"What Boy Crisis" op-ed column in New York Times

Parents Forum
41

<p>DRab:</p>

<p>The story of the dead 19-year old is really not any different from other accounts of young men who get into trouble with the law. In his case, the difference is that he was murdered. Crime is rather low in my city. Since he briefly shared a class with my S, I also know that he had access to a truly wonderful curriculum and some of the best teachers to be found in any k-8 school in the country. </p>

<p>I read the piece about the Gates interview with drop outs. I was interested to read that one reason the kids had dropped out was lack of discipline in class. I strongly suspect that many of the discipline problems were caused by the kids who did eventually drop out. The honors and AP classes have not nearly as many discipline problems as the easier classes, and yet, I doubt there are many school drop outs who were in the harder classes.</p>

42

<p>
[quote]
Aries, is the problem the divorce, do you think, or the fact that this often leads to parents acting badly or not being involved with their kids? I think a kid with divorced parents who both act pretty maturely about it and stay involved in the kid's life (like me) is better off than a kid with married parents who are apathetic towards them or who have terrible fights all the time.

[/quote]

Jessie, I couldn't agree with you more. :) </p>

<p>My parents have been divorced since I was a toddler. I cannot begin to explain why it's the best decision they could have made. They are both happily re-married to wonderful people - so I have four parents, not one, as you would expect from many divorce situations.</p>

<p>I do think that whenever you're talking about an aggregate social issue - like kids of divorced parents - you need not account for what happens in all of their lives, so long as it affects enough of them to show the disparity between other groups. </p>

<p>So, if you want my opinion (and others can feel free to add in) as to why children of divorced parents don't succeed as much, here goes:
*One involved parent, not two.
*Less aggregate family wealth- more expensive to set up two households than one.
*Various problems with non-custodial parent non-support - refusing to pay child support, refusing to pay for college (I've discussed remedies to this on other threads), just not having a good relationship with the kid, not encouraging them, helping with homework, etc.
*Divorce as a proxy for lack of wealth, younger parents, and disparities across racial lines. Perhaps, ties into religion and family values as well.
*I'll catch some flak for this, but the fact that children almost always go with the mother. This makes it difficult for a formerly SAHM to work enough and re-launch her career (note intimate ties between divorce and wealth), while the more wealthy father (hey, general trends!) is unwilling to give full financial support to the kids that he doesn't see. All burden, no benefit to him.<br>
*General parental nonsense - putting kids in the middle, moving around, custody battles. Even if you are visiting parents who live far away, great - but try telling the band director that you'll have to miss a lot of practice to see your non-custodial parent. (My sis had a lot of problems with that.) There are a lot of positive links between extracurriculars and academic performance.<br>
*Finally, in not a few situations, divorced women's boyfriends. There are exactly two ways to bring a signficant other into the household: a good way and a bad way. There are two kinds of siginficant others to bring in: those who, at their core, are not supportive of your children, and those who have their best interests at heart. I forget the stats, but the rates of stepfather-on-stepchild (or boyfriend/Mom's kids) violence and assault are amazingly high - much higher than biological parents. Even if you aren't in that situation, the parent may have a slew of boyfriends/girlfriends through the house; may date someone seriously who does not have the kid's best interests at heart; or is just taking him/her away from the kids. I was very fortunate in that my parents did not behave this way. Very slow introductions into the family; no "pushing" the significant other on us; my dad says that he only married my stepmom because we wanted him to. ;) My stepparents care about me like their own kid - that's unusual. </p>

<p>So yeah, I don't think it's divorce per se, but the things that come with it.</p>

43

<p>Final thought (before someone else beats me to it): A lot of people get divorced because the other parent is a complete, uncaring jerk. No matter how hard that parent works to give the kid a two-parent, albeit unmarried parent, life, the other parent isn't cooperating. We've all heard stories of parents who refuse to even fill out the financial aid info. </p>

