School is now just a 'girl thing'

Edmonton Sun ^ | August 4, 2002 | Ted Byfield

[pbear8]

School is now just a 'girl thing'

By TED BYFIELD -- Edmonton Sun

Now that our liberal educators have spent at least 30 years softening, gentling and generally feminizing the school system, why are we so astonished to discover that boys are opting out of education?

We've gone to extraordinary lengths to assure them that they don't belong there, that unless they change and become more like girls, they aren't wanted. They don't change because, of course, they can't. More and more of them simply quit.

So why be astonished to see that 57% of bachelor's degrees granted by American universities this year went to women - 61% at the University of Calgary while 59% of those receiving graduate degrees were female?

Meanwhile, at the high school level, the male dropout rate soars high above the female, as does the male suicide rate and the male crime rate.

Officialdom is becoming alarmed. Something called the Business Roundtable, an organization of top American executives, has commissioned a study. "We simply can't afford to have half our population not developing the skill sets we are going to need," says a spokeswoman. Research teams are studying the problem from Harvard, the University of Michigan and the United Negro College Fund.

Heaven knows what conclusions they might reach. As with a great many other things, if the obvious explanation offends the politically correct, we aren't likely to hear it, and it certainly does.

The fact is that the elementary schools are run almost entirely by women. The junior highs aren't much different. The male-female teacher ratio in high schools is about 50-50. Why are we surprised to discover that a boy grows up convinced that education is a "girl thing"?

But it goes much deeper than that. At another conference last week, this one in Montreal, a British psychologist and researcher reported that studies show girls tend to fight with their tongues while boys fight with their fists. Thus was educational academe endowed with knowledge that could have been provided by any parent of both girls and boys since the dawn of history, but it's nice to know that our educators are discovering things.

They have yet to discover, however, that certain conclusions follow from this. Since boys are far more physical, their discipline must be more physical too. I taught for 10 years in a boys' school. The first thing you learn there is that for most normal males of a certain age three or four swats with a strap will accomplish more in 30 seconds than six weeks of heart-to-heart "counselling."

One also suspects that the mysterious disease known as ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder, may be caused by a deficit of meaningful direction - meaningful, that is, in the sense of coercive. Over that 10-year stint, I could probably identify 50 boys, all suffering from what today would be called ADD. Every one of them was 'cured' when he found that if he didn't do the assigned work, things would become dreadfully unpleasant.

It is certainly odd that a disease that was absolutely unheard of before the schools were feminized has now become chronic. The favoured treatment is to hop up boys into educational acquiescence with Ritalin, a derivative of cocaine. Drugging children is seen as somehow more humane than spanking them.

Then too, boys easily assume that all the ancient human arts - song and verse in particular - are essentially 'girl things,' which of course is nonsense. But it's very difficult for a female teacher to overcome this bias, and one result is to render all the arts as something 'real men' aren't interested in.

Finally, boys more readily embrace what might be called absolutes. They're far more at home in a world of win-lose, pass-fail, good-bad than in a world of 'feelings' in the modern school.

Fix these things and you'll fix the problem of the opting-out male. But they won't be fixed easily because it means supplanting the whole philosophy of modern education - supplanting it, not with something new, but with something old.

For while what I've said here will appear extremist, radical, even demented to the modern educator, it is in fact the way human beings have been educated for every previous generation. He is the innovator, not I. And insofar as boys are concerned, his innovations are turning out to be catastrophic.

[TxBec]

ping

[womanvet]

...teachers, they are underpaid...and overworked...

Cattle manure! If there were a teacher left in the government-run propaganda mills that pass for schools today, he or she would be fired. The typical NEA member is way overpaid, and does no work at all.

It is time we stop repeating the garbage that comes from their mouths about their pay, and tell them to wipe their crocadile tears or get a real job -- one where they work 12 months a year, and don't get days off so they can fill out forms and copy some lesson plan from a book and pretend it was their own work.

It is time to start lowering teacher salaries, eliminating administrative positions, and closing schools tht do not teach.

