Posted on 07/25/2006 8:10:42 AM PDT by Lovingthis
How the Schools Shortchange Boys, by Gerry Garibaldi
In the newly feminized classroom, boys tune out.
Since I started teaching several years ago, after 25 years in the movie business, I’ve come to learn firsthand that everything I’d heard about the feminization of our schools is real—and far more pernicious to boys than I had imagined. Christina Hoff Sommers was absolutely accurate in describing, in her 2000 bestseller, The War Against Boys, how feminist complaints that girls were “losing their voice” in a male-oriented classroom have prompted the educational establishment to turn the schools upside down to make them more girl-friendly, to the detriment of males.
As a result, boys have become increasingly disengaged. Only 65 percent earned high school diplomas in the class of 2003, compared with 72 percent of girls, education researcher Jay Greene recently documented. Girls now so outnumber boys on most university campuses across the country that some schools, like Kenyon College, have even begun to practice affirmative action for boys in admissions. And as in high school, girls are getting better grades and graduating at a higher rate.
As Sommers understood, it is boys’ aggressive and rationalist nature—redefined by educators as a behavioral disorder—that’s getting so many of them in trouble in the feminized schools. Their problem: they don’t want to be girls.
Take my tenth-grade student Brandon. I noted that he was on the no-pass list again, after three consecutive days in detention for being disruptive. “Who gave it to you this time?” I asked, passing him on my way out.
“Waverly,” he muttered into the long folding table.
“What for?”
“Just asking a question,” he replied.
“No,” I corrected him. “You said”—and here I mimicked his voice—“ ‘Why do we have to do this crap anyway?’ Right?”
Brandon recalls one of those sweet, ruby-cheeked boys you often see depicted on English porcelain.
He’s smart, precocious, and—according to his special-education profile—has been “behaviorally challenged” since fifth grade. The special-ed classification is the bane of the modern boy. To teachers, it’s a yellow flag that snaps out at you the moment you open a student’s folder. More than any other factor, it has determined Brandon’s and legions of other boys’ troubled tenures as students.
Brandon’s current problem began because Ms. Waverly, his social studies teacher, failed to answer one critical question: What was the point of the lesson she was teaching? One of the first observations I made as a teacher was that boys invariably ask this question, while girls seldom do. When a teacher assigns a paper or a project, girls will obediently flip their notebooks open and jot down the due date. Teachers love them. God loves them. Girls are calm and pleasant. They succeed through cooperation.
Boys will pin you to the wall like a moth. They want a rational explanation for everything. If unconvinced by your reasons—or if you don’t bother to offer any—they slouch contemptuously in their chairs, beat their pencils, or watch the squirrels outside the window. Two days before the paper is due, girls are handing in the finished product in neat vinyl folders with colorful clip-art title pages. It isn’t until the boys notice this that the alarm sounds. “Hey, you never told us ’bout a paper! What paper?! I want to see my fucking counselor!”
A female teacher, especially if she has no male children of her own, I’ve noticed, will tend to view boys’ penchant for challenging classroom assignments as disruptive, disrespectful—rude. In my experience, notes home and parent-teacher conferences almost always concern a boy’s behavior in class, usually centering on this kind of conflict. In today’s feminized classroom, with its “cooperative learning” and “inclusiveness,” a student’s demand for assurance of a worthwhile outcome for his effort isn’t met with a reasonable explanation but is considered inimical to the educational process. Yet it’s this very trait, innate to boys and men, that helps explain male success in the hard sciences, math, and business.
The difference between the male and female predilection for hard proof shows up among the teachers, too. In my second year of teaching, I attended a required seminar on “differentiated instruction,” a teaching model that is the current rage in the fickle world of pop education theory. The method addresses the need to teach all students in a classroom where academic abilities vary greatly—where there is “heterogeneous grouping,” to use the ed-school jargon—meaning kids with IQs of 55 sit side by side with the gifted. The theory goes that the “least restrictive environment” is best for helping the intellectually challenged. The teacher’s job is to figure out how to dice up his daily lessons to address every perceived shortcoming and disability in the classroom.
After the lecture, we broke into groups of five, with instructions to work cooperatively to come up with a model lesson plan for just such a classroom situation. My group had two men and three women. The women immediately set to work; my seasoned male cohort and I reclined sullenly in our chairs.
“Are the women going to do all the work?” one of the women inquired brightly after about ten minutes.
