THE PLIGHT OF BOYS

Many of you are worried about the high rate of divorce and other issues of family concern. Cheer up - the world is not coming to an end. It is already tomorrow in Australia and it is a fine sunny day. Greetings from 'down under'!

At the United Nations and at conferences in or about the developing world, much attention is given to the situation of females, the disadvantage and discrimination they suffer beginning from conception. In countries such as India and China, girl babies are aborted just because they are female. When they are infants, girls are often not nourished as well as boys, and they are not given the educational opportunities their brothers enjoy. Indeed the Indian affiliate of Endeavour Forum, the Centre for Research, Education, Support and Training in Bangalore, has written a booklet, "Blossoms in the Dust", describing the plight of girls in India.

However, in the developed world, a different phenomenon has become apparent in the past thirty years, the serious gap in educational achievement of boys compared to girls, and the horrendous consequences that flow from this for their future employment, marriage and life prospects. My paper is about the plight of boys in developed countries, such as Australia, where I live.

This is not a new phenomenon - I became aware of the statistics during my research as a Member of the Victorian Committee on Equal Opportunity in Schools in 1975. This Committee, comprised entirely of feminists and education bureaucrats (who are nearly all feminists too) was dedicated to improving the educational opportunities for girls. It was alleged that girls were not doing as much science and maths as boys, and were being channelled into the humanities and domestic economics. However, when I looked more closely at these disparities, I found that sex differences in interest and aptitude played a significant role in the subject choices of girls, and a far more disturbing picture emerged of the failure of many boys to achieve basic standards of literacy. It was apparent that it was boys who were seriously disadvantaged in education, not girls.

Although the statistics I quote are from Australia, they are similar to data from the USA and UK and other English-speaking countries, and broadly apply to all the First World developed nations. Boys outnumber girls by about 4: 1 in needing remedial or special education. Many fail to achieve basic standards of literacy in elementary school, and this burden of disadvantage affects all their future educational, employment and life prospects. However teacher unions and the feminista who control education are unwilling to acknowledge this, let alone do anything about it.

As an example, although the Victorian Committee on Equal Opportunity in Schools made a number of recommendations to our state government, they deleted my recommendation, although it was supported by a sub-committee on remedial education, that before students entered secondary school, there should be an effective remedial program so that no child was unable to read and write at the appropriate age and grade level. The reason my recommendation was deleted was because the entire ideology behind the Committee's work was that it was girls who were disadvantaged, and if they had to show the data for the recommendation on remedial education it would be obvious that it was not girls but boys who were the disadvantaged group. So an entire generation of boys who needed help, has "fallen through the cracks", because feminists were unwilling to acknowledge the truth. Following the rejection of my recommendation on remedial education, I wrote a Minority Report (1)

The feminist/teacher union policy of ignoring the special educational needs of boys is in clear breach of Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Principle 7 of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child(1959) and Article 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), all of which express the rights of the child to receive education ".....which wll enable him on a basis of equal opportunity to develop his abilities, his individual judgement .... and to become a useful member of society.

Boys under-performance in education is not limited to Australia and is now a worldwide concern. Women have overtaken men at every level of education in developed countries around the world, and girls are now more confident of getting better-paid, professional jobs than their flagging male counterparts. International education figures, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, show a consistent picture, across cultures and continents, of women achieving better results than men. The OECD survey, a detailed comparison of education achievement and spending in 43 developed countries found that in almost every developed country, 15-year-old girls are more confident than boys about getting high-income jobs. In the United Kingdom, 63% of girls expect to have "white collar, high-skilled" jobs by the time they are 30, compared to only 51% of boys. This picture of girls with higher expectations than boys is repeated in the United States, Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Australia, where the success rate of girls in the matriculation exam is 15% higher than for boys.

