Men Saying “No Thanks” to College

Parent Cafe
161

“I did one myself, back in college student teaching in a classroom. Calling on them more often, encouraging them to figure out wrong answers rather than providing the correct one, etc.”

@OHMomof2 – I saw the same while observing a kindergarten/1st grade class recently… but my conclusion was that they boys weren’t getting more attention because they were boys – but because they needed more attention to keep them engaged. The girls in general did what they were told, sat quietly and paid attention. The boys were much more “all over the place,” and the teacher had to keep them engaged to keep control over the group.

It wasn’t sexism that kept this teacher from paying as much attention to the girls - it was the boys’ relative fidgeting, physical movement, and lack of focus.

Afterwards, I thought a lot about single sex education… it made me wonder if it’s more effective, since there are such big behavioral/maturity differences, at least at that age

162

Overdiscipline?!!

I doubt it considering the disciplinary regimen in the 2 Catholic elementary schools I attended as a child in the 1980’s seems far more severe than what most public or private school K-12 kids are subjected to nowadays.

I say this as someone who was expelled as a 5 year old first grader within a few weeks after the start of the year because I fidgeted a bit too much and 8 years before, an older neighbor was expelled around the same age/grade level from the same school for the same reason. Frankly, that was overdiscipline as even my strict father and Marine SNCO neighbors were concerned…but that decision was final for both of us*.

The second Catholic school I attended would subject students to far harsher punishments for infractions public schools would provide a slap on the wrist for or even ignore altogether.

And that level of discipline was very mild compared with what existed just 1-2 decades previously at those very same schools when teachers/admins had the right and could administer hard slaps on the palms of one’s hand with wooden rulers for infractions such as talking in class or fidgeting. And most parents considered that a good thing.

Heck, when the son of that retired Marine SNCO found his 8 year old third grader son and fellow classmate was reprimanded for talking in class, he felt the teacher’s assigned punishment of him having to write “I will not disrupt class a few hundred times” after school to be “too soft” of a punishment in light of the disrespect/lack of discipline his son exhibited towards the teacher in his eyes and assigned extra punishments by having him do pushups and other PT in a nearby public park as he did to recalcitrant Marine recruits during his stint as drill instructor a couple of decades before.

  • Ironically, we both ended up at the same academically selective STEM-centered public magnet and ended up graduating from respectable/elite colleges. Older kid turned down a full-ride FA package to MIT to attend USNA and became a submarine officer upon graduation. If he's still in the service, he should be coming up for promotion to rear/vice-admiral around now.
163

@cobrat

When I was thinking of “over-discipline,” I was mainly thinking of punishments such as suspensions and expulsions-- and also lesser punishments–for behaviors such as fidgeting or engaging in play that’s deemed too aggressive. Behaviors that many would just call “typical boy behavior,” and punishments that decrease boys’ school performance by reducing their time in class or making them hate going to school. And also deferring to punishing without other means of trying to encourage good behavior, such as positive reinforcement.

I wasn’t referring to the severity of the discipline or saying that discipline is worse compared to the past; definitely not.

164

Just a few decades ago, such “typical boy behavior” wasn’t excused as it seems to be among some CC posters.

Instead, it was regarded as a sign the child wasn’t raised with enough self-control/discipline and was considered a mark of embarrassment among parents…especially if the child is older than 7*.

And private schools…especially parochial schools in the early '90s and earlier wouldn’t stand for it.

  • Hence the reason why the Marine SNCO father felt the punishment the elementary school teacher assigned to his son to write "I will not disrupt class" a few hundred times after school for disrupting class as an 8 year old third grader was too lenient in light of the infraction committed.
165

I think @OnMyWay2013 and @cobrat are both right. Historically, there was much more discipline during class. Outside the classroom, roughhousing and even the occasional fist fight was written off as boys being boys.

166

Actually, that wasn’t tolerated, either. Especially in private/parochial schools.

If one was caught starting fights or found to have a historical pattern of doing so, s/he will face in-school detention/suspension at the very minimum.

Sometimes with a public shaming in front of the entire school by the principal as happened with 2 older 6th grade girls who were found to have been fighting off school grounds outside school hours by a neighbor*.

And if this continues, the latter reserved the right to expel the student with extreme prejudice. Knew of several students who were penalized with in-school detention, suspensions, or expulsions for such reasons.

  • Private/parochial schools codes of conduct applied whether the student was in or out of school. If parents/students didn't like that, they were free to find another more amenable private school or attend the local public(Not likely due to the greater levels of violence/chaos in and around the ones in my old NYC neighborhood back then).
167

@cobrat

In the 60s and 70s, a younger boy might have been paddled and sent back to class. An older boy might be given detention or even suspended for a couple of days, but you wouldn’t see the zero tolerance policies we have now. Expulsions, even at most Catholic schools, were almost unheard of and alternative schools for disciplinary problems didn’t exist in most places. In school suspension didn’t exist at a lot of schools either. It wasn’t economical for a smaller public school or a parochial school on a tight budget to hire a separate teacher to run an in school suspension, which might only have a few students or none in any given day.

