US The so-called "boy crisis" isn't real

[mlp]

Quietly, without anywhere near the fanfare that has greeted the claim that boys have become the weaker, worse-off sex, serious researchers have been arguing for years that boys — a lot of boys, at least — are doing just fine. That — so long as they’re white and from educated families, at least — they’re not dropping behind girls. That, when push comes to shove, they still outperform and out-earn their female counterparts once they enter the labor market. That the real issue — the real “crisis” in America is one of class (income and education level), not gender.

Drawing together all the best research, they found that, indeed, girls now take more advanced college preparatory classes than boys, and earn higher grades in those classes. They go on to earn more bachelor’s and master’s degrees than men.

Yet they also found that the academic discrepancy isn’t new. Surprisingly enough, girls have been outperforming boys in school for a century — so much so, Buchmann told me, that when the first U.S. colleges and universities began admitting young women, and quickly saw that they were winning the lion’s share of academic honors, some actually reversed their co-educational policies. What has changed, they say, isn’t the relative status of boys (a devaluing of maleness in the classroom), or a feminization of education (that much-cursed need to shut up and sit still), or a dearth of men in the teaching profession (boys, it turns out, do equally well with female and male teachers). Instead, they say, there has come to be a real discrepancy in boys’ and girls’ attitudes and effort — backed up by the messages that boys and girls are getting about academic achievement at home.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/21/the-boy-crisis-is-it-fictional/#ixzz2OCqbG5OK

 

[kibbleforlola]

color me shocked

 

[Kitties]

All I know is they put me in classes for slow learners in school. In the end, either you make it on your own somehow or you don't.

 

[mlp]

All I know is they put me in classes for slow learners in school. In the end, either you make it on your own somehow or you don't.

Agreed.

I also started out in the slow learners portion of the class. My English comprehension was still poor in first grade, but I also had difficulty memorizing the alphabet - I couldn't get further than the letter "g." (It wasn't until 6th or 7th grade that I finally sat down and memorized the alphabet, because having to look up at the alphabet above the blackboard when doing the alphetizing portion of standard exams was slowing me down too much.) Reading came to me suddenly and unexpectedly - the teacher was reading to us slow learners out of a Dick and Jane book, and the words suddenly appeared to me as words - I couldn't understand why we had been made to sound out letters and syllables, when the words were so clearly words.

 

[das_nut]

When compared to girls as a whole, boys from privileged backgrounds are doing fine.

I'm not sure how you can jump from this to thinking that boys as a whole are doing fine.

Seems like cherry-picking the data to me.

If someone claimed that when compared to men the whole world over, women from rich western countries are doing just fine, and thus conclude there's no gender gap worldwide, I suspect this forum would be crying about the fallacies in that train of reasoning.

FWIW.

 

[mlp]

Women in the U.S. continue to fall under the poverty line at greater rates than men:
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparebar.jsp?ind=12&cat=1

The poverty rate among women rose to 14.5 percent last year, up from 13.9 percent in 2009—the highest rate in 17 years. The “extreme poverty rate” among women was the highest ever recorded, climbing to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009.
“Extreme poverty” means that your income is below half of the federal poverty line—and by 2010, more than 7.5 million women had fallen into that dire category.

What all those statistics add up to is that more than 17 million women were living in poverty last year, compared with 12.6 million men. As usual, things were worse for older women; twice as many women over 65 were living in poverty, compared with men.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...it-hardest-by-poverty-says-census-report.html

And women in America are further behind than women in other countries—the gap in poverty rates between men and women is wider in America than anywhere else in the Western world.

Poverty rates for males and females are the same throughout childhood, but increase for women during their childbearing years and again in old age. The poverty gap between women and men widens significantly between ages 18 and 24—20.6 percent of women are poor at that age, compared to 14.0 percent of men. The gap narrows, but never closes, throughout adult life, and it more than doubles during the elderly years.

http://www.americanprogress.org/iss.../5103/the-straight-facts-on-women-in-poverty/

Those facts are inconvenient to those supporting the "Woe for us unfortunate males refrain", but they exist anyway.

 

[Spang]

One thing that is not mentioned in the article, and I suspect that it is intentional, is the epidemic of boys having rocks thrown at them.

 

[mlp]

 

[Clueless Git]

One thing that is not mentioned in the article, and I suspect that it is intentional, is the epidemic of boys having rocks thrown at them.

Made me laugh out loud!

 

[Clueless Git]

Those facts are inconvenient to those supporting the "Woe for us unfortunate males refrain", but they exist anyway.

Our misfortune is our fortune, mlp.

Contary to misandrist belief males are pretty much merciless with each other and there aren't many (any?) positive discrimination 'safety nets' for men.

The male world is learn to kick-butt or get your butt kicked.

It is that which results in most of the world's best butt-kickers being males.

