"Boy Crisis": A "Myth"?

The Washington Post's "Outlook" section today (an expanded Sunday Op-ed section) featured a front page essay entitled "The Myth of 'The Boy Crisis'" by Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett. The essay purports to debunk the "myth" that boys are currently under extreme disadvantage in today's educational system. What the Post doesn't tell readers, however, is that the co-authors have been in the forefront of gender feminist "research" that "proves" there's really no difference between the sexes—a ridiculous and indefensible theory that's been under increasingly heavy attack.

This hasn't prevented the co-authors from publishing a book on the subject (copyright 2004), arguing just this position, a fact the Post conveniently withholds, along with the fact that they don't have tons of support in this area of inquiry save from other gender feminists. Time for a fisking. The authors launch the piece with the following observation:

It was the early 1900s, and boys were supposedly in crisis. In monthly magazines, ladies' journals and books, urgent polemics appeared, warning that young men were spending too much time in school with female teachers and that the constant interaction with women was robbing them of their manhood. In Congress, Sen. Albert Beveridge of Indiana railed against overeducation. He urged young men to "avoid books and in fact avoid all artificial learning, for the forefathers put America on the right path by learning completely from natural experience."

What boys needed, the experts said, was time outdoors, rubbing elbows with one another and learning from male role models. That's what led -- at least in part -- to the founding of the Boy Scouts in 1910.

The first paragraph reminds us of that old quote that's tossed out from time to time, decrying the morals of the times, the disrespect of youth, etc. Once we have a chuckle hearing the quote, the speaker then reveals to us that the quote was from ancient Greece or Rome. It's a subtle way of saying that we shouldn't get too exercised about today's parallel problems since obviously the human race has survived. But it's also a subtle way of ridiculing contemporary observations. And that's what the authors are about here, deligitimizing the argument before they even present it.

The second paragraph, casually tossed off, is factually wrong. The first paragraph's citation didn't have anything to do with the founding of the Boy Scouts of America. The BSA was founded by William Boyce in 1910, but Boyce in turn was inspired by Lord Baden-Powell's Boy Scout movement which the latter had founded in Britain somewhat earlier. Thus, Baden-Powell was the inspiration here, not the cited quote from Senator Beveridge (who was aNeanderthall Republican, of course, a fact slyly omitted) which actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the Scouts at all. The authors cover themselves here a bit with the qualifier "at least in part," but there is no factual basis for their statement at all. It is, in fact, an outright falsehood and a slander on the Boy Scouts who, next to the Roman Catholic Church, are probably two of the most favored slander targets of the American left.

Let's continue:

Now the cry has been raised again: We're losing our boys. The media have been hyping America's new "boy crisis" in magazine cover stories, a PBS documentary and countless newspaper articles. Boys, these reports lament, are falling behind in academic achievement, graduating from high school at lower rates than girls, occupying fewer seats in college classrooms, displaying poorer verbal skills.

As we've pointed out, we now have an implicit parallel to the first paragraph. Just as Senator Beveridge and the hated Boy Scouts were idiots, so, too, is anyone today who's alarmed at the same thing.

This time, experts are calling for a complete overhaul of American education based on gender, saying that boys are wired differently from girls, learn in different ways and may just need their own schools. Boys, they say, are at a disadvantage in the many classrooms headed by female teachers, who are supposedly hostile to their sex. One male high school student in Massachusetts has even filed a federal lawsuit claiming that his school is biased against males.

Experts? Who are the experts? It's easy to dismiss them if you don't cite them, which is the game here.

But are American boys in academic free fall? Not really, if we look closely. Nor do they need special boys-only classrooms to teach them in ways tailored for their unique brains.

Not really, if we look closely. Implying that the previously cited "experts" have not. Now that we have already shot down our strawmen, let's proceed with the propaganda.

The boy crisis we're hearing about is largely a manufactured one, the product of both a backlash against the women's movement and the media's penchant for continuously churning out news about the latest dire threat to the nation. The subject got a big boost last year when first lady Laura Bush announced that she was going to turn her attention to the problems of boys.