“This is baloney,” my friend declared, yawning, as he chucked the seminar handout into a row of empty plastic juice bottles. “We wouldn’t have this problem if we grouped kids by ability, like we used to.”
The women, all dedicated teachers, understood this, too. But that wasn’t the point. Treating people as equals was a social goal well worth pursuing. And we contentious boys were just too dumb to get it.
Female approval has a powerful effect on the male psyche. Kindness, consideration, and elevated moral purpose have nothing to do with an irreducible proof, of course. Yet we male teachers squirm when women point out our moral failings—and our boy students do, too. This is the virtue that has helped women redefine the mission of education.
The notion of male ethical inferiority first arises in grammar school, where women make up the overwhelming majority of teachers. It’s here that the alphabet soup of supposed male dysfunctions begins. And make no mistake: while girls occasionally exhibit symptoms of male-related disorders in this world, females diagnosed with learning disabilities simply don’t exist.
For a generation now, many well-meaning parents, worn down by their boy’s failure to flourish in school, his poor self-esteem and unhappiness, his discipline problems, decide to accept administration recommendations to have him tested for disabilities. The pitch sounds reasonable: admission into special ed qualifies him for tutoring, modified lessons, extra time on tests (including the SAT), and other supposed benefits. It’s all a hustle, Mom and Dad privately advise their boy. Don’t worry about it. We know there’s nothing wrong with you.
To get into special ed, however, administrators must find something wrong. In my four years of teaching, I’ve never seen them fail. In the first IEP (Individualized Educational Program) meeting, the boy and his parents learn the results of disability testing. When the boy hears from three smiling adults that he does indeed have a learning disability, his young face quivers like Jell-O. For him, it was never a hustle. From then on, however, his expectations of himself—and those of his teachers—plummet.
Special ed is the great spangled elephant in the education parade. Each year, it grows larger and more lumbering, drawing more and more boys into the procession. Since the publication of Sommers’s book, it has grown tenfold. Special ed now is the single largest budget item, outside of basic operations, in most school districts across the country.
Special-ed boosters like to point to the success that boys enjoy after they begin the program. Their grades rise, and the phone calls home cease. Anxious parents feel reassured that progress is happening. In truth, I have rarely seen any real improvement in a student’s performance after he’s become a special-ed kid. On my first day of teaching, I received manila folders for all five of my special-ed students—boys all—with a score of modifications that I had to make in each day’s lesson plan.
I noticed early on that my special-ed boys often sat at their desks with their heads down or casually staring off into space, as if tracking motes in their eyes, while I proceeded with my lesson. A special-ed caseworker would arrive, take their assignments, and disappear with the boys into the resource room. The students would return the next day with completed assignments.
“Did you do this yourself?” I’d ask, dubious.
They assured me that they did. I became suspicious, however, when I noticed that they couldn’t perform the same work on their own, away from the resource room. A special-ed caseworker’s job is to keep her charges from failing. A failure invites scrutiny and reams of paperwork. The caseworkers do their jobs.
Brandon has been on the special-ed track since he was nine. He knows his legal rights as well as his caseworkers do. And he plays them ruthlessly. In every debate I have with him about his low performance, Brandon delicately threads his response with the very sinews that bind him. After a particularly easy midterm, I made him stay after class to explain his failure.
“An ‘F’?!” I said, holding the test under his nose.
“You were supposed to modify that test,” he countered coolly. “I only had to answer nine of the 27 questions. The nine I did are all right.”
His argument is like a piece of fine crystal that he rolls admiringly in his hand. He demands that I appreciate the elegance of his position. I do, particularly because my own is so weak.
Yet while the process of education may be deeply absorbing to Brandon, he long ago came to dismiss the content entirely. For several decades, white Anglo-Saxon males—Brandon’s ancestors—have faced withering assault from feminism- and multiculturalism-inspired education specialists. Armed with a spiteful moral rectitude, their goal is to sever his historical reach, to defame, cover over, dilute . . . and then reconstruct.
In today’s politically correct textbooks, Nikki Giovanni and Toni Morrison stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens, even though both women are second-raters at best. But even in their superficial aspects, the textbooks advertise publishers’ intent to pander to the prevailing PC attitudes. The books feature page after page of healthy, exuberant young girls in winning portraits. Boys (white boys in particular) will more often than not be shunted to the background in photos or be absent entirely or appear sitting in wheelchairs.
