According to mainstream media, parenting is a bit like trying to carry an enormous cardboard box with nothing but a cannon ball in it: minor shifts precipitate a sudden problem. At the moment, the media has got boys on the brain. Just look at the cover of Time magazine, or watch the follow-up stories on the morning shows and you'll know that we're in a full-blown crisis. Or maybe not.
To be fair, "The Myth About Boys" by David Van Drehle in the current issue of Time magazine is worth a read. The piece is an effort to both recap the literature of the current "boy crisis" and to explain the remarkable popularity of Hal and Conn Iggulden's The Dangerous Book for Boys. Ultimately the author claims that the boy crisis is over (while simultaneously stirring up the controversy all over again).
It was pretty amusing to watch Dr. Leonard Sax scrambling around on the Today Show this morning trying to save his crisis. His book Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men comes out in two weeks. So Time declaring boys okay: not so good for him.
In case you missed the gender "crises" in American education: first there was the girl crisis with Carol Gilligan and Reviving Ophelia. I remember sitting through a lots of faculty meetings listening to stats that pointed out how undervalued girls' contributions to class discussions were, how less likely they were to speak up, and how beneficial single sex education was for girls. It certainly got my attention, and like a lot of other teachers, I altered my style to make my classroom more girl-friendly.
Then came Raising Cain and the bevy of books and studies that Van Drehle cites in his article pointing out that boys were now the gender most "at risk." Declining test scores and college application rates, along with dropout and incarceration statistics are usually cited by boy-worriers, and the numbers can be pretty compelling.
I know that at the private school where I used to work there was quite a bit of hand wringing by administrators and parents alike over the relative performance of boys and girls in the classroom. To the casual observer, it would seem that at this school at least, that girls were getting more recognition for academic achievement and gaining more prestigious (read Ivy League) college acceptances.
The cause was clear enough to me. The school emphasizes collaboration and discussion, community, and prizes its egalitarian ethos. All noble. But what really motivates boys is competition. The sad fact is that if you want boys to really push themselves, to really maximize their efforts and to reach their fullest potential, you have to set them against each other. And that is not always pretty, and it is certainly not the current trend in education.
The academic and athletic landscape has changed – the hard-asses have been weeded out. I'm not advocating bringing back the abusive jerks in the tight Bike shorts, but the new model for teachers and coaches is not designed to get the most from boys. And this may be a good thing. We do have to accept, however, that while a kinder, gentler education system may turn out nicer boys, they may be less likely to achieve according to traditional measures. Maybe it's the measures that need changing.
And this is where the Dangerous Book for Boys comes in. Van Drehle astutely observes the Igguldens tap into the spirit that has informed boyhood reformations of the past: " a common impulse to return to the basics of boyhood--quests, competitions, tribal brotherhoods and self-discovery." The throwback, Old School world of The Dangerous Book for Boys is a nice compliment to a New School environment that promotes citizenship and collaboration.
In the end Van Drehle settles on the concept of "structured freedom" as being most beneficial for boys – a notion that resonates with me. This is precisely how I would articulate my ideal in raising my boys (and my girl, by the way): clear accountability in a space that encourages imagination, independence, and risk-taking. This requires of me that I be available as often as possible, though not always physically present (I hope not to be). And I need to keep the boundaries of their free and imaginative space well patrolled against enemies like over-scheduling and parental one-upsmanship.
Though "crises" are typically media creations that Van Drehle pretends to be apart from while working for a huge corporate conglomerate, I did appreciate his analysis. These "crises" can be a good way to keep on your parenting toes and to sharpen your own beliefs and values -- to keep us balanced, and to help us to put down that big cardboard box.
Clay Nichols, Family Correspondent:
Clay’s column, Dadventure, published twice monthly to Gather Essentials: Family, is a sure-fire guide to raising flawless, perfectly behaved, and always obedient children. Yeah, right.
Clay is the co-author of Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts, an award-winning playwright, and the Chief Creative Officer at DadLabs.com, a fatherhood website.
You can find all of Clay’s Dadventure articles at http://gather.com/dadventure
Keep up with Clay’s other postings and Gather activity by joining his Gather network -- just click here and select the orange “Connect” button on the left-hand side of the page.
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Comments: 37
Richard -- Do get The Dangerous Book. As soon as he saw it, my son grabbed the book and his pocketknife and headed to the woods to build a fort. I was thrilled/terrified.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe any actual 'falling behind' by boys might be based on something like expectations being leveled a bit so boys have to perform, not simply show up? After an eternity of the playing field being built with a lift on the boy's side, it's starting to even out in a few places - now boys have to work at things too. How sad.
Perhaps if people stopped acting as if their baby's genitalia was the primary determining factor in how children should be raised, these discussions would no longer be needed. Get over gender already, kids are comfortable (and good at) doing what they are raised believing is right and normal. If you teach them that boy and girls are two different critters (from two planets) they will often react by playing to their differences as if they were strengths as opposed to limiting societal constructs.