Now we're at the agenda. It always takes lefties a little time to get there because they need to conceal their tracks first. The "crisis" is just that, a "crisis" in scare quotes. The reason this "crisis" has occurred is because the usual suspects want to bash the feminist movement. And heaven forefend, Laura Bush supports them. That proves that these "experts" are a bunch of phonies, doesn't it? But what the authors don't tell us is that they are among the gender feminist leaders of a movement that claims there are virtually no differences between boys and girls at all. Check out the critique of their book from Publishers Weekly, no conservative publication itself. (Our citation below is excerpted from the Amazon link to the book cited above):

According to Rivers, a professor of journalism at Boston College, and Barnett, a senior scientist at Brandeis, there is no innate difference between the sexes; there are only varying behaviors that are determined by the degree of power males and females hold in a given situation. The authors earlier collaborated on She Works/He Works, which took issue with the idea that two working parents in a home was harmful to children...Drawing on current scholarly research, Barnett and Rivers take on one "myth" per chapter; they found little statistical support, for example, for Buss's conclusion that women choose mates on the basis of financial security and men prefer to marry younger, very attractive women. Although Barnett and Rivers make a cogent case, their conclusions will be subject to the same scrutiny as they give their targets.

On the cited Amazon site, another psychologist expresses disappointment in the book, noting, among other things that:

...the book devotes an inordinate amount of space to criticizing the work of Carol Gilligan. I was actually glad to see this, because the authors correctly point out that Gilligan's work has had a disproportionate and scary amount of influence on cultural thought despite severe methodological flaws (e.g., small sample, reliance on unrepresentative anecdotal accounts, refusal to allow other researchers access to data, etc.). However--and without any apparent sense of irony--Barnett and Rivers rely heavily on anecdotes from their own clinical practices throughout the book to make THEIR points. And if it's not okay for Gilligan to do so, why is it okay for them?

Good question. The answer, by the way, is that it is always okay to put out left wing feminist propaganda, because it is axiomatic and therefore requires no proof. The Amazon reviewer, Monica Kern, concludes:

...this book goes too far in trying to deny the existence of sex differences. I agree with the authors that the "Men are from Mars" and Carol Gilligan crowd is doing a disservice to men and women alike by stereotyping and pigeonholing us and insisting that we do not have the capabilities or flexibilities to show traits associated with the opposite gender. But I think "Same Difference" undermines their own argument by insisting too steadfastly that there are no differences at all, and their argument is undermined further by a willingness to rely on anecdotal evidence they (rightfully) dismiss in others' work. Yes, there is tremendous variability within genders, and both men and women are capable of an infinite range of behaviors, emotions, and talents. But men and women also differ, reliably, consistently, and in statistically significant and practically important ways. To pretend that they don't is the tale of the emperor's new clothes all over again.

Well, yes. But for the authors of this book, the truth is not important. Their agenda is to prove, in effect, the gender feminist mantra, namely that sex differences are not real but are mere constructs imposed by the oppressive male patriarchy in order to maintain artificial control over women. This is scientifically asinine, and increasingly, even liberals arbeginningng to say so. But let's get back to the Post article.

But those problems are hardly so widespread. The alarming statistics on which the notion of a crisis is based are rarely broken out by race or class. When they are, the whole picture changes. It becomes clear that if there is a crisis, it's among inner-city and rural boys. White suburban boys aren't significantly touched by it. On average, they are not dropping out of school, avoiding college or lacking in verbal skills. Although we have been hearing that boys are virtually disappearing from college classrooms, the truth is that among whites, the gender composition of colleges is pretty balanced: 51 percent female and 49 percent male, according to the National Education Association. In Ivy League colleges, men still outnumber women.

