Boys suffer in a culture without challenges

I could swear there was a thread/discussion on the problems of teaching boys. When i came across this article this morning I immediately thought of this forum.

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Boys suffer in a culture without challenges
Becoming a man in our society is becoming increasingly difficult because of a lack of healthy competition.
ROB NEAL

December 27, 2009

YARMOUTH — Boys need challenging and intense competition to become men.

Two 10-year-old boys show up for their first soccer tryouts. Both feel nervous but excited. The parent of one says, "give it your best shot and have fun." The other parent says, "you don't have to do this if you don't want to. It can feel scary."

Which of these statements is best for the boys?

An increasing number of boys are doing poorly in school and failing to mature in a positive way. More men are losing self-confidence and their passion for competing and achieving.

While the top-performing 10 percent to 20 percent of boys and men are doing just fine, the growing number of underachieving males forces schools, businesses, the military and others to lower their standards and expectations. What happened?

Political correctness and new age wishful thinking have all contributed to the effort in our schools, families, and communities to take away intense competition from boys. Even in sports, only a small number of top athletes ever get to experience challenging competition.

Some believe that competition turns boys into bad, mean or violent people. The opposite is true. The proving ground of competition done well creates confident boys and competent men!

Tens of thousands of years of human development cannot be swept aside to fit the "anti-competition" PC agenda. It's a mushy, idealistic approach to child development and education that seems disconnected from reality. Today boys learn more about fairness and fun than how to compete successfully.

Yes, fairness and fun are important lessons in life, but can be taught very well during intense competition. Plus nearly every aspect of life involves some degree of competition with other people, communities, teams, governments, or businesses and will never go away.

All of the politically correct worries about fairness, over-the-top fears about scuffing up knees or hurting someone's feelings frustrate boys and do them a disservice by lowering standards of achieving. We're taking away the proving grounds for learning how to be strong men. Our global business competitors and terrorist enemies are licking their chops.

Growing up I had many opportunities to compete in the classroom, playing sports or music, and having adventures with my friends and family. I learned from my successes and my failures.

Once, at age 11, I was about to bat for my Little League team in the last inning with two outs. The adrenalin came rushing in, my mind focused and I felt nervous but ready. The game ended suddenly, however, because the batter before me stuck out.

I was stunned seeing my chance to be the hero lost. I wanted to smack something to release my frustration. That's how many boys and men feel today even if they don't know why.

Luckily, I had a coach who kept providing opportunities to prove myself under pressure. When boys and men don't get these competitive chances, we tend to take our disappointment, anger and shame out on others. As a result, far too many of us become bullies, abusers, gangbangers, criminals, corrupt politicians or greedy corporate clones. Others become slackers, underachievers, indecisive, increasingly numb to life and focused on video games and fantasy sports. [SNIP]

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http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/st...&ac=PHedi&pg=1


I happen to agree with the general thrust of the article. The feminization of our culture (am I going to get smacked for that? :D) has really marginalized boys from achieving. Just look at the college graduating statistics and you'll see a incredible shift from thirty years ago. Boys aren't making it into college, not graduating, and resorting to manual labor type jobs that are disappearing with ever increasing technology. Now I'm sure the situation is more complex than this article presents, and just by allowing competition is not the complete solution by far. But the heart of this is I think true: boys need to compete, bump elbows, push each other, maybe even fight as a process toward manhood. That doesn't mean they don't get disciplined for it. The cycle of competing, fighting, disciplining is all part of the process. Boys are not little girls and they don't want to be made to feel like pansies. There needs to be an outlet for their inner boy to blosoom out into a man.

Sure, girls in the past were probably not taught to suceede in school and the real world. And hopefully we've adjusted for it today. But it's now time to adjust our teaching strategies for educating boys.

That's the basic premise of Fight Club.

Interesting topic. I think your on to something here. (It is, however, slightly frustrating to me as a female that our transition from girl to woman is generally not regarded with as much significance as the transition from boy to man, but that's a separate subject entirely). I certainly don't think it would hurt to see more encouragement in the area of competition for boys. They seem to thrive on it rather than be deterred by it. I think boys would breed competition on their own naturally if it were not so frowned upon today. I'm not sure how one would apply this idea practically. It seems it would be more of an attitude shift in the school system.

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Originally Posted by TheFifthElement

That's the basic premise of Fight Club.

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I'm not familiar with that. Is that a novel, movie?

It's both. The movie is pretty well known: Edward Norton and Brad Pitt star in it.

I do think competition is important, both for boys and girls. There's such a fear, though, that competition results in discrimination that schools seem to shy away from it now. My son's primary school doesn't seem to encourage competition or academic achievement, but they get medals if they're well behaved! Needless to say, my son thinks school is a total waste of time, and he's only 9. I just hope that secondary school will turn that around.

Hmmm, I've worked with child athletic programs (local YMCA) for several years now and I think parents pushing kids to compete to an exorbitant degree is still very much alive and well, at least around here. I've had to referee flag football games where coaches and parents scream and yell and antagonize me and other refs because they think that their third grader's talent is being marginalized by rules in place for safety reasons and to allow every player more equal opportunities. I think this type of behavior does more serious damage by far.

Hmm, I can't say that I think much of that article Virgil, for me it presents a far too simplistic and narrow-minded view of things and shows the personal agitations of the writer, rather than the reality. I did notice that you conceded to its simplistic view, but for me this is just one of those throwaway articles like you get in the Daily Mail or something.

I know that it is not meant to be anything more than a light opinion piece, which is fine, but he seems to jump to some rather strict knee-jerk conclusions. It might be true that on occasions "health and safety" goes a little too far at times, but this guy seems to want to blame all the wrongs of soceity on this to a ridiculous degree. It is also full of quite ridiculous loaded terminology and extreme hyperbole - I mean "our global business competitors and terrorist enemies are licking their chops" just made me laugh out loud, but you could also include:

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Tens of thousands of years of human development cannot be swept aside to fit the "anti-competition" PC agenda.

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You don't say? The "anti-competition PC agenda" just sounds like something straight out of Monty Python, you cannot take that line serious to any degree. I'm sure that "tens of thousands of years of human development" is perfectly safe from them.

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An increasing number of boys are doing poorly in school and failing to mature in a positive way. More men are losing self-confidence and their passion for competing and achieving.

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Are they, is he so sure of that? Where are the facts, how the hell can you quantify that, and if there are facts that point to the losses how can you determine that it has arisen due to a lack of competition?

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While the top-performing 10 percent to 20 percent of boys and men are doing just fine, the growing number of underachieving males forces schools, businesses, the military and others to lower their standards and expectations. What happened?

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What happened? Surely it must be the "anti-competition PC agenda"? How does this guy know that schools, businesses and the military (and others) are lowering their standards? This is certainly not true in the UK with University places anyway, and I doubt it is true of the US, but surely it is impossible to say unless you are a high government official with a finger in every pie.

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Political correctness and new age wishful thinking have all contributed to the effort in our schools, families, and communities to take away intense competition from boys.

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New age wishful thinking? In what context, Who? Druids and tree huggers? Quite ridiculous.

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That's how many boys and men feel today even if they don't know why.

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How the hell does he know what “many” boys and men feel?

I could go on but you get the picture.

I have also got a problem with simplifying men and women, girls and boys, into neat little pigeon-holes of femininity and masculinity. All of these things are simply cultural constructs of reality. I feel a little uneasy with these sorts of labels, I don't like reducing complex, very very complex human beings and the world into neat little cultural constructions such as these. As I say I know that you are just talking about the gist of this article and its overall message, and that you know such things are far more complex, but even so I just can't think that this fruitloop has much of a case at all, even if we cut through the nature of his amusing use of language.

So yes, and I'm going to get my mum to smack you regarding your "feminization of our culture" I just don't by that to any degree. Like I have said, occasionally "health and safety" and the "PC brigade" do restrict things a little, but you can bet that the whole thing is often blown up out of all proportion in silly little articles like these, reducing very complex issues to extremely simplified and highly exaggerated conclusions, while reinforcing old cultural stereotypes into the bargain! Rubbish.

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Originally Posted by Il Penseroso

Hmmm, I've worked with child athletic programs (local YMCA) for several years now and I think parents pushing kids to compete to an exorbitant degree is still very much alive and well, at least around here. I've had to referee flag football games where coaches and parents scream and yell and antagonize me and other refs because they think that their third grader's talent is being marginalized by rules in place for safety reasons and to allow every player more equal opportunities. I think this type of behavior does more serious damage by far.

