Little Boy Writing a Letter, Norman Rockwell

OUR culture is producing highly motivated girls and boys who are alienated from school and achievement. Boys have always rebelled against the dull routines of school, but the malaise we see today is more intense and pervasive, a product of unprecedented focus on boosting the morale of girls and of a world in which everything traditionally expected of men and women has undergone radical change. Heroism has been demonized. Boys understandably find it all boring. On some unconscious level, they know school is not about reality. Electronic games also consume much of their energy and motivation.

Gallons and gallons of ink have been spilled already on this subject. In his book, Boys Adrift, Leonard Sax, whom I have written about before, does a good job of describing the problem:

The hostility I’m seeing toward school among so many boys—no longer confined to black and Latino boys in low-income neighborhoods, but now including white and Asian boys in affluent suburbs—is also new. If you’re my age, or older, you can remember forty years ago when the Beach Boys had a major hit with their song “Be True to Your School”: “Be true to your school . . . just like you would to your girl.” That song describes a boy who is proud to wear a sweater emblazoned with the school’s initials, a boy who insists that allegiance to one’s school should be on a par with the enthusiasm a boy has for his girlfriend. There is no trace of irony in the song. If you’re my age or older, you remember Sam Cooke singing “Don’t know much about history . . . but maybe by being an A-student, baby / I could win your love for me” in his song “Wonderful World.” It’s hard to imagine any popular male vocalist singing such a line today, except as a joke. Can you imagine Akon or 50 Cent or Snoop Dogg or even Taylor Hicks singing, without irony and in all seriousness, about wanting to earn an A at school to impress a girl? I can’t.

These changes may be insignificant by themselves, but I believe they are symptomatic of something deeper. … [A] growing proportion of boys are disengaging from school. More and more of them will tell you that school is a bore, a waste of time, a tedium they endure each day until the final bell rings. As far as the boy is concerned, his real life—the life he cares about—only begins each day when the final bell rings, allowing him finally to leave school and do something he really cares about. “What he really cares about” may be playing video games, hanging out with his friends, or doing drugs and alcohol. It may be anything at all—except for school or anything connected with school.

“But you need to care about your schoolwork, or you won’t get into a good college,” his mom says.

“I hate school,” her son answers. “It’s like prison. I’m just doing my time till they let me out. Then I’m done. Why would I want to sign up for four more years?”

A smaller and smaller proportion of boys are going on to college. Right now, the student body at the average university in the United States is 58 percent female, 42 percent male (with similar numbers in Canada and Australia). And going to college doesn’t guarantee any positive result, particularly for boys. In fact, college is where the gender gap in motivation really shows up. Most girls who enroll in a four-year college will eventually earn a degree. Most boys won’t.

Sax blames, among other things, electronic games, environmental toxins and the “devaluation of masculinity.”

Again, education has been stripped of the heroic models that inspire and boys understandably find it boring. The modern secular school is an impersonal factory.

— Comments —

Paul C. writes:

Boys need discipline.  Honestly I don’t think any boy hated school more than me after my fourth grade teacher left in mid-semester to have a child, not that class was a bowl of cherries.  I teared up as she embraced each one of us as we left.  We inherited an unpleasant teacher who lived about a block from my family.  Before, I studied even though I socialized outside and inside class without pause, which always earned me a D or C in conduct, but I got As.

The major reason for my decline was my mother could no longer take the pressure of forcing my brother and I to study at the kitchen table and make sure we did our work.  She explained that she could not take it anymore.  She was working full time by then.  I was both angry and hurt that my mother abandoned me, yet I felt sorry for her because I loved her dearly.  Without that constant discipline, we boys foundered.  We studied nothing.  We did no homework.  We were smart enough to pass.  We did not have video games, but there was baseball, football, skating, basketball, and mischief, to mention just a few activities that boys today reputedly are not doing.

“As far as the boy is concerned, his real life—the life he cares about—only begins each day when the final bell rings, allowing him finally to leave school and do something he really cares about.” This perfectly describes my boyhood all the way through high school.  Oh, did I forget to mention that I too grew up with songs by the Beach Boys and Sam Cooke (whose death I heard in the background on TV as I was trying to charm a young lady on a business conference in Long Beach, CA, in the early 80s).

In my experience, during the same time as Mr. Sax grew up, good grades were never a way to gain a girl’s attention, as Sam Cooke’s song suggests.  I gained attention without grades, and so did my friends.  We were social and athletic.  You had to have moxie to step up and ask even though you were shy, as I am.

You could be onto something with, “But the malaise we see today is more intense and pervasive, a product of unprecedented focus on boosting the morale of girls and of a world in which everything traditionally expected of men and women has undergone radical change. Heroism has been demonized.”  I craved the attention of girls with my athletics and efforts to exhibit toughness, an indication of heroism.  Now apparently, male athletics are nothing special.  Girls’ athletics are just as important, which is a lie.  Humans instinctively want to see the best.  They want to see Bo Jackson and Tom Brady, not the WNBA.

The solution for boys is to change the school day.  Girls can join in if they want, and they surely will so as not to be deprived of boys.  The classes should be year round with appropriate breaks for traditional holidays and for resting the mind.  The classes should be short, and classes should end about noon, when lunch is served.  After lunch, there could be a two-hour study hall with student teachers monitoring the students to make sure they did their homework and could not leave until they finished.  The more studious could leave early, a tactic sure to get others to concentrate on their work.  This is similar to college, when I finally began to excel.  It was produce or perish.  The schoolchildren would then be free.  Free to work, play sports, play music, socialize, etc.

Laura writes:

Half-day school is a great idea. It wouldn’t work under existing economic conditions, but it could be a goal for the future.

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