<p>Not to put her on the spot, but I think that CalMom has had similar problems with her ex. She's said that she's had to do it all on her own. </p>

<p>There are times when divorce is just an excellent proxy for other problems, like parents who are horrible, uncaring people - one good parent who understands that she/he is better off divorcing the jerk.</p>

44

<p>Of course I agree with all who point out that a huge problem for American public education is the disintegration of so many American families --- single mothers by choice, absent or dead-beat dads. Many of these societal ills will "always be with us" along with the underclass they help create. But I don't think it's enough to say, look the problem is unwed moms and absent fathers and stop the conversation there as though that said it all and there's really nothing more that could be done about it. </p>

<p>Also, I don't agree that solutions to the gaps in achievement for minorities and some boys lie entirely outside the education system. If the education system is failing to reach so many students, shouldn't it change? I think the answers could be curricular or pedagogical or in the design of schools themselves; the solutions are hard to pinpoint and require much more study. </p>

<p>One answer might be a radical expansion of single-sex classrooms for boys and girls in public classrooms across the country. Another might be significant increases in teacher pay to attract the best and brightest and to attract specifically more MALE teachers and put them in front of the classrooms that are filled with fatherless boys. (Startling factoid in recent L.A. Times article: a middle school in the city where fully 80 percent of the students have no father living in the home.) </p>

<p>Other creative fixes for our public education system would indeed call for more money to be put toward the problem, but of course the public would need reassurances that the increased spending would be going for real change and not for more-of-the-same only with bigger bills and larger salaries. What has to happen first is that politics has to get out of the way of viewing the problem and looking for solutions. Gender politics. Partisan politics. Race politics. And union politics (perhaps most of all.) We need to go about looking for solutions outside our own biases and more in the spirit of "the common good" for the country. Does that sound hopelessly naive? Maybe it's the white wine talking. </p>

<p>There was another L.A. Times story recently about one school where Af-Am teachers created a village-like support structure to encourage, mentor, and discipline Af-Am students. (can't get the link to work but one could go to <a href="http://www.latimes.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.latimes.com&lt;/a> and put "black students village" in the search blank.) The school has seen impressive gains in test scores, reduction in drop out rates, and improvement in behavior. I do think it's possible to look for solutions within the educational system.</p>

45

<p>Jazzymom:</p>

<p>What struck me about the story of the young man I recounted is that he had exactly the same teachers, curricula, school atmosphere, etc.. as the kids who ended up in top 20 colleges. So why did he become a father at 17 and dealing drugs at 18, and getting murdered at 19? Is it the school?</p>

<p>While in k-8 there were far more female than male teachers, the ratio was much less lopsided in high school. Perhaps, my S even had a preponderance of male teachers (and it had nothing to do with the different fields).</p>

46

<p>Marite:</p>

<p>Obviously, in the case of the young man you describe, the school was not to blame for how his life went awry. That doesn't mean it's not possible to turn other lives around by making changes to public school systems, particularly in areas with the worst evidence of disintegrating families. </p>

<p>Regarding the number of male teachers in your S's high school, all I can say is lucky him. His high school, I suspect, is nothing like the high schools that see a third to a half of their students dropping out before graduation every year. And besides, having more male teachers at the elementary level is probably where they are most needed to influence and mentor children who have no fathers active in their lives. By the time they get to middle and high school, many of these future drop outs have already given up. I am thinking of the facts you posted earlier about the rate of men versus women populating the nation's prisons. It seems to me that as a society, we shrug our shoulders at the exponential increase in prison spending, yet we grouse about "throwing money at the problem" when it comes to significantly increasing spending to make a real difference in education.</p>

47

<p>Jazzymom:</p>

<p>I agree that there is a crisis when so many men are incarcerated. What I am dubious about is whether resources should be used in schools or elsewhere to be effective. For example, that young man attended the same DARE program my two kids did, but obviously it did not make a dent in his behavior. </p>

