Jolie Rouge
05-30-2006, 11:08 AM
Not another class of victims
By Heather Mac Donald
Tue May 30, 6:44 AM ET
The moment is close at hand when the United States will be composed entirely of victim groups.
The news media have been sounding the alarm about a new gender crisis in education: Boys reportedly make up a declining portion of college students. And so the future is clear. Boys are poised to become the newest victim class.
That rustling sound you hear is the migration of university deans and "diversity" consultants to the next big employment bonanza: helping boys succeed!
The requisite bureaucracies are already in place: The professions and academia overflow with committees on the recruitment and retention of minorities and women; they will undoubtedly be only too happy to expand their mandate to boys.
Here's a better suggestion for the alleged gender gap in education: Do nothing. Or rather, do nothing in the name of boys per se. If boys are lagging in undergraduate enrollment, it's up to them to study harder and stay more focused. They don't need the inevitable new consulting boondoggles in order to pull up their own bootstraps.
To be sure, there is a clear culprit in the boy shortage: feminized progressive education. Teacher education programs preach contempt for competition and fact-based learning; K-12 classrooms follow suit. When schools place more importance on group collaboration than on achievement of mastery in a subject, many boys are going to tune out.
But the costs of creating wall-to-wall victim groups outweigh the benefits of using boys' new victim status to overthrow progressive pedagogy. Let's get rid of the knowledge-crushing banalities of progressive education because it drags down all students' learning, not because it hurts boys.
The refusal to declare and minister to a new needy population could be revolutionary. It could launch a shocking proposition: Not every problem requires a response from our bloated helping bureaucracies. Letting boys choose for themselves whether to compete academically just might unleash a dangerous revival of individual initiative.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060530/cm_usatoday/notanotherclassofvictims;_ylt=Au6BkstjCjTI8rIPV852 OBP8B2YD;_ylu=X3oDMTA4MzQ0N2p2BHNlYwMxNzA0
More women graduate. Why?
With their black gowns, square-top caps and wide smiles, the 800 seniors who graduated this month from Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts appeared to be a perfect slice of America. Not quite: A lot more of the graduates were women than men.
This gender imbalance is present at most college graduations. More women than men apply to college in the first place. And once there, more women than men make it through.
According to the most recent data from the Department of Education, only about three in every 10 boys who enter four-year colleges emerge four years later with a bachelor's degree, compared with four in every 10 girls.
Boys as a whole are struggling all the way through the educational system. The ultimate impact of this is unknown.
Even so, it could blunt America's competitive edge and lead to large numbers of low-wage males — workers with bachelor's degrees earn 62% more than those with only high school diplomas — in an economy increasingly dependent on information-age skills.
The gender graduation gaps are most pronounced at colleges such as Bridgewater that serve students from blue-collar and lower income white-collar families. Bridgewater admits freshman classes that are 55% female. By graduation day, however, the number of women climbs to more than 60%.
Similar graduation gaps are found at the sprawling California State University system, which serves families similar to those attending Bridgewater. Among the 1999 freshmen, 51% of the women, but just 40% of the men, graduated within six years.
What happens to the men is no mystery to Gregg Meyer, Bridgewater's director of admissions. They either drop out or are "academically dismissed" — the polite term for flunking out.
Why is it happening?
Although university officials tend to point to inadequate preparation in high schools, the problems begin far earlier. In preschools, more boys than girls get booted for bad behavior. In elementary schools, boys slip behind girls in reading skills. In middle schools, the gender gap widens. By high school, girls are so far ahead the boys don't feel like playing catch-up. At that age, trying too hard is seen as uncool.
Poor motivation and lackluster academic backgrounds follow many boys into college, where they find a mostly unsupervised living environment. Plenty of time for drinking, chasing girls, staying up all night and playing poker and video games. Not a recipe for academic success.
Many educators, especially feminists, say academic gender gaps don't matter because men end up running things anyway. Some conservatives argue that doing nothing about the gender gaps is better than creating a new class of "victims."
But doing nothing makes no sense for parents looking for answers, employers looking for educated workers or women looking for an educated mate. Until schools at all levels face up to the gender problems, they will only worsen.
At Bridgewater, Meyer says the male dropouts tend to arrive on campus with high test scores but low grades. Just the kind of bright young men who could go far with a college degree. Except they won't.
