Is it Time to Reconsider Our Approach Regarding Boys Education?

Article here. Excerpt:

'Twenty years ago, or so, as faculty meeting after faculty meeting focused on the needs of our school’s girls and what we needed to for our girls, a faculty colleague pointed out that, as we assumed gender driven positions and definitions under the auspices of remedying something regarding girls education, our definitions and practices would affect boys.

He is the father of two boys. I’m now the father of one who can’t be more physical and different from his sister in his approach to the world.

I can tell you from practice, that twenty-something years ago, yes, we did focus a bit much on girls; we sometimes over encouraged and allowed our girls to press boundaries more than our boys. Quite literally, the boys had to be nicer during class discussions.

We know that boys have been falling behind in terms of achievement — high school and college — for the past two decades, plus.

It seems that the chickens have come home to roost; the circle is complete. It’s boys who now seem to suffer at the hands of particular treatments and educational approaches.'

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You think the current state is what roosting chickens look like vis-a-vis bashing males in education down to nothing? You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Imagine a society where boys by and large don't graduate from high school anymore. They can't qualify for decent jobs. They start living off welfare (if they can) but even if they do, they need something to do to bide their time. They'll figure something out to do. Video games? That'd be the more benign version of what it looks like.

It's one thing to have a large population of un- and under-educated males. For centuries, that described Europe and most of the rest of the world. But those males were "integrated" much better in society: they had trade-skills, and/or engaged in traditional agrarian work that indeed required an education, just not the kind that is considered so by today's standards. As a consequence, they were productive, active, and capable-- and "integrated" with society, becoming fathers, husbands, etc., and were not actively discouraged from doing so by a legal and social system that made it too risky for them to do so.

So compare that to what we have today, and the direction we continue to go in. What will the picture look like when the male population generally is "dis-integrated" with the productive society at large, which will be a minority of males and a lot of females? Imagine a society where, say, 80% of the male population and perhaps another 20% of the female population is "dis-integrated" with everyone else because of lousy education and bad employment prospects. What does that look like?

There are examples all over the world, really. But they are not found in "First World" countries. So that should give you some idea of where we're headed.

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