Education and Masculinity

Men now make up only 43% of college students. This is not an isolated fact, but the product of a societal trend towards undervaluing innate male characteristics and steering boys through an educational environment that isn't geared towards their mode of learning. In changing our education system to accommodate girls we have created problems for the boys. Michael Gurian writes in the Washington Post:

Beginning in very early grades, the sit-still, read-your-book, raise-your-hand-quietly, don't-learn-by-doing-but-by-taking-notes classroom is a worse fit for more boys than it is for most girls. This was always the case, but we couldn't see it 100 years ago. We didn't have the comparative element of girls at par in classrooms.

My experience is with daughters, but I have been witness firsthand to teachers at various levels who cannot distinguish between the generally raucous nature of boys and anti-social traits that lead to disruption. They think any kind of rowdy behavior is detrimental to learning, and they lack the skills to steer boyish behavior into productive education. Many of these teachers naturally prefer girls or girl-like behavior in a classroom setting, for no other reason than peace-of-mind.

Girls, of course, come with an inscrutable and complicated set of personal problems that can cause heartache and turmoil with one sideways glance; while boys, in comparison, can often have a fistfight at recess and be buddies again by the end of the day. But one high school teacher I know (the oldest of five sisters) will tell you that boys in the classroom are easier to manage - provided you can dish it right back immediately when they try and test their boundaries. Put up with a high overall level of boyish clowning, but at the right point the line should be firmly and smartly drawn with the inevitable classroom Alpha Jerk. It's like a whacking a newspaper on a dog's snout.

Gurian rightly suggests that society needs to stop blaming men and boys for their characteristically male approach to learning and the world at large. And that much is true. But the solution really isn't more complicated than role models. Boys can develop compassion, thoughtfulness, confidence, and all of the positive masculine attributes when they are shown these traits in action in the lives of the men in their families and communities.

How much public policy and debate will divert our attention before we come to the realize the simple power of example? Society is incomplete without fully-fledged men and women, and we need to raise and educate them both in a way that highlights their separate strengths.