Aaron W. Voyles comes clean about his past and offers insights into other young men’s futures.
I passed high school science because of Converse shoes. There—it’s off my chest. It was not because of the periodic table or falling apples or Celsius-to-Fahrenheit conversations. I passed high school biology and chemistry due to the convenient construction of the Converse shoe.
Science is not my thing. In fact, I’m terrible at it. When I was in high school, I felt I was dumb. I knew I was smart, but I felt I was dumb. This distinction is an important one, because even though I had many skills, I convinced myself that science was not one of them.
I had to come up with a plan to pass my biology class because my parents expected me to be smart. At this time, Converse shoes were popular and I owned several pairs. Since I wasn’t cool in any other ways, having a variety of Converse shoes became “my thing.” (Pro tip: this does not necessarily make you cool, as I learned.)
Because Converse are made of canvas, they can fit an astounding amount of information on the side of a size eleven. If you write answers on the inside of the shoe, it is easy enough to cross your legs and read answers from your shoe. While I’m hopeful that my high school won’t come and take my degree away from me this many years later, I am able to report that my strategy was somewhat successful. I passed science and moved on to college.
And college is what my column is about. I acknowledge that it is odd to begin the inaugural issue of a column about collegiate age men and their experiences with an anecdote about cheating in high school, but I begin by telling this story because it picks up in college.
No, I did not continue to cheat. I did not have to resort to the Converse method of education in my collegiate years, for I was running out of clean shoes at this point. Instead, I never took science again with the exception of an introductory environmental science class in which we watched The Day After Tomorrow.
Men’s college decision making and choices are formed in part before we ever arrive at college. As Richard Ford said in The Lay of the Land, “At the exact moment any decision seems to be being made, it’s usually long after the real decision was actually made—like light we see see emitted from stars”(2007, p. 33). So too are many parts of the male college experience decided beforehand.
◊♦◊
College is a place where men are falling behind repeatedly and progressively. Research has shown that men are the majority of conduct issues on campuses, have worse grade point averages, and have less desire to finish college. Men cause the overwhelming majority of violent and sexual crimes on college campuses. (Harper, Harris & Mmeje, 2005). What leads to men making these decisions is not a simple answer.
“The Dunce Cap” refers to a visual demonstration of shaming, of being less than. Masculinity, for many boys, is about the the need to avoid shame by staying unnoticed. I knew that I had to do “well enough” in my high school classes, because I was expected to go on to college, be ambitious, and be successful. As a man, those traits are considered a given for me.
Alternatively, I knew that doing too poorly would make me a bigger outcast that I already thought myself to be. If you are going to do poorly in school, you had to be much, much cooler than I was. Academics are just one kind of dunce cap that men wear. We crown each other with this cap for any variety of issues, faults, or unmanly behaviors.
◊♦◊
I brought this stress into college with me. Living as a man is living with a paradox of conflicting expectations. For me, the solution was retreat out of the world of science forever, shutting off that portion of my brain and life. For situations where an escape is not as easy as an environmental science class, the stakes are much higher than my petty story. For some men, this will lead to depression, drugs, suicide, violence, or rape.
For me, my admission of cheating on something as ancient as a high school biology test is part of owning up to my shame. I am saying that I understand I’m not everything I’ve said that I am. As a man, I have gotten the benefit of the doubt to the contrary of that ignorance often. Owning up to the challenges and the choices we make in the face of those challenges is how we remove that shame and move forward.
I don’t write this first column to condemn cheating or to condone it. Cheating is a reality born from the circumstances. As a boy, I viewed my cheating as the only acceptable way out of a system of pressures that said I should not study nor should I fail. As a man, perhaps that choice has created shadows for me. Our boyhoods haunt our manhood and help create the place in college where men are falling behind.
I accept that I will never be as good at science as I am at other things, but I also accept that I have the ability not to have to give up from fear of being stupid or of letting down others as a provider or decision maker. Though I wear many other dunce caps still and act out of fear of others, I am prepared to take this one off. I cheated, and I’m over it.
Ford, R. (2007). The lay of the land. (Vintage Canada Ed.). Toronto, CN: Vintage Canada.
Harper, S., Harris, F. & Mmeje, K. C. (2005). A theoretical model to explain the overrepresentation of college men among campus judicial offenders. NASPA Journal, 42(4), 565-588. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1208&context=gse_pubs.
Ditching the Dunce Cap is a weekly Friday column from Aaron W. Voyles on the University of Texas-Austin. He welcomes your comments.
—Photo Kyrre Gjerstad/Flickr
Hi Aaron,
I enjoyed reading your article. You cheated in highschool using your Converse shoes.. hahaha… that was hilarious! “Cheating is a reality born from the circumstances”. So true.