Down, Down, Down (Reflections On The Boy Crisis)

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2006/07/09/...he-boy-crisis/

Down, Down, Down (Reflections On The Boy Crisis)
July 09, 2006
By Fred Reed
One hears often now that boys flounder in school, drop out, generally
perform less well academically than girls, and don't go to college. A
certain amount of this commentary comes from women who seem quietly to enjoy
the spectacle. Given that women control the schools, this might suggest
that, if they are not actually causing the problem, neither are they in a
hurry to do anything about it. Other people worry that the comparative
superabundance of female college graduates will have no one to marry: While
men will marry down, women won't. Regarding all of which:

The cause is not that boys are stupid. Boys have higher average scores than
do girls on standardized tests, for example, and at the high end are far
ahead of the girls. Putting it straightforwardly, the very smart are
predominantly male, particularly in mathematics, and the exceedingly smart,
almost entirely so. You don't have to like it. You don't have to think it
fair. But it is a fact, and everybody in the field knows it.

Consider. The maximum score on each half of the SATs, both verbal and
mathematical, is 800. You have to be, or had to be until the tests were
recently dumbed down ("recentered," I meant to say,"recentered."), quite
bright to score an 800. In 1999, when I checked because I was writing a
column, 1611 girls in the country scored 800 on the math section; 4815 boys
did. Verbal? Girls, 2828; boys, 3087. The male average on the math SATs was
531. The female was 495. That's not a trivial difference. Verbal scores?
Males 509, females 502. The latter difference is slight and probably
attributable the larger numbers of girls taking the test. The difference in
math scores isn't..

This embarrassing disparity has been widely known at least since the
publication of Camilla Benbow's paper in 1980 from Johns Hopkins. It remains
despite alteration of tests (for example, National Merit) specifically to
improve the scores of females, despite "recentering" of the SATs to make
women and minorities look better at the high end. So what is the problem?

Whatever it is, it is new. I graduated in 1964 from a mediocre high school
in rural Virginia. Demographically it was a bit of a curiosity. Many of the
students were children of scientists and navy officers from Dahlgren Naval
Weapons Laboratory, and the rest rough country kids. There was no
discrimination by sex in the curriculum, incidentally: All in the college
track took two years of algebra, a year of plane geometry, and a year of
solid and trig, for example. If your parents had gone to college, you went
to college, regardless of sex. All the kids of educated parents graduated,
and almost all of the others. The exceptions were a few truly witless boys
(boys predominate at the low end of intelligence too).

There was no "boy crisis." The girls made better grades, the boys better
scores on standardized tests. There was no yawning gap.

In short, girls haven't come up. They have always done well in school. Boys
have gone down. Why?

I can guess. Boys are churning wads of energy. They are physical and
competitive. They want to climb things, test themselves, jump off of things,
explore, drive fast, fight, behave like damn fools, and sack cities. In
later years this energy may serve them well, but not yet. School is hellish
for them, with its year after year of sitting, bored out of their skulls,
while some drone babbles. It is worse for the bright, verging on child
abuse. They hate it. I did.

Girls are more orderly, patient, accept rules with less resistance, and do
their homework. They have better handwriting and cut pictures from magazines
to paste into projects. They finish assignments on time. In general girls
are easier to deal with, certainly for the female teachers who now are
almost the only teachers.

Now, 1964 was very different from today. Families were intact. I do not
remember a single kid whose parents had been divorced. There was therefore a
man in the house. Adolescent boys are wild men. A man can control them. A
divorced woman often has a hard time controlling daughters.

There were men in the schools. We had a hard-eyed male principal, Larry
Roller or, as we called him, Chrome Dome. You did not screw with Roller. He
could, and would, expel on the spot any boy who seriously transgressed.
(Girls just didn't commit expellable offenses.) This of course meant that he
almost never expelled anyone: We were teenagers, not suicides.

Discipline was not harsh. The boys clowned in class and engaged in pranks (I
may know somewhat of this), but we knew where the limits were. There were a
goodly number of male teachers, which helped us know the limits.

Further, parents would back up the teachers without question. If I had said,
"**** you" to a teacher, the French Foreign Legion would have been my only
choice. Facing my father would have been-how shall I put it?-unproductive.

Boys need someone who can control them until, in a few years, the internal
controls are in place. Women can't do it. Therefore we have police in the
schools, and we drug boys into somnolence with amphetamines. Parents,
instead of even trying to control their kids, will litigate.

Boys cease to be students and become problems, so teachers don't like them.