But I know that as long as we love and help each other it will all work out fine, so i will try not to worry to much.. easier said than done..
You've worked your comment wizardry again! Thanks.
That said, I would love to be able to dismiss gender differences as a simply a matter of genitalia and social construction, but I have to raise my kids in a world that has not. Plus there is the tricky issue of differences in brain structure, whether a function of hormonal influences in development or social conditioning, nonetheless documented. I'm trying to figure out how the interplay of nature and nurture is impacting my kid.
If boys are falling behind because of leveled expectations ( I actually think the academic field has been tipped slightly in favor of girls) then I should be proactive and offer what encouragement I can for my sons do more than "show up.
It's my ambition (and only time will tell) to raise my kids in as gender neutral a fashion as I can, while understanding the forces of gender at work on them, whether social constructs or biological imperatives.
Seven weeks to fatherhood and counting! Best of luck. It sounds to me like you are working from sound principles of parenting. As kitchenMage points out, the differences in raising boys and girls are over-emphasized. The ideas you articulate are far more important.
It's a tough thing to tease out the actual differences in the critters, isn't it? Especially since there is no desert island to raise them on to isolate from culture.
I read a book once by a British woman who tried to raise a non-gendered baby in the UK. It basically journaled the first 2-3 years of the kid's life and the constant imposition of gendered thinking on the child. At about 3, while wandering through downtown London with all of its advertising, the kid said to the mom, "Women are naked. Men aren't naked." (paraphrased) The mom was floored until she looked at the signs, shop windows, and people walking by and realized the child was right! Women were showing LOTS of skin, men NONE - in ads, the women often were naked, or nearly so. (I wish I could remember the book, I want to say it's "such a good girl" by Carol ____ but I can't find it on Amazon. It was a GREAT read for me as a young feminist mom of a girl. Then I handed it to a single father of a boy, who also loved it.)
So how can we tell what's innate?
While there are brain differences in some areas, they are trivial compared to the similarities. We have a world that is treating boys and girls as alien to each other based on a difference that comes down to being nominal at best.
Do you think the educational playing field was tilted towards traditional 'girl skills' as opposed to it being that girls have struggled to be equal on an uneven field and now that the field is flatter they are still able to out-compete in some ways?
I also think that the Ritalinizing of boys due to the lack of willingness to deal with normal kid behavior is a shameful data point in our reality. Because girls are TAUGHT to obey while boys are TAUGHT to not necessarily do so, boys are drugged into submission! How can this help them in school? Or life?
"It's my ambition (and only time will tell) to raise my kids in as gender neutral a fashion as I can, while understanding the forces of gender at work on them, whether social constructs or biological imperatives."
Good luck! I am fascinated by the topic, have lots of opinions on it, and am still learning.
Paul,
What you teach your boys about having a sister is as important as what you teach your girl. One thing I wish more parents would do: When you see behavior that would be unacceptable when directed at our daughter, point it out to your sons as 'would you want your sister...' ( I remember the day my father realized that all that "go out and get some" dating advice he had given my brother was different now that I had a date with one of my brother's friends.)
But that's much later. For now, or a few months from now, if you want to amuse yourself, try dressing her in one of the boy's discarded outfits and observe how people react to her as a 'boy' v 'girl'. It's one of the most useful awareness raising exercises you can do if you want to see just how early people start saying stuff like "he's gonna be a football player" v. "she's so pretty" - utterly hysterically insane.
Good article...
I think we should accept boys underperformance relative to girls as a sign of progress on many fronts, and be less hand-wringing about a "crisis" among boys. I don't think that either our expectations or our instruments of evaluation have kept up with changing pedagogy.
Ritalin and Special Education are different sides of the same sad coin, I'm afraid.
Alison -- I once saw a dad I like and respect go absolutely nuts when his son was repeatedly fouled by a girl on the opposing team. I think he got his gender politics all in a twist. This is an interesting dynamic.
Janet, John and David -- thanks for your comments.
Well-written article.
What about other factors affecting performance, such as the breakdown of the nuclear family and stresses such as parents having to work longer hours to make ends meet?
Jennifer -- I love having boys, despite whatever issues arise. Same goes for my girl.
Jessica -- Glad the piece was helpful. I'd love to know more about the work you reference. Are you writing something on this topic?
I was talking to a psychologist recently who said teachers today expect boys to behave like girls do in the classroom and that it's just not realistic. As someone who grew up with three sisters and no brothers, I often struggle to understand my two boys: the physical nature of their interactions, their need to run around all the time, why they can't sit still and get engrossed in a single activity for any stretch of time.
Maybe I'm reading too many headlines from the gossip rags, but I'm feeling concerned about girls today and the lack of positive role models in the media. Lindsay, Britney, Nicole, Paris...give me a break!
