The Invisible Man
Michael Gurian, a family therapist and author of The Minds of Boys : Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life,
has a great article in the Washington Post on the disappearing act of boys on college campuses. These last few paragrahs descibe the problem best:
Yes, maybe if we made the learning environment more appropriate for boys and stopped demonizing boys and men for being bad learners, airplane pedophiles and just plain jerks, the mysteriously vanishing male might reappear.
Update: Here is a good article on Gurian's methods for those of you who want to read more about boys different way of learning--thanks
Dadvocate.
Update II: Some good information from the Kansas City Star on raising boys better. I found it refreshing that the article mentioned a neurobiologist who was willing to stand up for his study results, depite them being politically incorrect--thanks to reader Jeff for pointing this out:
has a great article in the Washington Post on the disappearing act of boys on college campuses. These last few paragrahs descibe the problem best:We still barely see the burdens our sons are carrying as we change from an industrial culture to a post-industrial one. We want them to shut up, calm down and become perfect intimate partners. It doesn't matter too much who boys and men are -- what matters is who we think they should be. When I think back to the kind of classroom I created for my college students, I feel regret for the males who dropped out. When I think back to my time working in the prison system, I feel a deep sadness for the present and future generations of boys whom we still have time to save.
And I do think we can save them. I get hundreds of e-mails and letters every week, from parents, teachers and others who are beginning to realize that we must do for our sons what we did for our daughters in the industrialized schooling system -- realize that boys are struggling and need help. These teachers and parents are part of a social movement -- a boys' movement that started, I think, about 10 years ago. It's a movement that gets noticed for brief moments by the media (when Columbine happened, when Laura Bush talked about boys) and then goes underground again. It's a movement very much powered by individual women -- mainly mothers of sons -- who say things to me like the e-mailers who wrote, "I don't know anyone who doesn't have a son struggling in school," or, "I thought having a boy would be like having a girl, but when my son was born, I had to rethink things."
We all need to rethink things. We need to stop blaming, suspecting and overly medicating our boys, as if we can change this guy into the learner we want. When we decide -- as we did with our daughters -- that there isn't anything inherently wrong with our sons, when we look closely at the system that boys learn in, we will discover these boys again, for all that they are. And maybe we'll see more of them in college again.
Yes, maybe if we made the learning environment more appropriate for boys and stopped demonizing boys and men for being bad learners, airplane pedophiles and just plain jerks, the mysteriously vanishing male might reappear.
Update: Here is a good article on Gurian's methods for those of you who want to read more about boys different way of learning--thanks
Dadvocate.
Update II: Some good information from the Kansas City Star on raising boys better. I found it refreshing that the article mentioned a neurobiologist who was willing to stand up for his study results, depite them being politically incorrect--thanks to reader Jeff for pointing this out:
Sociologist Michael Kimmel of the State Universities of New York rejected anyone pressing a case that sex differences affect learning. “Really, how could you not call that anti-feminist?” he asked.
Neurobiologist Larry Cahill of the University of California-Irvine, who recently wrote up the topic in Scientific American, took exception: “Laughably wrong, but I believe that view prevails.
“A lot of scientists still don’t want to talk about sex differences in the brain. It scares people…(But) what scares me is seeing my own findings and choosing not to believe them
posted by Helen at 1:28 PM
16 Comments:
You have no idea how profoundly this resonates with me (though I suspect, if my comments are at all memorable, you wouldn't find it surprising).
All my interest in this topic far pre-dates my son's birth, but his entry into our lives has deeply intensified it.
And he's part of the "same old, same old" story: an extremely bright, even precocious, boy who is--wait for it--struggling with the routines and rigid expectations of kindergarten, fast getting turned off by school (already!!!!), and exhibiting behaviors he didn't have trouble with before.
(And this, by the way, is a private school, in which we enrolled him--at great financial sacrifice--on the recommendation of his pediatrician and others who were in a position to evaluate his potential at an early age.)
I never thought that my child's education would ever start shaping up as a major heartbreak for me--certainly not this early in the game. And all of that foreknowledge matters not one whit when I look into his discouraged face on bad days. Yet, he's one of the lucky ones, in that he's verbally proficient enough to precisely express what's going on and how he perceives things--when he doesn't shut down, that is.
