The comments about the WSJ commentary are pretty good…
And I got this email directly, which (with permission granted) I will reproduce:
Hello Mr. WhItmire,
Thank you for your interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal, “The Lost Boys”. Your new book could not be more important and I hope it’s a huge best seller! I’m a retired middle school teacher and former manager of a non-profit tutoring company, so the issues you raise are familiar ground.
Actually, there’s no mystery of the lost boys. The answers are simple but depressing. When boys work below their academic potential, it’s due to divorce, the political correctness infesting the curriculum, or a combination thereof.
Typically, single moms lose control of their sons around age 12, which corresponds to the beginning of middle school, 6th grade. This combination is lethal. The failure patterns set in middle school ripple all the way through high school and thus determine college readiness. The only single moms I’ve seen who are able to keep full control of their sons through middle school have wills of iron and constant assistance from a male family member, such as the boy’s grandfather or uncle.
At age 12, the calm of the latency period of late childhood ends and the storms of puberty begin. Simultaneously, as the sixth grade year begins, the single mom is blindsided by the way that her son’s middle school communicates much less with families than elementary school. Middle schools also insist that students master organizational and time management skills. Students need to adjust to different teachers with different expectations. Due to natural developmental lags, many boys are not ready to meet these expectations. Petty neatness goes against the grain of the pubescent male. Now visualize a point system for the quarterly grade, where a significant portion of the grade depends on the student keeping a portfolio of all his math papers, in sequential order. (The portfolio system is ridiculous, but that’s another issue.) A family where the two birth parents are together and dedicated to education is much more likely to succeed in seeing to it that the boy meets this requirement than a harried single mom. It’s especially helpful if the married mom can afford to work only part-time, so she has the time and energy to keep a close eye on her son, with her husband’s male authority as a backup in case the boy attempts to cut corners. Secondly, no red-blooded boy wants to do homework. Single moms are in a weaker position to insist that their sons tell them all about daily homework assignments, keep their daily planners filled out correctly, and keep their backpacks organized so the boy can actually find his assignments, and actually complete the work.
In the tutoring company I managed, 75% of the students were male and 75% came from single mom households. My tutors had standing instructions to make sure that each child communicated his or her assignments honestly, wrote them in the planner, and organized the backpack right in front of the tutor — every day, first thing. This alone enabled 80% of our students to improve their grades from all D’s and F’s to C- or better within six weeks. The sixth grade boy’s backpack is the ultimate in messiness, with rotting half-eaten sandwiches, filthy gym socks, and crumpled wads of miscellaneous papers all crammed together. Even if the boy completes his homework, once it disappears into the backpack morass, he can’t find it to turn it in the next day. Needless to say, these problems are far less troublesome to girls, who take to neatness like ducks to water.
Now visualize the daily humiliation of the 6th grade boy, falling a little more behind every day while the girls waltz ahead and adult female teachers crab at him incessantly. The result is alienation from school and a collapse of motivation, regardless of academic ability. At the same time, video games, sports, and teen culture beckon - all of which are far more welcoming to boys.
If all this weren’t bad enough, there’s the political correctness of the English and social studies curricula to consider. Many schools take a combined studies approach, with one teacher for both subjects. When sixth grades study ancient Egypt, they also read a novel about the same topic. If the novel features a female main character, especially one who is spunky and in rebellion against the patriarchy, arranged marriages, etc., most boys will be so utterly repelled that they decide they hate English, social studies, and school in general. Tutoring a boy through a book like this is no easy thing, I assure you. Political correctness infests the public school curricula like termites, eating away at the intellectual integrity of the curriculum, the motivation of the students, and the allegiance of the families.
