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Before Christmas I posted the article about the recent Australian study into boys' education, which maybe some of you have read. The report seemed to be written with the William Pollock view of boys. Amongst its recommendations was the idea that boys could once more be allowed to read the kinds of books they actually like reading - books with strong male characters taking the lead - but only as an excuse for 'deconstructing' those 'dominant masculinities'.
In one of my subsequent comments on the report I pointed out that any strategy adopted by the current crop of educationalists to improve boys' educational performance will simply further entrench the current position. For example, special classes for boys require that boys fail within the normal classes first - they help to reinforce the idea that boys ought to fail in the normal classes. The expectation of boys' failure is normalised by the idea that they need 'special' or 'extra' help. To get the help, they must fail, and having failed they must then try to 'catch up'. You can see another manifestation of this in the oft-used phrase 'girls can be as good as or better than boys at X', where X is any academic subject. The logic of the statement is that the worst girls can do is the best boys can do.
The Australian report was cold on the idea of greater involvement of men and fathers, which is only another expression of what I said in the preceding paragraph. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that men with 'traditional' ideas about masculinity will be excluded from the educational experience of boys. Without the sense of discipline and benevolent authority, the sense of ambition and lack of bullshit that such men have, boys are more likely to fail academically. The intention is to create men who have no meaningful positive sense of identity or collective strength. Self-doubt is the most powerful destructive force there is, because you're always fighting an enemy who is as strong as you are: yourself. Nobody will admit it, but this is the desired outcome.
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Self-doubt is the most powerful destructive force there is, because you're always fighting an enemy who is as strong as you are: yourself. Nobody will admit it, but this is the desired outcome.
You've hit the bull's-eye, Uberganger.
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I also agree. Feminist school administrators--typically vindictive and malignantly stupid, even when they don't suffer from the additional disability of being feminist--have turned the schools into centers of anti-male bigotry; we might start our own schools and keep feminists and females out of them. The feminists in power clearly don't want men and boys to succeed in their schools.
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