168

Expulsions for multiple instances of instigating fights were the reality when I attended those elementary schools in the '80’s.

Keep in mind one of the Catholic schools expelled me and 8 years previously, another boy as 5-6 year old first graders for fidgeting too much. Far less than being found instigating fights which was considered a grave offense.

And actually, there were “alternative schools” in the NYC areas in the 1980’s and before…but they were reserved for public school kids whose violent/criminal behavior was far more severe than even the more lax disciplinary standards of the public schools of the era would tolerate.

They were called “reform schools” and there was a strong stigma associated with violence and criminality associated with them and their students.

169

@cobrat

Part of it depends on the parochial school. A school with a long waiting list may feel freer to kick students out. A school that’s not at full capacity may be much more reluctant to kick students out, especially if they’re Catholic or full pay. Most reform schools would have been closer to the juveline detention centers we have today, and reserved for kids who had some legal troubles or those with parents who didn’t want to raise them.

170

@cobrat

What’s your take on that level of discipline in schools? Do you think it’s effective? Excessive?

I’m coming from the perspective of growing up in a public school. I also work with kids in public schools (in lower-income areas of cities with higher levels of violence and chaos). So maybe strict discipline works for the profile of kids you’re describing. But at least in the cases I’m thinking of, there are too many potential, unchecked contributing factors to “rowdy” behavior–or even violent behavior–for me to assume that punishing kids more will always improve their behavior.

171

@OnMyWay2013 At this point, there is a push toward the concept of “college for everyone.” It results in kids going to college who really do not belong there, get little out of it (assuming they even graduate) and end up with significant amounts of debt (with little to show for it). As college costs continue to escalate, the college route is getting worse for an increasing number of kids. As noted in this thread, men have more viable options outside of college then do women. I think it would be better if women had better options outside of college for those woman who will get little out of college beyond debt.

172

@saillakeerie

I get the first part of what you wrote, and I agree. But what more options outside of college could there be besides those that are already available? I don’t know much about what one can do without a college degree, but I thought women can pick up a trade, start their own business, become an artist or writer, go to beauty school, become a medical technologist or assistant, etc.

Do you mean that we should increase the wages for careers like these so women can earn more? Make it easier for artists and entrepreneurs to succeed? Provide incentives for women to pick up certain trades? Curtail the trend of certain industries expecting increasingly advanced degrees from their applicants?

173

In my old NYC neighborhood, the parochial schools had no problems getting student because one major selling point they had over the public schools was precisely the greater academic and behavioral/disciplinary expectations of students to avoid the classroom chaos and violence common in the public schools of my neighborhood of that time.

The dynamics of that selling point was such that if the parochial schools were perceived as “too lax” on either…especially the behavioral/disciplinary expectations…especially by retaining a student known to instigate fights after having been punished with in-school detention or suspension, that parochial school would actually undermine that “selling point”.

If that happened, they’d rapidly lose students as parents would feel the school standards were deteriorating to the levels of the neighborhood public schools they were trying to avoid in the first place because they felt the behavioral expectations/discipline in the neighborhood public schools was too lax.

My impression from talking with parents of current K-12 students and from posters here on CC is that discipline in public schools overall is more lax than what I experienced in the 2 Catholic elementary schools I attended or to a lesser extent, the public magnet HS I attended.

However, current school discipline is definitely stricter than the exceedingly lax disciplinary regimen at my public middle school where the admins went out of their way to shield and protect the bullies there despite one being an outright neo-nazi and their run-ins with the local LEOs because the ringleaders happened to be from well-to-do families with one being a sibling of a formerly popular actor. The admins went so far as to blame their bullying victims because those bullies were “misunderstood”.

Ironic how with the exception of that actor’s sibling that this encouraged them to commit more serious crimes to the point they ended up being convicted on enough serious felonies to be serving long prison sentences.

Some of those sentences ended up being so long some still have another decade to go before they’re due to be released. Especially considering it seems they’ve continued to behave badly in prison judging by what an LEO from the middle school area who got to know them very well from their multiple legal run-ins before the middle school admins intervened because they were “misunderstood”.

@OnMyWay2013

My experiences are from what was then a working-class/low income mostly populated by a mix of White Irish and Hispanic families(Puerto Rican, Dominican, and a few Cubans) NYC neighborhood during the 1980’s.

I also grew up in a period when NYC was much more crime ridden as shown by my having experienced multiple muggings, walking into a burglary in progress while visiting a friend’s LES apartment right after HS at 14 with burglars pointing guns at us, and attending an elementary school classmate’s funeral as an 11 year old 7th grader because he happened to be suddenly caught between a shootout between 2 rival small-time drug gangs while walking home from his middle school one afternoon. ,

174

One irony regarding trades is the academic-level/skills imparted in the average US K-12 education is such that some trades(i.e. electrician) in some states now require aspiring apprentices to take some community college courses just to ensure they have the adequate academic background to begin apprentice training.

175

Actually a Medical Technologist is a profession requiring a 4 year degree , an internship and passing a registry exam. I know this because it was my original career before I went back to school and became a CPA. Even with that , the pay was terrible.

