The Times reviews a new book by Claudia Goldin and Laurence Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology. The authors argue that America’s economic dominance can be traced directly to its investment in education — an advantage that is being lost, compared to our competitor nations.

The authors reject the idea that the United States has reached some natural limit in educational advances. Other countries are now at higher levels.

What, then, is holding American youth back?

The authors give a two-part answer. For one thing, the financial aid system is a maze. More important, many people with high school diplomas are not ready for college.

The second problem, the authors write, is concentrated mostly in inner-city schools. Because the poor cannot easily move to better school districts, the authors allow that charter schools as well as vouchers, including those for private schools, could be helpful, but more evaluation is necessary.

Data on the effects of preschool are plentiful, and point to large returns on investment, so the authors join the chorus in extolling Head Start, the federal government’s largest preschool program.

Providing more children with a crucial start, along with easier ways to find financial aid, are laudable national objectives. One suspects, though, that the obstacles to getting more young people into and through college have to do with knotty social and cultural issues.

BUT assume that the authors’ policies would raise the national college graduation rate. Would that deeply reduce inequality?

 Good question. I”m not sure the economic laws of previous decades will trigger the same impact. I am convinced, however, that college is the new high school, and neglecting to earn a two or four-year degree removes both men and women from competing in the global economy. Oddly, women have figured that out and responded with high college enrollment and graduation rates. By comparison, far fewer men have figured out the new economic realities.

That’s what this Independent article appears to offer up. For those new to this issue, countries such as England and Australia have been working on the boy troubles for years. in this country, we’re still quarreling over whether the “boy troubles” are a conspiracy to peel back the gains made by feminists.

 Here’s the entire article:

By Richard Garner, Education editor
Tuesday, 30 September 2008

Boys will perform better in education if they have a male teacher in their primary school, according to research published today.

A study of more than 1,000 men reveals almost half of them (48 per cent) cited male primary school teachers as having had the most impact on them during their school life.

In addition, 35 per cent said having a male teacher challenged them to work harder at school while 22 per cent said males had boosted their confidence in their own ability.

The research, for the Training and Development Agency - the body responsible for teacher training - comes as the number of males qualifying to teach is at its lowest for five years - 23.8 per cent. Only 13 per cent of all primary school teachers are men.

The research, carried out by ICM, is backed up by psychologists who point out that - with the growing number of one-parent families where children are brought up by their mother - a teacher may be a child’s only male role model. Dr Tanya Byron, the clinical psychologist and government adviser, said: “Male primary school teachers can often be stable and reliable figures in the lives of the children they teach.”

The number of males qualifying to teach was 1.5 per cent down in 2006-07 compared with the previous year. However, with primary school registrations, the figure has been rising by 1 per cent a year to 16 per cent.

The TDA is launching a campaign to encourage men to teach. It wants recruits to follow in the footsteps of Simon Horrocks, who quit his job as a supermarket manager to start teaching aged 39. Mr Horrocks, who teaches at Christ Church school in Folkestone, Kent, sold his home to study to be a teacher. He said: “It was when my two sons started school I thought about a switch. I used to spend one day a week in their school. It was a ‘road to Damascus experience’ and now I come skipping to work in the morning.”

 Maybe. I’m still skeptical. In elementary schools, where boys falter in reading, women have always dominated the teacher workforce. Nothing has changed over the years. Therefore, any attempt to explain the graphic you see at the top of my blog has to deal with something beyond the loss of male teachers in middle schools and high schools.

This article from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette lays out the fact behind a trend of more single fathers raising children:

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden may have been the quintessential single father in 1972: A widower, raising his children in a world surrounded by families with mothers.

Today, he wouldn’t be so alone, and the stereotypical image of the single father as a widower has diminished somewhat as more divorced fathers seek custody of their children and single men seek to adopt.

The number of single fathers has risen dramatically in the U.S. and more than tripled in Allen County in less than two decades, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Single fathers number more than 2.5 million in the U.S., an increase from about 856,000 in 1990, according to the census.

 I think the reason I plucked it from the wires is it reminds me of the articles you’ll find in the “social consequences” part of the library to the right that describe the shifting personal relationships arising from the gender imbalances (and new earning power for women). Most of the coverage, you will see, focuses on the wealthy of Manhattan, perhaps because The New York Times has done the best reporting on this.  But the Times also published this article, which I consider some of the best reporting ever done on this issue. Forgotten in all this are the blue collar men who can’t find women to marry them because their education backgrounds make them unattractive as mates. I can’t help but wonder if that phenomenon is a player in the dynamics laid out in this story from Fort Wayne.

I’m probably reading too much into this story, but it does raise the question of whether men and women will increasingly go their own way, choosing either to not have children as discussed in this recent Census story, or raising children separately.