<p>Our high school has decided to identify at risk students and to put them into a separate high school. The ostensible idea is to give them more support so that they can succeed and be less at risk of dropping out. The suspicion among many in the community is that this is a device to get the troublemakers out of regular classes so that teachers can concentrate on teaching rather than on maintaining control of their classes. The separate high school was launched only last year so it's too early to see results both for the at risk students and for the mainstream students.</p>

<p>Edit: On the subject of single sex schools, it is interesting that the reason women's colleges endure is the continued feeling that men tend to dominate class discussions. In the 1960s, there was the feeling that profs (usually males) tended to allow men to do so, lobbed easy questions to female students, especially in math/science classes, used men as the universal yardstick, etc... This was quite an eye-opening experience because I'd gone to a girls' lyc</p>

48

<p>Marite:</p>

<p>All I know is what I read in the papers and the very occasional magazine piece that tackles these issues. Unfortunately, no one has offered me a generous grant to drop everything else in order to research this topic in depth. </p>

<p>As you know, one of the problems confronting American education in general is that decisions/innovations are state or local driven. There is no way to impose a successful new program on a school district (or individual school for that matter) that doesn't want it except possibly through the political pressure of the local residents. So we have a nationwide hodge-podge of attempted solutions. As depicted in the Jan.30 Newsweek article, some schools have found that single-sex classes have increased test scores for both boys and girls, but there appears to be no widespread effort to duplicate the success elsewhere. The Los Angeles school district has talked about breaking up its crowded and enormous public high schools into smaller "learning communties" but it hasn't happened yet. The article I tried to give a link to discussed one high school that instituted a special program for black students and had good results. Whether other L.A. high schools follow suit remains to be seen. The point is, there are efforts that could be made in public schools which need not cost a lot of additional dollars. </p>

<p>The quasi-military approach you refer to is a more expensive endeavor, since the one I have read about is residential and targeted at very at-risk kids. Not just at-risk of dropping out of school, but kids (boys actually) who have dropped out, have gotten into minor trouble, and are at risk of having their next step in life be prison.</p>

49

<p>Jazzymom:</p>

<p>I understand the problem of too large schools (a Gates Foundation bugbear, by the way). But I don't see it as a boys' problem. There are many aspects of education that are far from optimal. But do they affect boys differntly from girls?</p>

50

<p>Here is another Op-Ed piece from Kathleen Parker in the Orlando Sentinel this week. Her column also appears nationally in many papers</p>

<p><a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/orl-parker05_106jul05,0,256678.column%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/orl-parker05_106jul05,0,256678.column&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
"Moreover, the declining status of boys -- or the ascent of girls, if you prefer -- is at least in part the product of political pressures that led to policy changes and cultural adjustments that have benefited girls. No one wishes to take away those accomplishments or to turn back the clock on girls.</p>

<p>That we might wish to exercise the same political clout in the interest of our sons and our nation's future fathers isn't a symptom of political one-upmanship, but a necessary search for balance.</p>

<p>No matter how much we tweak the data, one reliable truth is that successful women will always want to meet and mate with successful men. At this rate, they will be hard-pressed to find them."

[/quote]
</p>

51

<p>And the NY Times continues with a front page article on its Sunday edition which is too long to print out here, but here is the link:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?hp&ex=1152504000&en=1788c6468b950bc6&ei=5094&partner=homepage%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?hp&ex=1152504000&en=1788c6468b950bc6&ei=5094&partner=homepage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

52

<p>Judith Warner continues the discussion in today's Op-Ed section (7/12):</p>

<p>Guest Columnist
What Girls Ought to Learn From Boys in ‘Crisis’
By JUDITH WARNER
More on the “boy crisis”: A new report that came out yesterday from the American Council on Education has confirmed that there is a gender gap on American college campuses. It gapes the widest between African-American men and women. It is increasing, disturbingly, among low- income whites and Hispanics. It phases out as you go up the income ladder, then disappears entirely as you enter the upper middle class. (According to the report’s author, Jacqueline E. King, 52 percent of college students from the top income quartile — families earning $97,500 or more — are male.)</p>