Girls have good reason to be more confident than boys, because academically, around the globe, they are more successful - which is likely to lead to higher-income jobs. In literacy skills, 15-year-old girls are ahead of boys in every one of the 43 countries in the OECD survey. In the UK, the gap in literacy scores between girls and boys at this age is 26%. This school-age gender gap leads to an increasingly stark difference between the success of male and female students in getting into university. In New Zealand, 89% of women enter university, compared to 62% of men. In Iceland, 80% of women go into higher education, compared to 42% of men. (2)

In the United Kingdom, the figures for 2001 show that 49% of women entered university, compared to 41% of men. Andreas Schleicher,head of analysis at the OECD education directorate, says much of the rapid growth in higher education places and the larger number of students staying in education can be directly attributed to this growing academic success of women.

In the USA, April 24 which is "Take Our Daughters To Work Day", was renamed "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" after complaints from men's groups. The unofficial holiday originated with a now discredited 1992 report by the American Association of University Women that claimed US schools 'shortchange' girls. In reality, in 1992 and even more so today, it is boys not girls who need special educational attention and funding. Boys at all levels are far more likely than girls to be disciplied, suspended, held back or expelled. By high school the average boy is a year and a half behind the average girl in reading and writing, and is less likely to graduate from high school, go to college or graduate from college than a typical girl. (3)

Twentyfive years after my Minority Report, alarmed by statistics showing the comparatively poor performance of boys in education, the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, published a report, "Boys: Getting it right" (October 2002) which recommended that the national strategy for "gender equity" be rewritten because it is based on a faulty approach - trying to change hoys so they become more like girls. The Report also recommended a return to "explicit, intensive, systematic phonics instruction" in the teaching of reading in schools. The 'whole word' approach implemented across Australia and other English-speaking countries from the late 1960s is linked with significant reading failure - expecially among boys.

But why should boys be falling behind, in so many different countries? Andreas Schleicher says there are "troubling signs" that boys are more susceptible to being put off education by disruptions in their home environment. Boys seem less able to overcome obstacles to education, he says, whether it is peer group pressure or a lack of family support.

Jennifer Buckingam, Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney, in her analysis of the Australian House of Representatives Report, wrote: "What is most surprising is that the report fails to acknowledge a link between family structure and stability ...and boys educational problems, despite research and anecdotal evidence to the contrary (4).

Boys problems, however, go beyond family structure. Dr. James Dobso of . Focus on the Family, in his new bestseller, "Bringing up boys", writes: "The unisex movement prevailed until the late 1980s when it fell victim to medical technology. The development of magnetic resonance imaging and PET scans allowed physicians and physiologists to examine the functioning of the human brain in much greater detail. What they found totally destroyed the assertions of feminists. Men and women's brains looked very distinct when examined in a laboratory. Under proper stimulation they "lit up" different areas , revealing unique neurological processes. It turns out that male and female brains are 'hardwired' differently, which along with hormonal factors accounts for behavioural and attidudinal characteristics associated traditonally with masculinity and femininity.....Unfortunately, the ideas that were spawned in the seventies and perpetuated in a different form today are deeply ingrained in the culture, even though they have never made sense. Many parents are reluctant or ill-equipped to teach their boys how they are different from girls or what their masculinity really means. There is also a new source of confusion emanating from the powerful gay lobby".

My research on the development of boys and girls leads me to believe that boys may do better in single-sex schools. Boys are developmentally about 6 months behind girls of the same age. Boys feel humiliated when girls of their age outperform them. I was moved at a recent school swimming sports day when a small boy sobbed at the end of a race because - he said - he was defeated by a girl. In Australia swimming races for children under 12 are either "Open" events in which both girls and boys can compete, or "girls only" in which boys cannot compete. This little boy was defeated by a girl in an "Open" event, and no doubt he will be teased by his classmates.

However, difficulties for boys emanate from sources other than family problems and faulty teaching methods. They also arise from the feminist ideology which dominates teacher unions, elementary school textbooks and the aura of schools, even when individual teachers do not subscribe to these ideas. Basically the theory goes something like this: 'Women are an oppressed minority. Who is doing the oppressing? Well it has to be men. Men therefore are the enemy who have created an oppressive patriarchal society which prevents women from achieving their full potential.'

Another sub-text is that gender identity is learned, not innate, and any boy who cannot be tamed to conform to female patterns of behaviour, is suffering from testosterone poisoning. In co-ed schools, normal, youthful male exuberance (running, jumping, rough-and-tumble play) is unacceptable.With the objective of "gender equity", boys must be encouraged to play with dolls, and, as preschoolers tend to prefer same-sex play which reinforces gender stereotypes, teachers must force boys to play with girls and vice versa. This is for kindergarten children!

