How schools stifle our sons

By MARTY NEMKO



January 24, 2008 -- CONTINUED

The media now take inordinate care to ensure that women and minorities are not unfairly portrayed negatively. Equal care must now be devoted to boys and men.

Schools claim to celebrate diversity yet insist on providing one-size-fits-all, girl-centric education. Whether in co-ed or single-sex classes, boys need boy-friendly instruction: more non-feminized male teachers, more competition, praise for boldness, more active learning (for example, simulation and drama) and less seatwork, less relationship-centric fiction and more how-to books.

Importantly, teachers must accept that boys will, on average, wiggle more than girls - and that it doesn't require ongoing criticism - which, not surprisingly, leads to more oppositional behavior, to the school psychologist, to Ritalin or to special education.

Ironically, educated parents often do especially badly by boys. The college curriculum and the media consumed by the intelligentsia stress women's' accomplishments and men's evils. So these parents too often feel justified in squeezing the maleness out of boys.

Of course, I'm not advocating that parents or teachers allow junior to become a savage. But we must realize that aggressiveness, bravery and competitiveness, channeled wisely, can be the stuff of which greatness is made.

We can refine but rarely remold, so we must honor males' ways of being, just as we've been urged now for decades to honor females'. Apart from the effect on society, so many unnecessarily unhappy and underperforming children is, in itself, most sad. Over the past 20 years, I've noticed a dramatic shift in the boys I've counseled.

Twenty years ago, most were confident and ambitious. Now, disproportionately, they're despondent or angry. The girls, by contrast, more often feel the world is their oyster. And they're right - but it should be both genders' oyster.

Boys advocate Joe Manthey reminds us that "when girls were behind in math and science, we said there's something wrong with the schools. But now, when boys don't do well in school, we say there's something wrong with the boy."

Let's stop blaming the boy and start fixing our media, parenting and schools.