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I think some boys do ok. I think the article refers to the bottom 20%. Serious damage from competition? What do you classify as serious damage? While I have heard of parents going too far in pushing their kids to play in sports, I know of no serious damage.

I think the gist of what the author was saying was that we should look at bringing the nature of sporting competitions into the classroom to get boys engaged more. The nature of competition seems to captivate and draw boys into a subject, and hopefully into learning.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Hmm, I can't say that I think much of that article Virgil, for me it presents a far too simplistic and narrow-minded view of things and shows the personal agitations of the writer, rather than the reality. I did notice that you conceded to its simplistic view, but for me this is just one of those throwaway articles like you get in the Daily Mail or something.

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I have no idea what the Daily Mail is, but this seems to be an opinion piece in a Maine Newspaper. It's not a scholarly article. Nor do I think scholarly articles are all that important when it comes to real life issues. It is simplistic to drive a point.

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I know that it is not meant to be anything more than a light opinion piece, which is fine, but he seems to jump to some rather strict knee-jerk conclusions. It might be true that on occasions "health and safety" goes a little too far at times, but this guy seems to want to blame all the wrongs of soceity on this to a ridiculous degree.

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I don't see anything where he's talking about the wrongs of soiciety. He's talking about a single issue, "the growing number of underachieving males."

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It is also full of quite ridiculous loaded terminology and extreme hyperbole - I mean "our global business competitors and terrorist enemies are licking their chops" just made me laugh out loud, but you could also include:

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What's so outrageous about that? He makes a claim that certain ways of bringing up boys has been going on for ten thousand years. Whether that's exactly accurate or not, I hardly find it extreme or hyperbolic. It's a legitamate claim.

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You don't say? The "anti-competition PC agenda" just sounds like something straight out of Monty Python, you cannot take that line serious to any degree. I'm sure that "tens of thousands of years of human development" is perfectly safe from them.

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Yeah, there is a strain of that in contemporary universities and school systems, at least here in the US. I remember a lit net member of a Euroipean country telling me about how she goes to a school without grades. There is an "anti-competition agenda" in certain quarters.

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Are they, is he so sure of that? Where are the facts, how the hell can you quantify that, and if there are facts that point to the losses how can you determine that it has arisen due to a lack of competition?

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Well obviously you're not aware of it. There is an exploding gender gap in college graduates. Here from just a quick cursory google: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vannema...psgradsex.html
and http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-363985.html
and http://www.usatoday.com/news/educati...ge-cover_x.htm. And the gap is also specific to top fields such as lawyers and doctors.

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What happened? Surely it must be the "anti-competition PC agenda"? How does this guy know that schools, businesses and the military (and others) are lowering their standards? This is certainly not true in the UK with University places anyway, and I doubt it is true of the US, but surely it is impossible to say unless you are a high government official with a finger in every pie.

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I think the lowering of standards is fairly well documented. It was clear to me when I went to college in the early 80's that tests and grades were way stricter for those that went to college 20 years before me. I think it's probably gotten worse even since I went to school. Part of the reason is the openning up of college education to the masses.

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I have also got a problem with simplifying men and women, girls and boys, into neat little pigeon-holes of femininity and masculinity. All of these things are simply cultural constructs of reality.

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Frankly, to use your word, that's rubbish. To say there are no biological differences beteen men and women is absurd. All you have to do is look at the muscular differences and the size differences and you will see the difference, and the reason for those differences are hormones, and to say that hormones don't affect personality is ridiculous. Look at any nature show and you will see differences in behavior between males and females. Look at the behavioral difference of male and female lions. That's innate, not learned, and they're from hormonal differences.

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I feel a little uneasy with these sorts of labels, I don't like reducing complex, very very complex human beings and the world into neat little cultural constructions such as these.

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Actually by you claiming that there are no differences between men and women is the most simplistic reduction of complexity. You are the one reducing the comnplex to the ridiculously simple.

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I think the lowering of standards is fairly well documented. It was clear to me when I went to college in the early 80's that tests and grades were way stricter for those that went to college 20 years before me. I think it's probably gotten worse even since I went to school. Part of the reason is the openning up of college education to the masses.

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I do not know how it is in the US, but from my experience in a French university, I can wholeheartedly say that higher education for the masses does probably not mean low standards - the system in France seems to be: anyone can enter an university, the trick is staying in.
Seriously, it is bloody difficult.
I wouldn't equal public higher education with lower standards.
I would comment on the topic, but I'll go and study for the exams that I am going to fail anyhow.

Firstly, I’ll just clear up what I am getting at with the cultural construction of gender. There are obviously biological differences between men and women – which is the “sex” of the individual, but the “gender” of a person could be seen as the social construct – so in this case what it means to be “masculine” and “feminine” is determined from outside the self. So from this perspective nothing outside of the “sex” of the individual is natural. However, even the simple terms of “male” and “female” – the basic binaries – don’t even fit. What about cross-gendered individuals, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, “othered” groups who for some, such simple labels of “male” and “female” don’t seem to fit their own experience of the world? But let’s just move on from there.

So, if our present culture, at this time sees ideals as to what constitutes “feminine” and “masculine” the argument is that which society deems the values of these terms -, but these values are transient being different from culture to culture, and from time to time. Anyway, Judith Butler (a feminist critic) argues that we learn what it means to be “feminine” and “masculine” through our culture, and not through any inherent “reality”. So the little boy soon learns that “big boys don’t cry” and represses or conforms to that particular masculine ideal – to the point that such behaviour becomes “natural” – but it is not natural that boys don’t cry, it is the present cultural ideal of masculine behaviour. With this as an example we all learn what we believe is “natural” for our gender and for the most conform to that ideal.

My four year old girl basically refuses to wear anything that is not pink – she certainly won’t wear blue because “blue is a boys colour”. She has already started to learn the signposts for her desired gender from our culture which pigeon-holes gender into neat compartments, idealising what it means to be male and female, boy and girl, masculine and feminine. One of the problems arising from this, if you will let me sidetrack a little here, is the abuse of power from one sex to the other, the dominant and the passive ideal of male and female roles. I mean even the very nature of our language is loaded with terminology which favours one over the other, taking the male masculine as “naturally” dominant over the other. So a woman (wo-man, womb man, with man being the original default) is “naturally” seen as secondary because our language is rooted in old stereotypes, for example with the male taking natural default in such terms as “chairman” “manhole” etc, but anyway...

Going back to Butler she says that such gender construction acts as a “straitjacket” whereby the costs are high for both individuals who fit into neat gender categories, and for those who don’t. She says: “the construction ‘compels’ our belief in its necessity and naturalness. The historical possibilities materialized through various corporeal styles are nothing other than those punitively regulated cultural fictions alternately embodied and deflected under duress” (Butler, Gender Trouble). The “cultural fictions” are the narratives which we take as “naturally” occurring, blue is for boys, pink is for girls – which is ridiculous because they are just colours, they don’t have any inherent sexuality, it is all culturally determined, cultural fiction.

So, the article you posted for me was quite laughable on many grounds, but one of them being that widespread problems are occurring due to the “"anti-competition" PC agenda” which is “taking away the proving grounds for learning how to be strong men” from which “global business competitors and terrorist enemies are licking their chops”. When I say “widespread problems” you seemed to have misunderstood what I meant before when you said that he is not talking about widespread problems but a single issue that of “the growing number of underachieving males.” In the article he is seemingly making the point that the PC brigade is the root cause of underachieving males by taking away (supposedly taking away, see above poster) competition from our (your) schools, which is having the knocking on effect of weakening “schools, businesses, the military and others” by forcing them” to lower their standards and expectations” of individual. Notwithstanding the international threat to business and the terrorists who are now “licking their chops” because of the national weakening of male expectations due to the sole reason of the PC agenda with its “mushy, idealistic approach to child development.” Therein lies the hyperbole that you seem to think is a “legitimate claim”.

So anyway, there is a “gender gap” between male and female college graduates based on that graph you provided, so what exactly does that mean and what does it really show? Firstly, I put “gender gap” in speech marks because that phrase is automatically loaded, it suggests a problem, a gap that needs bridging. In actual fact it shows that the gender difference (though we really mean sex difference not gender) of college graduates is about 6% more for female, than it is for male population. We can also see that in the past, from about 1950, which is the date the graph goes back to, to about 1990 it was always males that came out on top in the graduate stakes. From here we can interpret this graph however we like.

