Re: [CTRL] The War Against Boys

2000-06-18 Thread Ynr Chyldz Wyld

Before WWI, it was the norm in western culture to give little boys
dolls to play with, the same sort of dolls which their sisters played
with.  Indeed, the Victorian custom was to dress little boys in dresses
until they were 5 or 6 years old.

With the first World War, the idea changed that now little boys had to
be conditioned and taught to be cannon fodder, hence the change to
emphasize 'masculine' toys for boys, and the denigrating of the idea of
boys' nurturing nature being encouraged via doll play...

It is purely a 20th century construct, a myth like that of the 'nuclear
family', that boys prefer one type of toy over another; boys will play
with the toys they are given, and if a male infant or toddler is given
a doll, he will play with it.


June

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[CTRL] The War Against Boys

2000-06-17 Thread J Taylor

WAll Street Journal, June 13, 2000

Teaching Those Little Protosexists How to Behave

By FRED BARNES

A few years ago, a teacher in a fourth-grade class in Maryland asked her
students to imagine themselves as advice columnists for the local
newspaper.
Their task was to answer a distraught mother who'd written for advice on
coping with her nine-year-old son, who wanted a doll. For the teacher, the
exercise was not merely a game. She was pursuing what's known as "nonsexist
child rearing" and hoped the boys in her class would reach beyond the male
stereotype. But the boys rebelled. They were hostile to the idea of a boy
with a doll and became disruptive. Reluctantly, they agreed the boy could
have a doll -- but only if it was G.I. Joe.

Their reaction, suggests Christina Hoff Sommers in "The War on Boys" (Simon
 Schuster, 251 pages, $25), was perfectly natural. From birth, boys are
different from girls, so it's normal for them to recoil when adults try to
make them act like girls. But rather than dissuading teachers from efforts
to make boys less aggressive, instances like the one in Maryland have
prompted the education establishment to intensify its drive to "rescue"
boys
from their masculinity. "Routinely regarded as protosexists, potential
harassers, and perpetuators of gender inequity," Ms. Sommers writes, "boys
live under a cloud of censure, in a permanent state of culpability."
They've
become politically incorrect.

How did we reach a point where boys are feared and "male culture" is
denigrated? Ms. Sommers argues that it's the result of feminist dogma now
popular among educators, and she makes a compelling case. "It has become
fashionable to attribute pathology to millions of healthy male children,"
she asserts. This false diagnosis denies boys what they need: respect,
discipline, moral guidance.

The first step toward pathologizing boyhood, according to Ms. Sommers, was
the creation of the myth that girls are being shortchanged in America's
schools. This notion was spawned by Carol Gilligan, a professor at
Harvard's
Graduate School of Education, then trumpeted by the American Association of
University Women, which had financed its own study in 1991. Soon the U.S.
Education Department was on board. And in 1994, Congress passed the Gender
Equity Act, which labeled girls an "under-served population."

In truth, Ms. Sommers notes, most educational yardsticks indicate that
girls
are doing far better than boys in school and have been for roughly a
decade.
Girls get better grades, take more advanced-placement classes, display more
musical and artistic ability, and study abroad more often. By 1996, they
outnumbered boys in college enrollment by 8.4 million to 6.7 million. True,
boys average higher scores on college-placement tests. But Ms. Sommers
notes
that more girls from low-income homes where parents didn't go to college
actually take the tests, and this reduces the female average.

The second step in the gender war was the refusal of educators to
acknowledge the academic plight of boys. The Education Department puts out
300 books, pamphlets and papers on gender equity, but none is aimed at
helping boys achieve academic parity with girls. But boys have genuine
problems in reading and writing. They're becoming "significantly less
literate than girls," Ms. Sommers writes. "By the time they reach college
age, many American young men are outside the culture of the written word."

Instead of developing programs to upgrade boys academically, educators
focus
on plans that treat boys as dangerous aggressors. Not only have
antiharassment curricula been adopted by many schools, "normal youthful
male
exuberance is becoming unacceptable," Ms. Sommers says. "Many educators
regard the normal play of little boys with disapproval and ban it
outright."
Recess, already eliminated in some schools, "may soon be a thing of the
past."

How can boys be helped? Ms. Sommers says Britain is on the right track.
"British educators are ten years ahead of Americans in confronting and
addressing the problem of male underachievement." The Brits stress
boys-only
classes, a structured environment, frequent testing, strict homework
checks,
more teacher-led work and high expectations. The results, especially in
improving male literacy, have been dramatic.

In this country, however, educators are bent on taming boys' innate
rambunctiousness and continuing what Ms. Sommers calls "the exact opposite
of what the British headmasters are recommending for boys." It's the usual
progressive stuff: less emphasis on competition and grades, less
memorization and absorbing of information, less individual learning but
more
group activity. In place of moral codes, boys are taught to be more open
about their emotions.

Ms. Sommers reveals how much that's being done in the name of aiding boys
is
based on junk science. There's no evidence, for instance, that boys are
better off being emotionally "open" rather than "repressed." Studies
purporting to show