Carry on…

176

Because as I have said about a dozen times now, nothing is ever all one thing or the other. The proper focus of policy, and the attendant public debate on it, is to try and ferret out what consequences can be efficiently “tweaked” by changes to policy/attitudes and which can not. The problem comes with the type of absolutest thinking evidenced here. It is very unlikely that any changes to standardized testing/outside scholarships/mentoring programs/hiring targets will provide an acceptable level of parity for women in engineering jobs, particularly as one climbs the chain. Therefore, if you think in absolutes, nothing you do is ever enough, and more changes are always required. I would argue the same principle applies to the rate of change in men attending college. There are some factors you can adjust for, if we had the political will to do so, but it is unlikely that whatever steps are taken, whether that is going back to recess or returning due process to college disciplinary tribunals, will ever achieve a similar level of parity. Personally, I am ok with both outcomes, because my experience and my mind tell me that in the main, men and women are motivated differently. I strongly object to the idea that we need to change one but ignore the other. Sauce for the goose as they say.

On a slightly less high minded note, it is also a lot of fun watching people twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels to try and argue that it is both night and day when looking out the same window.

As far as studies about how teachers treat boys and girls, there are several now which document that girls receive higher grades for generally equivalent work.

http://people.terry.uga.edu/cornwl/research/cmvp.genderdiffs.pdf
http://seii.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2016.07-Terrier.pdf

As a non educator, this is somewhat more meaningful to me than studies about whether teachers are doing enough to encourage girls, or if boys are being called on too much. Also, my common sense tells me that in a profession dominated by women, behaviors that women find lead to successful outcomes will be favored. This is the exact same thing I mentioned earlier when I said that the biggest source of “discrimination” I had seen in my years in practice is that the men who made hiring and promotion decisions tended to reward behavior that they believe led to their own success.

A big reason for this is because we no longer have shop classes in most schools.

Speaking of discipline in the schools, I went to a parish grade school and then a public high school that had a security wing (for the “problem” kids) and police in the halls. Were there tougher schools? Sure. But not many. Discipline in schools was absolutely different at that time (the 1970s to early 1980s). Kids didn’t get suspended for chewing a pop tart into the shape of a gun (although we did have regular police locker checks for real guns) or accused of harrassment for hugging their elementary school teacher. No one got suspended for getting into a fight unless a knife or a gun came out. When we were younger we even had recess! You could actually play games like dodge ball.

One other point that I think is never mentioned which had a significant impact on boys’ performance in school generally was the explosion of the use of ritalin. Weirdly, when you take away recess, and do not allow young boys any physical outlet, they get fidgety. Our system’s answer to this problem has been to drug them and sit them in the corner. Not awesome.

177

Factors outside of school have changed in the last 10-20 years and it’s also worth looking at how those changes have impacted boys and girls differently in the long term. Changes in parenting styles, online behavior, time spent in isolating activities (whether it be video games, increased homework, time spent prepping for the non-stop barrage of standardized tests, etc), societal and parental expectations, on and on.

The dropout rate might be a symptom of issues well beyond the walls of the college.

178

I regret that I have but one “Like” to give for this comment.

179

As the parent of a DS and a DD I can say that I have seen many differences in how they are treated within our school district. My DS experienced poor treatment by a male teacher that had an issue with athletes. Until I pointed out how hard he was making it for me to parent, he discouraged my insistence that my DS could be both athlete and good student–there was no need to choose. I suspect that this pressure to choose an “identity” is part of what discourages young men from college. Even I could see that if forced to choose, it was “safer” for my DS to choose athlete as his identity even if he chose not to participate in some stereotypes about athlete social behavior. So he kept his academic success relatively quiet and surprised all with his class rank and scholarships at graduation but was known by most as only that 3 sport varsity athlete. The truly awful part were the coaches that he had that looked down on him for being smart. Poor kid got all kind of mixed messages. Just more pressure to only have one “identity”.

My DD on the other hand, has been discouraged from being good at science very publicly when being given the award in a more traditionally “female” subject, even though her fellow students all knew she had the highest GPA in the science. The science teacher’s speech to all in class the next day about wishing she could give all of them an award did nothing to smooth that over with my DD or make her classmates less jaded about the process. They all can tell that the awards are discussed by the teachers in advance and “spread out” in an attempt at motivation but this process is only succeeding in reducing the value of the awards. My DD’s response to this treatment is “I’ll show them” and she works even harder academically. I see that response in lots of the young women that I know. They count on the grades to prove to all, but especially themselves, that they really can achieve excellence, despite the negative messages about where do, or do not, belong. My DD is also an athlete and the lack of resources and attention paid to her sport is glaring.

180

I also have a S and a D and saw differences in how they were treated in middle and high school. But by far one of the biggest differences I observed is how differently male peers and female peers interacted - something I feel has a huge impact on confidence and how one develops psychologically. In very general terms, males supported and defended each other while females criticized each other and attempted to drag each other down. I observed that both in athletics and on a social level.

For young girls, outside of their most intimate friend group they really had to watch their backs. For my S there just seemed to be a lot more visible support from peers.