We could write an article showing that these statistics prove that the problems facing women attending further education are being eradicated, meaning that a great deal of progress is being made for the equalities of the sexes. So in actual fact we could argue that this graph shows a great deal of progress in American institutions and society for greater equal opportunities. We could ask therefore what were holding women back in the past from progressing in education and come up with answers along the lines of the cultural expectations of female roles, getting married earlier etc. This is just one position you could argue, which would probably be my position, but with the realisation that this would be one point, based on one graph, which would naturally be generalised.

However, I wouldn’t say the stats show a problem for male education at college level at all. In fact it shows that since 1950 there has been a greater increase in male graduates from 1950 to the present, from just under 10 percent of the population in 1950 with a degree to about 27 percent of the population today. From here you could make a case for increasing standards of education across the both sexes over time. In fact you can make many, many points and counter argue them for days or years.

What the guy in the article seems to have done however, is to look at the 6 percent difference in male and female degrees, panic, and to blame this “problem” on the PC agenda and lack of competition in schools amongst boys! One thing just doesn’t follow on from the other at all. It is an opinion which is not built upon fact which only goes to show the weakness and prejudice of the author in question. It is an article which is possibly even intended to provoke an angry response from the readership, siding with their ill judged views on the “problems” of society and to seek an easy scapegoat (such as the political correctness) for them. It is not built upon any solid foundation at all, it is misguided, it is poorly written and it is possibly even a little sexist into the bargain – its appeal is there, I suspect to make a little easy money from an unsuspecting public. Like I said it is like a Daily Mail article, which is a paper that plays on the fears of the individual, usually misguided ones, and blows them up out of all proportion in order to sell papers and make money. The article you posted could have just have easily praised American standards of education for both the male and female population, but would that have sold as many papers or got as many hits?

This is just one of the reasons why I don’t read newspapers or other mass media forms because they often reduce very complex issues to ridiculous binaries, or they play off the fears and desires of an unsuspecting public that isn’t even built upon “reality” whatever “reality” is, where it is not culturally determined. Life and society is more complicated than that. :)

I think that competition is good for boys and for girls alike. Most people will perform better than they think they can when the pressure is on. But, I don't think that a lack of competitive sports is inhibiting manhood. I think a more likely culprit is the lack of strong male role models-- fathers. There is much more to being a man than fighting your way through a scrimmage line. Maybe boys are becoming bullies because they are not taught how to manage their emotions or any kind of self-control. This article almost suggest that a man is someone who has proven himself against his peers. I disagree. A man is someone who takes care of his responsibilities.

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I happen to agree with the general thrust of the article. The feminization of our culture (am I going to get smacked for that? ) has really marginalized boys from achieving. Just look at the college graduating statistics and you'll see a incredible shift from thirty years ago. Boys aren't making it into college, not graduating, and resorting to manual labor type jobs that are disappearing with ever increasing technology.

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Poor babies. I guess they just can't take the competition. :rolleyes:

We should also acknowledge other possible explanations for the lower levels of male admission to higher education. The fact is that decently paying manual labour still exists as a means of income for men. Women who want to have any sort of appreciable income must have higher education. While it is much easier, and socially acceptable, for a man to enter a trade like carpentry or plumbing. My father made a very good living as a plumber for 45 years, and these jobs are still very much dominated by males.

This isn't to depreciate the importance of competitive sports. I played hockey from childhood to my mid-teens and loved every moment of it. However, I don't think I'd go so far as to credit it with me graduating top of my high school class and going on to receive a university degree. Moreover, competition doesn't mysteriously disappear without institutionalized forms like soccer. Teens compete for popularity, friends, lovers, and academic standing.

I also agree with Neely that gender is largely a social construct and when we push specific roles onto individuals who just can't fit that role we can cause real harm.

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Originally Posted by Taliesin

I do not know how it is in the US, but from my experience in a French university, I can wholeheartedly say that higher education for the masses does probably not mean low standards - the system in France seems to be: anyone can enter an university, the trick is staying in.
Seriously, it is bloody difficult.
I wouldn't equal public higher education with lower standards.
I would comment on the topic, but I'll go and study for the exams that I am going to fail anyhow.

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I can't speak for France. How do you know what the standards were in the past? You can read about grade inflation over the years here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Firstly, I’ll just clear up what I am getting at with the cultural construction of gender. There are obviously biological differences between men and women – which is the “sex” of the individual, but the “gender” of a person could be seen as the social construct – so in this case what it means to be “masculine” and “feminine” is determined from outside the self.

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So you want me to believe that hormonal differences cause all sorts of physical differences between the sexes but they have no effect on personality? The feminists whine about about male patriarchy but can they name a single culture in the history of humanity where there wasn't male and female disticntions? Is it a coincidence that over the thousands of cultures we know of that no matriarchy as ever existed and that they all had male/female distinctions? Just a coincidence? Thousands of cultures with all having a similar social construct? How ridiculous. Again look at the animal world and you will see male and female traits. They weren't learned.

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So from this perspective nothing outside of the “sex” of the individual is natural. However, even the simple terms of “male” and “female” – the basic binaries – don’t even fit. What about cross-gendered individuals, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, “othered” groups who for some, such simple labels of “male” and “female” don’t seem to fit their own experience of the world? But let’s just move on from there.

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Have you ever heard of dysfunctionality from the norm? Have you ever heard of people having biological problems? Just today I came across dwarfism in the paper, a hormonal malfunction:

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Extreme shortness in humans with proportional body parts usually has a hormonal cause, such as growth hormone deficiency, once known as "pituitary dwarfism".

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarfism

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So, if our present culture, at this time sees ideals as to what constitutes “feminine” and “masculine” the argument is that which society deems the values of these terms -, but these values are transient being different from culture to culture, and from time to time. Anyway, Judith Butler (a feminist critic) argues that we learn what it means to be “feminine” and “masculine” through our culture...

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And what scientific degree does this Judith butler have? What medical education does she have? What biological experimentation has she performed to reach thgese conclusions? I bet she doesn't have any scientific background. I bet she's a liberal arts major of some sort. That's where this non-scientific rubbish originates from.

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and not through any inherent “reality”. So the little boy soon learns that “big boys don’t cry” and represses or conforms to that particular masculine ideal – to the point that such behaviour becomes “natural” – but it is not natural that boys don’t cry, it is the present cultural ideal of masculine behaviour. With this as an example we all learn what we believe is “natural” for our gender and for the most conform to that ideal.

My four year old girl basically refuses to wear anything that is not pink – she certainly won’t wear blue because “blue is a boys colour”. She has already started to learn the signposts for her desired gender from our culture which pigeon-holes gender into neat compartments, idealising what it means to be male and female, boy and girl, masculine and feminine. One of the problems arising from this, if you will let me sidetrack a little here, is the abuse of power from one sex to the other, the dominant and the passive ideal of male and female roles. I mean even the very nature of our language is loaded with terminology which favours one over the other, taking the male masculine as “naturally” dominant over the other. So a woman (wo-man, womb man, with man being the original default) is “naturally” seen as secondary because our language is rooted in old stereotypes, for example with the male taking natural default in such terms as “chairman” “manhole” etc, but anyway...

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Because the word woman originates from womb man a social construct has been formulated to minimize women? Frankly Neely this is so ridiculous. It defies common sense, let alone biology.

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So, the article you posted for me was quite laughable on many grounds, but one of them being that widespread problems are occurring due to the “"anti-competition" PC agenda” which is “taking away the proving grounds for learning how to be strong men” from which “global business competitors and terrorist enemies are licking their chops”. When I say “widespread problems” you seemed to have misunderstood what I meant before when you said that he is not talking about widespread problems but a single issue that of “the growing number of underachieving males.” In the article he is seemingly making the point that the PC brigade is the root cause of underachieving males

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No, he didn't say root cause, he contributed.

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by taking away (supposedly taking away, see above poster) competition from our (your) schools, which is having the knocking on effect of weakening “schools, businesses, the military and others” by forcing them” to lower their standards and expectations” of individual. Notwithstanding the international threat to business and the terrorists who are now “licking their chops” because of the national weakening of male expectations due to the sole reason of the PC agenda with its “mushy, idealistic approach to child development.” Therein lies the hyperbole that you seem to think is a “legitimate claim”.

