Eric Sentell urges good men to teach themselves and their sons to engage with learning and with others before the gender gap becomes a chasm.
Over the last five-plus years, I have taught college composition to freshman and sophomores at multiple universities and community colleges in the Midwest and the East. Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve observed multiple gender gaps among my students: the widely-reported enrollment gap and the underlying, more insidious gap in engagement.
My observations are necessarily generalizations, so some words of caution are in order. I’ve taught plenty of engaged, motivated males as well as many disengaged, apathetic females. Moreover, the gender gap involves multiple variables, such as family income. For instance, male enrollment in the Ivy Leagues remains higher than female enrollment. We need to remember these exceptions and caveats before we despair completely.
Yet some generalizations wouldn’t exist if they weren’t generally true. On average, my female students are much more engaged than the male students. They sit at the front of the room, bright-eyed and leaning forward. When I or their peers speak, they maintain eye-contact and listen attentively. When I ask questions, they readily volunteer answers. During peer review, they work hard the entire class session, independently exchanging papers with multiple peers. They use my advice on their writing and write longer papers (rather than set a minimum requirement, I ask students to thoroughly address the assignment).
Quite simply, more of my female students possess the ability to engage thoughts, ideas, and people who do not necessarily interest or entertain them.
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In contrast, most of my male students have no apparent desire to learn. They stare vacantly, look out the window, or surf their smartphones while I or their peers speak. When I ask questions, they don’t seem to realize I asked anything. If they do, they wait for a female to break the silence that sometimes ensues when the women feel awkward about answering everything. During peer review, they half-heartedly exchange papers with one person and then socialize for the rest of class. Some of them largely ignore my advice on their writing and revise minimally. They sit in the back, sleep through half of class, and then email, “wen did you say u wanted revisions?”
This email is a perfect microsm of a systemic issue. The young man who sent this email—a journalism major, mind you—took so little pride in his writing to his English professor that he could not be bothered to review his one-line email one single time. Predictably, his coursework, attendance, and participation all reflect a similar lack of effort. Which is really sad, because he might be one of the most talented writers I have this semester.
I believe the engagement gap directly causes the enrollment gap. If these are the young men who care enough about their educations and future careers to enroll in college, then just imagine how disengaged the rest of them must be! It’s no surprise that so many more women pursue higher education. In general, they clearly value it much more.
To be clear, I am not an elitist snob who equates lacking a college degree with failure. In fact, I believe a technical education can often better facilitate a person’s professional and personal goals. Moreover, many successful careers and good-paying professions do not require any post-secondary education, and I respect people who choose to enter the workforce or start a business rather than attend college.
But I also worry about the implications of the enrollment and engagement gaps. Our knowledge economy can’t afford to lose either gender’s contributions, yet relatively few men are gaining the education necessary for some of that economy’s most important, lucrative, and secure jobs. Besides credentials, they also aren’t gaining any of the less-tangible benefits of an education: namely, the ability to engage things that lack immediate interest and entertainment.
Consider the earlier generalizations about my students. The underlying difference isn’t the students’ chromosomes, intelligence, or even their learning styles. It certainly isn’t the female students’ inherent interest in college composition, a required course. I have 112 students this semester and not a single English major, male or female. Quite simply, more of my female students possess the ability to engage thoughts, ideas, and people who do not necessarily interest or entertain them.
So for me, the gender gap raises not only economic concerns but also anxiety regarding my male students’ abilities to stick with problems. Complex problem-solving requires contemplation, and contemplation requires some engagement and persistence—like proofreading a one-line email before clicking send. This is especially true of most real-world adult problems; unlike video games or sports, they are rarely fun or entertaining to solve, and thus they require especially demanding forms of engagement and persistence.
I also worry about my male students’ current and future relationships. Relationships require engaged attention, both at home or in the workplace. Wives, children, bosses, and co-workers all want to be heard, and the inability to engage less-than-compelling subject matter (I know English isn’t everyone’s cup of tea) does not bode well for these relationships. As I told one class, if you look out the window while your boss is talking to you and your co-workers, then there better be something awfully important happening outside.
Our society needs more men who can fully participate in the knowledge economy and engage in creative problem-solving and meaningful relationships, not fewer. So what’s to be done?
For starters, we can unplug from our hyper-paced, ADD media culture every once in a while. We can turn off the TV, ignore the smartphone, and let someone else answer the Call of Duty. We can spend some time reading articles and books, contemplating ideas in depth and detail. We can listen to those around us more attentively, searching for something of interest or usefulness until it becomes easier to just listen. We can value learning for learning’s sake. And we can share these lessons with the next generation.
Otherwise, the engagement gap may widen higher education’s gender gap into a yawning chasm.
Read more in Education.
