Letters to the Editor
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Trying to teach the guys
As one who teaches at a small college in America's heartland, it seems to me that if there is a war on boys it is being waged by their parents, their coaches and their sports teams, not by their teachers. Boys are pushed to become athletes. That is seen as the ticket to life, not engineering, science or even literature.
When boys aspire to be athletes first and scholars not at all, when they are passed because they're big and masculine and tough and important to the team, and when that behavior brings them to college unprepared, it is not the scholarly teacher who is `'feminizing`' the boys, but the coach who is hypermasculinizing the boys. I've taught boys who've been involved in all sorts of teams, from football to baseball, and many of them come to the final four years of their education uninterested in education (not just un-interested in reading), and are here at our college only because we offered them the most dollars to play their particular game. Their hope is to be an ESPN commentator (laugh) but they have difficulty speaking unaccented English or stringing more than five words together into a sentence.
What's worse, this over emphasis on sport has begun to spread into the female population. One of my assignments in an introductory class required observation and recording of actually human conversation. The number of women who recorded conversations between downs and during the commercial breaks for Sports Center was astounding.
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On the one hand . . .
This article seems concerned and genuine but some of the opinion expressed - disturbing.
"So yes, if you're a big, strong guy, there are jobs out there. But the fields that are growing fastest are in healthcare, education, leisure and travel, and the services -- all areas that women are better at than we are.
(skip)
The most educated women have the fewest children -- this is not rocket science, it's just the way things work. We need women to have 2.1 children [in order to maintain the U.S. population], but the recent Census Bureau reports show that American women with bachelor's degrees average only 1.7. You can do the math -- if we continue this way the white population is headed for extinction."
First off - women are not "better" at healthcare or education - men just haven't wanted the lower level and paying jobs in those fields. I believe that college professors and doctors are still predominately male. So - women are not "better" as much as men only want the higher prestige jobs.
And this whole thing that the white population is headed for extinction? I don't think it was intended but he holds this opinion in common with a lot of white supremacists groups. The human race will continue to thrive, but racial makeups do flunctuate. That is the way of the world. For example, at one point in our history - white people were a minority. That changed. Still a lot of humans around.
I do not know why boys no longer want to go to college.
Maybe that is the real question to solve - not worrying about women getting an education and not popping out enough white babies to maintain a majority. Do boys think studying and learning are things only girls do? Is education like wearing pink? Figure that out and stop worrying if women are exercising too much choice in their lives.
As far as the relationship between education and birthing out fewer children - if that is a real concern - put your money where your mouth is. Don't attain more babies by restricting women's opportunities. Offer opportunity to women in exchange for more children. Healthcare, retirement, daycare, etc. these are things that leave women who have children vulnerable to the whims of others. If women did not lose so much security when they do have children, they might be more interested.
I don't know why boys don't want to go to college. A problem that needs a solution. Please - let's not solve it by putting restrictions back on women
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Thank you Ms. Karnasiewicz
For getting Tom Mortenson to reveal to you so candidly the real motivation behind this "war against boys" national freak out - once we start educating women, they aren't going to want to just spend their lives pumping out babies anymore! "We're looking at a population crisis"? Who, on what planet, is Mortenson referring to, exactly, when he says "we"? Because I don't believe he can be living on the same one I am, where we've reached the point at which the US's population alone is 298,111,257 (one child born every 8 seconds, according to the US Bureau of the Census). I think we can safetly say it's time to sit back and stop worrying about any (natural) extinction of the human race and start focusing on QUALITY of life instead of quantity....
Oh, but wait, Mortenson is only worried about the WHITE population. How terrifying that a man like this is senior analysis of any institution, let alone one that claims it's committed to higher education. I would have loved to see Karnasiewicz pull up a copy of the Pell Institute's stated goals and ask how Mortenson's ideology in any way reflects Pell's mission "to maximize the impact of the Pell Institute and to increase its relevancy to improving access to higher education." I assume that an amendment to this statement ("improving access for white males") will be forthcoming?
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Bryn Mawr?
"Since teenage boys are often crazy about technology, a number of universities, including Case Western Reserve, Seton Hill, *Bryn Mawr* and MIT (which, admittedly, at 57-43, doesn't seem to have a problem attracting men), have launched admission-oriented blogs designed to offer an intimate, uncensored look at college life."
Whoa! When did Bryn Mawr go co-ed? Are you sure they're co-ed? I can't seem to find any "yay women's colleges!" sections on their website, and they also have a calendar of "alumnae/i" events (instead of just the usual "alumnae"), but that could merely be part of a recent trend at women's colleges to include transgendered people. Anyway, if Bryn Mawr is not co-ed (and I do believe it isn't because I'm pretty sure that would have kicked up a major shitstorm at MY women's college), then their inclusion in a list of schools that are trying to attract men via technology is pretty amusing, no?
Also, are "blogs" really "technology?" I mean, I guess they are, but when I think of cool technology, I think of sweet things that can break easily, not glorified diaries. I think either the writer is creating a bit of a tenuous link between blogs and an attempt to reach out to boys, or that the schools are woefully uninformed as to what it is about technology that "boys" apparently like. I don't know - maybe they might want to talk to the legions of women at my school who have the opportunity to become trained Library, Information and Technology technicians - they help other students with their computer problems, give workshops on Dreamweaver and RefWorks, learn crazy specific things about code - et cetera. Girls like technology too! Oh no! What if their plan BACKFIRES and they just attract even MORE women to their already overburdened-with-ovaries college?!?
The really interesting part of this story, which I would love to see developed in more detail, is the point at which the writer says that "Maybe men don't go to college because they don't have to" right after she says that men still make up the majority of doctors and tenure track positions. Um, I know there's a patriarchy and all, but no one gets to be a doctor or a tenure track professor just by secretly whipping out their bits at an interview. What this suggests to me is that IN SPITE of the fact that women have long been earning more B.A.'s than men, they are still underrepresented in the areas requiring the most education, which means either that disproportionately more men with BA's are getting admitted to med school and grad school, or that more men than women with those degrees are getting tenure-track positions or build up successful practices. Something is clearly very wrong. That's the real story, not this creepily-close-to-white--male-supremecist specious hand-wringing.