I’ve been writing about boys and reading for a long time, but until yesterday I had never run across this site, boysread.org. Here’s the mission statement from creator John Martin (pictured here):

Boys Read’s mission is to transform boys into lifelong readers. We’re an organization of parents, educators, librarians, mentors, authors, and booksellers. A core objective of Boys Read is to establish Reading Tribes. Tribes are informal reading circles for pleasure and non-deterministic learning. They’re very similar to book clubs. Tribes are a great opportunity to bond with boys. A Tribe Leader acts as a mentor and facilitator for the Tribe. Parents, teachers, librarians, booksellers, coaches, and other community outreach programs and services organize Tribes. Our website features many extraordinary authors who have published numerous compelling and gripping novels that boys love. For more information about Boys Read, visit our website at boysread.org.

Here’s what a reading tribe looks like. Ok, maybe hypothetically. I can’t really explain much about the photo, but it’s kind of cool, just like the website and blog:

This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education reveals what may be the first attempt to set up single-sex college classes, and it’s drawing some controversy:

Male-Only Class at Texas Community College Engenders Controversy
Questions are being raised about the legality of a speech class offered solely to men by Northeast Lakeview College (pictured here) in south Texas, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

The newspaper says the two-year public college, part of the Alamo Community College District, established the class to try to improve low retention rates among its male students. The class, which is not being offered this fall, focuses on imparting life skills and giving men a chance to discuss issues of particular concern to them in an all-male setting.

Although no discrimination complaints have been filed in connection with the class, a few female students on the campus say its existence amounts to preferential treatment for men, the Express-News reported. Experts interviewed by the newspaper suggested that the program could be vulnerable to a legal challenge.

Single-sex classes have become more common in public elementary and secondary schools as a result of the Education Department’s issuance, in 2006, of guidelines allowing them in such settings. The guidelines did not pertain to public colleges, however, and single-sex classes remain rare at such institutions. -Peter Schmidt

 What needs observing here is not the flap over single-sex classes, but rather the quick reference to the “low retention” rates among the male students. This is not just a phenomenon experienced by community colleges serving majority Latino populations. Here’s a paper that explores the gender graduation gaps in both high school and college. And here’s an editorial I wrote on the subject.

Here’s an interesting policy brief on male teachers from the Center for Evaluation & Education Policy at Indiana University. The papers have good trend numbers and cite the states with the greatest proportion of male teachers (Kansas at 33%, compared the national average of 24%.

Things aren’t that much differerent in England, as this article from The Independent shows:

Teaching is becoming an increasingly female-dominated profession with men making up fewer than one in four new recruits, official figures revealed yesterday.

Despite a multimillion-pound campaign to attract more men into teaching, the latest statistics reveal a widening gap between the sexes among those gaining teaching qualifications from universities and teacher training colleges.

In 2006-07, fewer than a quarter (23.8 per cent) of teaching qualifications were obtained by men, according to figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency - the lowest figure in five years. This was a fall of 1.5 per cent from the previous year. Meanwhile, between 2005-06 and 006-07, the number of women qualifying as teachers from higher education rose by 2 per cent, from 23,865 to 24,335, while the number of men fell 5.7 per cent, from 8,065 to 7,610.

The figures will be a blow to the Government, which has repeatedly tried to persuade men to train as teachers. The former education secretary Alan Johnson announced a drive to get more men into the profession in March 2007 after concern that just 16 per cent of teachers in primary schools, and 46 per cent in secondary schools, were male.

Mr Johnson said there was a need for more men in primary school teaching so they could provide role models, arguing: “Our schools should contain more male role models, such as ‘old boys’ or local boys made good.”

Is that right, that males are needed for models to help turn boys into men, control classrooms and turn around faltering academic performance among boys? (In England, the gender gaps are very bit as stark as those found in the United States.) Read the anchor piece in the Education Policy Brief by Shaun Johnson. There may be good reasons to encourage men to teach, but they aren’t the reasons you might be assuming. See his conclusions on Page 3.

This comes as no surprise, but it’s always helpful to see things laid out by the numbers. This confirms what home builders and bankers have been saying for years: Increasingly, we market toward women, not men. Sharon Jayson of USA Today writes about it here and here. 

Now comes Linda Sax’s book, The Gender Gap in College, which is definitely not a manhood-as-a-kegger book. Sax’s book, explained in her commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education (password protected), argues that just because female students dominate universities doesn’t mean life is smooth for them. In fact, the students who benefit the most from these imbalances may be the men (and not in the way you’re thinking!):

… despite the fact that college women earn better grades and exhibit a stronger academic orientation than their male counterparts, they tend to suffer from comparatively low academic confidence. In fact, women rate themselves lower than men on nearly every assessment of their academic abilities. Further, these gender differences grow during college. We should learn more about why women rate themselves lower - because they believe they are less capable, or are they simply reluctant to describe themselves as having high ability? - and what conditions account for the widening gender gap in academic self-confidence.