Image credit: Moyan_Brenn/Flickr
Until we begin looking at differential treatment from an early age and show just how our individual environments create different mental/emotional/social conditioning; how average stress is made up of layers of mental frictions that take up real mental energy, and how differential treatment creates real advantages for girls today, we will continue to be at a loss to explain the growing Male Crisis. Please do not buy into the genetic models, for they will only make it much worse for Male students. The problem is more complex than school curriculum or boy chemistry. The problem involves two entirely different treatments… Read more »
I just finished 16 years of full-time college teaching, and 14 years of adjuncting before that. I don’t see this problem at all. But I’m sort of a strange, kinesthetic teacher, so it might depend on method to some extent. What I’ve noted, though, is that women, in general, will put up with discomforts that will make men disengage. This is probably why women are surpassing men now in management positions, and are breaking all kinds of glass ceilings. This is not necessarily good. From the standpoint of resisting outrageous demands by management, women are being preferred, and men are… Read more »
Back in the 70s, when 40% of the students were women, the system was blamed. Programs started, and students became 50-50 by the early eighties. The system continued to get blamed for the bad enrollment of women despite them being 50-50, more programs came, more programs came to lower education, like forcing children to learn reading by treating a word as a picture, as opposed to a series of letters. It hurt both boys and girls, but boys more because less development of the language centers of their brains. Feminists were eager to hurt girls, just so they could hurt… Read more »
I ran the funding systems for state schools in Australia up to the mid nineties. At that time there were programs for girls in every school in my state but not a single thing for boys anywhere.
You reap what you sow.
I remember first bring up the gender gap in higher education to my grad studies class about 2 years ago. I kept bringing up stats and possible social ramifications. It finally hit home when I mentioned that educated, professional, women were having difficulty finding dateable men. The class actually reacted with derision until the black, female, instructor told them that it was already happening in certain communities when you overlay race and class. She noted having 9 professional, educated, female, friends who were never married. About 6 months later, another female instructor asked the class, which was 70% female, in… Read more »
Could this possibly be because of the way boys are shown in the media from a VERY young age? Now, I have seen groups who hate any commercial or show where a female role is smarter than the male; and of course there are groups who hate the opposite, any media where the female is dumb or the damsel in distress and the males are the heros. I lie in the middle, in reality more or less, which is funny since the book I’m about to tout isn’t in reality – Harry Potter is above all IMO the best childs… Read more »
You make an excellent point — part of the HUGE reason why boys also disengage is because, simply put, girls don’t exactly value intellectual pursuits the way they do certain types of boorish behavior. If the thug is more rewarded sexually than the smart guy, a massive incentive for being smart for a man is laid to waste. Couple that with virtually every social initiative on education fixated on how to make girls better, and how to get men and boys to accomodate girls and women, and you begin to see precisely why the average male really couldn’t care less… Read more »
I suspect that the biggest problem facing young men has to do with the double-bind that progressivist thought has created in our society when it comes to men and success. Whenever I am successful, I am told that it is only because I am a white male. How many hours I work each week, the fact that I had to put myself through undergrad, the actual value of my work product, etc. is all ignored by someone who gleefully tells me “You would never have accomplished anything if you were a black woman.” Indeed, at the height of the financial… Read more »
hmmm….well, either boys changed, girls changed, schools changed or some combination thereof. Its interesting though, that “boys changed” appears to be the null hypothesis by most feminist leaning social critics. It fits a pattern permitting such thinkers to preserve their labors against a fanciful system that consistently prefers male agency. It stand to reason, these feminists might argue, that such a system favoring male agency would also permit flawed male choices to flourish. And so my imagined feminist conjectures, male failing, as much as male success, provides clear evidence of a persistent patriarchal society -let us stay the course towards… Read more »
My older brother is a perfect example of ADHD, totally disengaged and underperforming student…he went to a selective NYC HS but definitely not at the top of his class…he attended a community college, but then woke up one day and figured he could do so much better than the gang members in his class….long story short: he transferred out to an engineering school and now is a hot shot computer programmer out in Silicon Valley (and he makes many times more than I do, the studious “perfect” child with all of the honors and awards!)…. Out in the real world,… Read more »
From a business standpoint- one of the best leading metrics for company performance is employee engagement. As a leader I cannot sit back and tell employees to become more engaged. I have to look at the environment, the work, the career path etc and figure out how to increase my company’s overall level of engagement. Look at the work done by Gallup on employee and customer engagement. This has been leveraged by businesses and churches across the country. You’ll always have some small segment of disengagement but you try to minimize it. When it comes to educators- all I see… Read more »
I comment often on the negative consequences for boys of the pressure to force literacy down into younger and younger grades (often due to high-stakes testing demands) and how this disadvantages boys and often turns them off to learning at a young age. I won’t blab on about that again. Commenters on this site usually agree more or less with that idea. Here’s another that I find much less support for when I post about it, but I nonetheless witnessed it myself over the 25 years I have worked with children in schools as an educational psychologist, teacher, and administrator.… Read more »
I dont know, it seems there are some dispute in the methodology of the experiment.