Will we be able to "look closely at the system that boys learn in" and make changes soon enough to avoid wasting kids like him, and all the others, too?
I wish I were more optimistic ...
It doesn't matter too much who boys and men are -- what matters is who we think they should be.
Amen. In to many ways we deny the biological, evolutionary process that brought the human species to where it is now. Certain gender traits related to personality, activity levels, etc. contributed to the success of the species. To now label these traits as "bad" is unreasonable and hurtful.
As a society,We need to be more creative in finding positive ways for boys to be educated, socialized, etc. Sports, Scouts, and more active environments are traditional ways that work for many but that have been under attack from the left for many years.
I also wonder why so few men seem to be actively interested in this problem. As Gurian says, he hears if from the mothers. Why aren't more fathers taking action?
Maybe they've been beaten down so long they're afraid to speak up. I once spoke with my social work professor sister regarding men's rights groups. Her first response was that they were groups of abusive men. I doubt she knows anyone who is a member of a men's rights group but she didn't hesitate to label the men abusive. I wonder what prospective social workers are being taught.
Hi Dadvocate,
You make some good points. I think our society is so indoctrinated into believing that guys have had it good so long--they should all be guilty. The truth is--yes, there are men who are presidents, Bill Gates, Judge Roberts, etc. and everyone focuses on them and neglects the millions of men and boys who are losing out--Gurian pointed out that a lot of these guys work dangerous jobs, never go to college and play video games into their 30's at which time life has passed them by (I think there is still hope at that age) but you get the gist.
As for men not caring etc.--I do not know why--they are afraid to speak up, don't think they have to, keep to themselves or just stay out of the whole thing--the rights thing is for women, minorites etc. Who knows what social workers are being taught but what real guy wants to go to a social worker? I might if it were Michael Gurian (a family therapist who seems sharp) but I suspect that many are like your sister--men are abusive etc. That's because all of their clients are abused women--I guess they don't want to lose business.
I have twin 9 year-old step-children: a girl and a boy. These children were raised in the same setting, have sat in the same classrooms, and have had virtually identical life experiences.
Yet they couldn't be more different. The girl is calm, thoughtful, mature. She can sit still, follow instructions, and concentrate. She thinks things through before acting. She can carry on a real two-way conversation, and can make new friends and relate to them. Most importantly, she seems to have control over her impulses. The boy on the other hand can not control his impulses no matter how hard he tries, has trouble relating to others, and is constantly in trouble at school. He doesn't think before acting. And it's a constant source of frustration and sadness to him because he really does try!
This is a common story. It's ridiculous that some people are still hanging on to the canard that biology doesn't matter. Have they never met any children?
Try as I might, I'm partial to my step-daughter. It's almost impossible not to favor her when she's both easier and more engaging. I imagine their teacher also favors the girl (even if only subconsciously). No matter how hard you try, it's very difficult not to quickly become exasperated with a rambunctious boy -- even though he can't help it.
So the question is, what is to be done about this problem? Are sex-segregated classrooms the answer? Frequent breaks? More discipline? It's difficult for me to imagine a solution that's would be workable for all children. Dr. Helen, what's your proposal?
On a side note, I truly believe that boys are quickly becoming undesirable in our society. Now that we don't rely on physical work anymore, their energy has no outlet. Every young couple I know speaks of hoping to have girls, not boys, some day. And if you look at the data on US couples that pay for sex-selection procedures in getting pregnant, more than 3/4 are choosing girls.
This is, in my opinion, one reason for the rising popularity of homeschooling. An email list I'm on regularly discusses ways to give boys (and some girls) an outlet for their energy during the day. We can do that at home more easily than schools can, although I hope schools improve in this regard also.
Yes, the schools are definitely the wrong place for boys these days. I don't have kids yet, but my friends who live nearby tell me that in (now mandatory, full-day kindergarten here in Maryland), they only give the kids recess twice a week! And they definitely keep the kids inside at their desks if it's rainy, snowy or cold (what is that, like 75% of the time?). It seems to be an almost hostile environment to be in if you were to have a say, healthy, male energy level...
I might have mentioned this in another thread, but I recall reading an essay a few years ago about the plight of working-class men in Australia. They frequently found themselves in the grips of an all-female welfare-state apparatus that viewed them with suspicion or hostility. Female social workers, employment counselors, family court workers, etc. Once they entered the system for any problem- unemployment, substance abuse, marital counseling, housing, or child support, they found themselves judged and punished by the female establishments notions of behavior and justice. The resulting friction fueled their further alienation from productive society.