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He said it effects the lower 20%, he didn't say everyone. You are projecting a lot more into his claims that are in the article.

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So anyway, there is a “gender gap” between male and female college graduates based on that graph you provided, so what exactly does that mean and what does it really show? Firstly, I put “gender gap” in speech marks because that phrase is automatically loaded, it suggests a problem, a gap that needs bridging. In actual fact it shows that the gender difference (though we really mean sex difference not gender) of college graduates is about 6% more for female, than it is for male population. We can also see that in the past, from about 1950, which is the date the graph goes back to, to about 1990 it was always males that came out on top in the graduate stakes. From here we can interpret this graph however we like.

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I think the significance is in the slope of the curve and the acceleration of the trend. There are legitamate claims that the education system is failing boys. I alluded to other articles that we have discussed here, let alone in the public domain.

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We could write an article showing that these statistics prove that the problems facing women attending further education are being eradicated, meaning that a great deal of progress is being made for the equalities of the sexes. So in actual fact we could argue that this graph shows a great deal of progress in American institutions and society for greater equal opportunities. We could ask therefore what were holding women back in the past from progressing in education and come up with answers along the lines of the cultural expectations of female roles, getting married earlier etc. This is just one position you could argue, which would probably be my position, but with the realisation that this would be one point, based on one graph, which would naturally be generalised.

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Actually a number of strategies were incorporated for the last 25 years to help women achieve, and obviously they have worked. The point that the article brings up is that we now need strategies directed at boys.

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However, I wouldn’t say the stats show a problem for male education at college level at all. In fact it shows that since 1950 there has been a greater increase in male graduates from 1950 to the present, from just under 10 percent of the population in 1950 with a degree to about 27 percent of the population today. From here you could make a case for increasing standards of education across the both sexes over time. In fact you can make many, many points and counter argue them for days or years.

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Again it's the slope of the curve and the acceleration of the trend.

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This is just one of the reasons why I don’t read newspapers or other mass media forms because they often reduce very complex issues to ridiculous binaries, or they play off the fears and desires of an unsuspecting public that isn’t even built upon “reality” whatever “reality” is, where it is not culturally determined. Life and society is more complicated than that. :)

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Well, with all due respect, that explains it. You're an academic and you're unaware of real life issues. ;)

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

We should also acknowledge other possible explanations for the lower levels of male admission to higher education. The fact is that decently paying manual labour still exists as a means of income for men. Women who want to have any sort of appreciable income must have higher education. While it is much easier, and socially acceptable, for a man to enter a trade like carpentry or plumbing. My father made a very good living as a plumber for 45 years, and these jobs are still very much dominated by males.

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There may be something to that, but I believe the drop out rates have a significant gender gap as well. Also, most of those lower 20% boys are relatively unambitious and get themselves into trouble. They aren't thinking about manual labor jobs. They aren't thinking period.

I construe it to be "serious damage" if children grow up with the expectation that obliviousness toward others is acceptable. The original quotes the author of that article uses are laughable themselves; the parents saying "give it your best shot and have fun" are the progressives, in reality, and at one extreme you have parents who force their children into the view that winning is an object in itself without regard for their treatment of others (the other side) and in defiance of referees or other authority figures (potentially teachers). I see it as potentially damaging for players to learn from role models (their parents) who emphasize success in sports as the numerical ratio of wins to losses over relationships and fun. That is the hazard of a too competitive approach to eduction; students lose sight of the rewards of an education and see grades and such as the determining factor over what they get from classes.

Virgil,
What are you advocating here? If you acknowledge differences in the mentality of boys vs. girls, do you think it is appropriate to segregate the sexes in early grades? Give them different educations? How do you see reports like that above impacting actual education procedures?

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Well, with all due respect, that explains it. [Not reading papers]. You're an academic and you're unaware of real life issues.

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:lol: Because academics don’t live in the real world! Though I am hardly an academic, you flatter me there, no just a part-time student and sort of a trainee teacher. I don’t read papers for the reasons I gave before.

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The point that the article brings up is that we now need strategies directed at boys.

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And those strategies involve what? Encouraging boys to cut their knees so they can learn to be “real” men? :lol: But I’ve already given my opinions on the merits of the article, no need to go there again.

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And what scientific degree does this Judith butler have? What medical education does she have? What biological experimentation has she performed to reach these conclusions? I bet she doesn't have any scientific background. I bet she's a liberal arts major of some sort. That's where this non-scientific rubbish originates from.

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Judith Butler’s CV is quite impressive. Her “Gender Trouble” is arguably the most influential theoretical text of the 1990s which, as well as being an important feminist piece, was one of the founding texts of Queer Theory. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale University in philosophy and has taught at Johns Hopkins University and at the University of California at Berkeley. Her work distils forty years of French theory from important theorists in the field including the likes of Simone De Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Lousis Althusser, Jacques Derrida and MichelFoucault. In short she is held in high regard in the academic world. However, something tells me that you will be unimpressed with all this “non-scientific rubbish” with its “whining feminists” and its aloof non-connection with “reality”.

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Have you ever heard of dysfunctionality from the norm? Have you ever heard of people having biological problems? Just today I came across dwarfism in the paper, a hormonal malfunction:

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But who defines what the “norm” is? Science tells us that there is variation within the species, but it is man which labels and determines the norm.

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Because the word woman originates from womb man a social construct has been formulated to minimize women? Frankly Neely this is so ridiculous. It defies common sense, let alone biology.

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It is obviously much more complicated than that, Butler is not easy going stuff, but something tells me you would be entirely dismissive of it as “liberal arts” nonsense anyway.

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So you want me to believe that hormonal differences cause all sorts of physical differences between the sexes but they have no effect on personality? The feminists whine about about male patriarchy but can they name a single culture in the history of humanity where there wasn't male and female disticntions? Is it a coincidence that over the thousands of cultures we know of that no matriarchy as ever existed and that they all had male/female distinctions? Just a coincidence? Thousands of cultures with all having a similar social construct? How ridiculous. Again look at the animal world and you will see male and female traits. They weren't learned.

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I’m sure that hormones do have an effect on personality to some smaller degree, but I am sure that it is the cultural which determines identity, much more than hormones or anything which science can explore, however interesting science is, it is to social and cultural theorists we need to turn to in order to learn about social and cultural things. So for example, would you wear a skirt to walk down the street? I'm guessing not, but why not? It is just, after all, a piece of cloth to protect you from the elements. However, it is the cultural and social construction that attaches that particular piece of clothing a label of femininity, and isn’t that mental conditioning so strong, so ingrained in the psyche? However if you change culture and you go to Scotland a wear a kilt (which is just a skirt under a different name) the social connotation is one that is inherently masculine. It is the cultural which determines the ideal of masculine and feminine, which as I said previously is quite transient and therefore of course there are going to be differences amongst what it means to be male and female, over time and place, but they mostly culturally determined. Unless you want to argue that it is hormones that decides who should wear a piece of cloth that we give the name "skirt"?

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Originally Posted by Neely

But who defines what the “norm” is? Science tells us that there is variation within the species, but it is man which labels and determines the norm.


So for example, would you wear a skirt to walk down the street? I'm guessing not, but why not? It is just, after all, a piece of cloth to protect you from the elements. However, it is the cultural and social construction that attaches that particular piece of clothing a label of femininity

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Are you equating an article of clothing with the cognitive processes involved in learning? That seems rather simplistic. Scientific studies (I'd have to find my linguistics textbook for specific reference, but I can do that if you'd like) have shown that there are early differences in how young boys and young girls behave and manifest themselves in learning environments. Sudies of apes, such as bobonos in the Congo, as well as chimpanzees, have shown differences between female apes and male apes in temperaments demonstrated in problem-solving. Is that also a matter of the culture solely?

Biological differences are real and they impact learning preferences. I just don't think enhancing classroom competition is the most productive way to benefit overall learning.

What article on clothing? I'm just giving an example from off the top of my head on how we as a culture attach feminine and masculine constructs to inanimate objects. Is a piece of cloth that you wrap around your legs inherently male or female? No. Is the colour pink a girl’s colour? No. Is blue a boy’s colour. No. Such things are culturally fabricated, and if these things are, then what else is also picked up? What signs are present in society to tell us how we should behave?