Ladies, your bias is showing. First of all, look at the weasel words: problems "hardly so widespread"; "if there is a crisis, it's among..."; "pretty balanced"; "on average;" etc. All of this, including the only numerical stat in thparagraphph, is misleading and glosses ovetighterer statistics that show an alarmingly huge drop in black male college attendees and in male students in professional schools, such as legal and medical programs. The authors cleverly drop subgroups into a universe that's defined by the leftwing agenda driven National Education Association, the union that's probably the single most destructive force in American Education today, and whose current headline website article continues their constant bashing of Bush's "No Child Left Behind" initiative which they view as threatening to their educational hegemony. (An additional article trashes same-sex educational classes, which Rivers and Barnett bash a bit later.)

One group of studies found that although poor and working-class boys lag behind girls in reading when they get to middle school, boys in the wealthiest schools do not fall behind, either in middle school or in high school. University of Michigan education professor Valerie Lee reports that gender differences in academic performance are "small to moderate."

Really? Perhaps that's because Professor Lee's mantra is "small class size" and not gender. Or because she believes in equal outcomes, not opportunities, as the University of Michigan web link we've just cited explains:

Much of Lee's research is oriented to public policies that relate to educational equity, where equity is defined, in terms of outcomes, particularly (but not exclusively) test scores, she said.

Follow us here as this is a bit deep. Without citing any actual statistics, "evidence" presented by the authors' opponents is invalid, they conclude, because boys in high schools in wealthier areas are pretty well off, even though, statistically, we have no numbers. Their viability is now dismissed. Now, in a deft lefty touch, our authors use some of Professor Lee's researched, which is biased by her emphasis on class size and on equality of outcomes, to switch the argument, if there is an argument at all, toward class struggle as defined by race and social class:

When it comes to academic achievement, race and class completely swamp gender. The Urban Institute reports that 76 percent of students who live in middle- to higher-income areas are likely to graduate from high school, while only 56 percent of students who live in lower-income areas are likely to do so. Among whites in Boston public schools, for every 100 males who graduate, 104 females do. A tiny gap.

But among blacks, for every 100 males who graduate, 139 females do. Florida's graduation rates among all students show a striking picture of race and class: 81 percent for Asians, 60 percent for whites, 48 percent for Hispanics and 46 percent for blacks.

So, young black males actually DO have a real problem here. But mysteriously, this gets swept under the rug since it's inconvenient. Having in fact undermined at least part of their own mantra, the authors move on, covering their gaffe as they go. Let's get back to "myth bashing" before anyone notices:

A peculiar image of the "typical" boy has emerged in many media reports: He's unable to focus, can't sit still, hates to read, acts up in class, loves sports and video games, gets in trouble a lot. Indeed, such boys exist -- it has long been established that boys suffer more from attention deficit disorder than girls do -- and they need all the help they can get. But research shows this is not the typical boy. Boys, in fact, are as -- or more -- different from one another as they are from girls.

Peculiar? Really? Where's the proof for this startling observation? What research? What's the typical boy? Isn't everyone "special?" And boys are MORE different from one another than they are from girls??? Excuse me, but have the authors had a refresher anatomy class lately?

Using quick-cut techniques usually reserved for the cinema, the authors, having dismissed upper class boys as a statistical anomaly, ignored the grave problems of young black males, and having established without an iota of proof that boys are more different from each other than they are from girls, skate right into an attack on gender-separated classrooms as a possible solution to a problem which, of course, doesn't exist anyway:

...some are advocating boys-only classrooms in which boys would be taught in boot-camp fashion. In a recent Newsweek cover story, Houston neurologist Bruce Perry described today's co-ed classes as a "biologically disrespectful model of education." In the New Republic, Richard Whitmire wrote of a "verbally drenched curriculum" that is "leaving boys in the dust." New York Times columnist David Brooks suggested that boys ought to be given books about combat, to hold their interest. (Forget Julius Caesar, give them GI Joe?)

This is another straw man. Boys only classrooms have existed for a long time, particularly in parochial high schools. And Wonker oughta know. I attended an all-male Jesuit high school where I received a fabulous education, and where the all-male environment permitted an educational focus and a (non-military) regimentation that fostered a competitive spirit as well as respect for others. And since we didn't have GI Joe at the time, we read Caesar's Gallic War commentaries in the original Latin. Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est. Held my interest.