The underlying message isn’t lost on Brandon. His keen young mind reads between the lines and perceives the folly of all that he’s told to accept. Because he lacks an adult perspective, however, what he cannot grasp is the ruthlessness of the war that the education reformers have waged. Often when he provokes, it’s simple boyish tit for tat.
A week ago, I dispatched Brandon to the library with directions to choose a book for his novel assignment. He returned minutes later with his choice and a twinkling smile.
“I got a grrreat book, Mr. Garibaldi!” he said, holding up an old, bleary, clothbound item. “Can I read the first page aloud, pahlease?”
My mind buzzed like a fly, trying to discover some hint of mischief.
“Who’s the author?”
“Ah, Joseph Conrad,” he replied, consulting the frontispiece. “Can I? Huh, huh, huh?”
“I guess so.”
Brandon eagerly stood up before the now-alert class of mostly black and Puerto Rican faces, adjusted his shoulders as if straightening a prep-school blazer, then intoned solemnly: “The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ ”—twinkle, twinkle, twinkle. “Chapter one. . . .”
Merry mayhem ensued. Brandon had one of his best days of the year.
Boys today feel isolated and outgunned, but many, like Brandon, don’t lack pluck and courage. They often seem to have more of it than their parents, who writhe uncomfortably before a system steeled in the armor of “social conscience.” The game, parents whisper to themselves, is to play along, to maneuver, to outdistance your rival. Brandon’s struggle is an honest one: to preserve truth and his own integrity.
Boys who get a compartment on the special-ed train take the ride to its end without looking out the window. They wait for the moment when they can step out and scorn the rattletrap that took them nowhere. At the end of the line, some, like Brandon, may have forged the resiliency of survival. But that’s not what school is for.
I came home from work one day to see my son with a weird Tinkertoy apparatus around his head. He made a Halo, just like a friend with a broken neck was wearing. The difference was that my son's halo was mounted with several guns. Cause that's how boys think and that's what boys do.
I have long said that the disappearance of the draft guaranteed that a lot of boys were denyed the opportunity to be around men and to learn how to become men. Sad.
If you read my post again, you will see that I never indicated one should not be inquisitive. Quite the contrary! But the assertion on the part of the author that a child should be allowed (without consequence) to be so disrespectful in a formal setting is an illustration of how parents are helping to degrade the very system they are condemning. Nor am I defending the public schools in every aspect. I happen to agree with the need for vouchers, for competition, and results oriented education.
I, too have several years of RECENT experience in the technology industry, as a design engineer. I can tell you that, though there is no perfect world, fighting is not encouraged, and we did our best work in arguing (amicably) over various solutions to problems. Of course "why's" are answered. Your argument seems to be that those of us who would not allow combattive behavior in the classroom are stifling the "why's". We are denying the free-flowing sand-box self-discovery made possible only by allowing any and all types of behavior despite their potential negative effects on the over-all classroom experience. Reminds me of one of my three education classes in the 1970's where "anything goes" was the way to enlighten children. I didn't buy it then, and don't buy it now.
"Why's" are crucial. Particularly if they concern the subject matter and why a device like a transistor behaves the way it does, etc. Why a student is required to do a specific type of assignment can be handled differently than the manner that was accepted as boy-like behavior in this article. He could have asked, "Mr. X, could you please explain the purpose of the assignment again?" If it appears that the teacher is giving bonehead assignments (I can think of a few like that my daughters had in high school in a super liberal teacher's history class), maybe if the student is an elementary or high school student the parents should get involved, and remove the teacher or make recommendations involving the curriculum. I did when my daughter reported lesbian promoting garbage being spewed in the class described above. But, I still think that encouraging a student to be disrepectful in a classroom in the name of "inquisitive behavior" or seeking the "why", is just pure bull.
With your industry experience, you know as well as I do this is a global economy. Most of our global competitors are not concentrating on teaching their children to be disrespectful and that such behavior should be tolerated. They are helping their children to master material required to take the reins in the world, and not to master in whining.
This is a great article. I read Sommers book, as well, several years ago and knew only too well how right she was. I went from over 30 years in medicine to teaching. I don't regret it, but I am sad at what I see in the public schools. Like Sommers and this author, I lay it squarely at the feet of the radical feminists.
I helped out in SpecEd at the military HS in Heidelberg and had a class full of very normal young men. When I asked one of them why such a bright guy was here, he was very truthful with me- he said "Because I don't wanna do the work." It was just that simple.
