The War Against Boys Read online

  Figure 6: Change in Male Earnings, 1969–2009

  Source: “Trends: Reduced Earnings for Men in America,” The Milken Institute Review.

  Why have men suffered this decline? As jobs in manufacturing, construction, farming, and mining have disappeared and the United States has moved toward a knowledge-based economy, men have failed to adapt. At the same time, the education establishment, as well as the federal government, looked the other way. Male workers with only a high school degree, say Greenstone and Looney, have been “unhitched from the engine of growth.”74 According to these two economists, “Male college completion rates peaked in 1977 . . . and then barely changed over the next 30 years. This slowdown in educational attainment for men is puzzling because attainment among women has continued to rise, and higher education is richly rewarded in the labor market.”75

  These rewards are already in evidence. In major cities across the United States, single women ages twenty-two to thirty with no children now earn 8 percent more than their male counterparts (Figure 7). According to the latest Census Data, since 2007, the number of young men (ages twenty-five to thirty-four) living with their parents shot up from 14.2 percent to 18.6 percent. For young women the rates have remained steady—around 10 percent (Figure 8). The Population Reference Bureau notes, “The share of young men living at home has reached its highest level since the Census Bureau first started tracking the measure in 1960.”76

  Figure 7: Top Towns for Women

  Percentage in which median full-time wages for single, childless women ages 22–30 exceeds those of single, childless men in the same age group.

  Metro Areas

  Wage Advantage

  Atlanta, GA

  21%

  Memphis/Ark./Mo.

  19%

  New York City–Northeastern NJ

  17%

  Sacramento

  16%

  San Diego

  15%

  Miami–Hialeah, FL

  14%

  Charlotte–Gastonia–Rock Hill, NC/SC

  14%

  Raleigh–Durham, NC

  14%

  Source: Reach Advisory, New York, New York.

  Figure 8: Share of Men and Women Ages 25–34 Living with Their Parents, 2000–2011

  Source: US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey. Graph from Population Reference Bureau, September 2011.

  At the conclusion of their report, the Brookings authors offer suggestions on “the long road back.” One of their top recommendations: more career academies for high school students that blend academic instruction with workplace experience. In other words, more schools like Aviation High School. Given the current climate, how likely is it that will happen?

  The Women’s Lobby Again

  In June 2012, the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education (NCWGE) published a new, 66-page report on the plight of girls in education, Title IX at 40: Working to Ensure Gender Equity in Education.77 While acknowledging that women have made progress, and mentioning that men may face bias in nursing and child care programs, they once again present girls as the shortchanged gender. “Girls and women,” they say, “are discouraged from pursuing traditionally male training programs.”78 Aviation High is not singled out by name, as it was at the White House equity seminar in 2010, but it is clearly in their sights. The report calls for aggressive Title IX compliance reviews and demands that Congress “hold states and municipalities accountable for increasing women’s completion of career and technical education programs.”79 As we shall see in chapter 7, the effort to harass and subjugate one of the few styles of education that is working for boys is already bearing bitter fruit in law and regulation. The buzz machine never stops.

  Soon after the AAUW published its 2008 report dismissing the boys’ crisis, Linda Hallman boasted in her monthly newsletter about how its release was publicized by the major news organizations—NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. She said, “[The] AAUW’s ability to capture media attention demonstrates the power and credibility of our message.”80 Not so. Capturing media attention and being credible are distinct phenomena. What it demonstrates is these women’s groups’ preternatural ability to lobby, to network, and to spin.

  Within living memory, the American feminist movement has been a valiant, broad-based vehicle for social equality. It achieved historic victories and enjoys continuing, well-deserved prestige for its contributions to social equality. But it has now harnessed that prestige to the ethos and methods of a conventional interest group. For leaders like Linda Hallman and Marcia Greenberger, men and women are two opposing camps engaged in a zero-sum struggle. Their job is to make sure women win. Few women, including feminist women, share their worldview. The AAUW and the National Women’s Law Center represent a tiny ideological constituency. But, at the moment, the education establishment, the White House, and many in the media treat them as the authoritative voice of American women.

  Male underachievement is more than an American problem. While men still outnumber women in higher education in China, Japan, and India, there is a growing college gap favoring women in countries as diverse as France, Brazil, Albania, Malaysia, and Australia. And the international dimension gives the problem special urgency, as education writer Richard Whitmire and literacy expert William Brozo remind us: “The global economic race we read so much about—the marathon to produce the most educated workforce and therefore the most prosperous nation—really comes down to a calculation: Whichever nation solves these ‘boy troubles’ wins the race.”81

  That is surely an overstatement, but we do know that the entry of large numbers of women into the workforce in recent decades has paid large economic dividends. There is no principle that says gender parity in education guarantees national economic success, but finding ways to get boys and men more engaged in school will certainly yield social and economic benefits that go beyond the welfare of the men themselves.