The motivation problem is easily solved by offering students a choice - a list of acceptable books, so each student can choose a title which appeals to him or her. When I taught 8th grade combined studies in Catholic school, I allowed this choice. The boys chose blood-and-thunder adventure stories with male main characters, such as Johnny Tremaine, and the girls chose softer, more relationship-oriented stories with female main characters such as The Witch of Blackbird Pond. In terms of academic merit, both books are equal. As a result, the boys worked like beavers and produced quality book reviews and research papers. I wouldn’t have been allowed to get away with this easy fix in public school, but the elderly nun who was our principal gave her OK. As a result, all the boys who wanted to go to the top Jesuit high school in our area were accepted. It’s really quite easy to tweak the curriculum so it’s equally friendly to boys and girls. Equality does not mean enforced sameness.
Hope you sell tons o’ books,
Regards,
Linda Elgee
San Rafael, CA
November 7th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Some great comments. Now, can the piece move to the next level. For instance, can it get mentioned on Meet The Press? A few weeks ago they had Maria Shriver on talking about “A Women’s Nation.” Why not Richard Whitmire to talk about Why Boys Fail?
November 7th, 2009 at 7:11 am
This amazing commentary captures so many of the factors affecting this boys’ problem, including the third rail of single parenthood. I hope the Civil Rights Commission investigation, along with this blog and efforts elsewhere, helps to blow up the PC “cone of silence” that is suppressing solutions to this crisis.
November 7th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Alas, I fear Oprah has failed to locate my phone number. Maybe later…
November 7th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
The male of the species, having evolved from the hunter gatherer into today’s risk taker in business, is constantly on the lookout for fresh opportunities and ways to buck the trends. Never satisfied with following the pack ,he sees the rise and success of the female gender in higher education as a sign to move on to the next conquest and leave the monotony of higher education to the traditional caregivers and mothers.
As horribly sexist as this might sound, it could partially explain why boys no longer see the importance of higher education. Perhaps the underlining stigma is that a college education and excelling at school is now considered “girls work. Just as the technical fields such as engineering and science have the stigma of “boys work”.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
There is a strong aspect of explanative truth to Ms. Elgee’s comments-divorce has devastated the nurturing of boys to intellectual men. I’ve seen that too–in the performance–or lack of it, of some of my son’s friends. And there is no question that my son’s high academic performance (top in his class; high SAT’s) is due in no small part to some tough love dynamics posed by both mom and dad (yes, still married!) And the ‘backpack’ comment is painfully accurate!!
However, another problem is that boys can’t be boys. Boy’s prep schools , for example, are getting rare as dodos, and unless I am mistaken, there are no more men’s colleges. Are Smith, Mt Holyoke and Wellesley going coed? Why is it considered sexist to insist on the equivalent men’s schools? There used to be oodles of men’s colleges–I am old enough to remember. Where Iron John at State when we need him?
Most boys are now looking at college as an extension of high school, rather than a cut above. This means many boys are looking at college as an ongoing process–think online colleges in the gameboy generation–and not a 4 year destination. Further aggravate by the worst job market in 75 years and you have the recipe fully mixed. Disaster set.
Colleges need to maintain their 50/50 ratios not for dating purposes (C’mon Richard–you don’t really believe that!) but because it will thoroughly *iss off the donor base. Equality is fine; sexual imbalance is not.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
BTW Richard,
You have hit a chord–lost of parents visiting colleges this year were shocked by the ratio of girls versus boys attending college fairs, visiting days, and college visit sessions. At some it was 80% girls. And this is at the tippy top of the demographic peak of college applicants.
Waiting to buy the book. Best of luck with it.
November 7th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I wrote MSNBC to request they invite you to appear on Meet the Press. Good luck!! Your voice needs to be heard - now!
November 7th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
To Jack:
Intersting. A former NOW president wrote a similiar argument in usa today: when men see that women rule higher education, the will devalue higher education.