"I lay fault at the feet of these boys FATHERS for tolerating such folly."
one word, home schooling
ok that was two words but what do you expect from a publically educated guy
We have our daughter in a private Christian school so I don't relate to public school issues locally. Our daugher is the typical tomboy. Like you she must conform to the rules however asking questions is encouraged! It is important to mold their will but not destroy their spirit!
"It is important to mold their will but not destroy their spirit!"
THAT IS IT!
Why not to follow the principle of openness which help to dismantle Soviet union and speak the truth openly (but politely)?
When faced with such "zero tolerance", parents and students could tell in presence of other students and teachers that "It is good and patriotic to be interested in military and to consider joining army in the future! Trying to feminize boys comes from hatred toward men and is unpatriotic."
You can say it better, but the rule is that new PC tyrants are afraid of light, the more public you are more scared they will be.
I absolutely agree. I have a son who will complete night school. At this point I just want him out. I have only one son. The girls are fine-they are treated completely differently than my son.
I'm also the mother of a son, and I couldn't agree more. In fact, it seemed to ramp up and take on a life of it's own over the last decade, it wasn't quite so obvious in my small area when my son first started school.
I agree with the author, as well, except for this:
A female teacher, especially if she has no male children of her own, I’ve noticed, will tend to view boys’ penchant for challenging classroom assignments as disruptive, disrespectful—rude.
Having experience in the workings at my son's school and as a volunteer teacher, I find, after a decade (at least) of hammering it home, friends of mine who also volunteer, who also and coincidentally have sons only, many of them are just as bad or worse with what they view as 'disruptive'. In my own group, once I started - or shoould I say stopped! - focusing on the fidgeting and such, their overall behavior improved and we had a more productive class. We were originally instructed to 'stop' such behaviors because they were considered 'acting up'.
That's all my daughter dates (19) -- partly by choice. It's fool's gold. Young women think having a puppy dog for a boyfriend or a husband is more pleasant for them -- until they realize they need a man with a pair when the going gets tough.
As if we fathers control the schools, or the culture, or our crazy ex-wives.
And I disagree that the education monopoly is irrational. It's perfectly rational as far as acting in its own narrow interests is concerned, and the interest of the students be damned.
The "why" question is ALWAYS ASKED, and eventually, ALWAYS ANSWERED.
The current buzzword for this (at my current corporation, at least) is "root cause".
The WHY is always important. Technical problems that "fix themselves", will always come up again. When you ascertain the 'why' of an issue, it can be permanently addressed.
And bin Laden knew it. Groups of four -- outnmbered by at least ten to one and armed only with boxcutters -- caused the horror of September 11 while American men on four airliners sat by and let them do it.
Thank you for that, liberal PC feminists and their fellow travelers in "education".....
I thank God that I spent 5th thru 8th grades in a two room schoolhouse, 2 grades to a room, where we were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, science, art and music by teachers who tolerated no nonsense. We were regularly tested for reading comprehension. We had recess twice a day with only a softball, bat and a football for equipment. We brought our lunch in a paper bag; there was no cafeteria, pool, gym, vending machines or any other extras. Best of all there was no teachers' union, the downfall of education, as far as I am concerned.
The punishment for misbehavior in the classroom was standing in the corner; we were told this the beginning of every school year. That was more humiliating than anything. Just the thought was enough; no student went over the line in those 5 years. Bottom line, the teacher was in charge, not the student nor the parents nor any outside organization. And common sense prevailed.
I would be home-schooling my children today.
What a sad commentary on the state of health care. Your son's friend is wearing a Halo made from TinkerToys? ;)
Hey! My husband is dyslexic too! He's worked very hard to overcome it and seemed to do better after playing "The Junior Phonics Game" with our son a few years ago. For some reason it seemed to really click with him!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1618525/posts?page=2696#2696
If it helped him it means that he is not dyslexic. It means that he cannot learn to read with the idiotic "look-and-say" "whole-word" method. He is perfectly normal.
"look-and-say" "whole-word" method is more fit for Chinese or Egyptian ideograms. Western alphabet which is designed to be phonetic and is one of the reasons why Western culture is superior to the Far East.
"look-and-say" "whole-word" method is the MAIN reason why Johnny can't read.
I hear that's still true of the Marines. Feminism, however, has taken a severe toll on the Army, or so I am told.
For instance, men and women do basic training together now in the Army, and the result has been a drastic decline in standards. Only special forces are now rigorously trained, or so say my sources.
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