Christina Hoff Sommers in her definitive work "The War Against Boys" (5) highlights the role of the US Department of Education in promoting "gender equity", and in ignoring the natural differences between boys and girls. From an early age boys show a distinct preference for active outdoor play with a strong predilection for games with body contact, rivalry and clearly defined winners and losers. All this is to be suppressed as a manifestation of 'testosterone poisoning'. The typical classroom is geared to the docile proclivities of girls - long stretches of sitting down and being quiet.

The Good News from Australia is that an academic who has run a decade-long campaign on the need for extra schooling help for boys has been hired by the Australian Government to rewrite education guidelines relating to gender. Richard Fletcher, of Newcastle University, is part of a team commissioned to redraft the gender equity framework designed to support the particular needs of boys and girls in schools. The move has split those in education. While some have praised the Fletcher appointment, saying it acknowledges the pressing need to come up with new policies to help boys as they move through the education system, others have accused the Federal Government of running its own ideological agenda.

Tim Hawke, headmaster of The King's School in New South Wales, and a writer on boys' education, has praised the decision.The current framework "pathologises maleness", he said. The authors of this framework appeared "more interested in finding an antidote to the toxic touch of testosterone than putting in place sensible policies that support the educational needs of both sexes", he said.

The report from the Australian House of Representatives inquiry, recommended the policies be revised since they did not "adequately articulate and address boys’ educational needs" and criticised a "negative" focus limited to "boys not being violent, not monopolising space and equipment and not harassing girls and other boys". Australian Federal Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, said at the time of the report's release: "We have to honestly consider to what extent the gender equity framework has been responsible for letting down boys and their families."

Other academics and education consultants dispute that the guidelines need changing. The framework "already provides an appropriate national policy framework for addressing theeducational needs of boys," said the [feminist dominated] Australian Education Union in its submission. "They are making it very clear which way they want to send it," said one academic source critical of the Government's decision, suggesting the new focus will be on boys rather than "a fine tuned balance between the needs of both boys and girls". Professor Fletcher responded that the Government was responding to community concerns.

Human Rights cannot depend on a denial of the basic facts of human nature. The consequences of the discrimination and disadvantages experienced by boys in the education system, particularly elementary education, leaves a sub-group functionally illiterate, unable to benefit from higher education, unemployable or condemned to a lifetime of lower-paid, lower-skilled jobs, and with unattractive marriage prosects as they can offer little to a prospective spouse. These men will drift to the margins of society, poor and lonely. For men, their job and 'provider' role is the main source of self-esteem and identity. In Australia it is now estimated that about a third of young men - in the low-income, unskilled groups, are not in a position to marry. Women, on the other hand, always have a biological role. The consequence is that there are now many single mothers who need to be supported by taxpayers, and at the other end of the financial scale, there are many lonely and childless career women - and some of these women are deliberately deciding to "go it alone" and have a child without a spouse or partner.

The discrimination against boys affects minority groups in particular. In the US it is a national tragedy that there are more African-American men in prison or on parole than in college.

If we don't get it right in the education of boys, we deprive society of the manly virtues of courage, honour, self-discipline, competitivenes - and the inventiveness which has given us so many labour saving and life-saving devices. If it were not for male inventiveness, we might still be living in cold, dark caves, but we live with electricity and washing machines and computers. Of course it is these labor-saving machines that have given feminists the time and energy to indulge in 'consciousness-raising' about the evils of a patriarchal society.

We don't need to pathologise boys, we need to celebrate their maleness, it is this difference which has enriched human life.

References:

(1) Minority Report, Babette Francis, Victorian Committee on Equal Opportunity in Schools, (2) BBC News, 16 Setember 2003 (3) Glen Sachs, Male View, Jan-March 2004 (4) "Getting it right - Some of the time", Jennifer Buckingham, Centre for Independent Studies (5) "The War Against Boys", Christina Hoff Sommers, Simon & Schuster, 200l.