November 7th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
In seventh grade when Cindy Taylor told me that I looked good in green slacks and an orange & green striped shirt, I begged my mother to let me get five varieties of orange and green clothes, one for each day of the week. As a Freshman in college an attractive coed promised me that she would make it worth my while to help her paint her apartment. I sanded and painted like there was no tomorrow. The bottom line is that the greatest motivator of men is women. Thirty-five years ago there was a low percentage of young women having premarital sex, and in my peer group if there was not a ring in the picture the young man at least had to have marriageable potential. That meant that he had “promise” and would likely be able to support a family. When the Great Society was implemented in the 1960’s, our nation had an illegitimacy rate below 10%, between 3 and 4% for Caucasians. Now the national illegitimacy rate approaches 40% and is 74.5% for Black Americans. A young woman who becomes pregnant without the benefit of a husband qualifies immediately for free food through WIC, housing subsidy, electricity subsidy, free medical coverage through Medicaid, free medical care until age 18 for her child as long as she remains unmarried and dependent upon the State, a monthly check for her child support paid by the federal government, and college tuition support for being a single mother. This is common knowledge and illegitimate pregnancy is more often than not a voluntary choice. To be honest, it is often difficult for a woman to put up with a man. We are sloppy, not always good housekeepers, and sometimes ventose. The unspoken message to all young men today is that we do not need you prepare yourselves to support a family because the government will support your child. We do not want you to marry the young woman you impregnate because she will lose benefits. If you are a young man in our society today, you will principally be valued as a semen donor, but then you are expected to butt out. The Department of Health and Human services has a multimillion dollar program to encourage young men to be responsible fathers while at the same time we are paying young women to be single mothers. If all support for illegitimacy ended tomorrow the rate of birth out of wedlock was return to 1950’s levels in five years and boys would no longer be “Lost Boys.” Young woman would demand it and would make it worth our while to prepare to be head of a family.
William D. Strinden MD Lufkin, Texas
November 9th, 2009 at 7:52 am
The debate between the gender gap is certainly an interesting one. At the tuition company I work for in London we tutor people across the academic spectrum but find that more boys than girls suffer from learning difficulties and there is evidence to suggest that boys are more prone to difficulties such as dyslexia and dyspraxia. This talk on dyslexia makes this point: http://www.dystalk.com/talks/31-what-is-dyslexia As yet scientists haven’t figured out exaclty why this might be the case but it adds an interesting other factor to the debate.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Although Dr. Lufkin makes some valid points about huge changes in premarital dating behavior and young men no longer being motivated to raise a family, I disagree that most illegitimate pregnancies are a voluntary choice or that government benefits are the main motivator. I very much doubt that such “benefits” go through the minds of many men or women before they have sex. All the couple thinks about is the short-term reward - they do not think about either possible consequences or rewards in the long term. And many of these women do indeed want the father to be around, but if the father choose not to be, or if he makes himself a burden to the women, i.e., a poor excuse for a partner or father, then the women will decide she is better off without him.
November 9th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Let’s put some of this in perspective. First, from the beginning of the 20th century until about 1930’s men and women enrolled in college in more or less equal numbers. Some of the women were in 2 year teachers’ college programs, so that early on there were about 1.5X more men than women in 4 year programs. The balance shifted in the 1930’s as an increasing number of men enrolled in colleges in hopes of job training. That caused a big imbalance for about a decade. After WW2, women started catching up. The male/female imbalance in colleges decreased, until parity was reached two decades later, around 1978 or 1979. Since then the rate of increase of female enrollment has been greater than the rate of increase of male enrollment. The largest explanatory factor appears to be economic. The return has been greater for women than for men, at least until recently. The male-hostile programs and events and the female-favoritism programs (women-only scholarships and internships, girls-only science camps, etc.) mostly were put in place long after college enrollment of women exceeded that of men.
Will there be a restoration of balance in the next few years? It is difficult to say, but boys can hardly have failed to notice that the domestic automobile industry has badly declined, that manufacturing jobs of all sorts continue to disappear overseas and that the construction trades (never more than 10% of the male workforce and never very lucrative) are not doing well either.
Meanwhile, I agree with those who say that we need more emphasis on literacy, with boy-friendly reading lists, a structured learning environment that encourages friendly competition and all the rest of the constructive suggestions that have been made here and elsewhere.