Further, in the schools today we have feminization, feminization,
feminization. Instead of treating girls like girls, and boys like boys, all
are expected to be girls. It doesn't work. Boys by their very nature like to
roughhouse. They like contact sports. You don't have to force them to play
football. They are competitive. Women don't understand this, and what they
don't understand, they outlaw. Today estrogenated school after estrogenated
school bans dodge ball as too dangerous, outlaws tag ("They get too rough,"
meaning too rough for Mrs. Teacher), and insists on "groups games led by a
caring adult."

It is hideous for boys. Everything they are, it isn't. "Ohhhhh, let's have a
caring non-competitive game.." If he is really bright, with an IQ north of
150, he will decide that his teachers are idiots, which most of them are,
and withdraw. There will be a price for this one day.

You want to end the "boy crisis"? Easy. Give boys male teachers who
understand boys and care about them. Women do neither. Let them compete. It's
how they are. Encourage them to burn off energy in the gym. Reward
achievement, not pretty projects. Turn them into men, not transvestites.

Nahhh, never happen.

More Scurrilous Commentary by Fred Reed is available at
http://www.fredoneverything.net

Dusty wrote:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2006/07/09/...he-boy-crisis/

Down, Down, Down (Reflections On The Boy Crisis)
July 09, 2006
By Fred Reed
One hears often now that boys flounder in school, drop out, generally
perform less well academically than girls, and don't go to college.

Someone needs to tell Fred Reed that he should rely more on facts.
Is it or is it not the case that boys drop out of school more than
girls?
Seems to imply "high school." Is that true? I'm willing to believe
Fred - but not the "one who hears" in his opening paragraph. Who is
this one person who hears this statistic? Is the statistic true or
not?
That matters a great deal.

A
certain amount of this commentary comes from women who seem quietly to enjoy
the spectacle.

If it is a fact that boys (regionally or nationwide or universally -
the article
doesn't make clear) drop out of high school (implied, but vague) more
than girls, then whatever it is that women are saying, if it is only
this
that they are saying - it is a fact, not a commentary.

If they are expressing opinions on that fact, it's a commentary. If
their
facts are wrong, it's propaganda.

Given that women control the schools, this might suggest
that, if they are not actually causing the problem, neither are they in a
hurry to do anything about it.

Is there a correlation between male success and schools where
women are not in control? Is it the total number of employees, by
gender,
that results in the computation of who is in control - or is it the
fact
that not as many men go into teaching, so that becauses women are
in the classroom, that's by definition called "in control." If so,
just
so state. Otherwise illustrate how *women* produce the laws that
control curriculum - and the schools. In which states? I've lived in
several, and the state boards of education were male-dominated (quite
thoroughly at several top layers, although recently undergoing
realignment -
and women may well be in control - I'm not disputing that, it's
possible,
but I'd like facts and analysis).

Other people worry that the comparative
superabundance of female college graduates will have no one to marry: While
men will marry down, women won't. Regarding all of which:

The cause is not that boys are stupid. Boys have higher average scores than
do girls on standardized tests, for example, and at the high end are far
ahead of the girls. Putting it straightforwardly, the very smart are
predominantly male, particularly in mathematics, and the exceedingly smart,
almost entirely so. You don't have to like it. You don't have to think it
fair. But it is a fact, and everybody in the field knows it.

Until quite recently, these were not the facts. From 1950 until 1985,
while boys lagged in GPA compared to girls, they did better on the
math sections of the SAT, and were slightly under the girls on the
verbal sections. Throughout college, the gap widened - with males
on top. More of the incoming freshmen males would graduate than
females, often in ratios of 2:1.

In fact, at some top universities, the ratios of admitees were and
still
are roughly 2:1 in favor of males, none are completely 50/50 and those
that aren't favor males (except for the so-called girls colleges, like
Smith).

Consider. The maximum score on each half of the SATs, both verbal and
mathematical, is 800. You have to be, or had to be until the tests were
recently dumbed down ("recentered," I meant to say,"recentered."), quite
bright to score an 800. In 1999, when I checked because I was writing a
column, 1611 girls in the country scored 800 on the math section; 4815 boys
did. Verbal? Girls, 2828; boys, 3087. The male average on the math SATs was
531. The female was 495. That's not a trivial difference. Verbal scores?
Males 509, females 502. The latter difference is slight and probably
attributable the larger numbers of girls taking the test. The difference in
math scores isn't..

Exactly. These are facts. And until about 1985-1988, these same
males were entering school at a higher rate - and were graduating out
of
proportion, even, to those SAT scores. Studies of immediate post-
graduate salaries still reflect significant differences between males
and
females - but often because women are already choosing not to compete
for top jobs/salaries. It's interesting - but describe the mechanism,
Fred,
by which women managed to change this. How was it "women" as a group
and not, in fact, the boards and presidents and faculty of colleges -
who
are still predominantly male? Sex traitors?

