Letters to the Editor
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It's not like female teachers are new
Female teachers have been around for a very long time now... as have fine motor skills such as learning to print letters in elementary schools. So how come this wasn't a problem until recently?
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It's kind of complicated, the numbers
Yes and no.
The argument has been put forth from some quarters that there has been some restructuring of the educational system which has been good for girls and bad for boys. Books have been written. People have talked a lot. So if we wanted to answer that question in an intellectually honest way, how would we do that?
Ideally, I'd want some data about whether achieving academically was constructed as a feminine thing, and if so, how was that happening? There's an economist whose name I'm blanking on who did this sort of thing with race and academic achievement: we could try that sort of thing with gender, too - although, if we wanted wide sweeping answers, we'd have to do that with a lot of students from at least a few different types of schools. If this was happening, we would try to figure out how much had to do with actual curriculum issues and how much was values kids are getting from peers/parents/etc. Also, how does this vary across economic strata/race - because, obviously, it does. Also, is there some component of higher female college attendance that is a logical economic response to gender-wage differences/the fact that men tend to be more risk-taking and entrepreneurial? (I'm not sure how I'd test that.)
It'd be neat. I mean, that'd be one way to talk about it. We could also study ways that curriculum has changed in the past 20 years, or whatever, and see if there's some evidence that the types of learning being done right now work better for girls than boys. Because: this case has been made, but it didn't rely on a lot of econometrics.
But doing that sort of thing requires not just using numbers that already exist, but doing your own research on a lot of kids (for the first idea), or relying on a lot of data that may not actually exist and if it does is probably not very straightforward (for the second.) You'd have to spend a lot of time and money and do a lot of qualitative research. (Which, certainly, the people on the other side didn't do, either.)
Certainly, saying, "well, boys and girls both seem to be doing better, and the real differences are in race and class, and anyway, men still make more than women, so clearly those higher 4th-grade verbal scores/that extra AP class doesn't mean women will achieve economic equality and the world will come crashing down on us" isn't the most intellectually satisfying response to the case that's been made for "the boy crisis." But it's probably the best you can do with the existing data, and it's not a dumb or useless project. I mean, if there was some sort of universal Boy Crisis, probably this WOULD manifest itself in some of the ways that this study tested for. And we may all kind of know it already, but OBVIOUSLY on every academic measure, you'll find more differences across racial and economic groups than you will across gender lines. Which doesn't say a whole lot about whether boys are totally overmedicated at school compared to girls, or, I don't know, forced to read books with female protagonists (OMG!), or are more likely to be physically assaulted for being nerds. But, hey, whatever, it wasn't trying to do that.
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What's changed?
especially in lower grades, elementary schools are mostly under the employ of women, and mostly unintentionally, create an atmosphere that is difficult for boys to succeed in
Women have been the majority of primary schoolteachers and small children have been instructed in penmanship for what, the last 100 years? The menfolk of the previous three generations learned to write under female tutelage and seem to be doing OK for themselves.
What dramatic change has happened in the last 10 years or so that would account for a 'crisis'?
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larger role doesn't mean that other factors play no role or an insignificant role
so it is erroneous to imply that the presence of a more influential factor means that other things don't matter(of course it is all about plausible deniability anyway: if most males are uneducated blue collar workers it just means more women will be in the positions of authority that they should be in anyway).
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Ah yes, the "boy crisis"
Another study, much like the Educational Sector's bankrupt report by Sara Mead, which concludes, that its not bad news about boys doing worse, but good news about girls doing better, and that boys are doing better than ever before.
Of course, these arguments are flat ridiculous. To argue that boys are "doing better than ever before," both the Education Sector and AAUW base their argument on absolute numbers. That is to say that more men go to college, than say in 1950. The argument is bankrupt, easily destroyed by arguing the absurd. for instance, say that today, 100,000 people are going to college, 60,000 girls, and 40,000 boys. All of a sudden, the neext day, the college population doubles to 200,000 people, 150,000 girls, and 50,000 boys. The argument can be made, well, boys are doing better than ever. Now we have 10,000 more boys going to college. But in reality, whereas yesterday we had a distrubtion of 60% girls, and 40% boys, today, we have 75% girls and 25% boys.
In 1992 when the AAUW came out with its report in 1992 that girls were being screwed in schools, the AAUW supressed evidence that girls had already surpased boys in almost all subjects and almost all measures. That trend has condinued. Today, with 57% of colleges made up of women, the disparity continues to grow.
When women were the ones outnumbered at colleges, we blamed the schools, and passed title IX. When boys are getting screwed, we blame the boys and largely ignore the problem. Anybody who has studied the situation knows that both the Education Sector and the AAUW's recent report are attempts to make lemonade out of lemons, by putting a gloss that which has become abundantly apparent; boys are getting metaphorically raped by an education system.
What has happened is that women's organizations, in an attempt to mitigate the fair distrubtion of resources, have played the race card and said, oh, don't worry white middle America, your sons aren't doing that much worse that white girls, its only the blacks and Latinos who are woefully behind -- no problem here. The argument is racist, and patently untrue on both the interpretation or the research and the actual facts. Boys -- ALL BOYS -- regardless of income or race fare worse than girls, a reversal of fortunes that has specifically been ignored by both the media and academics, because aren't as sypathetic as girls.
Both the Orwellian language used of the arguments by opponents of helping boys, and the repeated attempts to disprove the obvious, betray the notion that girls progress has been not come at the expense of boys. This is a fight about resources. Thank God for the women who are mothers of boys.
It is also rather scandelous that Title IX, a gender neutral statute, has been interpreted by the bureocratic establishment as benefiting anyone but girls. The enforcement has been corrupt.