As I said I am sure that hormones do make a difference as to how young children behave and that biology is important, but I’m also sure that culture and language plays a huge role in shaping who we are as individuals.

As someone who also works in a classroom (in the real world too, I’ll have you know) I can see that the sex of pupil does, on the whole, seem to make a difference, generally speaking, in learning styles and outcomes. For example, in the top bands of English, girls tend to come out on top, whereas in maths boys tend to have the upper hand slightly, though not as much as the girls do in English. This is backed up with statistics across the board, throughout the country generally – this appears to be a biological difference, appears to be, though I would hazard a thought that even some of that could be put down to cultural pressures. For example “poetry” is often seen as a “soft” subject, something that is not very masculine, and although we know this is nonsense, I’ve seen boys with my own eyes completely disengaged by the thought of having to study a “girly” module, "gay" it tends to get called. I think on the whole though, this difference is more down to the fact that girls tend to mature at an earlier age than boys, which seems to have an significant impact on learning, but my point is even here, don’t dismiss cultural construction out of hand; it plays an important part of forming our so called “natural” identity, much more than people realise, or it seems, will even entertain...

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Originally Posted by Il Penseroso

I construe it to be "serious damage" if children grow up with the expectation that obliviousness toward others is acceptable. The original quotes the author of that article uses are laughable themselves; the parents saying "give it your best shot and have fun" are the progressives, in reality, and at one extreme you have parents who force their children into the view that winning is an object in itself without regard for their treatment of others (the other side) and in defiance of referees or other authority figures (potentially teachers). I see it as potentially damaging for players to learn from role models (their parents) who emphasize success in sports as the numerical ratio of wins to losses over relationships and fun. That is the hazard of a too competitive approach to eduction; students lose sight of the rewards of an education and see grades and such as the determining factor over what they get from classes.

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I don't know. I agree that parent's obnoxiously pushing kids in sports is not the best of all worlds, but i would have to see some statistics to be convinced it led to serious damage. Are they more likely to commit crimes or get into drugs? If you showed me something like that I would agree.

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Virgil,
What are you advocating here? If you acknowledge differences in the mentality of boys vs. girls, do you think it is appropriate to segregate the sexes in early grades? Give them different educations? How do you see reports like that above impacting actual education procedures?

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I'm not an educator. I don't know what specific thing to advocate. But like I've mentioned, there was a coordinate effort to assist women in the last thirty years, and it's apparently worked. So I'd advocate a plan to assist boys now. There have been studies that show that girls do better in school in an all girls environment. I don't know if that applies to boys. Probably not, but we need to study it and come up with new approaches.

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Originally Posted by Neely

:lol: Because academics don’t live in the real world! Though I am hardly an academic, you flatter me there, no just a part-time student and sort of a trainee teacher. I don’t read papers for the reasons I gave before.

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;)

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Judith Butler’s CV is quite impressive. Her “Gender Trouble” is arguably the most influential theoretical text of the 1990s which, as well as being an important feminist piece, was one of the founding texts of Queer Theory. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale University in philosophy and has taught at Johns Hopkins University and at the University of California at Berkeley. Her work distils forty years of French theory from important theorists in the field including the likes of Simone De Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Lousis Althusser, Jacques Derrida and MichelFoucault. In short she is held in high regard in the academic world. However, something tells me that you will be unimpressed with all this “non-scientific rubbish” with its “whining feminists” and its aloof non-connection with “reality”.

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I am an engineer. I am completely unimpressed with anyone making scientific claims without any scientific schooling or experience. Period.

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But who defines what the “norm” is? Science tells us that there is variation within the species, but it is man which labels and determines the norm.

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Because the relationship between personality, hormones, and the brain and its maturity is largely not fully understood, identifying a norm is vague. But that's because we are in virgin territory. Since the brain and its functions remain undiscovered, it leads to all sorts of non scientists to come up with all sorts of nonsense theories, like vocabulary determines gender identity. Or should I even mention the nonsense about an Oedipal Complex. When we understand this relationship better, we will be able to identify norms and abnormalities. But I can tell you this with absolute confidence, having the urge to cut one's penis off and form a vagina - or what is supposed to pass for a vagina - between one's legs is not normal.

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I’m sure that hormones do have an effect on personality to some smaller degree, but I am sure that it is the cultural which determines identity, much more than hormones or anything which science can explore, however interesting science is, it is to social and cultural theorists we need to turn to in order to learn about social and cultural things. So for example, would you wear a skirt to walk down the street? I'm guessing not, but why not? It is just, after all, a piece of cloth to protect you from the elements. However, it is the cultural and social construction that attaches that particular piece of clothing a label of femininity, and isn’t that mental conditioning so strong, so ingrained in the psyche? However if you change culture and you go to Scotland a wear a kilt (which is just a skirt under a different name) the social connotation is one that is inherently masculine. It is the cultural which determines the ideal of masculine and feminine, which as I said previously is quite transient and therefore of course there are going to be differences amongst what it means to be male and female, over time and place, but they mostly culturally determined. Unless you want to argue that it is hormones that decides who should wear a piece of cloth that we give the name "skirt"?

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What you are describing there is cultural diversity, not gender identity. If men from Scotland feel that a kilt is masculine, then it is. It becomes identified with masculinity and therefore it's part of male identity. That doesn't support your argument at all. But I will take solace in your first sentence in that paragraph. Let's leave it that a complex interaction between hormones and brain function and development occurs to form personality, which includes gender identity. I guess we agree to some degree. :)

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Originally Posted by Il Penseroso

Are you equating an article of clothing with the cognitive processes involved in learning? That seems rather simplistic. Scientific studies (I'd have to find my linguistics textbook for specific reference, but I can do that if you'd like) have shown that there are early differences in how young boys and young girls behave and manifest themselves in learning environments. Sudies of apes, such as bobonos in the Congo, as well as chimpanzees, have shown differences between female apes and male apes in temperaments demonstrated in problem-solving. Is that also a matter of the culture solely?

Biological differences are real and they impact learning preferences.

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Thank you very much. :) Perhaps you said it better than I or it just took another reasonable voice to chime in, but i think we've made headway in persuasion. :D

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I just don't think enhancing classroom competition is the most productive way to benefit overall learning.

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I would love to run an experiment to find out. I think it's worthy of a few trials. Why not form the boys into teams, have practice studies, have them coordinate responsibilities, and then have oral and written competitions between them? When I was in high school I was part of the math team and we competed against other schools and that led to a playoff system and a championship. That was great. We wanted to beat the heck out of our rivals. I personally think the guy writing the article is on to something.

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Originally Posted by Neely

As someone who also works in a classroom (in the real world too, I’ll have you know) I can see that the sex of pupil does, on the whole, seem to make a difference, generally speaking, in learning styles and outcomes. For example, in the top bands of English, girls tend to come out on top, whereas in maths boys tend to have the upper hand slightly, though not as much as the girls do in English.

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Observation is the first step at science. Good for you. Now don't let all that other non scientific nonsense distort you views. :p

Actually Neely, here's another one for you. If social construct is the predominant factor in gender identity, then why is it that there aren't whole groups of siblings that are transgender? Obviously the social construct within their families was pretty much the same for all the siblings, why is it only an isolated case here or there?

My own experience of Primary school teaching is that there are few men, and this naturally has an effect upon the school culture. Many Primary schools in Coventry have no male staff, and I think this is reflected across the country.

I honestly did feel sorry for the boys, (and myself). There was much more singing - and the staff were expected to join in enthusiastically! (miming saved me) - and a lot less sport. Sports day was avoided if possible, or was one of those pointless, non-competitve affairs. There were 4 male teachers in a school of 38 staff, and so I think there was a bias against the interests of young boys. I can't blame the female teachers - they were doing their job well. It did skew the culture though. The male colleagues and I used to moan about it in the staff room regularly.

It continues to be a hot topic in he news too. In the Times today they were reporting that boys are significantly behind girls in writing when they get to Reception, (4-5 yrs). Gender differences and developmental factors were cited as the cause, and they were exploring ways of engaging boys in interesting ways to develop the fine motor skills for writing. It is a moot point though, whether this should be pushed at all.

There is a problem with boys in school, and it begins early.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I am an engineer. I am completely unimpressed with anyone making scientific claims without any scientific schooling or experience. Period.

