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Christina Hoff Sommers thinks schooling would be better for boys if we gave them a plethora of vocational-technical classes and advocated for them as an underserved population, as we do for women in traditionally male fields.
...no. Well, maybe, I suppose, but the conclusions drawn from the plight provided appear remarkably myopic, and more than a little bit stereotyping. Starting with the set-up:
Wait. For kicks and giggles, how many professions require postgraduate education as a minimum for the entry level? Lawyers, doctors, (nurses?), teachers, librarians...I have to wonder if this disparity isn't something that has to do with the female-coded nature of many postgraduate professions. Maybe not the doctors and the lawyers, but the others... anyway, resuming...
So, the consequences are very dire for our boys - without that college education, the wages for the men have been going down. The Brookings Institute study could, of course, point to the decline of union jobs, factory closures, globalization, outsourcing, and all of those things that dried up the pool of good-paying jobs that didn't require collegiate degrees, leaving service industry work like Wal-Mart or McDonalds. But that wouldn't serve the current purpose. The College Board study that declares the awful plight of minority men sounds an alarm about the society and situations those men find themselves in outside of school. There are a lot of studies already out that point out how difficult it is to do well in school when all your survival instincts won't let you concentrate. And more than a few more studies that talk about the ease in which minority children can fall behind due to a lack of books, a lack of conversation, and a bad neighborhood long before they get to school.
So, what now? According to the article...
But really? This whole thing currently boils down to "Hey! Kinesthetic learners exist, and our school system does not do well with them right now." Vocational training, classes with more hands-on elements, ways to do instead of just reading and listening to lectures, and all of these things could be reintegrated into a classroom, given proper support, funding, and a curriculum that encourages all their students to find the ways that they learn best. And then provides those ways for every student.
But then, there's the whole other component. Making school better for boys isn't just about improving classroom environments and advocating for more vocational and technical training for those that have the aptitudes (but without sorting them up too soon), but also about improving their environments outside of the school. Early literacy projects and Head Start programs have had effects in improving the ability of everyone to avoid starting behind, and improvements to a surrounding environment that improve safety, economic security for families, reduce crime, violence, drug usage, gang activity, and otherwise make it so that those students don't have to concentrate on survival long enough to learn things pay dividends in the school environment.
It's entirely short-sighted to say that boys aren't doing well because they are just hard-wired to take stuff apart. Advocating for students means advocating for improving all aspects of their lives at all stages of their lives. Our article-writer needs to zoom out some.
...no. Well, maybe, I suppose, but the conclusions drawn from the plight provided appear remarkably myopic, and more than a little bit stereotyping. Starting with the set-up:
- Women are obtaining the majority of university degrees... Which apparently causes women to start fleeing college after there are less than 40 percent of men on campus. So I'm supposed to believe that enough women go to college to meet men that they'll flee when there aren't enough? I thought the M.R.S. degree was a thing of the past. Why so many women on campus? It's...
- ...because girls have more collegiate aspirations...
- ...because girls get better grades. Both of those assertions backed by a study, of course, that says women are more likely to aspire to postgraduate education (a Masters or Doctorate) than boys (29 percent to 16 percent), and that five percent more girls get mostly As than boys.
Wait. For kicks and giggles, how many professions require postgraduate education as a minimum for the entry level? Lawyers, doctors, (nurses?), teachers, librarians...I have to wonder if this disparity isn't something that has to do with the female-coded nature of many postgraduate professions. Maybe not the doctors and the lawyers, but the others... anyway, resuming...
So, the consequences are very dire for our boys - without that college education, the wages for the men have been going down. The Brookings Institute study could, of course, point to the decline of union jobs, factory closures, globalization, outsourcing, and all of those things that dried up the pool of good-paying jobs that didn't require collegiate degrees, leaving service industry work like Wal-Mart or McDonalds. But that wouldn't serve the current purpose. The College Board study that declares the awful plight of minority men sounds an alarm about the society and situations those men find themselves in outside of school. There are a lot of studies already out that point out how difficult it is to do well in school when all your survival instincts won't let you concentrate. And more than a few more studies that talk about the ease in which minority children can fall behind due to a lack of books, a lack of conversation, and a bad neighborhood long before they get to school.
So, what now? According to the article...
- Acknowledge that boys and girls are different.
- Change education to give boys more opportunities to hit things and take them apart.
- Steer more boys into vocational education.
- Advocate for boys at national levels, like we do for women
But really? This whole thing currently boils down to "Hey! Kinesthetic learners exist, and our school system does not do well with them right now." Vocational training, classes with more hands-on elements, ways to do instead of just reading and listening to lectures, and all of these things could be reintegrated into a classroom, given proper support, funding, and a curriculum that encourages all their students to find the ways that they learn best. And then provides those ways for every student.
But then, there's the whole other component. Making school better for boys isn't just about improving classroom environments and advocating for more vocational and technical training for those that have the aptitudes (but without sorting them up too soon), but also about improving their environments outside of the school. Early literacy projects and Head Start programs have had effects in improving the ability of everyone to avoid starting behind, and improvements to a surrounding environment that improve safety, economic security for families, reduce crime, violence, drug usage, gang activity, and otherwise make it so that those students don't have to concentrate on survival long enough to learn things pay dividends in the school environment.
It's entirely short-sighted to say that boys aren't doing well because they are just hard-wired to take stuff apart. Advocating for students means advocating for improving all aspects of their lives at all stages of their lives. Our article-writer needs to zoom out some.
