The Myth of 'The Boy Crisis'

Washington Post ^ | Sunday, April 9, 2006 | Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett

[palmer]

It was the early 1900s, and boys were supposedly in crisis. In monthly magazines, ladies' journals and books, urgent polemics appeared, warning that young men were spending too much time in school with female teachers and that the constant interaction with women was robbing them of their manhood...

Now the cry has been raised again: We're losing our boys. The media have been hyping America's new "boy crisis" in magazine cover stories, a PBS documentary and countless newspaper articles...

The boy crisis we're hearing about is largely a manufactured one, the product of both a backlash against the women's movement and the media's penchant for continuously churning out news about the latest dire threat to the nation...

[palmer]

Is that really a big deal, though?

It's a symptom. Regardless of the cause, boys are becoming less motivated to continue their education in general. white boys are the only demographic group whose high school dropout rate has risen since 2000 (from Where The Boys Aren't)

[WV Mountain Mama]

Right, of course there isn't a problem. The United States accounts for approximately 90 percent of total world manufacture and consumption of ritalin. Most of which is consumed by boys. Why is that? Could it be that we took away their recess? Could it be because we took away their gym class? Could it be because there is so much crap on school walls it diverts attention from the teacher? Or that they are forced to read touchy, feely, girly, non-violent stories that are boring, but PC? Perhaps because text books have so many different types of graphs, multicultural photos, and mini lessons within lessons on their pages that the boys have trouble concentrating on what they are actually supposed to be doing because boys and girls do learn differently? I was a teacher, I know they learn differently. The think, play, process info, communicate differently than girls, just to mention a few.

I will also add that the number of boys in this country growing up without fathers is also helping the crisis.

[Blessed]

>Is that really a big deal, though? As the article said, most of the gap is between black men and women; between whites it is only 49/51.<

You stopped reading to soon.This was according to the NEA.Just a little biased.Most of the Major Liberal Arts Universities are closer to 60% women.The major engineering schools are close to 40% women where they were 10% 20 years ago.I have 2 daughters and I am worried about them finding good men.

[Tax-chick]

LOL! They didn't have bathrooms! :-).

So in addition to missing out on Queer Legal Theory, they also didn't know much about plumbing, electronics, or digital signal analysis! However, not many college graduates today know what Aaron Burr, for example, needed to know to get into Princeton at the age of 14.

[Hardastarboard]

Personally I think the government needs to start a program that buys every new-born male child a Mini-14 and 6,000 rounds of ammunition so that they grow up feeling masculine.

[Tax-chick]

I think if your daughters (I have 3, so I'm concerned, too :-) are good women, they will find good men, as long as they don't put it off too long.

[weegee]

Heck, they couldn't even tivo the evening news or format in HTML...

[weegee]

However, not many college graduates today know what Aaron Burr, for example, needed to know to get into Princeton at the age of 14.

I thought that was Doogie Howser, M.D. < /sarc >

[Tax-chick]

:-). Aaron Burr was a moonbat, but he was quite an intellectual, too. He couldn't do corporate income tax accounting, like yours truly, but only because there was no such thing, which was good, actually ...

[palmer]

a Mini-14 and 6,000 rounds of ammunition

Hard to argue with that although some might say an AR-15.

[Jason_b]

"They didn't have bathrooms." No but they had these.

The Necessary

[Savage Beast]

This is probably beside the point, but did they ever finish removing the urinals from the men's rooms in Sweden?

[unixfox]

Feminists are women without men.

Nor do they deserve them/us.

[BamaGirl]

What do you expect from someone who can't even spell their name right. "Caryl" as an alternative for "Carol" is a litle close to the whole "women/womyn" thing for me not to wonder about her true motives...

[LWalk18]

Just a little biased.Most of the Major Liberal Arts Universities are closer to 60% women.

I found the numbers for schools according to the 2005 edition of U.S. News and World Report's America's Best Colleges:

1)Harvard- 53M/47F

1)Princeton- 52M/48F

3)Yale- 50M/50F

4)UPenn-50M/50F

5)Duke- 51M/49F

5)MIT- 58M/42F

5)Stanford- 50M/50F

8)CalTech- 67M/33F

9)Columbia- 53M/47F

9) Dartmorth- 51M/49F

11) Northwestern- 47M/53F

So the top ten schools all have either equal numbers of men and women or more men than women, confirming what the report says about men not being missing at the very top schools. You have to getting to the 11th ranked school before you see more women than men. The first national university that I see with 40% men or less is #32 NYU, which is 40M/60F. Compare with some historically black schools:

Howard- 33M/67F

Hampton- 38M/62F

Fisk- 31M/69F

Clark Atlanta- 29M/71F

[twippo]

I wonder if boys seem to be falling so much behind because girls are experiencing puberty earlier, thus widening the gap. Boys today seem the same now as they were when I was growing up, but girls have definitely changed. They're now menstruating at 9 years old, from what I've heard. It's like you've got boys and pseudo-women in the same class, so whom is the teacher going to relate better to?

[twippo]

The conservative Christian college I attended between 98-00 was 70% female.

[Tax-chick]

I remember that from my last trip to Mount Vernon. (Early 90's). A famous 6-seater, iirc.

[Old_Mil]

There are a lot of details that the Washington Post conveniently ignores in publishing this editorial in favor of rabid feminism...

...for instance, in the early 1900s, the divorce rate wasn't north of 50%. Half the children born in America weren't bastards, either.

[TalBlack]

"The major engineering schools are close to 40% women where they were 10% 20 years ago."


The subject is a bit more layered than most people seem to think. The reason that the major engineering schools are at 40% today may be BECAUSE they were only 10% 20 yrs ago.

Traditionally what has happened is that medical school or officers school didn't have as many woman as the PC types thought they should so standards were then dumbed down to "correct" the lack. This makes the educational experience less valuable to merit-minded males and the slide begins.

Med schools dumbed down admissions in the early 70's. As PC has filtered down the others have followed.