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Of course, I agree with this statement Virgil. However, it is a scientific fact that a large amount of human behavior is learned. You need only look at the variety of cultural forms of gender to realize that it is substantially malleable. Gender expectations vary through different cultures and times. Concrete biological inclinations will colour the forms that gender norms take, but we shouldn't just accept what we expect of males to be what is the natural way of being "male".

Virgil,
Linguistic studies of classroom behavior focusing on gender differences have shown males to act in a more dominant manner, asserting ideas as if to control classroom discussion. This is essentially a competitive endeavor; each male student attepts to manage the floor of debate or exchange of ideas by injecting his opinion over the ideas of others, often resorting to speedy responses without time for deeper thought and understanding. Particularly for high school age and below, do we really trust students' competitive nerves and emotional nature to sidestep themselves and allow truly balanced perspectives to develop?

My question for you is whether or not this is really the most productive learning environment, for either males or females. If participation becomes a competition, dependent largely on power relationships developed between peers, what type of learning is taking place? Is it the fullest possible? Aren't more deliberative classroom environments better suited for developing real critical thinkers, capable of combining concepts to adapt to variables as they occur?

Neely,
My question was directed to what seems to me to be your linking of the internal processes of learning to an external article of clothing (your skirt example). The latter is, obviously, socially conditioned; however, the former is more open to debate, and perhaps (hopefully) impossible to quantify as far as which is the predominant influence. I agree that culture has an important influence over what interests individuals (generally reflected externally, especially amongst socially conscious teenagers), but I also think that biology plays an important role, particulalry when dealing with internal processes such as cognition.

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I am an engineer. I am completely unimpressed with anyone making scientific claims without any scientific schooling or experience. Period.

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She’s not making scientific claims, she’s a philosopher, a theorist, she is making cultural observations on a cultural topic, and she is one of the best and most important in her particular field – though like similar theorists not easy reading!

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Because the relationship between personality, hormones, and the brain and its maturity is largely not fully understood, identifying a norm is vague. But that's because we are in virgin territory. Since the brain and its functions remain undiscovered, it leads to all sorts of non scientists to come up with all sorts of nonsense theories, like vocabulary determines gender identity. Or should I even mention the nonsense about an Oedipal Complex. When we understand this relationship better, we will be able to identify norms and abnormalities. But I can tell you this with absolute confidence, having the urge to cut one's penis off and form a vagina - or what is supposed to pass for a vagina - between one's legs is not normal.

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:lol: Don’t forget that a large part of science is just theory too based on observations and speculations. If I’m right in remembering a scientific theory has to go a hell of a long way to actually be proven as a “fact”. I mean even what I would call the solid things like gravity and evolution have not yet passed into scientific “law” to the best of my knowledge, and evolution still seems to kick up a fuss. Just the other day I caught sight of a documentary about sharks (I though the kids would like it) and it showed sharks sleeping at the bottom of the ocean – this was obviously counter to the biology text book which I had at college showing a little diagram explaining that sharks needed to maintain a forward motion in order to breathe. That’s just a minor thing, but it goes to show that science is far from the solid rock some people take it for, science is largely theory too.

As for literary theory, which by its very nature borrows from other from other disciplines such as politics, social, linguistic, psychology, philosophy amongst everything else, I can honestly say that it is the single most important thing that I have covered during my six years of undergraduate study. Theory naturally takes from other disciplines because in an attempt to understand the literature, it must try to understand the motivations of that literature, which it needs to turn to the outside world to do. So to understand a character in a novel we might find it fruitful to turn to psychology, in psychoanalysis. In examining the structures present in the novel, say the church, education – we might turn to political theory. Either way literary theory naturally borrows from other disciplines (even science) in order to interpret events in a plot or character in a work of literature or art. Think of literature just capturing a moment in time, for example a Victorian novel, it is also capturing, like a photograph, the thoughts and motivations of that particular period, which in turn could lead us to looking “outside” of the text in order to learn more about it, or at least to undercover potential areas of exploration.

I would seriously consider theory a little before you totally dismiss it, what has been for me and many who study it, as a huge area of learning - sure it is not always applicable, but it is a great tool to have in the tool box! I would again recommend Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory, (Manchester University Press) as a great and lasting introductionary text on theory, though self-studying theory is not easy without the support of tutors and other students, you still might be able to gain a great deal by self-study. Your reaction to psychoanalysis is actually quite typical and not far off my position at all in starting literary theory, but when you start to see things from a psychoanalytical perspective in a text the evidence, like in science, seems to overwhelmingly mount up, that it is hard to be so dismissive of. Actually the Turn of the Screw is quite a handy set text of psychoanalysis if you’re still reading that then that is a great text to start on. If you’re interested ill post a few things in the relevant section if I have time, but myself I only have a foundation grip of theory, even after 2/3 years of studying theory on and off, I’m certainly not an expert or specialised in any one particular branch.

(With the vocabulary thing it is rather the other way round: vocabulary doesn’t determine gender identity, it is gender roles that helped to determine vocabulary. So for example in the past very few women worked down the sewers, (bless them not a women’s job?!) so they got the name “manhole” by default. Women in the past couldn’t possibly be trusted to run a large company so the title of “chairman” became the natural default. There is no term for a female teacher in France, I believe, because, bless them again, surely women aren’t bright enough to teach at the highest level? And then as we label things in nature, like “lion” and “lioness”, the male of the species is the default term – because it is a man that is deciding the labels! And as you look at the world around you, as you look at “mankind” you can see how language suits the dominant male party and why some feminists, or even non-feminists don’t think such terms are quite fair. Anyway, such a point was only really a minor footnote.)

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Observation is the first step at science. Good for you. Now don't let all that other non scientific nonsense distort you views.

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See my above post about theory, and don’t be so dismissive.:D

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Actually Neely, here's another one for you. If social construct is the predominant factor in gender identity, then why is it that there aren't whole groups of siblings that are transgender? Obviously the social construct within their families was pretty much the same for all the siblings, why is it only an isolated case here or there?

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Social construction is a factor in determining gender, but not the sex of the individual. What you are really talking about here is the sexual identity of a person which actually brings up a whole new nest of bees – which I may stir at a later date, but would perhaps rather not! Though in short I think the “sex” of an individual is quite inherent from birth, as I said, as Butler would state, but her main point, and it would be worth reading Foucault here too, is that such categories of “male” “female” “transsexual” etc, are quite unstable notions in themselves.

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Neely,
My question was directed to what seems to me to be your linking of the internal processes of learning to an external article of clothing (your skirt example). The latter is, obviously, socially conditioned; however, the former is more open to debate, and perhaps (hopefully) impossible to quantify as far as which is the predominant influence. I agree that culture has an important influence over what interests individuals (generally reflected externally, especially amongst socially conscious teenagers), but I also think that biology plays an important role, particulalry when dealing with internal processes such as cognition.

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OK, I'll let you off the hook...:)

:rolleyes:

The value of any piece of cultural criticism decreases every time it mentions "political correctness."

Regards,

Istvan

:D we should just throw them into a snake pit and be done with it. pfft. men.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

Of course, I agree with this statement Virgil. However, it is a scientific fact that a large amount of human behavior is learned. You need only look at the variety of cultural forms of gender to realize that it is substantially malleable. Gender expectations vary through different cultures and times. Concrete biological inclinations will colour the forms that gender norms take, but we shouldn't just accept what we expect of males to be what is the natural way of being "male".

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First I am not going to put myself forth as an expert or even someone who has done any study in this area. But let me put forth this hypothesis. Like I addressed the kilt as hypothetically masculine in Scotland, there is cultural behavior that overlays our identities, but at the root there is still something biological which is masculine and feminine. How that gets intertwined must be incredibly complex, but it is evident there are levels of hormonal differences (possibly even brain structure) between the sexes. Just look at the different energy levels of boys. Look at the predominance toward the physical in teen boys. Look at aptitudes. Those are not culturally learned. I would expect those go across cultures. Cultural identity is masking over certain gender innateness, but it's there.

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Originally Posted by Il Penseroso

Virgil,
Linguistic studies of classroom behavior focusing on gender differences have shown males to act in a more dominant manner, asserting ideas as if to control classroom discussion. This is essentially a competitive endeavor; each male student attepts to manage the floor of debate or exchange of ideas by injecting his opinion over the ideas of others, often resorting to speedy responses without time for deeper thought and understanding. Particularly for high school age and below, do we really trust students' competitive nerves and emotional nature to sidestep themselves and allow truly balanced perspectives to develop?