  As we shall see, for countries such as Australia, England, and Canada, closing the boy gap has become a national priority. But the United States has an extra handicap. We are coping not only with millions of poorly educated boys and young men, but with a tenacious women’s lobby that thwarts all efforts to help them. And today, that lobby appears to be setting the agenda for the US government.

  In June 2012, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights published a report entitled Gender Equity in Education.82 This new equity study might have been an occasion for federal officials to finally acknowledge the boy gap and alert the public to its social and economic hazards. After the department’s 2000 Trends in Educational Equity study and alarming reports on male academic disaffection by the California Post-Secondary Education Commission, the Massachusetts Rennie Center, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Brookings Institution, it would seem impossible for federal officials to ignore boys any longer. But Gender Equity in Education reads as if it were crafted by spin-mistresses at the AAUW and the National Women’s Law Center. The reading, writing, and school engagement chasms favoring young women are never mentioned; the college gap is noted without comment. In contrast, the few areas where girls are behind boys are highlighted as examples of inequitable “disparities” and described as “underrepresentation.”

  The report’s treatment of the gender gap in the elite Advanced Placement (AP) program is typical of the entire study. In 1985, boys and girls took AP courses at nearly the same rate. Around 1990, the girls moved ahead of boys and never looked back. By 2012, AP enrollment was 56 percent female. How do you turn that into bad news for girls? The authors of Gender Equity in Education found a way. They mention without elaboration that “girls outnumber boys in enrollment in AP science, AP foreign languages, and several other AP subjects”—and then they get down to business. Bullet point: “In AP mathematics, however, boys have consistently outnumbered girls by up to 10,000.” A longitudinal graph emphasizes the point. But there are no bullet points or graphs showing that girls have consi
stently outnumbered boys by up to 32,000 in biology, 56,000 in history, and 206,000 in English.83 Why don’t the lower male numbers count as disparity and underrepresentation? Because they do not fit the shortchanged-girl narrative promoted by the women’s lobby. Unfortunately for boys, that narrative has been adopted by the federal government and other influential quarters of the American education establishment.

  A Smoking Gun on How Our Schools Fail Boys

  What, finally, explains boys’ plight in education? Why should they be so far behind girls in honors courses and college attendance? Boys score slightly better than girls on national math and science tests—yet their grades in those subjects are lower. They perform worse than girls on literacy tests—but their classroom grades are even lower than these test scores predict. How does that happen? Don’t expect answers from the Department of Education.

  In February 2013, three economists from the University of Georgia (UGA) and Columbia University may have inadvertently solved the mystery behind the boy gap. In “Non-cognitive Skills and the Gender Disparities in Test Scores and Teacher Assessments: Evidence from Primary School” (published in the Journal of Human Resources), they confirmed that boys across racial lines and in all major subject areas earn lower grades in elementary school than their test scores predict.84 But then these economists did something no education official had thought to do: they looked for an explanation. And they appear to have found it. Teachers as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades—and girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better and are more amenable to classroom routines than boys. As the authors say, “We trace the misalignment of grades and test scores to differences between boys and girls in their non-cognitive development.” Non-cognitive skills include self-control, attentiveness, organization, and the ability to sit still for long periods of time. As most parents know, girls tend to develop these skills earlier and more naturally than boys do. It is not unheard of for some males never to develop them at all.

  The economists looked at data from 5,800 children in kindergarten through fifth grade. They examined students’ performance on standardized tests in reading, math, and science. They then compared the test scores to the teachers’ evaluations of student progress, both academically and socially. At all stages studied, teachers’ assessments strongly favored the girls. Girls reap large academic benefits from good behavior and accommodation to the school environment. So do some boys, by the way. The researchers found that boys who possess social skills more commonly found in girls—those who are well-organized, well-behaved, and can sit still—are graded as well or better than girls. But such boys are rare. According to the authors “the seeds of a gender gap in educational attainment may be sown at an early age.”

  Figure 9: Male-Female Gender Gaps on Kindergarten Test Scores and Grades

  Source: “Non-cognitive Skills and the Gender Disparities in Test Scores and Teacher Assessments: Evidence from Primary School,” Tables 4A, B and C (for Whites). All gender gaps are significant at the 5% level or higher.

  Graph by Mark Perry (University of Michigan and American Enterprise Institute). Data from Department of Education, ECLS-K (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten, 1998–1999 cohort).

  Some will say: too bad for the boys. If young boys are inattentive, obstreperous, and upsetting to their teachers, that’s their problem. After all, the ability to regulate one’s impulses, delay gratification, sit still, and pay close attention to the teacher are building blocks of success in school and later life. As one critic told me, the classroom is no more rigged against boys than workplaces are rigged against lazy and unfocused workers.

