There is a growing Male Crisis in education. While I knew there is like a 62 to 38 percent graduation rate for college in favor of Females to Males, I found a site with Peg Tyre saying there will be an increase of about 100,000 more Females than Males going to college each year. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peg-tyre/who-says-the-boy-crisis-i_b_104172.html?show_comment_id=13400739
This could boast the percentages of Female graduation to Male graduation to a point in a few years that will become so obvious the press may take hold of this problem before the education community desires its release. The reason I am concerned is if this is taken up by the press seeking an explanation, educators may point (incorrectly) to learning differences, need of more activity for boys, role models, and more tactile learning. I ???firmly disagree with??? this approach for it greatly smacks of genetic differences. I feel if such news and advice does come out in the press, this will set up negative synergy from news organizations, drama, and even sit-coms. This will then create again, much negative synergy from a very unscientific public that will begin to put Males and especially Male children under a microscope and cast doubt as to ability and intelligence for Male children in general. This will lead to much public ridicule from women, girls, teachers, and others in society. This could in turn set off an opposite equally or worst negative synergy against society by Males.
If you can see this possibility, I have an alternative that even if incorrect, which I believe ???is correct???, will at least provide many good years to approach the Male Crisis from an environmental perspective and not one of genetics. This alternative, environmental approach will generate much more positive esteem, hope, and much more support from a general unknowledgeable society that would be more inclined to step up and help Males much more than the genetic models presented by educators. The genetics model I feel will lead to many problems for society down the road.
Struggling School-Age Boys
A new study says parents are right to worry about their sons.
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Every other week it seems a new study comes out that adds to our already-formidable arsenal of parental worries. But even by those escalating standards, the report issued last week by the federal government's National Center for Health Statistics contained a jaw-dropper: the parents of nearly one of every five boys in the United States were concerned enough about what they saw as their sons' emotional or behavioral problems that they consulted a doctor or a health-care professional. By comparison, about one out of 10 parents of girls reported these kinds of problems. (See the study here.)
The report confirms what many of us have been observing for some time now: that lots of school-age boys are struggling. And, parents are intensely worried about them.
What is ailing our sons? Some experts suggest we are witnessing an epidemic of ADHD and say boys need more medication. Others say that environmental pollutants found in plastics, among other things, may be eroding their attention spans and their ability to regulate their emotions.
Those experts may be right but I have another suggestion. Let's examine the way our child rearing and our schools have evolved in the last 10 years. Then ask ourselves this challenging question: could some of those changes we have embraced in our families, our communities and our schools be driving our sons crazy?
Instead of unstructured free play, parents now schedule their kids' time from dawn till dusk (and sometimes beyond.) By age 4, an ever-increasing number of children are enrolled in preschool. There, instead of learning to get along with other kids, hold a crayon and play Duck, Duck, Goose, children barely out of diapers are asked to fill out work sheets, learn computation or study Mandarin. The drumbeat for early academics gets even louder when they enter "real" school. Veteran teachers will tell you that first graders are now routinely expected to master a curriculum that, only 15 years ago, would have been considered appropriate for second, even third graders. The way we teach children has changed, too. In many communities, elementary schools have become test-prep factories—where standardized testing begins in kindergarten and "teaching to the test" is considered a virtue. At the same time, recess is being pushed aside in order to provide extra time for reading and math drills. So is history and opportunities for hands-on activities—like science labs and art. Active play is increasingly frowned on—some schools have even banned recess and tag. In the wake of school shootings like the tragedy at Virginia Tech, kids who stretch out a pointer finger, bend their thumb and shout "pow!" are regarded with suspicion and not a little fear.
Our expectations for our children have been ramped up but the psychological and physical development of our children has remained about the same. Some kids are thriving in the changing world. But many aren't. What parents and teachers see—and what this government study now shows—is that the ones who can't handle it are disproportionately boys.
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