 

[beancounter]

This article seems to contradict itself. First it says that boys aren't doing worse than girls, then it provides examples on how girls are doing better than boys.

 

[yally]

The male world is learn to kick-butt or get your butt kicked.

It is that which results in most of the world's best butt-kickers being males.

I feel really lucky that none of the men I know grew up in that world you're describing.

 

[beancounter]

males are pretty much merciless with each other and there aren't many (any?) positive discrimination 'safety nets' for men.

The male world is learn to kick-butt or get your butt kicked.

This is unfortunately true.

 

[Clueless Git]

This article seems to contradict itself. First it says that boys aren't doing worse than girls, then it provides examples on how girls are doing better than boys.

I read it in the context that girls, on paper, should be faring better than boys in lifes butt-kicking competitions but they aren't.

 

[Eleven]

This is unfortunately true.

It's only true if you play in that world. You don't have to buy into it if you don't want to.

 

[Freesia]

Our misfortune is our fortune, mlp.

Contary to misandrist belief males are pretty much merciless with each other and there aren't many (any?) positive discrimination 'safety nets' for men.

The male world is learn to kick-butt or get your butt kicked.

It is that which results in most of the world's best butt-kickers being males.

Clearly you havent met my mother.

 

[das_nut]

Those facts are inconvenient to those supporting the "Woe for us unfortunate males refrain", but they exist anyway.

You can dig up facts that are inconvenient to those supporting the whole "men have it awesome refrain" as well.

For example, most homeless adults are men. Most suicides are men. More homicide victims are men.

It seems to me that anyone who wants to paint a picture of one gender leading to a life of pain and suffering, while the other gender leads to a life of joy and happiness is oversimplifying the issue.

 

[FortyTwo]

Sigh. Here we go again.

Nobody's saying "men have it awesome." Very few people have it awesome.

What's very true is that due to early genetic disposition in prehistoric times men have used certain aspects of their nature to attempt dominance over women, and have ingrained this into society ever since society came into existence.

Now, there is absolutely no reason to exercise this BS. With the resources currently available there is every reason that every person should be considered equivalent to every other. It's just that all this cultural crap is holding us back, because people enjoy norms and stereotypes and have this incredibly skewed view of the way things work, when the only thing at work is a massively artificial and incredibly forced hierarchy that breeds this sort of attitude even faster than it kills people off.

Well, either way you're just looking to stir the flask up so you can see how the sediment settles. Move along. Nothing to see here. Don't bother citing Wikipedia.

 

[mlp]

This article seems to contradict itself. First it says that boys aren't doing worse than girls, then it provides examples on how girls are doing better than boys.

The "boy crisis" in education was posited on the claim(s) that the educational system itself is geared toward females , and that is why girls earn higher grades, take more college prep classes, and earn more advanced degrees than their male counterparts. If you paid attention to das-nut's posts over the years, you would certainly have heard that refrain - the educational system is yet another area which favors females and in which males are sorely disadvantaged. What this article summarizes is that researchers have long thought that this simply isn't true. The fact that the majority of lower grade level teachers are female doesn't disadvantage boys (boys do as well with female teachers as they do with male teachers), and neither do the other inbuilt "biases" in the educational system that formed the basis for the "boy crisis" claims. Girls at every socio economic level simply work harder at their studies, and place more importance on doing well in school, than do boys, except for those boys who are getting the message, at home and through their fathers' example, that it is important to succeed in school.

You can dig up facts that are inconvenient to those supporting the whole "men have it awesome refrain" as well.

For example, most homeless adults are men. Most suicides are men. More homicide victims are men.

It seems to me that anyone who wants to paint a picture of one gender leading to a life of pain and suffering, while the other gender leads to a life of joy and happiness is oversimplifying the issue.

No one (in this thread, or, to my knowledge, on this board) has claimed that "men have it awesome" or that one sex leads to "a life of pain and suffering" and the other to a life of joy and happiness." You're the one who is constantly jumping into every imagineable subject with claims that basically boil down to whatever women have been subjected to, men have had it at least as bad if not worse inregard to whatever the topic of discussion is.

You have brought up the supposed "boy crisis" in education repeatedly.


Now, in response to a debunking of that "boy crisis" in education, you veer off into suicide and homicide statistics. You're demonstrating the level of intellectual honesty I suspected you would when I started this thread.

I don't know whether you don't realize how dismissive of women most of your posts appear, or whether you just don't give a ****.

 

[Pickle Juice]

The "boy crisis" in education was posited on the claim(s) that the educational system itself is geared toward females , and that is why girls earn higher grades, take more college prep classes, and earn more advanced degrees than their male counterparts...

Oh geez. I guess that's because everything else being equal, boys are superior to girls in every way. So naturally the education system has to be deliberately and artificially geared toward giving the false impression that girls might be better than boys at stuff that requires intelligence.