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Bias Suit Reveals The Truth Behind The 'Boy Crisis'



 
 
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Old February 1st 06, 09:05 AM posted to alt.child-support
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Default Bias Suit Reveals The Truth Behind The 'Boy Crisis'


http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/2006/0...behind-boy.htm
Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Bias Suit Reveals The Truth Behind The 'Boy Crisis'
by Carey Roberts
Six days after graduating from Milton High School, Mickarl Thomas tragically
died in a single-car accident. Affectionately known as Mikey, he was the
co-captain of his Boston-area football team and the only black male in his
honors classes.

Growing up in a family with two sisters and no father, Mikey had a strong
need to hang out with other African-American guys. It's that old thing about
men needing to learn about masculinity from other men.

As chance would have it, a few years later his mother Carole, now a
successful consultant, was hired by the school to do a diversity assessment.
Her report acknowledged the sudden death of her son and then pointedly
noted, "The ultimate question is finding a way to encourage black males to
succeed academically in a way that does not demean the ethnic trust and
respect they so desperately need." (Word Doc)


But it turns out the problem of male achievement at Milton H.S. is not
limited to minorities.

Last month Doug Anglin, a white 17-year-old senior at the school, filed a
civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education. His
allegation: Milton High discriminates against boys.

At his school, girls outnumber boys 2 to 1 on the honor roll, and about 60%
of Advanced Placement students are female. Only 36% of teachers are men. And
in one class, students are expected to fancy up their notebooks with glitter
and feathers.

Ignoring the statistics and oblivious to the heartfelt plea from the
diversity consultant, school administrators seem to view the "boy problem"
more as an inconvenience than a crisis. In a recent Boston Globe interview,
Milton High principal John Drottar would only concede, "We're aware of it.
We're looking into it."

Twenty years ago the boy crisis did not exist.

True, boys didn't do as well as girls in reading and spelling, but they
compensated for that with higher science and math scores. Similar numbers of
men and women graduated from college. All in all, things seemed pretty equal
back then.

But everything changed in 1992 when the American Association for University
Women released its intellectually-dishonest, self-serving report, How
Schools Shortchange Girls. The document charged that girls were treated as
second-class citizens in the nation's schools, which made them suffer from a
crippling crisis of self-esteem.

But some had their doubts. One New York Times reporter interviewed Diane
Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education. Ravitch shook up the
educational establishment when she revealed, "The AAUW report was just
completely wrong. What was so bizarre is that it came out right at the time
that girls had just overtaken boys in almost every area."

Smarting under criticisms of bias, the AAUW commissioned a second report in
1998 called Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail our Children.

This time the AAUW decided to come clean with the truth: "National data
indicate that girls consistently earn either equivalent or higher grades
than boys in all subjects at all points in their academic careers."

But that admission could not undo the damage. Because four years before that
Congress had been stampeded into passing the Gender Equity in Education Act,
which singled out girls as an "under-served population." The Act pumped tens
of millions of dollars into advocacy research and feminist-inspired
programs, all based on the fraudulent claim that girls were lagging in an
all-encompassing patriarchal society.

This past week the front cover of Newsweek magazine announced "The Boy
Crisis." The article did not admit that boys are lagging because our schools
have been turned into feminist re-education camps. Rather, we're told the
problem is with male grey-matter, what Newsweek dubs the "boy brain."

But the boy brain theory doesn't explain why two decades ago, boys were
doing just fine. And why has the number of boys saying they don't like
school sky-rocketed 71% from 1980 to 2001? Well, that question stumped the
Newsweek reporters.

It's one thing to acknowledge the God-given neurological differences between
the sexes. But somehow the boy brain theory reminds me of the KKK-types who
once claimed that since the brains of certain races were slightly smaller,
those people had puny intellects.

Four months from now Carole Thomas will commemorate the ninth anniversary of
the death of her only son. Let's hope we come to recognize that Mikey's
story was not merely one of a life brimming with promise that was cut short
by a terrible fate, but rather an object lesson in why boys are falling
behind in a glitter and feathers world.


 




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