The job of an educator is to educate. If over the passed few decades the education of boys has been declining there is nothing wrong with educators trying to figure out how to solve that problem. Focusing on problems isn’t the same as Affirmative Action, is it?
Marc
To me, the issue is not so much schooling nor stereotyping, but something much deeper – and while I suspect my own life experiences influence me strongly, I also see a lot of the same sort of behavior in others.
And that is, the actual means by which boys are supposed to deal with feelings and emotions as they mature, is for many very much a do-it-yourself, trial-and-error process. Being “manly” for many young people means effectively suppressing your interior feelings and not allowing them to be known. That this can lead to significant psychological and social problems later in life seems not to be sufficient grounds to justify modifying the traditional Stoic mode of upbringing.
“Nurture” can mean a lot of things – but caring about the person supposedly being nurtured, and enabling an emotional connection, seems to me to be high on that list.
I agree. I get uncomfortable, though, when educators are expected to parent, because their students lack needed social skills and act out. The buck stops with the parents, IMO; and I suspect a subtext of this thread is teachers could/should be doing more to foster “nurturing”. I disagree, unless that means, simply, teachers can hold parents accountable for their children’s actions, and demand changes if the child is to continue study in that teacher’s classroom. Teacher’s aren’t social workers either, and shouldn’t be expected to be, IMO. Teachers, rather, should expect disciplined and respectful students, and if they’re forced to cope with something less, that’s hardly their fault, and again, IMO, should hardly be their responsibility or job to correct.
What was she attempting to accomplish in her first term as First Lady? Making sure her daughters weren’t caught being drunken wh- er, nah, they don’t deserve that. But still.
In 2008. Fox is currently under negotiations with the State Department on making the First Lady an elected position for a reality show, with a camera crew to follow along as she tries to deal with the President. They’re going to call it, “The D.C.” :rolleyes:
MG: The job of an educator is to educate. If over the passed few decades the education of boys has been declining there is nothing wrong with educators trying to figure out how to solve that problem.
But it seems to me that the data merely indicates that the education of boys has been declining in the recent past with respect to the education of girls. It’s not that boys are necessarily doing worse in absolute terms (after all, the percentage of boys enrolling in college continues to increase, right?), it’s that they’re doing worse in comparison to girls.
Those of us who value equality of outcomes have no problem responding that boys need to be encouraged and assisted to achieve more. But how does an affirmative-action opponent justify such a response? Why wouldn’t you just conclude that the boys are simply being outclassed meritocratically, and should simply be left to find their own level among the statistically higher-achieving girls?
Regarding the OP, it doesn’t seem like LB has said much, and she certainly hasn’t done anything. We’ll see if she can put her money where her mouth is, or is simply being as disingenuous as her hubby.
I somehow get the impression that no one posting to this thread actually has boys. I do; well, I have one, and a lot of his friends hang around our place. I also have a daughter, for whom the same is true.
Anyway, I think the stuff about school performance, career opportunities and even parenting is way off the mark. The problem as it presents itself to me is that this society currently doesn’t much like its children, and it certainly doesn’t like its boys. School curricula and Boys Clubs and all that crap isn’t going to change this; we’ve collectively got to get it through our thick skulls that these are our children, and if we’re going to go through the bother of having them, we’d damn well better like them.
Here in Houston, it’s commonplace for kids to be thrown into the slammer (and kept there), be charged as adults for the most idiotic things, be harassed by police on a regular basis, and generally to be treated like some sort of pond scum. The schools have zero tolerance for just about everything: they seem to assume that every place is a potential Columbine. The boys get it worse because, as far as I can tell, they’re feared. Apparently the fact that boys will be boys is now an unforgivable sin. And if you see five of them together, they must be up to no good, and are probably in a gang.
A fair amount of my time is spent with boys, sometimes cleaning up the mess that society makes of them. Most of them seem to have been in trouble with the law, usually for doing things that I just would have been (or was) yelled at or grounded for. These kids are dying for affection and approval; they’ll do just about anything for you if you give it to them. It’s heartbreaking.
I could continue this rant for another 20 pages, but I guess I’ve said what I’ve got to say. Good luck to Laura if she gets off her ass and does something, and doesn’t go off in the wrong direction. I haven’t seen much from her family that looks very promising, though.
Sure they do. LB was on the cover of Parade on Sunday with this same message.
I’d like to see some evidence that she has some clue as to how to raise girls to be useful members of society before I take her word for it on what to do about boys.
Not to push prejudice and stereotyping or anything… but, uh, she IS a Republican First Lady.
Well… you do have to take into consideration that they got some bad genes passed by their father (addiction, etc). I frankly don’t know anything about them other than the drunken escapades, so I won’t call them bad people just because their father is a psychotic threat to world security.
I don’t value equality of outcome above all other things. Maybe boys are simply being outclassed but when I see that they’re also more likely to be drugged into compliance I start to think that there might be a bigger problem.
Marc
Er, let me defend this before anyone pounces on it…
Republican First Ladies: Say something obvious (drugs are bad, boys need nuturing), wear a pretty dress, and smile. They do basic things like that, and they get praised and petted on the head like a good dog for being “wise” (see: thread title). An exception here could have been Elizabeth Dole. But wasn’t.
While I do not have and am not planning to have children, that is, in my opinion, one of the most on the mark things I’ve read. Thank you, kelly5078.