You both touch on the issue of the learning challenges that many boys face in school -- being active and kinesthetic seems to bring them negative attention. But think of it this way -- school addresses boys' weaknesses and mostly reinforces girls' strengths. That is, some scholars feel like the traditional classroom environment actually serves boys well by forcing them to concentrate on what they do not already do well (fine motor, discipline, holding still) rather than what they already are good at (large muscle, spacial/abstract thinking, competition). These same scholars argue that this balance serves boys well, and that schools should do more to force girl to do things they do not do well!
Make sense?
Thanks.
Here is what you have to say on this issue:
"But what really motivates boys is competition. The sad fact is that if you want boys to really push themselves, to really maximize their efforts and to reach their fullest potential, you have to set them against each other. And that is not always pretty, and it is certainly not the current trend in education."
Let me suggest that what really motivates boys is the need to strive. Competition is the means to this end. In this sense, competition itself does not set boys against each other. In fact, quite to the contrary, it involves them in a common enterprise. Competition can of course go bad--the cheater, the overly ambitious coach or parent, the bully--and corrupt its higher purpose. But these problems--dishonesty, selfishness, and aggression--can afflict any enterprise, with the same pernicious results.
You also say that "The school emphasizes collaboration and discussion, community, and prizes its egalitarian ethos. All noble." Is your presupposition the common one that collaboration, discussion, community, and equality and somehow the special province of girls and women and that men are "challenged" (I can't believe I typed that.) in these areas? If so, I urge caution for a couple of reasons. First, men, I think, have an exceptional ability to work together. Their enterprises throughout history have met with remarkable success and have had vast reaches. This kind of success does not come to those inept at collaboration. The forms of collaboration that men favor may differ from those that women favor, but that does not make them any less preferred in the school or anywhere else. Second, the great women leaders in history (e.g., Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Victoria, Meir, Thatcher) have governed in the same autocratic style as did their male counterparts. If they brought any unique collaborative skills or egalitarian views to their regimes, those skills and views are not evident to me. (Victoria, in fact, became considerably more imperious after she lost Albert, however, this may be because of Disraeli's increased influence.)
Any discussion on this topic will contain some generalizations, and I am certainly guilty of that. As human beings, men and women are more similar than we are different. Some men are compassionate collaborators that cry at every long distance commercial (me), and some women are highly competitive (my wife).
What I meant to point out in the article is that in my limited experience as a teacher (2 private boarding/day schools, 12 years in) I observed a very concerted effort to alter the classroom to make it a more favorable learning environment for girls. These efforts entailed very specific classroom management and lesson plan suggestions based on research about what helped girls most.
I found the research compelling and the suggested changes reasonable, so I bought in and changed my teaching. I don't think I was alone in this.
As a a result, my classroom that was very unlike the classrooms at the all-boys prep school I attended in the early 80s where competition raged on the fields and in the classroom and sleep was something losers did. You strove hard and pushed yourself to keep up.
I like to see the boys at the school where I now live (though I've left teaching) -- they're relaxed, confident, balanced -- kinder and more aware. But they don't push themselves as hard, which drives the type-A parents paying big bucks tuition totally up a wall.
I say good for the boys. As long as a bit of that old way -- a bit of the Dangerous Book for Boys gets in there somewhere. I think for the most part it does And that is why I agree with Van Drehle that the boys are alright.
One of the links isn't working now, not sure why. I wrote a review of Boys Adrift and am about to write one of The Dangerous Book for Boys.
There has been a HUGE push to get both boys and girls to learn more difficult concepts, including reading and math, at earlier ages than before. Where preschool and kindergarten often used to focus on letting kids learn by playing and getting to experience social activities, many young children are now being forced to sit still all day, in a country where we have HUGE levels of childhood obesity! Also, young children need recess and gym and...well, just time to explore. Play IS their "work" and they learn by trial and error.
Also, I do not believe that the average boy (note that I wrote "average") is mean to read at age 3 or 4, while in preschool and I also don't believe the average 4th grader is ready for algebra. They are teaching harder concepts at earlier ages, as if this will actually increase achievement levels. It does not. More kids are failing those standardized tests for grade level achievement. THat ought to say something about our educational system.
When my oldest son was in school, he learned to read gradually and at an age where his brain was ready. No more! If you go to many public schools in our area, boys are often in the "dumb" reading group while girls are soaring in the "smart" group, with only one or two boys. This is NOT because boys are "dumb" but because they do learn to read at different ages, on average, and girls are more verbal at an earlier age, on average. My boys all learned to read at about 7, although they were "expected" to read well by age 6. One just made Dean's List at college, which I note NOT to brag but only to point out that he reads just fine - and yet, because he was not reading by 5 and not reading proficiently by 6, we were told he was dyslexic and would have reading issues all his life! Not true, never had a reading problem, just had to get there on his brain's timetable.