COLUMN: Males flunking public education
Are girls really smarter than boys? Based on the academic performance of the two genders, it seems that boys have been losing ground at an alarming rate.
More boys drop out of high school than girls. More boys have discipline problems than girls. More boys struggle with standardized tests than girls. And fewer boys apply for college than girls.
It wasn’t always this way. Thirty-years ago, the situation was reverse. More boys attended college than girls. In fact, the nation’s education system was considered to be a male-dominated world that discriminated against girls. Remember the old complaint that teachers called on male students more often than female students?
Those days are long gone. Today, female high school students typically do better than boys academically and are better prepared for college than their male counterparts. Girls outnumber boys in college freshmen classes 58-42. After that, boys quit at a higher rate than girls, making the college graduation gap even wider.
But while most people agree there’s a crisis in male education, the reasons for it are unclear. Among the most-cited culprits:
• Male students lack the self-discipline to succeed in high school and are more prone to discipline problems than females. Males drop out of high school more often as well. Among some groups of males, academic success is viewed as a weakness and a sign of a lack of masculinity.
• The breakup of families and high unwed birth rate has left many male students without a daily male role model in the home. Outside of sports, there is a lack of other male role models in most public schools.
• Females gravitate toward education careers far more than males by about a 5-1 ratio. That means much of today’s curriculum, classroom structure and teaching styles has been designed by females, perhaps with an unconscious bias toward the way females learn as opposed to how males learn.
• Academic rigor has been pushed down through the grades such that students are expected to know much more at an earlier age than ever before. Girls have absorbed that better than boys due to a faster maturation rate both in self-discipline and cognitive ability. For boys, the increasing academic rigor has proven frustrating, increased failure and caused male students to lose interest in school at an earlier age.
This is a true crisis, yet one that is not much discussed outside of the world of academia. To an extent, it is politically incorrect to discuss the problems of males in education. Some feminist groups view such talk as overwrought and claim that discussing the problems of male failure is just a back door way to undermine the achievements of females in the education arena.
But it isn’t. The under-achievement by boys in public schools is a time bomb; an entire generation is being lost. There are fewer jobs for uneducated males, as evidenced by the high ratio of men being laid off during the last two years of the recession.
Somehow, public schools are going to have to find a way to help male students be more successful in the classroom. To do that, there should be more public acknowledgement that the problem exists in the first place.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
It wasn’t always this way. Thirty-years ago, the situation was reverse. More boys attended college than girls. In fact, the nation’s education system was considered to be a male-dominated world that discriminated against girls. Remember the old complaint that teachers called on male students more often than female students?
Those days are long gone. Today, female high school students typically do better than boys academically and are better prepared for college than their male counterparts. Girls outnumber boys in college freshmen classes 58-42. After that, boys quit at a higher rate than girls, making the college graduation gap even wider.
But while most people agree there’s a crisis in male education, the reasons for it are unclear. Among the most-cited culprits:
• Male students lack the self-discipline to succeed in high school and are more prone to discipline problems than females. Males drop out of high school more often as well. Among some groups of males, academic success is viewed as a weakness and a sign of a lack of masculinity.
• The breakup of families and high unwed birth rate has left many male students without a daily male role model in the home. Outside of sports, there is a lack of other male role models in most public schools.
• Females gravitate toward education careers far more than males by about a 5-1 ratio. That means much of today’s curriculum, classroom structure and teaching styles has been designed by females, perhaps with an unconscious bias toward the way females learn as opposed to how males learn.
• Academic rigor has been pushed down through the grades such that students are expected to know much more at an earlier age than ever before. Girls have absorbed that better than boys due to a faster maturation rate both in self-discipline and cognitive ability. For boys, the increasing academic rigor has proven frustrating, increased failure and caused male students to lose interest in school at an earlier age.
This is a true crisis, yet one that is not much discussed outside of the world of academia. To an extent, it is politically incorrect to discuss the problems of males in education. Some feminist groups view such talk as overwrought and claim that discussing the problems of male failure is just a back door way to undermine the achievements of females in the education arena.
But it isn’t. The under-achievement by boys in public schools is a time bomb; an entire generation is being lost. There are fewer jobs for uneducated males, as evidenced by the high ratio of men being laid off during the last two years of the recession.
Somehow, public schools are going to have to find a way to help male students be more successful in the classroom. To do that, there should be more public acknowledgement that the problem exists in the first place.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
Society needs to find a way to re-inject the father into the family model, even in the case of divorce. Perhaps joint custody should be the rule, rather than the exception.
Throw gay marriage and relationships into the mix that’s now being rammed down our throats, and in a few years, you’ll be writing articles about how gay students are now attending college at a rate of 5 to 1 over straight males and females.
Young men were biologically programmed for all those years to be the hunter, bread winner, and protector of the family. We’ve messed with Mother Nature; I hope it doesn’t take tens of thousands of years for us to reprogram.
Many other reasons:
Teenage pregnancy, improper selection of our mates, poor education, NO DISCIPLINE! Spank a young boy and watch how quick you are on the phone with a bondsman trying to get out of jail! Political Correctness! Government Intervention and intrusiveness into our personal lives. Oh goodness, let me count the reasons. Looked around at our kids lately? Male and female, they are getting fat dumb and lazy! Little boys don't head out on Saturday morning to seek out a pick up game of baseball, they don't play Army with a conveneiantly located stick shaped like a gun. They play video games and eat "hot pockets" and other frozen, lazily prepared junk food.
According to recent census reports, the number of unmarried men in their early 40's who do not have college degrees has risen to almost 20 percent, a trend which sociologists believe is largely due to college educated women not wanting to marry "beneath" their own socio-economic group. Marriage rates will continue to fall as the pool of eligible males shrinks, and many of those well-educated women will not become mothers. Thus, a disproportionate number of children will be born to families with lower educational levels, and presumably less interest in the education of their own children. Should this trend continue, the schools will spiral downward, and even able students will have fewer opportunities to excel.
Every teacher, administrator, and certainly parents of male children should see the negative statistics regarding male students as a call to action.
As a teacher (albeit a very part-time one) I am concerned about the raw material which will be coming along.
The post-patriarchal society you describe sounds like a great plot for a science fiction yarn, though.
Not all kids are college material...no shame in becoming a plumber or auto mechanic.
Charlie D and Emmett Delaney really hit some great points here so kudos to you and Pam those 40 something old maids who I know very well are more a less waiting for a perfect mate and well never find one....more about there twisted ideals then anything else.