Raising boys today

I recently watched the PBS documentary, Raising Cain.This is a very interesting show on raising boys in the U.S. today, and how boys are failing.

The Washington Post has an article on the show and a transcript of an online chat with Michael Thompson.

There is a concern about how the school system in the U.S. is based on a female way of educating, and this is failing boys as they have a different style of learning.

It appears these days that schools (having become female centric since I was in school in the 60s and 70s) and parents (many of them single parents tired after a days work) can't handle the energy of boys, and therefore label it as a "problem". This being America we turn to a miracle drug to solve the "problem". A number of parents I know actually are relieved when their child is diagnosed with ADHD. I wonder how many of these kids really have ADHD?

"Girl behavior becomes the gold standard," says "Raising Cain" coauthor Thompson. "Boys are treated like defective girls." Many boys are being labeled as "bad", or in need of a "time out", or perceived as having ADHD. Boys then feel bad about themselves.

This site has an excellent article that sums up the situation: Boys flunk life 101

While the PBS show and Newsweek cover story are recent, the "Girls rule, boys drool" situation has been perculating for a few years as evidenced in this April 2004 article, "Where the Boys Aren't"

The Jan 30, 2006 issue of Newsweek has an interesting article titled, "The Trouble With Boys".

Newsweek titled their story "The Trouble with Boys." Who choose the article's title, its female author Peg Tyre? At least Newsweek didn't put the story's title on its cover. Wouldn't "Boys in Trouble" be a good title?

The Newsweek site also has a link to some video clips from the PBS documentary.

According to the Newsweek article,

"By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind. In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes. High-school boys are losing ground to girls on standardized writing tests. The number of boys who said they didn't like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001, according to a University of Michigan study. Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses. Thirty years ago men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body. Now they're a minority at 44 percent. This widening achievement gap, says Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of Education, 'has profound implications for the economy, society, families and democracy.'"

Also in the article,

"One of the most reliable predictors of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school rests on a single question: does he have a man in his life to look up to? Too often, the answer is no. High rates of divorce and single motherhood have created a generation of fatherless boys. In every kind of neighborhood, rich or poor, an increasing number of boys‚ - now a startling 40 percent ‚- are being raised without their biological dads."

The PBS documentary said that only 9% of teachers today are male. And how many of the 9% are phy ed teachers? From my school experience I didn't look up to my phy ed teachers. The schools today are not providing young boys with responsible role models to look up to. From my grade school experience the only teacher I remember is the 1 male teacher I had. From my high school experiences I remember an equal amount of male and female teachers. My male teachers seemed to know when to allow boys to let off steam, and when to rein us in to focus on the task at hand.

Last year a former girlfriend and her son told me how he liked having a male teacher - his first one ever. Now I get it. He was looking for a role model.

Watching the PBS show I was struck as how boys' stories where labeled as bad. One young boy, about 4 or 5, had a story where a bad man killed a horse, then a good man killed the bad man. The female teacher and girl students were upset with the story and the teacher led the class in coming up with a new rule that no one dies in future stories. Instead they would "fall asleep". I noticed the boys in the class sat silently when the teacher asked if everyone agreed.

Then the documentary showed how the young boy struggled to write another story where the bad guy was punished. He hesitated and figited for a while before finally saying that the bad guy would fall asleep. One could easily tell this boy was troubled at being censored. Since this was being filmed the teacher commented on how the boy struggled with his story this time. The teacher then opened up the "no one gets killed" rule, and after a discussion the class agreed that bad guys can get killed. But only bad guys. The boys in the class participated in the discussion and now seemed happier, and no longer felt bad about their contributions and themselves. This ties in with a recent brain study of men and women's brains where men find retribution more rewarding.

While flipping through TV channels the other day I came across Susan Sarandon on the Martha Stewart show. I am not a fan of Martha, but I do like Sarandon, having remembered her from her roles in the movies "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Atlantic City". She talked about how her daughter had no problems studying for the SAT tests, but this year her son is struggling. And Sarandon being a proper Liberal most likely raised her children fairly, equally, and politically correct.

A Montessori Mom wrote about the PBS show on her blog, and on raising her son.

This invisible man blog has some interesting comments and links to other sites.

What triggered my post on this subject? While the "Raising Cain" documentary has been rattling around in my head for the past week or so, the statistics here on one of my favorite sites (as I like statistics).

In reading through articles, blogs, and their comments I find a number of women are surprised at the differences between their sons and daughters; how their sons have all this excess energy. For years feminists have said that boys and girls are really the same, that their differences are a result of society and the child's upbringing. However with MRI scans and further studies, it has been shown that biology plays a large role in the differences. This is part of the reason that politically correct toy purchases often mean those toys are ignored by the children.

Another article on Wikipedia about boys is about the "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!" tshirts and books.

Now all of this will have an impact in the future. If boys and men continue to drop out of school their education and income will suffer.

A 1999 Toronto Sun newspaper survey asked women what they were looking for in a spouse,

• Would you pick a man who had less formal education than you (1%), about the same (61%), or more (36%)?

• Would you pick a man who earned less than you (1%), about the same (43%), or more (49%)?

I guess I should give up on finding a wife. I have the education (even if I am not using it presently), but with my recent career change into ranching, I don't have the income. I think I now fall into the "1%" catagory in the above survey. I don't mind if she earns more than me, but apparently she will mind. (-:

I've seen other surveys where women have had similar preferences with education and income. And not just in the U.S., I remember reading a study on how after the fall of communism there were many more educated Russian women than men. The women were very unhappy with the uneducated and drunken men in their country. And no, I wasn't reading about how to "meet hot Russian women now"!

If women think it is hard now to find a husband that meets their standards, it appears it will get worse if boys keep falling behind.

I don't have kids, but based on how society views boys and men, if I ever have kids I probably would wish for a girl. No sense bringing a boy into a society that dislikes and over medicates boys. On the other hand, if I could ever get a son educated and into a good job, he should have a large number of women to choose from for a wife.

I wonder how many other people in the U.S. believe the same as I do? Statistics anyone?