Finally, compared with men, women enter college with higher levels of self-reported stress and lower ratings of their physical and emotional health. Such gender gaps remain significant over four years of college and reflect the fact that men spend more time on activities that can be considered ways to relieve stress (playing sports and video games, partying, and watching television) while women often devote themselves to a range of responsibilities that tend to induce stress (studying, homework, community service, and family responsibilities). Colleges should encourage all students to strike a healthier balance between academics, extracurricular activities, and leisure. We also need to develop a better understanding of what it means for a student to maintain balance.

Although women have a numerical advantage in college, both genders face challenges to their adjustment and development. Just as we need to be concerned about high stress and low self-esteem among women, we must be concerned about growing academic disengagement among men.

Again, I will do my best to refrain from reviewing books I haven’t read. Linda Sax is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Here’s the press release from this new book, Permanent Adolescence: Why Boys Don’t Grow Up. Somehow I feel I already read this book, perhaps one of the top three reviewed here.

Wait, there’s one more I forgot to mention in the previous review, The Decline of Men  by Guy Garcia.

I’m resisting the urge to review books I haven’t read, so I”ll simply cite the press release for Permanent Adolescence:

IS THE PETER PAN COMPLEX AMBUSHING TODAY’S BOYS?

Too many boys wish Neverland really existed so they can stay a child forever. It sounds like a lot of fun and games, with few adult responsibilities or chores. But what if a whole generation of males really didn’t grow up? This is the escalating problem of a generation of lost boys who never really take on adult responsibilities, have trouble maintaining personal relationships and play games forever, or worse, violently act out.

In Permanent Adolescence: Why Boys Don’t Grow Up (New Horizon Press, October 2008), Joe Carmichiel, MS Ed., examines the growing phenomenon of boys who grow up physically and legally but not emotionally and mentally. As a teacher working with troubled boys as well as gang members, Carmichiel has discovered that males are getting stuck in a state of permanent adolescence. And now these male permanent adolescents are taking on key adult roles without having fully developed into adults.

Permanent Adolescence: Why Boys Don’t Grow Up analyzes the unfortunate decisions and deliberate oversights society has made. Based on Carl Jung’s theory of “horizontal and vertical mindedness,” Carmichiel examines the major reasons causing permanent adolescence: the disappearance of coming-of-age rituals; the effect of television on children’s brain development; the lack of male role models; the normalization of violence; the inadequate teaching methods in schools. All of these factors cause boys to be contemptuous of adulthood, mistrust adults and, rather than seek mentorship or adult development, choose to remain permanent adolescents.

Carmichiel’s book reveals the devastating state many of today’s boys are in. These boys want to succeed and develop, but adults and society are not giving them the means and guidance they need to do so. Permanent Adolescence: Why Boys Don’t Grow Up not only presents the problems boys face growing up, but also outlines steps and changes society must make to remedy them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Carmichiel, MS Ed., an education consultant and freelance journalist, has taught high school English in some of America’s most challenged schools and has a wealth of firsthand experience with teens, gangs and violent adolescents. He has a B.S. in Communication Studies from State University of New York at Brockport and an M.S. in English Education from the University of Rochester. He lives in Victor, New York.

This article in Insidehighered does a good job laying out some of the subtleties involved in the challenge of encouraging more women to take on science/engineering academic studies and careers (a necessity, given the diminished interest in higher education shown by men, who have traditionally taken on those major and careers).

 The key player here is Harvard economist Claudia Goldin (pictured here):

Among the characteristics she is finding among the career paths that are both attracting and retaining women: flexibility in schedules, “transparent career paths,” and “predictable milestones” on the path to a career. The latter is important, she said, because the research shows that women are quite willing to study for long years (as in medicine) to be trained, but they want a clear path.

A comparison of medical and academic training isn’t favorable to academe. Medical school “is difficult, but it takes four years,” Goldin said, and medical internships have known durations. In graduate school for a Ph.D., students take some courses and prepare for some tests of their knowledge, but the process of completing a dissertation is mysterious to many and takes widely differing periods of time. “We say to take some exams and then we will give you a parachute and throw you out of a plane,” she said of Ph.D. training.

 This is an issue that is likely to take years to sort out. In the end, I suspect the solution will involve scores of minor adjustments in both academic programs and science/engineering jobs. In the interim, the key is resisting silly political solutions, such as using Title IX to root out “sexism” in college physics and engineering departments. If only life were that simple.