<p>All of which will most likely have no effect on the affluent parents making the most noise about the “boy crisis” in our nation’s schools. No one, apparently, wants to hear about the economically disadvantaged. So let’s ride the wave, and leave aside the truly important issues the new report raises — i.e., why are fewer poor white and Hispanic men now attending college, and why, in particular, are young African-American men being left behind? — and let’s instead together have some fun, as I did, last Sunday, reflecting on The New York Times’s boy-crisis-inspired survey of “performance differences” in males and females of high school and college age.</p>

<p>I took a little trip down memory lane while reading about college men who hang out, socialize, play video games and “take the path of least resistance” in their classes and then go on to outearn and professionally outperform the girls who juggle jobs, internships, campus activities and honors-level course work. </p>

<p>This is not just because my husband, Max, and I were once the college boy who coasted by on his prodigious intellect and the girl who worked like a demon. Nor is it because he has outworked and outearned me throughout our careers. No, the story brought back a memory much more specific than that. It recalled an image from a trip we took to Bali back in 1989, shortly before we were married.</p>

<p>During our travels around the island, where we worked for two months, we came one day upon a construction site, where women were walking up and down a steep hillside, balancing baskets of bricks on their heads. Meanwhile, by the road, a group of men were squatting, smoking clove cigarettes and, undoubtedly, strategizing about efficiency and productivity and the bottom line.</p>

<p>This was perhaps not the best cultural experience to have had just before getting married, but we were very young and had many years of eating takeout still to go before issues of domestic load-sharing entered our lives. On Sunday night, though, as I read The Times’s laid-back-boys-on-campus piece — while simultaneously giving a bath, putting away laundry and writing a week’s worth of columns in my head — the colorful image of sarong-clad men and women suddenly lodged itself inside my mind. It seemed to have some kind of great significance; column potential. So I raced to share it with Max, who was having a little lie-down on the couch, having done some very tiring driving earlier in the day.</p>

<p>As I began to talk, his fingers reflexively felt for the TV remote, trying — and I really don’t think this was conscious — to turn me either down or off. When this proved fruitless, he resorted to words: “interesting,” first, then “work on that” and, finally (TV volume rising now) “Sounds great — get to it!”</p>

<p>The pattern of selective male laziness and female frenzy that begins among young men and women in college persists long after graduation. Someday soon, I am sure, an evolutionary biologist will teach us how all this is hard-wired — and why it is worthwhile. But in the meantime, I’d like to suggest that there’s something more at work here than relative levels of skill or laziness or drivenness or privilege, though all that clearly plays a role. It seems to me that, from an early age, men seem to be quite clear about what expenditures of energy are worth their time. Like kids with A.D.D. (the majority of whom are boys), they’re able to spend great amounts of attention and energy on things they find interesting, but show considerable signs of challenge when it comes to tasks they find boring or personally unprofitable.</p>

<p>Is this really a problem? Women would probably say yes. But I wonder if we shouldn’t learn a lesson from the still more privileged and powerful sex — and lighten up a bit. </p>

<p>Judith Warner, the author of "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety" and a contributing columnist for TimesSelect, will be a guest columnist through the end of July.</p>

53

<p>NYT: ** A More Nuanced Look at Men, Women and College**
Discussion of Jacqueline King's ACE report. </p>

<p>Money quote:

[quote]
Over all, the report stressed, men's college participation is increasing.
"It does not appear that women's success is coming at the expense of men, but rather that women's college participation is rising faster than men's," the report said.