  But unfocused workers are adults. We are talking here about children as young as five and six. If little boys are restive and unfocused, why not look for ways to help them improve? When we realized that girls, as a group, were languishing behind boys in math and science, we mounted a concerted national effort to give female students more support and encouragement, an effort that has met with significant success. Surely we should try to provide similar help to boys. Much is at stake.

  Grades, more than ever before, are crucially important to a child’s future. According to the lead author, UGA’s Christopher Cornwell, “The trajectory at which kids move through school is often influenced by a teacher’s assessment of their performance, their grades.”85 Grades determine a student’s entry into enrichment programs and AP classes, as well as whether or not a student receives honors. Most of all, they open and close doors to higher education. So, says Cornwell, “If grade disparities emerge this early on, it’s not surprising that by the time these children are ready to go to college, girls will be better positioned.”

  Boys, on average, lack the social maturity of girls—and for that, many are paying a high price that continues after they have become more purposive young adults. What is the answer? More boy-friendly curricula? More male teachers? More single-sex classrooms? Special preschool classes to improve boys’ social skills? Extra recess where boys are allowed to engage in their characteristic rough-and-tumble play? More boy-engaging schools like Aviation High? As we will see in chapters to come, these are all promising solutions—and all are strenuously opposed by the women’s lobby.

  Teachers know their male students are struggling, and most would welcome new ideas on how to help them. But they get little help or support from official circles. The 2012 Gender Equity in Education report is striking proof that boys are nowhere on the agenda.

  The sad truth is that the educational deficits of boys may be one of the least-studied phenomena in American education. If Professor Cornwell and his colleagues are right, our educational system may be punishing boys for the circumstance of being boys. And it is a punishment that can last a lifetime.

  2

  No Country for Young Men

  Boys make adults nervous. As a group, they are noisy, rowdy, and hard to manage. Many are messy, disorganized, and won’t sit still. Boys tend to like action, risk, and competition. When researchers asked a sample of boys why they did not spend a lot of time talking about their problems, most of them said it was “weird” and a waste of time.1

  When my son David was a high school senior in 2003, his graduating class went on a camping trip in the desert. A creative writing educator visited the camp and led the group through an exercise designed to develop their sensitivity and imaginations. Each student was given a pen, a notebook, a candle, and matches. They were told to walk a short distance into the desert, sit down alone, and “discover themselves.” The girls followed instructions. The boys, baffled by the assignment, gathered together, threw the notebooks into a pile, lit them with the matches, and made a little bonfire.

  The creative writing teacher was horrified at the thought that she was teaching a pack of insipient arsonists—or Lord of the Flies sociopaths. In fact, they were just boys. But, increasingly, in our schools and in our homes, everyday boyishness is seen as aberrational, toxic—a pathology in need of a cure.

  Boys today bear the burden of several powerful cultural trends: a therapeutic approach to education that valorizes feelings and denigrates competition and risk, zero-tolerance policies that punish normal antics of young males, and a gender equity movement that views masculinity as predatory. Natural male exuberance is no longer tolerated.

  The Risk-Free Schoolyard

  Many games much loved by boys have vanished from school playgrounds. At some elementary schools, tug-of-war is being replaced with “tug-of-peace.”2 Tag is under a cloud—schools across the country have either banned it or found ways to repress it. When asked by a reporter why the game of tag was discouraged in the Los Angeles Unified School District 4, the superintendent, Richard Alonzo, explained, “Why would we want to encourage a game that may lead to more injuries and confrontation among students?”3 But safety is just one concern. Protecting children’s self-esteem is another.

  In May 2002, the principal of Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, California, sent a newsletter t
o parents informing them that children could no longer play tag during the lunch recess. As she explained, “The running part of this activity is healthy and encouraged; however, in this game there is a ‘victim’ or ‘it,’ which creates a self-esteem issue.”4 School districts in Texas, Maryland, New York, and Virginia “have banned, limited, or discouraged” dodgeball.5 “Any time you throw an object at somebody,” said an elementary school coach in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “it creates an environment of retaliation and resentment.”6 Coaches who permit children to play dodgeball “should be fired immediately,” according to the physical education chairman at Central High School in Naperville, Illinois.7

  The movement against competitive games gained momentum after the publication of an article by Neil Williams, chair of the department of health and physical education at Eastern Connecticut State University, in a journal sponsored by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, which represents fifteen thousand gym teachers and physical education professors. In the article, Williams consigned games such as Red Rover, relay races, and musical chairs to “the Hall of Shame.”8 Why? Because the games are based on removing the weakest links. Presumably, this undercuts children’s emotional development and erodes their self-esteem. The new therapeutic sensibility rejects almost all forms of competition in favor of a gentle and nurturing climate of cooperation. It is also a surefire way to bore and alienate boys.