MG: I don’t value equality of outcome above all other things.
I doubt that any affirmative-action supporters do, either. Certainly we’re all aware that individual differences mean that outcomes are never going to be exactly equal.
It’s just that when affirmative-action supporters see significant and systematic differences in outcomes between groups, we tend to view it as an indication that there may be a problem in the system, and that the lower-achieving group(s) may be getting short shrift from the system’s built-in biases.
Which is exactly what you seem to be agreeing with here in the case of boys, but which most self-proclaimed supporters of “meritocracy” reject in the case of women and minorities. I don’t know whether you consider yourself one of those “meritocrats”, but as I said, I’m curious to know how they would reconcile the contradiction in these two cases. (Of course, I haven’t yet heard any self-identified supporter of “meritocracy” agreeing that boys are getting short shrift, so maybe there isn’t really any contradiction to explain.)
While I agreed with the rest of your post, I am interested to hear why you think this. I’ve always thought just the opposite - that our society worships its children to an unhealthy degree.
Not necessarily a contradiction in terms. We sentimentalize childhood, but don’t necessarily value children.
Keep in mind the current soul of the conservative movement is patriarchal with a capital P. Issues women care about are either to be subordinated or co-opted into the greater politico-moral paradigm of the disciplinarian-dad state. (Hey, my jargon’s on a roll tonight!)
My reaction to your post was that I’m interested to hear why you think this. I’m not being sarcastic, I really can’t see how you could reach this conclusion.
I think the term “worship” is an exaggeration on your part. I’ll assume you believe that society loves and appreciates them. I don’t see that either. Perhaps you are thinking of small children. There may be a lot of love there, although the amount of drugs floating around to keep them under control seems to belie this idea. Also, I’ve had the damnedest time trying to make it clear to teachers (that he’s had problems with) that if you just treat him nicely, he’s yours. They just don’t get it. It’s all about control. Parents of small children get railroaded into giving their kids Ritalin and the like, because the schools say their kid is a problem. Very few kids are the screaming maniacs that 20/20 or their ilk show; it’s just that they aren’t as malleable as apparently is desirable.
Moving on to teens, which is really what I’m talking about, maybe you’re thinking of kids who do all the right things. If I send my kid to soccer camp, and she ends up getting a full athletic scholarship, it’s going to be pretty easy to be appreciative. Teachers love that kind of stuff, too: it makes them feel like a success.
But what of the kids, and there are a lot of them, who aren’t perfect. The kids that smoke weed, or get into harder stuff, who write graffiti, maybe do a little shoplifting, who cut themselves, who try to kill themselves, and so on? The get detentions, they go to juvy (or adult jail), they end up in rehab; all sorts of stuff (mostly ineffectual, from what I’ve seen) are in place to treat a problem. I say it’s still all about control, not love, certainly not worship. Most of the kids I know are hurting, and these aren’t (for the most part) poor kids, either. Go ask kids if they feel appreciated. I don’t think you’ll get a positive response.
The “he” above is my son. BTW, he is not, nor has he ever been, on Ritalin. It was once suggested, which was quite a laugh, because I know very few people as capable of sustained concentration as he is.
I think we’re talking about two different socioeconomic groups here. I was thinking of my peer group (18-24) - the children of yuppies. These kids have parents who seem unable to function without them - they have spent the last 18 years giving the kid therapy, dance lessons, music lessons, karate lessons, braces, credit cards, in short everything but what they actually need to survive in the Big Wide World. These kids have spent their lives being catered to, and have come to expect and demand more of the same from the world in general. My parents are working-class, and I thank God every day for my second-hand clothes and education that I am paying for myself.
However, I also volunteer for a grade-school literacy program in a low-income school system, and I see what you are talking about there. These kids are just the opposite: so starved for attention and so pathetically grateful for any scrap of love I can give them that it breaks my heart.
Back on topic: The Hoff Summers book also mentions that boys do best, academically speaking, in a semi-military school environment, boys only, with male teachers and plenty of competetive physical exertion. That is so far from our classical model that it is scary.
Lessee- Jenna graduated University of Austin to go on teaching elementary school in Washington DC (inner-city, IIRC) while Barbara graduated Yale & plans to continue medical studies to work with AIDS patients…
filthy drunken Republi-whores.
Don’t nurture the boys too much, Laura. Coddle 'em and they’ll turn all gay. Then your husband will have to get all up in their “civil rights” and shit.
It makes no sense to me that anyone could say “boys need nurturing.” All children need nurturing. If it has come to a point in history where girls are starting to succeed and the unfairness is under control, wouldn’t this be a good time to say that children need to have their needs addressed as individuals regardless of gender, regardless of traditional ideas about what boys need and what girls need?
Why does there always have to be a backlash? Why does our focus have to ping pong back and forth? Why can’t children be treated evenhandedly? I’m sure everyone will agree that not all girls are the same and not all boys are the same. If you have a “boys club” to teach people how to cope with their emotions, will girls who need help dealing with their emotions be excluded?
I really don’t understand why people would be pleased to hear someone be so unnecessarily divisive. How is she going to nurture boys without excluding girls? If you address “boy” problems, what happens to the boys who don’t fit the stereotype of “boy” problems? And what happens to girls who have “boy” problems, do they have to stay home? It doesn’t make any sense to me. To be really honest, I find it creepy and depressing.