new technology. Boys haven’t changed — society has. Where do you think the problem lies?

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (10)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Flu-Bird said:

Bring back home schooling Its time to return to home schooling abolish the DEPT OF EDUCATION(BRAINWASHING)and end compuluary schooling force busing and end the control of the NEA

December 08, 2009

A little too general..., Lowly rated comment [Show]

Paladin said:

Jerrod is wrong Jerrod, your comment show us why you're a liberal. Your facts are WRONG. College enrollment for men and women among whites is NOT even close to identical. I'd provide a url for the stats but this site doesn't let you post urls it seems. but this is from the American Council on Education, 'Among whites, a clear female majority has emerged since 1995–96, with the male share of undergraduates dropping from 49 percent in 1995–96 to 46 percent in 2003–04.' You can't learn the truth if you don't even get the facts straight. There's something funny too. You leftists don't mind saying a societal factor affects a sex when the sex is women and supposed discrimination is the factor. Also, we 'defined masculinity' in even more traditional ways years ago when boys were doing better. Wise up.

December 08, 2009

David Crain said:

Thank you for that insight, Paladin...You are absolutely right about Jerrod Paladin speaks truth! I happen to be a male who believes that boys will be boys, and I promise you that my boys WILL BE BOYS. I don't believe in this namby-pamby, group cooperation theory, this emasculation (literally, castration --look it up: http://dictionary.reference.co...asculation) of the male gender performed by bigoted feminist militants and their neutered leftist male counterparts! The reason boys do so poorly in school nowadays is exactly what the article said: as a society, we have removed all rewards for over-achieving males. And another thing: discipline has far too long been absent from the school system. The article is exactly right: what boys need is discipline, and a whole lot more of it than they are getting in the current public "schools," as the public institutions of brainwashing and indoctrination are called. Never was an appellation so abused, a moniker so wrongly bestowed! School is a place where a child is taught to think critically, to have his own opinion, and to evaluate the world around him by logical thought processes; and not, as the public schools teach, to follow the crowd in a mindless, irresponsible and bestial manner. School is no longer about learning; it's about freedom of [removed]of perversion), and following your basest instincts...even the teachers are doing it...so it can't be wrong, can it?

December 08, 2009

Forestman said:

The Education system is totally against males There is no doubt that an anti male bias permeates this society. Once when I took college algebra at a community college I was constantly harassed by the female teacher and the female students. There were only 3 other males in the class. I ended up failing the class, but when I took it again with another teacher, and with a class that was largely male I ended up making a B. What makes the male bias so bad is that one is not supposed to say anything about it, and if you do, your labeled as sexist. Not only this, but the media is driving it into little boys at a young age that they are dumb, and that girls are superior.

December 14, 2009

Ryan said:

favortism of female students I think it also has something to do with all of the attention we give females in school to be successful and empowered. One good example is the federal catalog that is 4 inches thick full of program after program dedicated to girls achievment, its made illegal to have one for boys of course. So maybe one good solution is to focus some attention on boys in school and stop doing nothing (like the gov't is doing now).

December 18, 2009

David Kuehne said:

Abuse you child by sending it to Public School Why should we complain? Anyone who sends their child to the reeducation camps deserves what they get--an abused child. And the comment about bringing back home schooling is ridiculous--it needs no "bringing back" because it is thriving quite well--thank you.

December 18, 2009 | url

Dan Tana said:

... Excellent analysis- discipline is the key. Political correctness is ruining this country. And btw, political correctness does not mean anti-racist, as many would have you think. It's time to put an end to discrimination of all sorts, an end to the "nanny-state," and an end to the demonization of families and the human being in general. Speak out against the Global Warming fraud and the feminization of male children. Down with the population control! Fight the power, have more children, and teach your children well.

December 18, 2009 | url

KidsRpeople2 said:

"Discipline" is Teaching, Not Hitting! We need the rod, not Ritalin.. The TRUTH is that school children are treated differently in our great nation based on where they live. A middle school student in Texas DIED by having his chest crushed when his teacher sat on him to restrain him and ignored his pleas that he could not breathe, he died on the classroom floor in front of his classmates (the teacher is teaching children in another state), a Texas high school student suffered deep bruising and welts to his lower back, buttocks and back of his legs when he received 21 "licks" with a wooden canoe paddle, which broke during the beating and had to be taped to continue the beating, a 9-year old Georgia 3rd grader suffered deep bruising injuries when he was paddled with a WOODEN PADDLE 3 TIMES IN ONE DAY (Decatur Co., GA affirmed Corporal Punishment Policy 9/17/09 for school children) and a Publicly Funded Charter School in Memphis, Tennessee physically punishes middle/high school boys and GIRLS weekly during a ceremony called "Chapel" by hitting them with wooden paddles and/or whipping their hands with leather straps IN FRONT OF ALL THE OTHER STUDENTS AS A DETERRENT to publicly induce shame, humiliation and fear! The school employees in the above actions have LEGAL IMMUNITY and are STILL paid by our tax-dollars to be ENTRUSTED with the care and education of our children! Please demand your Governor/Representatives in Congress introduce/support legislation to Abolish Corporal Punishment of Children in ALL SCHOOLS, the cost is $0.

December 23, 2009

Tom Johnson said:

School paddling violates Title IX. Speaking of Title IX, the particular form of school discipline Duke appears to advocate is itself inconsistent with this anti-discrimination law because it inherently impacts boys and girls unequally. Unlike boys, girls who may have entered puberty would have to reveal intimate personal information in order to avoid the chance of this punishment being unfairly compounded by menstrual discomfort, or of being a risk factor where there is the possibility of pregnancy or other female-specific vulnerabilities. Either the school callously and/or recklessly does not address such concerns when paddling girls (concerns which many students may be too embarrassed or intimidated to volunteer), or it intrusively does inquire about them. There are at least two known incidents where paddling had medical consequences due to a student being female, one in Dunn, N.C. from 1981 (ref: "Don't Inflict My Pain on Others," by Shelly S. Gaspersohn, USA Today, October 23, 1984) and another in Scioto County, Ohio from 1997 (ref: "Some Ohio schools not sparing the rod -- Corporal punishment allowed in districts," The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), September 24, 2000). With children of any age, moreover, discomfort following a paddling is apt to be greater for girls, due to pressure on the inflamed and/or contused area of their bodies resulting from their normal mode of urination or, alternatively, to muscular discomfort if they awkwardly avoid this pressure. This disparity was illustrated in the case of an 8-year-old in Florida who had to use her hands to support herself astride a toilet in order to urinate without aggravating the lingering pain she was experiencing) (ref: State v. Paul E. King, Florida Supreme Court Case No. SC05-25. At the same time, anti-male bias may be at work insofar as boys on average are struck with greater severity or frequency than girls for any given misbehavior.

December 23, 2009 | url