There's actually not much evidence that most boys lack verbal skills.

An astonishing, glib statement, backed up by nothing. What exactly is "much" evidence? Check out the stats on SAT verbal scores. Cut me some slack.

In 2005, University of Wisconsin psychologist Janet Hyde synthesized data from 165 studies on verbal ability and gender. They revealed a female superiority so slight as to be meaningless. And psychologist Diane Halpern of Claremont McKenna College looked at many studies of verbal and math abilities and found that, overall, the gender differences were remarkably small.

Janet Hyde couldn't possibly be the same professor who collaborated with Barnett on a study "proving" that families are better off when mom works outside of the home, could she? And Diane Halpern couldn't possibly be the professor who said this, could she?

We still have along way to go in changing some of the basic attitudes that create work-family difficulties. Attitudes are highly resistant to change, even when people are presented with data and even when they have had personal experiences that might change their perceptions and ideas. For example, some people are afraid of "losing something" when mom goes to work. We need to present information to them that lets them know that there are gains to be had, as well.

Note also that Professors Barnett and Halpern feed off the Sloane Work and Family research network, which is housed at Boston College. Which is, amazingly, the home institution of one of the co-authors and which has provided plenty of funding for Barnett's biased studies. Are we detecting a birds-of-a-feather pattern here?

This research casts doubt on the idea, championed by author Michael Gurian ("The Wonder of Boys") and others, that boys' and girls' brains are so different that they must be taught in very different ways. Although there are indeed some structural differences in the brains of men and women, we don't know what they mean. Perhaps very little. In the 19th century, scientists thought that the greater size of the male brain meant that men were a lot smarter. We now know how off the mark that was.

"Some" structural differences? We don't know what they mean? Very little? And note the subtle comparison of Gurian with uninformed "19th century scientists." The authors ridicule Gurian by trivializing his findings implicitly, but what are they? Could they include the following:

Boys receive up to 70% of the Ds and Fs given all students, they create 90% classroom discipline problems, 80% all high school dropouts are boys, millions of American boys are on Ritalin and other mind-bending control drugs, only 45% college students are boys, and three out of four learning disabled students are boys!

Sounds pretty provocative to me? Might our authors want to rebut Gurian with facts and figures? Maybe not, because they vary so radically from the non-documented pap we've just been presented with. No wonder they don't provide us with a very good paper trail to their opponents. We might find something out that rebuts the authors' argument.

Many, perhaps most, boys would be bored to tears in the kind of classroom that is now being described as "boy-friendly" -- a classroom that would de-emphasize reading and verbal skills and would rely on rote learning and discipline -- because it is really a remedial program in disguise. That's great for boys who need it, but most boys, especially those in affluent suburban schools, don't.

How do we know that "most boys" don't need this? What constitutes "most" boys? 51%? 40% (if 11% of the respondents "don't care"?) Competitively memorizing facts teaches not only discipline. The rewards show up later when you have the opportunity to reequipped-equiped amateurs like our authors here. The authors, in fact, have zero idea what it's like to be a boy. And the reason why is, they don't think boys are inherently any different from themselves, a preposterous premise that causes them no trouble at all.

Still, as Newsweek reported, educators "are reviving an old idea: separate the girls from the boys." We may see a rush to single-sex classrooms that won't really be good educational policy. California tried such classrooms in the 1990s under Gov. Pete Wilson, but they did not succeed in boosting academic achievement. In fact, according to a 2001 Ford Foundation report, the academic success of both girls and boys is influenced more by small classes, strong curricula and qualified teachers than by single-sex settings.