I don't think that's exactly the problem here, but I can see the future being shaped in that direction. It's been going on for two centuries and the advent of PC culture has really greased the skids. The direction this is headed is a de facto matriarchy, a culture shaped along feminist lines in which men are held to be primitive and dangerous.
We have seen in the female-centered welfare culture of the underclasses what happens when men are completely shut out of family life; I fear this effect will only trend upward in society. The flip side of which is the rise in violence among girls and young women, which is celebrated in popular culture every day.
The thing that is frequently overlooked about western "patriarchy" is how much male self-hatred was a part of it. Chivalry was about taming the male beast, not subjugating women. The madonna-whore complex was about whether or not a woman was soiled by sexual congress with a man or men. The point being that it was men that were the unclean factor that spoiled women. It's entirely in keeping with this tradition that men would be helpmeets in raising women to mistrust men, to be "feminist" men.
Real patriarchal cultures, like ancient Greece or modern Japan, feature monuments of actual phalluses, not fake ones like the Washington Monument. Our culture's elites have made a hacky play about women's vulvas into a public ceremony of feminine triumphalism. Something tells me this is significant.
As a social worker working with children and adolescents, I have to agree that the boys definitely seem to be having a harder time with problems related to school. One child I work with has difficulty concentrating and has his recesses removed as a result. I utterly fail to see the sense in this. I also hear a lot of video-game bashing, but I actually think that using video-games as a way to reach these kids is an excellent opportunity. There are a huge number of math and science concepts that could potentially be taught through these children's love of video-games.
As far as social work programs go, I just graduated (a horrid experience) and I'll sum it up by saying that in a school of over nine hundred students, only every other floor held a boy's bathroom. A majority of my classes were brainwashing session, but I did have a couple of teachers who actually seemed to use their own brains a bit. Two of my most memorable class experiences were one, we were supposed to come up with terms describing males and females. Heh heh heh. You can probably guess what happened. Very negative on the male side, females were angels of course. But thanks to the teacher that was the purpose...to point out social work bias. The other class we watched a family therapy session on mute that contained a girl and her mother and father. Her father was dressed in a business suit and spoke through most of the session. After watching the scene we were asked to describe what we thought was happening in the session. Almost everyone suggested that the man was "domineering" and "trying to control" the session. This was especially evident, apparently (according to members of the class), because he was a businessman who was used to people obeying him at work and didn't know how to turn that off at home. WELL, it turned out that the mother refused to participate in raising her daughter and the father had everything on his shoulders. This session was about him talking about his concerns for his daughter. I was so incredibly grateful for those two moments that so obviously pointed out a tiny part of the numerous prejudices of social workers. I only wish more of those lessons had been a part of the curriculum. Unfortunately, only members of "oppressed" populations seemed to warrent serious focus (and I still have yet to have anyone adequately explain to me how exactly institutional racism supposedly exists when our laws forbid discrimination of any sort. Would "insititutional" imply an inherently racist system that condones discrimination?)
Excellent article and terrific comments. I plan to implement Gurian's ideas with my sons. Thanks Dr. Helen and Dadvocate.
Sawyer,
Congrats on making it through your program--kudos to those two teachers who exposed the bias of the mental health profession--try to do the same in your work. As far as instiutional racism, my take when people use that term is that is sounds so vague, you don't know what the hell they are talking about. I think it means if you are a white guy, feel really guilty and make sure that you show it at all times.
Jeff,
Your post reminds me of why I am afraid of women like Hilary Clinton becoming president (I would vote for Condi in a heartbeat). A female centered society is a scarty thought in my mind--more secret police and nanny state politics. I am also puzzled about the chivalry thing--obviously just a slogan now to keep men in line. A commenter on a former post about the men being asked to move for children on the airlines (lest they be a pedophile)said that men should "act like men" and do as they were told. Yeah, right, men are always supposed to be chivalrous in response to being discriminated against. Do you think this commenter would have said the same if a black man had been asked to move away from a female passenger?
To drj,,
Glad you found the article helpful. Gurian seems like a good and fair clinician.
