There are two big stories from the boy troubles that remain unreported…
The first is what’s happening with the sons of blue-collar workers, a topic that’s front and center in England but nonexistent here. The second is disconnected youth, those not in school or the workplace. The New York Times makes a contribution to this story today. They are mostly boys.
There are two reasons for the omission. First, the stories are hard to match with good numbers. There are only rough estimates. By contrast, the college imbalances come with hard numbers. Second, these stories are less appealing to editors who hesitate to run stories that don’t connect to the middle class readers who buy their products.
The recession, however, is making both these issues harder to ignore.
Tags: disconnected youth
October 27th, 2009 at 12:08 am
It doesn’t seem like these runaways are leaving because of problems with school. Nonetheless, I suspect that part of the way to get the general public to treat the problems of boys education seriously is to show direct connections. That is, to show case studies of boys who drop out and what becomes of them. And to show case studies of boys who were saved from bad backgrounds by good school experiences. Then, after the case studies, maybe some demographic statistics could be developed. I think the general public has the impression that the worst that happens to the boys who are doing poorly is that the get minimum wage jobs and live in poverty.