This embarrassing disparity has been widely known at least since the
publication of Camilla Benbow's paper in 1980 from Johns Hopkins. It remains
despite alteration of tests (for example, National Merit) specifically to
improve the scores of females, despite "recentering" of the SATs to make
women and minorities look better at the high end. So what is the problem?

That's a factual misstatement. That's not how the "recentering" took
place.
The recentering simply lowered the curve overall and introduced even
more
stringent testing - which actually resulted in a lowering of the scores
of minorities. It was not calibrated according to ethnicity or gender.
If
it results in such differences, they fall outside the test itself. Try
to keep
that clear.

Whatever it is, it is new. I graduated in 1964 from a mediocre high school
in rural Virginia. Demographically it was a bit of a curiosity. Many of the
students were children of scientists and navy officers from Dahlgren Naval
Weapons Laboratory, and the rest rough country kids. There was no
discrimination by sex in the curriculum, incidentally: All in the college
track took two years of algebra, a year of plane geometry, and a year of
solid and trig, for example. If your parents had gone to college, you went
to college, regardless of sex. All the kids of educated parents graduated,
and almost all of the others. The exceptions were a few truly witless boys
(boys predominate at the low end of intelligence too).

Last sentence is also a fact. Author is on the right track - just
needs
better understanding of statistical analysis.

There was no "boy crisis." The girls made better grades, the boys better
scores on standardized tests. There was no yawning gap.

In short, girls haven't come up. They have always done well in school. Boys
have gone down. Why?

I can guess. Boys are churning wads of energy. They are physical and
competitive. They want to climb things, test themselves, jump off of things,
explore, drive fast, fight, behave like damn fools, and sack cities. In
later years this energy may serve them well, but not yet. School is hellish
for them, with its year after year of sitting, bored out of their skulls,
while some drone babbles. It is worse for the bright, verging on child
abuse. They hate it. I did.

I agree. Oh, you're onto something, Fred. But it affects bright girls
just as much as bright boys. Bright people (more of them male - I
admit
it, using SAT scores or other similar measures) are very similar in
many
ways, male or female. We need them to stay IN school. It's
crucial. They need to BE the school.

Girls are more orderly, patient, accept rules with less resistance, and do
their homework. They have better handwriting and cut pictures from magazines
to paste into projects. They finish assignments on time. In general girls
are easier to deal with, certainly for the female teachers who now are
almost the only teachers.

Which sucks (and which is why I have such a hard time with girls,
myself - those are all fine characteristics, but really, those are
SECRETARY
skills, not EINSTEIN skills).

Now, 1964 was very different from today. Families were intact. I do not
remember a single kid whose parents had been divorced. There was therefore a
man in the house. Adolescent boys are wild men. A man can control them. A
divorced woman often has a hard time controlling daughters.

There were plenty of divorces where I grew up, but it was small town,
blue collar America, and those same dads were close by - and the
mother's
brothers were a force to be reckoned with, throughout all ethnic
groups.
Grandpas weren't exactly to be fooled around with, either - and
everyone
was involved, seemingly, in everyone's business - at some level. At
least
watching out. The police and the principal were friends - and they
knew
the boys. They knew what they were up to, and when to pull the reins
in.

Today, we've got Zero Tolerance and Zero Collective Experience - very
hard on boys, and on bright people. In some ways, even non-bright boys
share some of the prerequisites of bright people (wanting activity,
physical experiences), while many non-bright girls (say, those with XXX
syndrome) are passive. Did you see that new UCLA study about how
pervasive sex hormones are in creating nearly all human capacities?

There were men in the schools. We had a hard-eyed male principal, Larry
Roller or, as we called him, Chrome Dome. You did not screw with Roller. He
could, and would, expel on the spot any boy who seriously transgressed.
(Girls just didn't commit expellable offenses.) This of course meant that he
almost never expelled anyone: We were teenagers, not suicides.

Exactly.

Discipline was not harsh. The boys clowned in class and engaged in pranks (I
may know somewhat of this), but we knew where the limits were. There were a
goodly number of male teachers, which helped us know the limits.

And while SOME of the female teachers also held the line, with boys, a
lot
of them didn't. I distinctly remember female teachers being less
likely to
set limits with boys and then freak out about the same boys. Male
teachers,
on the other hand, had a tendency to be a bit too interested in girls,
sometimes.

