What's Happening with Boys?

About 20 years ago, the American Association of University Women, (AAUW), sponsored a detailed inquiry into whether or not public schools were gender neutral or favored one gender over the other and concluded that girls were significantly disadvantaged.  Many disagreed with this conclusion then and continue to do so now. 

Some of these also accuse feminism, (which they appear to regard as a “dirty word”), as the problem or “fault.” Now it appears that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction – perhaps inevitably in the course of human events – and the concern is that boys are significantly underserved.  NEWSWEEK magazine made this their cover story for the January 30, 2006 edition:  “The Boy Crisis.”  While the NEWSWEEK article is focused on pre-college age males, I have a colleague at CSU-Fullerton tasked with gathering data to explain why fewer and fewer college-age males – and especially Black and Hispanic/Latino males – are enrolling in college and why so many of those who do fail to complete college.  In fact, NEWSWEEK’s article states that shift, (disparity?), is especially apparent on college campuses.  On page 46 they comment, “Thirty years ago men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body.  Now they’re a minority at 44 percent.”  (They don’t include a majority/ethnic minority component in these statistics.)  Continuing, they quote Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of Education, who says this achievement gap “has profound implications for the economy, society, families and democracy” (p. 46.)

To state the obvious, there are no easy answers…

The NEWSWEEK cover story contains a number of challenging assertions.  For example:  The authors write that “Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls…” and stress that teachers, especially in the lower grades, need to learn this and follow through by adapting teaching methods accordingly.  Quoting Michael Thompson, author of the best seller Raising Cain, “‘Often boys are treated like defective girls’” (p. 46.)  (This is a serious claim.)  Perhaps one of the boldest statements comes from Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute, who is among the strongest of voices to “…charge that misguided feminism is what’s been hurting boys” (p. 47.)  Those who subscribe to this point of view claim that by the 1990s girls were experiencing significant gains in terms of parity in schools “…but feminist educators portrayed them as disadvantaged and lavished them with support and attention.  Boys, meanwhile, whose rates of achievement had begun to falter, were ignored and their problems allowed to fester” (p. 47.)  So if one is a feminist, one is to blame, and the “’fault’, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.” (Julius Caesar, Shakespeare)

I am a feminist and I have benefited from the feminist movements, especially the “second wave.”  I came of age at a time when, if a woman married and elected to keep her maiden name – what a concept – suspicion was often the reaction.  I came of age at a time when the credit and banking rules began to change, and a woman could establish credit in her own name rather than being subsumed by her husband, if she were married, or her father, if she were single.  This opened the way for females to “own” credit accounts (and the cards that went with them,) cars, homes, and businesses. I came of age at a time when career options for women were just beginning to open beyond teacher – elementary school, preferably – nurse, or librarian but ultimately wife and mother.  I came of age when a woman’s innate right to exercise dominion over her body was a new idea.  I came of age when there were essentially no women in the U.S. Senate, no women on the U.S. Supreme Court, fewer female CEOs than now, (though this number needs serious improvement), and when many institutions of higher learning were actually closed to women despite their representations to the contrary.  Therefore, I suggest that the women who are making statements which “demonize” feminism need to step back and ask themselves where they would be today were it not for feminism.  Furthermore, applied feminism is not about setting up gender as a combat issue; feminism represents the concept that the rising tide lifts all boats. It’s about equity.  While many institutional adjustments are still needed, including improvements in our educational processes, blaming feminism seems simplistic, misguided, and fatuous at the least and dangerous at the worst.  (Would those decrying feminism have us roll backward?)

As one who reads many documents written by male college students, I know first hand that the quality of literacy is sinking rapidly across our public school systems, and that females are not immune to this diminishment.  I, and many of my colleagues, often ask how these students were admitted, how they managed to graduate from high school, and why they are being permitted to conceptualize themselves as college educated?  There is an unraveling, but it cannot be placed at the feet of feminism.

Reflecting on the differences between boys and girls, it seems imperative to reconfigure the “one size fits most” approaches which have been in use for too long.  We socialize and acculturate the genders differently from birth – and sometimes earlier, (paint the room blue, paint the room pink, etc.)  Generally we instill in boys from a very early age - William Pollack and others ask us to recognize this early age is a too early age  - a perspective that places them at a disadvantage well before they enter school.  NEWSWEEK quotes Michael Thompson on this point, “Boys measure everything they do or say by a single yardstick: does this make me look weak?” (p. 49.)  One corollary to this is the imbued dictum “failure is not an option.”  According to the NEWSWEEK article, it is not socialization but brain chemistry that accounts for many of the behavioral differences between boys and girls, “…what psychologists call the ‘boy brain’ – the kinetic, disorganized maddening and sometimes brilliant behaviors that scientists now believe are not learned but hard-wired” (p. 48.)  But does hard-wiring cause one to avoid anything that could be interpreted as either weakness or failure – or does socialization?

In the past three to five years advanced techniques, particularly refined MRI capabilities, have informed us that much of what we thought about the development of the human brain was incorrect.  Principal among these revelations is how much longer it takes for the brain and especially the pre-frontal cortex to develop fully.  This means expectations regarding certain types of critical thinking, impulse control, perspective taking, and hypothetical thinking which includes understanding the consequences of one’s actions are going to evolve much later than the mid-teen years, as we had thought previously. 

What we thought and how that shaped how we teach needs to be reshaped by what we know now.  Science, however, does not excuse us from societal realities.

NEWSWEEK states unreservedly, “One of the most reliable predictors of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school rests on a single question:  does he have a man in his life to took up to?  Too often, the answer is no.  High rates of divorce and single motherhood have created a generation of fatherless boys.  In every kind of neighborhood, rich or poor, an increasing number of boys – now a startling 40 percent – are being raised without their biological dads…  A boy without a father figure is like an explorer without a map” (p. 51.)  Instead of bashing feminism, how about we look at those statements?

The NEWSWEEK article is a valuable discussion of important issues and concerns. 

The Letters to the Editor that it generated are also worthy of our attention.  Some parents wrote to say that the schools their sons attended were quick to label these boys as ADD or “hyper” plus ADD when, in fact, all they needed was a lessening of restrictiveness since boys are more kinetic than girls.  An adult male reader provided the observation that men have been reluctant to admit for a long time that they are boxed in by the socialization applied to them – there’s that “weak” and “no failure” component – and suggested new role models, including strong women, need to be the focus.  Curiously, a high school teacher suggested the only thing wrong within the schools today is a decrease of recess and a shortening of the lunch period, because boys need time to move around.

An educator wrote in support of single-gender classrooms, because boys are different from girls and each requires a specific, but incompatible, approach.  (For boys, turn their natural tendency to aggress into healthy competition rather than attempt to repress it.) Some felt home schooling is the answer.  Others lauded mentoring.  Some suggest boys are disincented to read because schools choose “girlie books” and once their interest is lost, the boys are lost.

We know there are no easy answers – and there is no one answer, but we cannot avoid the implications of Margaret Spellings’ concerns regarding how this unfolds in terms of effects within society, on the economy, for families, and for the nation itself, both currently and for the future.  When boys drop out, a crucial part of our total population is at risk – undereducated, limited in terms of income production, strained where family issues are concerned, and disconnected fromthe body politic.  Let’s stop “blaming” and start fixing.