[Vic3O3]

In one word:
HOMESCHOOL!

[Tired of Taxes]

I taught for 10 years in a boys' school. The first thing you learn there is that for most normal males of a certain age three or four swats with a strap will accomplish more in 30 seconds than six weeks of heart-to-heart "counselling."

I had to laugh at that line. I had relatives with three sons, and I always thought they were mean to them. Once, I saw their mother grab them by the ear and pull them around. Now, I have three sons of my own. I would never hit them, but I do have to get physical with them almost everyday... because, I noticed that, when I tried the "Barney" technique of sympathy and understanding and communicating, it doesn't work. One day, my oldest wrestled his brother to the floor and began pushing his head into the carpet. I was holding the baby, so I couldn't pull him off, and I told him: Get off your brother; stop that; that's not nice... to no avail. Finally, I had to employ one of my relative's techniques: I had to grab him by the ear and tell him to get up or I was pulling it off. Sounds mean, but I couldn't let him hurt his brother. Turns out I learned alot from those relatives. =)

[goodieD]

The best school I ever attended was a little bitty high school in a little bitty town in Oklahoma. It was 90 percent male run. In fact the only female teacher I saw was the home ec teacher (there were NO boys in that class). There were few discipline problems (you had a choice, the paddle or being sent home and everyone chose the paddle). There was a fairly strict dress code. And yet, no one acted "repressed" or like "robots".. everyone was fairly well adjusted, happy, and normal. It's a shame there aren't many of those kinds of public schools left, if any.

[Search4Truth]

You'd be surprised at how hard you can pull on a boy's ear before it comes off. LOL And if you want to simply get a boy's attention, a knuckle of the top of the head always works.

[ladylib]

This is the way it is in public schools now. Both get in trouble. The teacher or school goon squad just sits there watching a kid get the crap beat out of him and if the other kid so much as raises a hand, he's in trouble too. I heard that this is to protect school officials from getting sued. I don't see how, since they are sitting around watching a crime being committed. So, I wonder, if a girl is being sexually assaulted in school, does she just have to take it, or can she defend herself? Public schools truly suck.

[PsyOp]

This is now suprise. The anti-male bias in the school system is amazing. I have been going through the process of getting a teaching crediential in California and it has been an eye-opening and painful process.

When I hear people complain that the problems in California lagging educational system will be resolved by making sure that all the teachers are credentialed, I have to laugh. If people knew what was being taught in those programs they'd call for an end to them today. I could (and have done as a sub) a better job than most of those with a credential. As long as you know your subject, you can teach, and regardless of credentialing, some will know more and be better at imparting the knowledge. Just ask yourself - Was teaching mre or less effective before widespread credentialing?

The real problems are:
1. Way to much political correctness.
2. Lack of standards to teach to (reading, writing, math, and un-revised history).
3. To much time spent on aids, environmental, and non-existent "rights" (animal, gay, etc), education.
4. Lack of discipline among students and teachers.
5. Failure to impose practical standards of conduct for students, or failure to punish for breachs. Same goes for parents who now sue teachers and schools when their brats commit an offense and whine when punished.
6. Too many ridiculous, time and money consuming hurdles to entering the profession. These essentially serve to drive the most qualified people away.
7. Bloated school administration bureaucracies that suck all the money out of the system before it can reach the classroom or the teachers.

The list goes on. As for the anti-boy bias... I believe that it is deliberate and is the result of the many radical feminists that inhabit all levels of the system.

[Ligeia]

if the other kid so much as raises a hand, he's in trouble too.

This is true. Here in my county, a 17 year-old boy was benched for two lacrosse games for trying to break up a fight due the the "third man rule." Instead of the officials being placed in a position to sort things out, they immediately bench players who try and help. Idiot parents have done this to our school system by interfering too often in like situations that don't involve them. The zero tolerance madness is out of control.

[PsyOp]

Re: Hitting Back

I was subbing at a middle-school one afternoon. There was a firedrill during my down-period, so I did not have to deal with herding kids and was standing on the field observing things when I noticed two girls aged 13-14 get into a brawl. One was realLy beating the crap out of the other.