Considering, as I have said before, how children have been educated for the last million years, conventional school practice seems as counterintuitive as it can possibly be.
Yet, young men learn a huge amount of stuff in boot camp and further on.
From how to make a bed, to how to call for fire to land navigation to maintainance of complex systems to getting along with others to first aid to unit history to memorizing various systems' characteristics, and being prepared to recall, organize and use all of this stuff in the midst of maximum stress.
Anything to learn there?
Nah.
If you have to do poetry, skip Emily Dickinson and if you have to do lit, skip Jane Austen. For poetry, try Kipling or Lord Macauley (Horatius at The Bridge--"then up spoke brave Horatius, Captain of the Gate. Death cometh sure to any man, whether soon or late. But how can man die better, than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods?"
Kipling wrote on everything, but you could do "Without Benefit of Clergy", or "Daughter of The Regiment." Later, maybe, "The Light That Failed".
Imagine trying to get these selections into an English department at high school or college.
Helen,
Your secret police comment reminded me of something. One of the traditional western European critiques of the declining Byzantine Empire (as well as the end stages Ottoman Epire, ironically) was that the emperors became pawns of the eunuch and their patronesses, the wives and mothers of the emperors. While the women came from the politically connected elite and were royal themselves, they could only rule from behind the scenes through the eunuch advisors, who were the only "men" allowed intimate access. Much like todays entrenched bureaucracy, these players endured while individual emperors came and went.
The point being that power was held and exercised in what was seen as an essentially female way, through indirection, manipulation, and guile, all the while professing powerlessness. These shadow rulers were feared as exceptionally ruthless and calculating, and were derided by later (western) historians as fiddling domestically while the foreign affairs of state burned.
In the Ottoman example I believe this was termed the 'sultanate of women'. Chinese history offers similar examples.
Female power has been real and concrete in many guises in many "patriarchal" civilizations. The study of these less benign examples seems to have fallen out of favor with academia. Acknowledging a history of power would complicate the "5,000 years of patriarchal oppression" meme, while acknowledging female power that was more about realpolitik and less about peace and love is of course completely verbotten.
The relevance to our present situation might be less than clear. I think the behavior of a clearly respected female President would offer little to compare with some shadowy medieval empress. However there are parallels
with regards to bureaucracies and networking and the female model of social interaction.
I have worked in a number of companies that had departments that were almost entirely composed of women. Some women enjoyed this but others felt oppressed by it. The dissenters complained, almost without exception, of a feeling of coercive power being exercised, of a culture of "snitches" and emotional leverage and conformity. These women felt that men were easier to work for and with, that any unpleasantness or compeition was usually much easier to diagnose and deal with, and that most men were just plain less complicated to deal with in general. Plus men still exercise a little bit of the ol' chivalry, whereas other women would fight with the gloves off. I've seen that and it ain't pretty!
One last point: I've read that in warfare among the plains indians, warriors preffered a clean death on the battlefield to being captured. In open combat they respected certain rough rules of fair play between men who were trying to kill each other, as a matter of pride. But if they were captured alive, they were turned over to the women for death by (prolonged) torture. The women of the tribes, you see, had no notions of fair play and took the opportunity of power over a man who threatened their tribe very seriously. That man received not gentle feminine forgiveness and understanding but rather pitiless, bloody torture for as long as he lived. And they kept him alive as long as they could!
$cav3ng3r:
Thank you for your thoughtful and interesting analysis. The complexities of racism are indeed difficult to tease out at times--and I agree that it is hard to balance between not wanting to play the victim and yet, not wanting to deal with stereotypes and discrimination based on race etc. I would assume it is difficult for immigrants to come to the US and find that some of the aspects of racisim are worse in some ways than in their country of origin. Please keep speaking about these issues on this blog or on others as you seem to have a great deal of insight into the problems for both blacks and whites in this country.
"Hi, I'm Thoth. I'm a 36-year old male raised in a strongly patriarchal household in a poor, industrial neghborhood who can't quite make the transition expectations of the modern male."
And I don't care. Really. I'm cultured, sensitive, intelligent when I need to be, but I'm "a guy" at heart. This is actually my son's story though....
My son was a troublemaker all through elementary school. In any given month he was in dentention at least three times. In any given school year, suspended for at least a day.
He won't sit still. He seemed angry all the time. He's blatantly defying authority. He takes over the class, and is disruptive.