Further, parents would back up the teachers without question. If I had said,
"**** you" to a teacher, the French Foreign Legion would have been my only
choice. Facing my father would have been-how shall I put it?-unproductive.

I hear ya. Me too - and I'm, of course, a girl. I understood - from
my father -
that under certain contexts MEN were allowed or expected to cuss (but
that they regretted it), and that women, boys and girls should not
cuss.

Boys need someone who can control them until, in a few years, the internal
controls are in place. Women can't do it. Therefore we have police in the
schools, and we drug boys into somnolence with amphetamines. Parents,
instead of even trying to control their kids, will litigate.

It's a bit more complex. A boy who, at 14, doesn't have much
self-control
is much less likely to develop it on time. He may be 35 before he
finally gets
it - if ever. While it's fine to point to the absence of fathers in
the home,
which is significant, it's also interesting to note that many of these
personality traits are set in very early childhood - during the first
five years.
That fact needs to be controlled for, and when it is, the analysis is
somewhat different.

Boys cease to be students and become problems, so teachers don't like them.

Further, in the schools today we have feminization, feminization,
feminization. Instead of treating girls like girls, and boys like boys, all
are expected to be girls. It doesn't work. Boys by their very nature like to
roughhouse. They like contact sports. You don't have to force them to play
football. They are competitive. Women don't understand this, and what they
don't understand, they outlaw. Today estrogenated school after estrogenated
school bans dodge ball as too dangerous, outlaws tag ("They get too rough,"
meaning too rough for Mrs. Teacher), and insists on "groups games led by a
caring adult."

I agree if we all have to be one traditional gender, PLEASE let it be
boys.
Do not consign me forever to the world of Strawberry Shortcake.
Please.
Please, let me be a boy in that case!

It is hideous for boys. Everything they are, it isn't. "Ohhhhh, let's have a
caring non-competitive game.." If he is really bright, with an IQ north of
150, he will decide that his teachers are idiots, which most of them are,
and withdraw. There will be a price for this one day.

Oh yes. And this happened purely because of female politicking - that
I'll agree with. A teacher can be female and still appreciate
masculinity
(if she doesn't, she'd best not talk about the history of science or
math,
or teach early or medieval or later philosophy, in fact, she'd better
pretty
much not mention anything about who does what...). But today's
teachers
are so insecure (about what, exactly? their own intelligence?) that
they
can't handle the inherent challenges of bright, creative people (who
are
frequently and commonly, boys).

You want to end the "boy crisis"? Easy. Give boys male teachers who
understand boys and care about them. Women do neither. Let them compete. It's
how they are. Encourage them to burn off energy in the gym. Reward
achievement, not pretty projects. Turn them into men, not transvestites.

Nahhh, never happen.

Well, speak to the Brits (in particular, the members of Monty Python
about the value of all male schools). Obviously, you don't want to
have
all male teachers at schools with girls - and no women teachers at all,
do you? There need to be far more male teachers - but that's up to
men,
to go into teaching. I don't believe we should legislate it. I think
men
should realize they need to do it. Then, they'll approach it with the
right
attitude.

Rewarding achievement needs to be brought back. Competition is not
always evil. Sports are good. Being argumentative and stubborn are
good.
Always seeking to compromise and have a nice tea party is not always
good.

It's up to men to do this part, though. Take back whatever it is you
gave
up by ceasing to be teachers, schoolmasters, school founders, outdoor
guides, mechanics with apprentices, mentors to each other, etc.

A.

More Scurrilous Commentary by Fred Reed is available at
http://www.fredoneverything.net

wrote:
You want to end the "boy crisis"? Easy. Give boys male teachers who
understand boys and care about them. Women do neither. Let them compete. It's
how they are. Encourage them to burn off energy in the gym. Reward
achievement, not pretty projects. Turn them into men, not transvestites.
Nahhh, never happen.

I am a totally blind heterosexual male who never benefited from more
time in the gym or competitive sports. I didn't turn out to be less of
a man from reading a lot and studying music.

Orlando

wrote:
Rewarding achievement needs to be brought back. Competition is not
always evil.

Depends on what kind of achievement is to be rewarded. In your ideal
educational situation, would only achievements in competitive sports be
rewarded while creative, artistic or literary achievements ridiculed?

Sports are good.

I agree. But some students cannot participate in sports, and they
shouldn't be ostracized by too much cultural pressure.

Being argumentative and stubborn are
good.

Especially with Jesuits.

Always seeking to compromise and have a nice tea party is not always
good.

Hear hear!

Orlando

Boys drop out of school because female teachers f*ck them. They only
caught a few, wonder how many are still going away with it../