…and sometimes I don’t realize I’m upset until I notice my toes are twitching. That toe twitch thing just happened while reading this report about how to reverse the boy problems in Maine.

Here’s the thing. The people involved with this project are smart and honorable and they really want the right thing — to get the young men there on a track that will make them competitive in the new world economy. Problem is, they keep getting stuck in a swamp of political correctness.

I won’t go into all the history here. Actually, I will, by offering this link to a great Portland Press series about the problems boys are experiencing in that state. Maine’s history of offering young men lucrative jobs in lobstering and lumbering jobs set it up for a tough transition as the extractive jobs began to fade. Young men there aren’t faring well, as you can tell from that series, published about two years ago.

Soon after that series came out, the state published its own report on the problem. Maine tried to go where no state has ever gone, which makes the skewed outcome of that report so sad. At one point, the state issued an early draft saying yes, young men in Maine are truly behind — but that’s offset by the fact that they stare at Maine women in a way that suggests, well, it suggests they might be sexually interested in said Maine women, and, well, that makes some Maine women uncomfortable, and, well, that kind of evens things out.

OK … I know it sounds weird. You’ll have to take my word for this one. Here’s a link to an article Portland education reporters wrote about that state report. Here’s an editorial I wrote about it.

Now comes this earnest effort to reopen the issue. In spite of all the great people involved in this latest effort, the language in this report at times morphs into pc mushiness, when in fact the boy troubles are all about sharp and pointy issues. That pc stuff makes my toes twitch. Me, I grew up around country folk, North Carolina farmers, where the rules-of-life got passed down by heavily calloused uncles and aunts: Boy, ya’ got to put the hay down where the cows can get at it.

Is that so hard? Apparently it is.

 

 

 

 

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