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"One day last September, there were two
back-to-back events in adjacent rooms at the
National Press Club in Washington, D.C. "Beyond the
Gender Wars", a symposium organized by the American
Association of University Women (AAUW), was
followed by a rejoinder from the Independent
Women's Forum (IWF), "The XY Files: The
Truth is Out There...About the Differences Between
Boys and Girls." Each event largely followed, a
predictable script. On the AASUW side, there
was verbiage about "gender, race, and class" and
hand-wringing about the "conservative backlash";
despite an occasional nod to innate sex
differences, "gender equity" was pointedly defined
as "equal outcomes." On the IWF side,
there were affirmations of vive la difference and
warnings about the perils of trying to engineer
androgyny; despite some acknowledgment that there
are not only differences between the sexes but much
overlap, the old-fashioned wisdom about men and
women was treated as timeless truth. And yet, both
discussions share one major theme: the
suddenly hot issue of boys - to be more specific,
boys as the victimized sex in American education
and culture.
"Just a few years ago, of course, girls were the
ones whose victimization by sexist schools and a
male-dominated society was proclaimed on the front
pages of newspapers and lamented in editorials,
thanks largely to widely publicized reports
released by the AAW in the early 1990s. It was
probably only a matter of time before somebody
asked, "But what about boys?" But as the two
National Press Club panels underscored, two
contrasting arguments are being made on behalf of
boys. In one room, there was sympathy for boys who
yearn to be gentle, nurturing, and openly emotional
but live in a society that labels such qualities
"sissy"; in the other, there was sympathy for boys
who want only to be boys but live in a society that
labels their natural qualities aggressive and
patriarchal.
"Both sides, however, agree that something is
rotten in the state of boyhood.
"The most tangible and effectively documented
cause of concern is male academic
underachievement:
- Girls make up 57 percent of straight-A
students; boys make up 57 percent of high school
dropouts.
- In 1998, 48% of girls but only 40% of boys
graduating from high school had completed the
courses in English, social studies, science,
math and foreign languages recommended as a
minimum. (In 1987, there was no such gender gap,
though only 18 percent of the students met these
requirements.)
- "High school girls now outnumber boys in
upper-level courses in algebra, chemistry, and
biology; physics is the only subject in which
males are still a majority.
- "In 1996, 17-year-old girls, on average,
outscored boys by 14 points in reading and 17
points in writing. While boys did better on the
math and science tests, it was by margins of
five and eight points, respectively.
- Women account for 56% of college enrollment
in America. This is due simply, as some
feminists claim, to older women going back to
school; among 1977 high school graduates, 64 %
of boys and 70% of girls went on to college.
Female college freshmen are also more likely
than men to get a degree in four years."
Source: Learn more directly from
the 2/01 issue of Reasons
* * *
Education is what survives when what has been
learned has been forgotten. - B. F. Skinner
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