Philip Zimbardo challenges the global community to think about the question, “Why are boys struggling?”
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who lead the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, has spent most of his career exploring the nature of evil. He was an expert witness at the Abu Ghraib trials, and is the author of The Lucifer Effect, which explains how “good people turn evil.” His recent work focuses on the nature of heroism, and how some people are driven to help others in need.
In his most recent TEDTalk, Zimbardo explores the question of why boys are struggling. He shares some statistics, and makes several suggestions as to what he sees the cause of “the demise of guys” to be. Zimbardo points out that, “Boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to drop out of school. In Canada, five boys drop out for every three girls. Girls outperform boys now at every level, from elementary school to graduate school.” He explains that a major part of the problem is that:
Boys’ brains are being digitally rewired for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal. That means they’re totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive.
His challenge to the global community is for people to step up and pay attention, and to start looking for solutions to the very real problems facing boys in today’s societies.