I immediately headed towards the fight to stop it. A teacher near me looked at me and said "don't even think about it - leave it alone..." I stopped momentarily trying to think if she was warning of some prosecutable offense I was about to commit that I missed in my sub's handbook. I could think of none and decided to go stop the fight.

By this time everyone, teachers included, were looking. But I was the only one moving, which I thought was very strange. When I got there I could not sepparate them as they were rolling around on the ground with fist-fulls of each others hair (and I did not want to inadvertently grab some body part that would get me prosecuted for molestation). Finally, two other teachers came to help me (shamed into action no doubt). During the struggle, the aggressor aimed a heel at my face with the intention (she admitted) of loosening my teeth or breaking my nose. I saw it coming and moved enough to catch the kick on the side of my jaw instead of my teeth.

As she was being escorted away to the office by the vice-principal, she broke away and started charging back accross the field towards the other girl, who was being looked over and helped by another teacher. I was between them and told the girl to stop while took a tackling stance. She stopped in front of me and proceeded to tell me how I couldn't touch her. I said I'd throw her over my shoulder or drag her to the office by her heel if she took another step. By that time though, the VP had caught up with her and took her in tow to the office with me following a few feet behind.

I ended up testifying at her expulsion hearing (not so much because of the fight, but because she had deliberately kicked me in the face while I tried to sepparate her from the other girl). When they went over the long list of this girls previous offenses and victims, I could not help but wonder why she wasn't already in juvenile detention. A 14-YEAR OLD GIRL!

[ladylib]

Having teachers just sit there while a kid is being physically abused does nothing to make parents feel comfortable about sending their kid to that school. Perhaps parents should find out what the policy is and make an informed decision as to whether they want junior to attend Lord of the Flies Middle School.

[PsyOp]

I asked one of the teachers who came to help me why no one was doing anything. The simple answer was they were afraid of getting sued or losing their jobs if one of the brats, or the brats parents, complained.

If you have ever read the all the rules that teachers have to comply with regarding what they can and cannot do with regard to students, it is not hard to understand. In California, if a kid turns out to have been abused by a parent, and it can be "proved" that you saw a bruise at one time or another and did not report your suspicions (whether you had any or not), you, as a teacher, can be prosecuted.

There is no allowing for judgement calls, see a bruise on a kid, guess wrong as to the cause, go to jail or lose your job.

Is it any suprise?

[cherry]

" I believe that it is deliberate and is the result of the many radical feminists that inhabit all levels of the system. "

and here I thought it was the homosexual gays that were infiltrating the schools....

[GingisK]

Can't be anything to do with the type of stupidity that fosters expulsion for drawing pictures of guns, could it? I used to draw tank battles, airplanes putting rockets into railway locomotives, and so on. Boys do this, girls don't. Boys sure do get kicked out for being boys these days. I need to find a corner to puke in now.

[Junior]

Dude, you were in third grade in '88? Now I feel really old ...

[ladylib]

Gee, I wonder. Even male superintendents and principals come off looking like wussies in today's new zero tolerance/zero brains school atmosphere.

[PsyOp]

"and here I thought it was the homosexual gays that were infiltrating the schools...."

You could be right. Its hard to tell them apart sometimes.

[GingisK]

Even male superintendents and principals come off looking like wussies...

They surely do! What really drives me nuts is that those wussies are in charge, and we mere morals don't seem to be able to project our voices above the din. They seem to think they know what is best for our children and the good of the Nation; and, there is no redress.

I plan to lay a barrage of letters on the desk of the other set of pig-headded wussies in my life: my state and federal "represenatives". I am really dissapointed with the silence of the Republican party on these issues.

[jae471]

Heck, I remember a picture of an F-16 in flight I drew in 6th grade. (I can't remember if I armed it or not.) It was displayed in the hall during art week. That was during the 91-92 school year. Imagine the reaction today, a mere ten years later.

[ladylib]

Democrats - Republicans - same thing really. Not a dime's worth of difference between them.