Small classes, hmm? Now where have we heard this before? Professor Lee maybe? And doesn't any study funded by the Ford Foundation support the lefty mythology? (Contrary to what would have been its founder's intentions, the Foundation is perhaps the single largest conduit of funds to the American left today.) And what old idea? I already said I'd attended a male-only Jesuit high school. The school still exists today, and my nephew is currently enrolled. So what's this about an "old idea?" It's a current idea and it still works. And 98% of the graduates of that school and others like it go on to college. Do we have similar percentages in non sex-segregated schools? (My classes, BTW, usually had 25-30 students in them, which hardly can be defined as "small" by today's so-called standards. That didn't seem to make any difference either.)

The Department of Defense offers a better model. DOD runs a vast network of schools on military bases in the United States and abroad for more than 100,000 children of service members. And in those schools, there is no class and race gap. That's because these schools have high expectations, a strong academic focus, and hire teachers with years of classroom experience and training (a majority with master's degrees). Of course, this solution costs money, and has none of the sex appeal of the trendy single-sex-school quick fix.

Trendy?? See above. Observe the verbal slight-of-hand in the above graf. Sneaky, but watch out. The authors cite DoD schools, with the obvious intent of thwarting arguments from the right. Cuts down on their credibility gap. But you'll note we have no stats for the results of these schools, re: SATs, etc. It's another straw man. It's thrown in to throw readers off the trail. Didn't work.

Obsessing about a boy crisis or thinking that American teachers are waging a war on boys won't help kids. What will is recognizing that students are individuals, with many different skills and abilities. And that goes for both girls and boys.

Note how the authors' straw man opponents "obsess." We'd observe that it's the authors who are obsessing on their unsupportable theory that promotes more of the same propaganda, behavioral modification, and oppressive political correctness that have made America's public schools a living hell for boys for at least the past 30 years. As always, the American left, which runs the public schools as a boot camp for young Marxists-in-training as well as a funding pool for careerist lefty teachers unions, is not anxious to have its taxpayer-funded monopoly threatened. And neither are the gender feminists who have negatively feminized the educational environment far worse than even our friend, Senator Beveridge, could ever have imagined. Further, if we started paying attention to young males again, that would diminish the importance of gender feminists like the authors. We couldn't have that, could we? Might lead to less funding for amateurish studies in phony academic disciplines.

Admittedly, it's not possible to document a newspaper article the way you'd expect an academic piece to be footnoted. But the facile "scholarship" here, derived from a very selective subgroup of gender-feminist researchers, many drawing on the same grant and funding pool, all feeding each others' agendas, is a feeble attempt to draw attention away from the demonstrably sinking accomplishments of young males in the academic environment.

It's quite clear that 30-40 years ago, the route to academic excellence was a difficult one for girls in many ways. That it is less problematic now is a good thing in many respects, allowing young women equal access to intellectual and career development if that is what they so choose.

But, as with race-norming of test scores, and, as in the research cited above, if the ultimate aim of educational policy is not equality of opportunity but equality of results; and if equality of results can only be obtained under false or phony premises, we are dealing with precisely the kind of discrimination that was once deployed against young women. How can we define that as progress?

In its insistence on transforming every possible difference of gender, race, or opinion into class struggle within the context of the ongoing dialectic, the American left has, on a wide variety of fronts, created a world that is in constant warfare with itself and incapable of reflection, rationality, or compromise.

Boys are clearly shortchanged by today's educational system which is more interested in changing their unique nature than it is in educating them. A significant body of evidence is growing that supports this observation. Rivers' and Barnett's casual dismissal of this evidence, as well as their breezily condescending and contemptuous attitudes toward their better-armed critics, should never have found its way to the editorial front page of a major newspaper.

There is a very real and growing problem today in the education of boys, particularly when it comes to minorities. Dismissing this ticking time bomb, the gender feminists writing this article are choosing to ignore a growing problem by using faulty research and observations to deny an increasing body of evidence that it exists.

In dismissing a widely-discussed study finding that homemakers are happier in their marriages than working women, Rivers (who is a journo prof and advocacy journalist, not a statistician, BTW) and Barnett conclude an article by stating:

When journalists come across a study like this--that says something so radically different from other studies--they should start asking questions and not automatically embrace the results.

Maybe it's time for both authors to start taking a little of their own condescending advice.