My question for you is whether or not this is really the most productive learning environment, for either males or females. If participation becomes a competition, dependent largely on power relationships developed between peers, what type of learning is taking place? Is it the fullest possible? Aren't more deliberative classroom environments better suited for developing real critical thinkers, capable of combining concepts to adapt to variables as they occur?

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All I'm saying is it's worth a study. I don't know and you don't know. In my career as an engineer, i have been continually surprised at what turns out to work and what doesn't. That's actually ther difference between an inexperienced engineer and one with experience. The best engineering teacher I ever had in college stressed that assumptions almost always lead you astray. You have to work out the equations and run the experiments. Look at the assumptions Neely and the Judith Butler types make. Until you run an experiment I can't predict. Utalizing what seems to be an innate competitiveness to boys is an interesting hypothesis worth putting to the test.

I don't know much about the theories, science etc, but when it comes to education you have to remember that the kids have already gone through a number of developmental stages and the teaching environment needs to provide the best learning model for the kids.
Of course this doesn't happen. It is pot luck whether your kid will get a sympathetic and understanding teacher, let alone one who can try to adapt to the needs of the pupils. I would have liked to have tried the Australian method of 15 mins pysical exercise before lessons in the primary school I worked in. It was supposedly good for boys to do this, but there was absolutely no flexibility in the curriculum. I would have liked to have tried different teaching methods like mind mapping and using music, but didn't become aware of them until after I had left Primary school teaching to teach adults.

Certainly there is a lack of role models and an apprecation of how boys learn. I don't know about the theories, but many of the boys I taught were more active, less attentive and less likely to fit into the one stop shop model of schooling that was offered them. You may not want boys sword fighting and playing war in school- which they definately wanted to - but conversely there was a palpable fear of the things that interested boys - sport, conflict, machines, adventure and competition.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

My own experience of Primary school teaching is that there are few men, and this naturally has an effect upon the school culture. Many Primary schools in Coventry have no male staff, and I think this is reflected across the country.

I honestly did feel sorry for the boys, (and myself). There was much more singing - and the staff were expected to join in enthusiastically! (miming saved me) - and a lot less sport. Sports day was avoided if possible, or was one of those pointless, non-competitve affairs. There were 4 male teachers in a school of 38 staff, and so I think there was a bias against the interests of young boys. I can't blame the female teachers - they were doing their job well. It did skew the culture though. The male colleagues and I used to moan about it in the staff room regularly.

It continues to be a hot topic in he news too. In the Times today they were reporting that boys are significantly behind girls in writing when they get to Reception, (4-5 yrs). Gender differences and developmental factors were cited as the cause, and they were exploring ways of engaging boys in interesting ways to develop the fine motor skills for writing. It is a moot point though, whether this should be pushed at all.

There is a problem with boys in school, and it begins early.

---

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I don't know much about the theories, science etc, but when it comes to education you have to remember that the kids have already gone through a number of developmental stages and the teaching environment needs to provide the best learning model for the kids.
Of course this doesn't happen. It is pot luck whether your kid will get a sympathetic and understanding teacher, let alone one who can try to adapt to the needs of the pupils. I would have liked to have tried the Australian method of 15 mins pysical exercise before lessons in the primary school I worked in. It was supposedly good for boys to do this, but there was absolutely no flexibility in the curriculum. I would have liked to have tried different teaching methods like mind mapping and using music, but didn't become aware of them until after I had left Primary school teaching to teach adults.

Certainly there is a lack of role models and an apprecation of how boys learn. I don't know about the theories, but many of the boys I taught were more active, less attentive and less likely to fit into the one stop shop model of schooling that was offered them. You may not want boys sword fighting and playing war in school- which they definately wanted to - but conversely there was a palpable fear of the things that interested boys - sport, conflict, machines, adventure and competition.

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Oh Paul, I didn't mean to ignore your first post. But I seemed to have by pass it accidently. I completely agree with you. It seems like you are experiencing the issue first hand and are looking for solutions. Anyone saying that it's not an issue is sticking their head in the sand.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Oh Paul, I didn't mean to ignore your first post. But I seemed to have by pass it accidently. I completely agree with you. It seems like you are experiencing the issue first hand and are looking for solutions. Anyone saying that it's not an issue is sticking their head in the sand.

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No worries Virgil - I didn't feel ignored. I merely felt I was adding a slightly different anecdotal perspective.:)

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Originally Posted by Neely

She’s not making scientific claims, she’s a philosopher, a theorist, she is making cultural observations on a cultural topic, and she is one of the best and most important in her particular field – though like similar theorists not easy reading!

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She's making biological claims when she says that gender identity is not innate/biological. Yes sir, she is making scientific claims.

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:lol: Don’t forget that a large part of science is just theory too based on observations and speculations. If I’m right in remembering a scientific theory has to go a hell of a long way to actually be proven as a “fact”. I mean even what I would call the solid things like gravity and evolution have not yet passed into scientific “law” to the best of my knowledge, and evolution still seems to kick up a fuss. Just the other day I caught sight of a documentary about sharks (I though the kids would like it) and it showed sharks sleeping at the bottom of the ocean – this was obviously counter to the biology text book which I had at college showing a little diagram explaining that sharks needed to maintain a forward motion in order to breathe. That’s just a minor thing, but it goes to show that science is far from the solid rock some people take it for, science is largely theory too.

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If science can go astray - and i've never said it can't - what makes you think that a social scientist (that term rubs me the wrong way because there is nothing scientific about it) can by pulling things out of the air or by intuition or by whatever magic you want to hang your hat on can understand biology? At one time it was intuition that it was in the semen that a baby was formed and placed into a woman's womb. Boy as that wrong biology.

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As for literary theory, which by its very nature borrows from other from other disciplines such as politics, social, linguistic, psychology, philosophy amongst everything else, I can honestly say that it is the single most important thing that I have covered during my six years of undergraduate study. Theory naturally takes from other disciplines because in an attempt to understand the literature, it must try to understand the motivations of that literature, which it needs to turn to the outside world to do. So to understand a character in a novel we might find it fruitful to turn to psychology, in psychoanalysis. In examining the structures present in the novel, say the church, education – we might turn to political theory. Either way literary theory naturally borrows from other disciplines (even science) in order to interpret events in a plot or character in a work of literature or art. Think of literature just capturing a moment in time, for example a Victorian novel, it is also capturing, like a photograph, the thoughts and motivations of that particular period, which in turn could lead us to looking “outside” of the text in order to learn more about it, or at least to undercover potential areas of exploration.

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I don't know how literary theory came into this, but I guess all that deconstruction nonsense all interweaves together. Look, this pseudo science is as valid as the intuition that the earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around, or that the earth was created 6000 years ago, or that evolution doesn't exist. All of these ideas were divined magically by people who weren't qualified to make such statements. At least they had the excuse that the scientific method wasn't understood yet. Judith Butler and all these deconstructionist, post structuralists, new historicism, feminsts, psychoanlytists (why are there so many? because they all jump from one divination to another? :lol:), or whatever is the latests fad don't have that excuse.

I guess the rest is repetition and no use going over the same ground. Let's leave it as we disagree. But it was fun. :)

:brow: Ah, Virgil, I guess there is no teaching an old dog new tricks, especially a stuborn one...

It is a shame though because the world of literary theory does open up a huge area of thought and learning, a way to see things in a different light. It is always best to try to keep an open mind in these matters, but I fear, alas you have made up your mind before you have really delved any further, still I'm not here to preach or convert, but if you were to want to open your mind a little (is that not the purpose of education to open minds, not to close them?) then my door is always proverbially open. Or even you are feeling brave give Peter Barry a read!

Oh it seems Paulclem that primary is as frustrating as secondary. I must say that I am unimpressed with the way secondary education is going at least in my experience of the lower end of state schools. Really I'd like to teach post 16 or adult, I don't know if I want to necessarily hang around secondary schooling slogging my guts out with little reward, but I know that post 16 and adult is a little shaky to get into on a full-time basis. Anyway, I’ll end up doing what I’ll end up doing, I’m not really concerned with that at present. :)

Edit: Oh, maybe I'll teach theory to stuborn old adults, ha, ha. :D

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Originally Posted by Neely

:brow: Ah, Virgil, I guess there is no teaching an old dog new tricks, especially a stuborn one...

