<p>Things are changing. The pendulum swings both ways, and with the societal push to encourage more academic progress and success for women, they surpassing the men at this time. </p>
<p>There are a lot of things happening and have happened that are changing the traditional way are society was formed. Whether these changes are going to be good for the world, our country, our society, community, family and personally have yet to be evaluated. There is a lot that is good, right, and needed in these changes, but some of the results may have to be addressed. We have to fine tune constantly. Also things change.</p>
<p>Some things that were done to bring equity to females have adversely affected the males. Maybe too much. Maybe not.</p>
<p>Some talented, brilliant daughters of my friends are finding out now that getting equality in some venues is no nirvana. If you are the logical bread earner because you have the more marketable education, training, resume, it does make it more difficult to take off time to stay home with the children, and it can hurt terribly when that happens. There is that old expression, “be careful what you wish for”. Sometimes the most noble and wonderful wishes have some thorns that are most painful.</p>
<p>I want to also add that a lot of female college applicants and their parents are upset in that in a lot of cases the standards are more rigorous for the women since most schools want a somewhat even ratio, and the women tend to be more qualified by traditional standards of test scores/ grades combos. If gender were not taken into consideration, some schools with lopsided ratios would become even more female, and then the women would not want to go there as well as the men.</p>
<p>When my youngest was in kindergarten and first grade, there was a demographic oddity in that there were 7 girls in the grade…and 41 boys!</p>
<p>For first grade, the principal created an all boys class…16 boys…and a male teacher. Best thing ever! The boys learned to count by 2s while doing jumping jacks. Indoor recess? he would “march” them around the school in a close-order drill with each boy getting a chance to lead the march through a hall way. Misbehavior in class? Pushups or sit ups or running in place…in other words, a chance to channel all that boy energy. </p>
<p>My son’s favorite memory is coming back in to the school after a rowdy recess having a very loud and obnoxious burping contest with his besties…and instead of using the situation in a disciplinary fashion, the teacher used it as a math/science/civics/writing lesson. The first graders did some quick research on burping…why and how people burp. And each student wrote a paragraph about burping. And then held burping contests in class…who could burp the most burps? Who could burp the loudest? who could burp the funniest? They graphed the results, including having a vote for the funniest burp.</p>
<p>I could not imagine this lemons-into-lemonade situation occurring in a class with girls.</p>
<p>Boysx3, I agree with you fully that an all boys environment is often times the best for young males in schools. The same go for young women at times. I live in an area where there are still a number of single sex options for students in the private school world. High quality ones. Though they still exist in terms of all women colleges, not so much for the men. I can only think of one all male college, at this time, though I can reel off a list of all female ones.</p>
<p>I don’t know if for society, in the long term, whether single sex education environments are better or worse. For certain individuals and situations, they are clearly better. But the top all male schools, for the most part now are co-ed because the arrangement was apparently not the best way to go for the most people.</p>
We’re hoping that will be the case for our son. He tends to be a little less of a traditional “guy” in the sense that is common in Mob Wivesland where we live. He’s going to be attending a school that is all boys and where his summer reading assignment is all about considering what kind of man he hopes to become. The motto is “respecting the man the boy will become.” He tends to be a little flaky and less than perfectly organized and our perception of the school, from interaction with them and from other parents, is that the school doesn’t sweat the small stuff. We battled all through middle school with the fact that the school made the notebook 25% of the grade in all major classes. My son isn’t a notebook guy and he was always in trouble for that.</p>
<p>That’s silly Chedva. The real number of CEOs is very small, whereas the number of males in prison is very large. There are all sorts of reasons why it’s bad for society to have the discrepancy in numbers between educated men and women. It’s particularly tough in the black community.</p>
<p>My daughter works in an inner-city school with a population that is largely comprised of African immigrants. Life is pretty tough on those boys, less so for girls, and the statistics of suspensions and disciplinary proceedings tell quite a tale. </p>
<p>Boys actually do matter and the fact that most teachers in some areas are female isn’t particularly helpful.</p>
<p>That doesn’t make sense, chedva. It’s like saying there are no fertility problems because there are shows like 20 and counting or whatever it is.</p>
<p>It seems that according to NYT, any system is unfair to anybody, and that is the most important reason for failure. Very information and helpful. I feel that I treat NYT very fairly by not reading it.</p>
<p>But the reality is that men earn more and are promoted more often (proportionally, even in otherwise female-dominated careers). This includes entry-level job seekers, by the way. And the reason that men may have been hit more disproportionally with layoffs in a lousy economy is that they were the ones making the most money, so companies can save by laying them off, and are the ones least likely to accept pay cuts on re-employment. Companies that can hire or retain women more cheaply will do so.</p>
<p>When I was in elementary school, we also had to sit still and listen. We didn’t have “circle time.” Our desks were aligned in rows - no tables, no “grouping” of seats, no u-shaped arrangements. Yet no one worried about whether the boys had sufficient “outlets.” And they did just fine. </p>
<p>Of course, there was the “boys will be boys” attitude, which often meant that they could get away with tormenting each other and, often, the girls.</p>
<p>Not a world I would particularly like to return to.</p>
<p>^Sorry, you comment goes way way above my head. I am glad that others understood it, but it means nothing to me, so I will continue doing what I have been.</p>
<p>In regard to topic of discussion, it is very obvious that girls will do whatever they are assigned as they want to please, even though they might be bored to death doing it. Boys simply will not do it, they want to be challenged. K - 12 is so demeanning, is so filled with busy work that have nothing to do with getting educated and developing analytical skills that there is no wonder that boys who are naturally NOT raised to please, just skip doing all this boring work, while girls stick themselves in a corner and just do it. I can sse it in my own children. While D. will do everything, will work hardest in classes that she actually hates, S. wants to be perfect in everything…that he likes, and nothing else bothers him.</p>
<p>When I was in elementary school, we had large special-purpose rooms
that had a lot of small spaces and partitions and we had teachers and
aides leading small groups for some subjects. There was plenty of room
to be active - some of these rooms didn’t have desks and chairs - you
stood up or sat on the floor. I don’t think that we got into chairs
and desks until the later grades.</p>
<p>We had gym too as opposed to recess. I recall a fifth-grade teacher
that also did the gym class. He was from Norway and I remember him
taking us outside to kick around a soccor ball in a few inches of
snow. We had playground equipment, tennis courts and a huge field
for all kinds of activities. There were also huge bicycle racks as
a lot of kids rode their bicycles to school (we didn’t use locks
in those days).</p>
<br>
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<p>There have been several incidents raising interest levels in
homeschooling but I recall one in particular where a lot of parents
became interested in homeschooling their daughters around
middle-school due to the cruelty that can be inflicted on girls at
this time - most of it coming from other girls.</p>
<p>As has been seen in many recent high-profile cases, bullying
is instigated by both boys and girls.</p>
<p>Personally, I think there has been an increase in focus on things that don’t really matter, like notebook checks (does it matter if each kid’s notes look exactly the same as long as they are learning?) and artsy type projects. When I was a kid, you did your work and that was that. Nowadays, you’ve got to game the system. Nobody cared about things like glitter and color coding.</p>
<p>And the primary reason for this ‘fact’ is that many women take time off for the mommy track. We have had ~8 births in the past few years at our company, and every one of those new moms has resigned, to stay home shortly after the birth. (Perhaps excellent family policy for the kids, but not great for a career.)</p>
<p>Agree with zoose. I’m very intelligent but not artistic. I despised those projects and would often get poor marks on book reports because my visual was poor even though I knew the book through and through. Why does it matter if I can draw a scene??? /rant</p>