These are comments by Eric M and Danny on the post “The deck has been stacked against boys since the early 1990′s in education.”
Eric M said:
“The reason that boys are doing so badly in school (and getting worse) is that the ‘who cares’ attitude held by society in general, especially the government. The government wants boys to do badly compared to girls. That is a reflection of society in general, since politicians must do the bidding of their constituents, and the left especially wants boys to do poorly compared to girls.
“They don’t care how well or badly boys do as long as girls are doing much better, the bigger the education gap the better. Evidence?
“The President of the United States of America celebrated the education gap, applauding the fact that boys and men are behind. He said:
‘More women as a whole now graduate from college than men. This is a great accomplishment for America.’
“When the President and the majority of Congress want boys to fall further behind, there is no hope it getting better overall.”
Danny responded:
“I wouldn’t say that the government actively wants boys to fail so much as not caring that they do.
When the president said, ‘More women as a whole now graduate from college than men. This is a great accomplishment for America.’ … I don’t think it should be read as hoping that boys fails. But I do think it’s fair to read it as wondering when is he going to say something about how boys are lagging behind and what a ‘great accomplishment’ it would be if they were able to catch up.
“Again I don’t think its so much actively plotting the doom of boys but more of just not caring about them UNTIL they start f’ing up. (Think about it when people want to talk about how men are the architects of their own doom where do they point? They don’t point to the elementary levels where even at that early in life boys are still lagging behind girls. No, they jump to the 20 to 30 year olds that are slacking off on Call of Duty. Why is that? There is poor performance early on but that is regularly ignored in favor of highlighting the poor results later in life.)”
Photo credit: Flickr / thelesleyshow
About the Editors
This….sounds a lot like my family. I am female with a younger brother. As a child, I got the lion’s share of the attention from my father, because I was his firstborn and had certain talents that he expected to grow into an Awesome Rich-Making Career someday. My brother? Sure, he had better toys, and my Old-World extended family made much of the fact that he was male, but in the day-to-day he didn’t get nearly what I got in terms of attention.
Don’t get me wrong, my parents weren’t neglectful, they just….didn’t praise much. He was scolded for drawing on furniture with a crayon, or making C’s, or not cleaning his room. But he had to do pretty big things to get that “Way to go!” or “Good job!” even compared to me (and dad had crazy-high expectations for me). Performances in the school play got praise, an A for the year got praise, but I don’t remember any pictures on the refrigerator or anything like that.
It was like praise had to be rationed out for only Big Things or he somehow wouldn’t be motivated to try anything anymore. Or like somehow turning 5 took away his right to have the little things even acknowledged. I’m not talking “You cleaned your room for a whole week, let’s go to Chuck-E-Cheese.” I’m talking “You cleaned your room yesterday without being asked! You’re becoming quite a responsible little guy,” or “Hey, nice grade on your history test!”
How’s your brother doing now? Has he managed to carve himself a life irregardless of his father’s apathy?