It is a shame though because the world of literary theory does open up a huge area of thought and learning, a way to see things in a different light. It is always best to try to keep an open mind in these matters, but I fear, alas you have made up your mind before you have really delved any further, still I'm not here to preach or convert, but if you were to want to open your mind a little (is that not the purpose of education to open minds, not to close them?) then my door is always proverbially open. Or even you are feeling brave give Peter Barry a read!

Oh it seems Paulclem that primary is as frustrating as secondary. I must say that I am unimpressed with the way secondary education is going at least in my experience of the lower end of state schools. Really I'd like to teach post 16 or adult, I don't know if I want to necessarily hang around secondary schooling slogging my guts out with little reward, but I know that post 16 and adult is a little shaky to get into on a full-time basis. Anyway, I’ll end up doing what I’ll end up doing, I’m not really concerned with that at present. :)

Edit: Oh, maybe I'll teach theory to stuborn old adults, ha, ha. :D

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You have my sympathies teaching secondary - a difficult job. Hard to try new stuff when you are focused on keeping them focused.

I think the two tier system doesn't help. Primaries send the kids off to secondaries ill prepared for the experience of having 8? 9? teachers of each subject after having one main class teacher for most of theeir school life. Of course it is the vulnerable ones that cope least.

There are still kids who can't read properly - for a multitude of reasons - that are never going to get anywhere in secondary.

In my last full time Y6 class I sent two lads up to secondary school - one with suspected motor dyslexia that I had only just realised after gong on an adult ed course - and one with some kind of emotional disturbance - perhaps a form of autism - that had never been addressed, just coped with in the Primary school. I don't know what happened to the lad with dyslexia - it was too late for us to get him assessed or anything, but the kid with the emotional problems lasted three weeks before they sent him to a school for kids with emotional and behavioural problems. This was a fairly typical one form intake primary school. Who knows how many were sent that year and every year to fail in the secondary system. (By the time I had this class I was sick of the job and was already moving into Adult Ed - hence the course).

The problem with Adult Ed is difficult to get full time work, as you said, especially now, and the money is significantly lower. In colleges you might end up teaching 14-19 yr olds again. I have to say though that Ad Ed is a great job if you can get it, and much much less stressful. Scher's also in Adult Ed.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

You have my sympathies teaching secondary - a difficult job. Hard to try new stuff when you are focused on keeping them focused.

I think the two tier system doesn't help. Primaries send the kids off to secondaries ill prepared for the experience of having 8? 9? teachers of each subject after having one main class teacher for most of theeir school life. Of course it is the vulnerable ones that cope least.

There are still kids who can't read properly - for a multitude of reasons - that are never going to get anywhere in secondary.

In my last full time Y6 class I sent two lads up to secondary school - one with suspected motor dyslexia that I had only just realised after gong on an adult ed course - and one with some kind of emotional disturbance - perhaps a form of autism - that had never been addressed, just coped with in the Primary school. I don't know what happened to the lad with dyslexia - it was too late for us to get him assessed or anything, but the kid with the emotional problems lasted three weeks before they sent him to a school for kids with emotional and behavioural problems. This was a fairly typical one form intake primary school. Who knows how many were sent that year and every year to fail in the secondary system. (By the time I had this class I was sick of the job and was already moving into Adult Ed - hence the course).

The problem with Adult Ed is difficult to get full time work, as you said, especially now, and the money is significantly lower. In colleges you might end up teaching 14-19 yr olds again. I have to say though that Ad Ed is a great job if you can get it, and much much less stressful. Scher's also in Adult Ed.

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Yes, it seems that a lot slip through the net to get into secondary, but it is just so difficult to try to manage it all. As I work in a lower end secondary, (and I mean Lower end) there are a huge number that come to "us" that simply cannot cope with the transition at all, many of them with significant emotional and behavioural problems, who naturally have a total distaste for learning. I think that in special needs the latest intake was around 75% from Y6 to secondary, and this is not a special school, just a run of the mill lower end state school! It is all quite depressing, though my thoughts are often with those that want to progress and can't due to behaviour. Anyhow, it is Christmas, I don't want to depress myself too much - I'm on holiday still! Really the real world is all too painful, I'd rather hide in the lofty world of the academia, even as a hanger-on wannabe...:brow:

I would think some of it is more what's inherent in each boy's nature. My mom basically overprotected me and my brother, keeping us away from the gangs in our barrios keeping us out of sports, telling us not to join the armed services because of Viet Nam. I lisetened, my brother, well there was no stopping him, even when i aruged with him that he was breaking moms heart, he just met things head on, we didn't have a father present growing up and my Brother quickly picked upt he slack. He is 4 years younger than I, but the guys in the neighborhood knew not to mess with him while they lit up on me. I think we both came out alright, but his sense of how to handle the world was much more advanced than mine was.

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Originally Posted by Neely

:brow: Ah, Virgil, I guess there is no teaching an old dog new tricks, especially a stuborn one...

It is a shame though because the world of literary theory does open up a huge area of thought and learning, a way to see things in a different light. It is always best to try to keep an open mind in these matters, but I fear, alas you have made up your mind before you have really delved any further, still I'm not here to preach or convert, but if you were to want to open your mind a little (is that not the purpose of education to open minds, not to close them?) then my door is always proverbially open. Or even you are feeling brave give Peter Barry a read!

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:lol: Oh Neely, I may be an old dog, but I've been more than exposed to literary theory. I do have a masters in english lit. It's all a crock. ;) Frankly meaningful literary theory started and probably ended with Aristotle. :D

Oh Ok, I'm surprised that anyone can dismiss ALL of it though. (Anyway, the article was rubbish.:p)

Virgil-tis sad you leave out Horace and Longinus

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Originally Posted by gbrekken

Virgil-tis sad you leave out Horace and Longinus

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You know I felt a tug of regret when I left it at Aristotle, but then I went ahead anyway. Aristotle teaches us how to underastand art, but I think Horace (Ars Poetica) and Longinus (On the Sublime) concentrate on appreciation for and style of art rather than an understanding of art, though there is a relative mix. If you think that's not correct, feel free to dispute it. you might be right.

What's truly a shame is that today's literature students are fed this deconstruction (and that long list of associated theories I presented above) nonsense at the expense of Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, and the Renaissance humanists. I wonder how many literature graduates have even been exposed to non 20th century aesthetic theories. Perhaps Neely will see this and tell us if he has.

No, you are quite right they are not on my particular course or I doubt on many. However the benefits of studying part-time is that personally I have a little time to try and fill in any gaps myself, and my Norton Anthology starts with the likes of Leontini, Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Quintilian, Plotinus, Hippo Macrobisu etc. Whereas I can't claim to have read many of those (only a little Plato and Aristotle) you can bet I will when I can get around to it - obviously I have to meet the priorities of the course first.

However, I am more concerned at large cuts in literature departments meaning drains on the teaching of the likes of Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens etc - (Sheffield university has just got rid of their only Dickens expert and one Shakespeare scholar, as well as a number of very good part-time tutors - this is all very sad to me, honestly what is happening to part-time study is a disgrace, but perhaps that's a different discussion?

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Originally Posted by Neely

No, you are quite right they are not on my particular course or I doubt on many. However the benefits of studying part-time is that personally I have a little time to try and fill in any gaps myself, and my Norton Anthology starts with the likes of Leontini, Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Quintilian, Plotinus, Hippo Macrobisu etc. Whereas I can't claim to have read many of those (only a little Plato and Aristotle) you can bet I will when I can get around to it - obviously I have to meet the priorities of the course first.

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Actually other than Aristotle, who was specifically brought up by a single teacher, I had to read most of those on my own as well. Who is Leontini? He doesn't ring a bell.

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However, I am more concerned at large cuts in literature departments meaning drains on the teaching of the likes of Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens etc - (Sheffield university has just got rid of their only Dickens expert and one Shakespeare scholar, as well as a number of very good part-time tutors - this is all very sad to me, honestly what is happening to part-time study is a disgrace, but perhaps that's a different discussion?

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Oh that does sound unfortunate. Is it because of a shrinking department or are they choosing other scholars in lieu of those you mention?