This year? He's fine. All A's and B's. Not a single disciplinary complaint of consequence so far, and it's 3 months into the year.
The difference I think? Male teachers. More than half of his instructors (Gym, Band, Math, Soc. Studies) at school are now male. He's never had a male teacher before -- even at my insistance when one was available.
They know what it's like to be a boy. Boys are different. Without medication you can't make boys (on the average) into quiet, attentive, tranquil, doe-eyed, eager cogs in your educational system. That's not what they are. There are ways of cramming education into these guys without having to castrate them. It's not as easy and (based on my experiences) nearly impossible for a timid, dowdy, middle aged elementary school teacher to handle pre-adolescent boys in any way that's going to allow them to learn.
Boys are loud. Boys are physical. Boys are competitive. Offer boys a book or a kickball, and they'll take the kickball -- and, if unsupervised, start playing dodge ball with it.
Boys are different! It's not wrong! You can't make boys into something they're not.
Please stop trying!
[I am a 45 year old man from India]
I think we can't blame feminism or feminists for everything. At the time that they pushed for changes, it all made sense to them. The problem is that what they pushed for was exactly wrong.
They assumed that men and women were "good" but were distorted by the patriarchy. This is essentially marxism in new bottles. And so they set out to dismatle the patriarchy. Since they did not say men were bad, only the patriarchy, they really laid into the poor old patriarchal system. You can't talk to a feminst for two minutes without wincing if you are (like me :^) a confirmed patriarchal man. Ofcourse she will earnestly assure you that she does not mean the real you that is hiding inside.
The problem is that in the 90s or so, scientists began to find that all the things that feminists blamed on the patriarchy - the male instinct for power, possessiveness, bravado, alienation, aggressiveness ... all of it is biological, although greatly shaped by social conditioning.
So feminism has a huge problem on its hands. So huge that they fear to confront it. Either they junk 40+ years of dogma and reinvent the notion of a better society that accepts men as they are (and we _are_ rather nasty people, I must admit), or they must shift ground and label _men_ and not the patriarchy as evil.
That's their problem. Our problem is that in the process of proving that men and women are the same, they decided to create "gentle boys". So they thought about it and said we need less binary thinking (i.e., charge of the light brigade) and more nuanced literature. As a result, my son has no clue what the lessons he reads are saying. Luckily, he is one of the few who has a flair for language (purely curtesy his mother) and handles his exams as we would handle a comprehension passage in a foreign language.
The foreign language is not English. It is the content, and the emotions.
Can you imagine a textbook in the 5th grade talking about insanity and death? Or a 4th grade book that discussed the sociology of viewing soap operas?
The best students always manage. But the average boy I think tends to give up. Add to this the other problem - boys are slow learners. To help them cope, nature gave them a crucial strength - a huge ego. If you can convince a boy that he can do something he then becomes a self-propelled machine. But you have to give him that "I am king. I will be boss" attitude. And that, unfortunately, feminism has totally knocked on the head. Boys of today have no self-confidence at all. (Even boys in India are affected, and I imagine that the problem is far more acute in a developed country like the USA).
I don't see any easy solutions to this. The worst part is that there are no "bad guys" in this story. The feminists are extremely well meaning people who have tried to cure problems, real problems, they perceived in society. What they did not realise was that tinkering with society is something one does VERY carefully. And that one does it after one completely understands how the different parts work.
(Perhaps it is because none of them were used to trouble shooting complex machines? :^)
希望大家都會非常非常幸福~
「朵朵小語‧優美的眷戀在這個世界上，最重要的一件事，就是好好愛自己。好好愛自己，你的眼睛才能看見天空的美麗，耳朵才能聽見山水的清音。好好愛自己，你才能體會所有美好的東西，所有的文字與音符才能像清泉一樣注入你的心靈。好好愛自己，你才有愛人的能力，也才有讓別人愛上你的魅力。而愛自己的第一步，就是切斷讓自己覺得黏膩的過去，以無沾無滯的輕快心情，大步走向前去。愛自己的第二步，則是隨時保持孩子般的好奇，願意接受未知的指引；也隨時可以拋卻不再需要的行囊，一路雲淡風輕。親愛的，你是天地之間獨一無二的旅人，在陽光與月光的交替之中瀟灑獨行.................
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