[/quote]
</p>

54

<p>The girls beat the guys at riflery, too.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Matchup separates the girls from the boys</p>

<p>By Joseph P. Kahn, Globe Staff | August 7, 2006</p>

<p>FITZWILLIAM, N.H. -- Brian Petersen wasn't exactly brimming with confidence when his Camp Oatka riflemen pulled into Fleur de Lis Camp last month for a match against the home team. Then again, who would be, knowing your last victory came when gas cost 93 cents a gallon and Ronald Reagan was president?
<code>This is going to be our first loss this year," Petersen predicted, standing outside the camp dining hall, while the afternoon sunlight sparkled on nearby Laurel Lake.</code>We can beat everybody else. We just can't beat the girls."

[/quote]
</p>

<p><a href="http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/articles/2006/08/07/matchup_separates_the_girls_from_the_boys/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/articles/2006/08/07/matchup_separates_the_girls_from_the_boys/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

55

<p>marite - the top 5 all time scores in Marine Boot Camp on the rifle range are held by women. Why is this so? According to the Marines, with the average recruit success on the rifle range is a function of how well one listens to detailed instructions (the Marines in a healthy yet funny kind of way do attribute success to individual talent, although at some level that plays a part). And the Marines find that women recruits generally do a good job at listening and following instruction. What is fascinating is that despite the rather aggressive nature of Marine drill instructors, female recruits also "get it" earlier than men that the DI's are there to help them. So they listen to instructions without as much internal turmoil as to the agenda that may be taking place. </p>

<p>I am not sure this is dispositive of anything more general, but upon reflection do find it predictable that hewing to detailed, mechanistic instruction will beat intuitive gun slinging the majority of the time.</p>

56

<p>This article tickled my funny bone because riflery is so often associated with boys, it is seen as more "manly." Remember dolls for girls and guns for boys? </p>

<p>But I am not surprised that girls should do well--if, that is, they take up riflery. Besides the following instruction part, I would assume small motor skills also play a part.</p>

57

<p>marite - I think you are correct about the importance of motor skills and the incidence of individual talent, but do not expect the Marines to admit it- to them - anyone with sight should become an Expert marksman! </p>

<p>In any event, while there are general gender differences between men and women it strikes me that the cause of the performance gap between men and women is currently and largely due to the very unfortunate incidence of single mother homes - where not only no father is around but where there really has never been one. Conservatives have been accused (perhaps with some validity) of beating the drum too loudly and narrowly against single parenting but our social policies and mores that fail to frankly stigmatize and discourage single parenting - or more precisely, raising children without involved and caring fathers around - is the elephant in the room. When looking at the demographics of the "gap", they track so closely to single motherhood and out-of wedlock births it is remarkable. How did we get to a point where we could decide that fathering a child and not taking a very involved and active part in the child's life (far more than paying court mandated child support, but there are plenty who don't even do that) is anything but an outrage? And there will be no change without outrage, no matter "bad" it makes some feel.</p>

58

<p>collegeparent: That Judith Warner column really annoys me. As do all those cutsey columns in the same vein: super-competent intellectual woman multi-tasks while loutish husband (despite his Ph.D & high-pressure job) loafs. Warner & her ilk are so weak & ineffectual that they can't work out domestic job-sharing that both can live with, but they want to tell the rest of the world how to live and think. Nobody can take advantge of you unless you let them.</p>

59

<p>More women to the front-lines? Who's for actual equality of treatment?</p>

60

<p>mam1959:</p>

<p>When I was in HS (a long time ago), I taught swim and also volunteered to be a 'victim' for the lifesaving class since I'd already been certified in lifesaving by then. As a victim, for some of the tests, I'd be a 'struggling' victim. The interesting point is that I could get out of the cross-chest carry of all the guys and most girls except for a couple of the girls including one I remember who couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds. The reason? She paid attention and did the cross-chest correctly rather than trying to 'muscle' me (which didn't work:)). I guess the general mentality of the guys was that they were strong enough to not follow the taught procedure whereas some of the girls knew they weren't strong enough and applied the taught procedure to success. It sounds similar to the shooting story you conveyed.</p>