Boys Adrift
Something scary is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. While Emily is working hard at school and getting A’s, her brother Justin is goofing off. He’s more concerned about getting to the next level in his videogame than about finishing his homework. Now, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than twenty years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men are failing in school and disengaged at home. He shows how social, cultural, and biological factors have created an environment that is literally toxic to boys. He also presents practical solutions, sharing strategies which educators have found effective in re-engaging these boys at school, as well as handy tips for parents about everything from homework, to videogames, to medication.
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What Hacker News says
- The book "Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men" by Leonard Sax goes into a lot of detail behind some of the underlying problems causing this.
- I suggest reading the book Boys Adrift (https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Adrift-Epidemic-Unmotivated-Unde...). It speaks to exactly this topic.
- There's a book on this topic, it's called Boys Adrift, by Dr. Leonard Sax. I highly recommend it. It's been a while since I read it but some of the dynamics he talks about are:
1. The age at which children start school has gradually lowered. This has reached a point where ~80% of boys and ~20% of girls do not have the brain maturity to pay attention (boy brains mature at a different schedule from girl brains). The result is that teachers will group classes with young students into two groups: one that is mentally ready to play the educational games and the other group that can play freestyle. Kids no matter what age are very good at learning who the "dumb" group is, even though teachers never / almost never have a negative attitude towards the group that isn't ready to learn. This causes children to think, "The teacher hates me" which causes them to hate school.
2. Schools tend to have extreme punishments towards any kind of violence, even healthy violence. E.g., banning snowball fights. This also creates an environment that is bad for ~80% of the boys and ~20% of the girls, who want to have fun this way.
3. Even intellectual discussions of violence are frowned on. The author received awards when he was a child for writing a story about a man who was trying to escape East Germany and ended up getting both his legs blown off. Nowadays it's hard to imagine anything other than that child getting detention / the police called on them / counseling / etc. This frowning on discussions of violence again causes harm, but a disproportionate amount of harm is experienced by the boys.
- > There is very much a need for boys to have a space to be boys: where they can let their boisterousness out, where they can act a little crazy, or just act closer to their true selves etc. without having to worry about how they're perceived by the girls.
As the father of several boys, I agree. For anyone interested more in this concept, I recommend "Boys Adrift" by Leonard Sax (a psychologist) and "Boys Should Be Boys" by Dr. Meg Meeker (a pediatrician). Both books are very enlightening about some of the problems our boys face in America.
- If you find this article interesting or compelling, please check out Boys Adrift[0]. You may not necessarily agree with all of Sax's conclusions, but if you have boys of your own, it should be required reading.
- I was recently reading about violence in schools in Boys Adrift by Dr. Leonard Sax and he mentioned several correlations that are common suspects: economic "level", race, and a few others, and race was the highest correlation by about 20%.
I share your curiosity and have dug into the issue quite a bit, but obviously it's difficult since it's a bit of a taboo topic.