Posted 5/29/2006 7:58 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-05-29-our-view_x.htm
By Heather Mac Donald
Tue May 30, 6:44 AM ET
The moment is close at hand when the United States will be composed entirely of victim groups.
The news media have been sounding the alarm about a new gender crisis in education: Boys reportedly make up a declining portion of college students. And so the future is clear. Boys are poised to become the newest victim class.
That rustling sound you hear is the migration of university deans and "diversity" consultants to the next big employment bonanza: helping boys succeed!
The requisite bureaucracies are already in place: The professions and academia overflow with committees on the recruitment and retention of minorities and women; they will undoubtedly be only too happy to expand their mandate to boys.
Here's a better suggestion for the alleged gender gap in education: Do nothing. Or rather, do nothing in the name of boys per se. If boys are lagging in undergraduate enrollment, it's up to them to study harder and stay more focused. They don't need the inevitable new consulting boondoggles in order to pull up their own bootstraps.
To be sure, there is a clear culprit in the boy shortage: feminized progressive education. Teacher education programs preach contempt for competition and fact-based learning; K-12 classrooms follow suit. When schools place more importance on group collaboration than on achievement of mastery in a subject, many boys are going to tune out.
But the costs of creating wall-to-wall victim groups outweigh the benefits of using boys' new victim status to overthrow progressive pedagogy. Let's get rid of the knowledge-crushing banalities of progressive education because it drags down all students' learning, not because it hurts boys.
The refusal to declare and minister to a new needy population could be revolutionary. It could launch a shocking proposition: Not every problem requires a response from our bloated helping bureaucracies. Letting boys choose for themselves whether to compete academically just might unleash a dangerous revival of individual initiative.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060530/cm_usatoday/notanotherclassofvictims;_ylt=Au6BkstjCjTI8rIPV852 OBP8B2YD;_ylu=X3oDMTA4MzQ0N2p2BHNlYwMxNzA0
More women graduate. Why?
With their black gowns, square-top caps and wide smiles, the 800 seniors who graduated this month from Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts appeared to be a perfect slice of America. Not quite: A lot more of the graduates were women than men.
This gender imbalance is present at most college graduations. More women than men apply to college in the first place. And once there, more women than men make it through.
According to the most recent data from the Department of Education, only about three in every 10 boys who enter four-year colleges emerge four years later with a bachelor's degree, compared with four in every 10 girls.
Boys as a whole are struggling all the way through the educational system. The ultimate impact of this is unknown.
Even so, it could blunt America's competitive edge and lead to large numbers of low-wage males — workers with bachelor's degrees earn 62% more than those with only high school diplomas — in an economy increasingly dependent on information-age skills.
The gender graduation gaps are most pronounced at colleges such as Bridgewater that serve students from blue-collar and lower income white-collar families. Bridgewater admits freshman classes that are 55% female. By graduation day, however, the number of women climbs to more than 60%.
Similar graduation gaps are found at the sprawling California State University system, which serves families similar to those attending Bridgewater. Among the 1999 freshmen, 51% of the women, but just 40% of the men, graduated within six years.
What happens to the men is no mystery to Gregg Meyer, Bridgewater's director of admissions. They either drop out or are "academically dismissed" — the polite term for flunking out.
Why is it happening?
Although university officials tend to point to inadequate preparation in high schools, the problems begin far earlier. In preschools, more boys than girls get booted for bad behavior. In elementary schools, boys slip behind girls in reading skills. In middle schools, the gender gap widens. By high school, girls are so far ahead the boys don't feel like playing catch-up. At that age, trying too hard is seen as uncool.
Poor motivation and lackluster academic backgrounds follow many boys into college, where they find a mostly unsupervised living environment. Plenty of time for drinking, chasing girls, staying up all night and playing poker and video games. Not a recipe for academic success.
Many educators, especially feminists, say academic gender gaps don't matter because men end up running things anyway. Some conservatives argue that doing nothing about the gender gaps is better than creating a new class of "victims."
But doing nothing makes no sense for parents looking for answers, employers looking for educated workers or women looking for an educated mate. Until schools at all levels face up to the gender problems, they will only worsen.
At Bridgewater, Meyer says the male dropouts tend to arrive on campus with high test scores but low grades. Just the kind of bright young men who could go far with a college degree. Except they won't.
Posted 5/29/2006 7:58 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-05-29-our-view_x.htm