Anyways before pointing the finger at others, you should alway point give a look at yourself. I keep reading over and over again in the commentary, that girls get encouraged and supported meanwhile boys do not. Is there something truth in this, if yes is that possible that this kind of procedure is actually responsable for the lack of boy’s interest in study? if not why do you think this meme is around?
Gonna rant a bit because I have so many views on the topic, some are generalizations, I’m sure some of what I will say is probably wrong so feel free to correct me. My school experience was traumatic and quite frankly pathetic, I have nothing but anger for 90% of my school life and I truly believe so much time was wasted with bullshit like bullying, shitty teachers, etc. It’s interesting teachers are so quick to blame other things though. Is it possible that with the elevated focus on helping the girls in the 90’s that boys were ignored or… Read more »
To focus on video games is to absurdly and intentionally deflect the issue from a systemic crisis that’s being borne out in education — our society overvalues the average female over the average male in virtually all forms of society which is conspicuously shown in public policy. It’s not just in education (as we see here), but in health care (men die of virtually everything more than women, but receive far less federal funding), poverty (men make up 90% of the homeless and a majority of the impoverished), crime (men are more likely to be imprisoned falsely, receiver harsher sentences… Read more »
You’re right and by now I shouldn’t be surprised when I find out that men or boys are more abused or exploited than women or girls, but I’m still surprised. Lately I found out that most prostitution cases involve boys or young men and the majority of their customers were women. I suspect it is because the social safety net fails men leaving them with three methods of survival begging, crime (robbery or theft), or selling their bodies.
Sorry about all tha typos. This new remote keyboard doesn’t seem to work that well
The general attitudes you notice i your class happen long before these young people walk through your door. I’ve recently read a study tha claims that because of the differnt rate of brain developement between the sexes and because of different patterns of processing information, females tend to do better at course work (that might explain a couple of women I know wo can ‘ae’ just about any course but ave true difficulty applying that knowlege). If that is a part of it at all, I believe it is a very small part. The mustch larger probm that no one… Read more »
Systemic oppression
Meant to say:
By the end of high school boys average 3 full grades behind girls in reading comprehension.
Yes, you can blame young men for a failure to be serious. However, most of these patterns are set in early childhood. During the 1990’s the AAUW released their report “shortchange girls shortchange america” and it issued in a lot of new laws, rules, and procedures in elementary, middle, and high schools which by design favored girls. The problem is that even in the 90’s girls were nearing parity. When you factor in boys who were expelled or dropped out giving them a Zero in whatever system you wanted to measure education, then girls had *already* pulled up equal to… Read more »
Great post John. I’m still skeptical of the boys crisis as it seems to be a manufactured debate. The idea of a boys crisis popped up in popular magazines such as Time and Newsweek and several books were published around 2007, but very little primary academic research suggests that the gender gap favors females. The AAUW is a major player in this debate. They analysed the 2007 NAEP exam and adjusted the disaggregated data to rule out factors of poverty and race. There findings showed that boys still out-preformed girls by an average of two points. That being said, in… Read more »
I graduate high school in 85 at a semi-upscale public school system in which teachers really seemed to care and was about 30-40% male teachers. In many ways I thank that I wasn’t born later in which schools seem to have been driven over a cliff. In elementary school I remember a teacher who had a rule that if we finished all of our work, and it was acceptably correct for the day we got to play with board games in the back. Nowadays I have a feeling that this would be seen as “punishing” the slow kids rather than… Read more »
Suspense and horror stories, not suspension lol
Speaking as someone who wrote very slowly I was regularly held during lunch to finish off writing on the board, it destroyed a lot of my desire to learn. Gimme a keyboard though and I would have easily beaten everyone else in the class. So yeah it would be punishing the slow kids as the fast ones get to enjoy a game and get that because they have extra skill, that will cause resentment for children. I had major resentment for people who were able to write fast because they actually got to enjoy their full lunchbreak, a 30 minute… Read more »
@ John D When I was younger, we used to have math contests and spelling bees. I have always wondered if this shift from a competitive environment has affected boys negatively. Mt nephew loved playing football, but hated practice. He was a disruptive beast on the defensive line, but was average or so on the offensive line on passing plays, probably because the defensive player initiates the action. I also wondered why girls were consistently rated higher than boys in school, but when taking standardized exam, like the SAT boys scored higher. In grade school, I was the 7th or… Read more »
Aaron,
While I agree with the general sentiment of your post, I fail to see how you can suggest that the gender gap in academic achievement is primarily a manufactured crisis.
Virtually all data on the subject supports the idea that around the mid 1990’s or so, girls began to outpace boys in academic achievement. That THIS particular gender disparity is couched as a victory instead of a symptom of systemic discrimination against one gender (as we did when girls were in a similar situation) is the likely root of the problem.