The other day David Brooks jumped on the bandwagon of folks wringing their hands in distress because–horror of horrors–girls are outperforming boys in school.
Brooks claims that little boys could reasonably conclude–based on playground safety rules and classroom behavioral requirements–that “the official school culture is for wimps and softies.” This claim reminded me of the story Tony Porter told in his TED talk about a little boy telling him he’d “rather die than be a girl.” We are still implicitly telling little boys that femaleness is less valuable than maleness–and therefore that traditionally female behavioral traits like nurturing, listening and collaborating are inherently less valuable than traditionally male traits like rambunctiousness and aggression. No wonder little boys don’t want to sit still. Sitting still would be wimpy and soft and so humiliatingly female. You can almost hear Brooks whining about how it just isn’t fair to ask boys to behave themselves.
So never mind that the United States’ K-12 math and science education ranks 48th out of 133 nations. Never mind that girls still lag behind boys in math and science, though as Brooks laments, “that gap is nearly gone.” Never mind that classrooms are overcrowded, and that already underpaid teachers routinely spend their own money on classroom supplies. Never mind that relationship violence among middle and high school students is rising. And never mind that this country can’t even fund science-based sex education. No, clearly these things aren’t nearly as important as the fact that boys are struggling to sit still in school. And this fact alone demands an immediate and complete overhaul of the entire system. Because those other problems weren’t enough to make that fact readily evident, and because–as everyone knows–the success of one sex must always come at the expense of the other.
I agree with Brooks that we need an education overhaul, and that those who are designing that overhaul need to account for individual differences in students’ personalities and energy levels. Overall, all children regardless of their sex or gender need much more time for unstructured play and exercise than we give them. Recess and PE are really important. And it may be that because girls are socialized to be more accommodating than boys, they are more likely to be comfortable abnegating that need in favor of sitting quietly and pleasing their teachers.
But whatever the problems in our school system, calling out the underperformance of boys in isolation and using it to call for an educational overhaul is like freaking out over a flesh wound when the patient has cancer.
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There is no argument that, on average, the US’s lower education(K-12) system is pretty shameful when compared to the rest of the civilized world’s. So far our universities do a grand job catching people up (for those privileged enough to attend), but even so one can only do so much to output quality when a lackluster input is given. As such raising the bar on our K-12 system is a good idea.
Where my disagreement stems from is comparing the larger sad picture to the specific problems that exist (repeatably and measurably, so they “exist” as more than a collection of anecdotes) for boys. Of course the larger picture is technically “worse,” it’s physically/systemically larger!
But does this observation mean that I should not care about the social trouble boys seem to be having? Are their stories, pain, trials, and tribulations unimportant and/or not worthy of investigation/discussion? What about boys makes their stories insignificant in front of the larger more “humanist” problem? Why can’t boy’s problems be used to illustrate why/how there are issues with the larger system? Would fixing a small piece not help the larger system?
If boy’s/men’s problems in education is not your focus, or if you’re more concerned with non-gendered systemic problems in education, that’s grand. It’s wonderful, you’re doing quality societal work. But writing off the stories of so many other people is dangerous and most likely hurtful.
P.S.
Brooks’ article has issues to be sure but it is nice to see a columnist acknowledging the role of social factors. Zimbardo’s (of the Stanford Prison Study fame no less D:) new book and his 6-minute TED talk on YouTube start off with the assumption that boys on average are sort of “sick” and suffering from persistent, low-level, sensory addiction.
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[...] Brooks redeems himself By Tae Phoenix | Published: September 11, 2012 This summer, I excoriated David Brooks for his column lamenting boys’ underperformance in school relative to their female peers. I [...]