Canadian concerns about male underachievement may increase as early testing becomes more regular and standardized. In Ontario, for instance, academic- achievement tests have become the norm, and student progress is being charted from early elementary school through high school. Outside provincial programs, in 2004 testing done by the oecd’s Programme for International Student Assessment, it was discovered that in all ten Canadian provinces girls demonstrated superior reading skills. There is a growing concern that this difference in reading ability flows directly through to one’s university experience, placing young men at a significant disadvantage.
In a fall 2006 Globe and Mail article, Ian Brown refers to the “modern feminized university,” an institution where traditional models of teaching have been replaced by a more co-operative, feminine model of interaction. Marion Hannaford, once a faculty of education instructor, has a similar diagnosis of the effects of pedagogical changes broadly instituted at the high-school level. She argues that teaching methods are now heavily biased in favour of girls. “Everyone has become aware of the learning needs of girls, but we’ve just forgotten about the boys,” she says. According to Hannaford, the competitive learning that comes naturally to males has been replaced by collaborative learning styles better suited to girls. Jim Sentance, an associate professor of economics at the University of Prince Edward Island, watches his son show signs of disengagement with school and suggests that the legitimate feminist complaints about pedagogy have been turned on their head. “While the old learning style favoured males, the new emphasis on discussion, participation, following instructions, and meeting deadlines has moved us in the other direction. Boys don’t see a lot of point in working hard on assignments when the grades are just shared out to others,” says Sentance.
As it turns out, many young men may feel that relying on university education is not essential for success. A recent study by University of Guelph economists Michael Hoy, Louis Christofides, and Ling Yang suggests that while women do earn more with university degrees than they would with high-school certificates, men are still likely to earn more money than women with equivalent levels of education. The 2001 census revealed that men with a high-school certificate and minimal post-secondary education earn approximately $10,000 more than women with the same qualifications. For those with skilled trades certificates, the gap between men’s and women’s wages increases to about $17,000. In science and business, men are also more likely to be promoted and to earn more money than women. Such realities may send the message “Relax!” to younger generations of men, who do not feel they need to put in the same effort as young women do.
A favourite theory of media watchers is that young males have been receiving endless “You’re a dork!” messages, and an entire generation is now living up to those low social expectations. They are proudly thick, just as London’s disenchanted 1970s youth—told for years that they were punks—learned to glory in their alienated, society-be-damned subculture. Since the 1970s, according to this line of argument, cartoons, advertisements, and sitcoms have avoided showing females in a negative light because doing so guarantees sharp criticism from advocacy groups. By default, then, when the media depict incompetence and stupidity it is typically exemplified by a male: the self-proclaimed underachiever Bart Simpson having trouble understanding the simplest things, while sister Lisa invents perpetual-motion machines; Red Green (“I’m a man, but I can change”) reinforcing the bungling male stereotype; the somewhat gentle Beavis and Butthead; the more direct Trailer Park Boys.
“[Males] have been anaesthetized by a ‘boy culture’ that celebrates bravado, lassitude, and stupidity,” says Pat Clarke of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation. And a culture of male mediocrity may be exacerbated by what University of Western Ontario professor of sociology Roderic Beaujot calls the longest adolescence in history. In “Delayed Life Transitions: Trends and Implications,” a 2004 report published by the Ottawa-based Vanier Institute of the Family, Beaujot points out that by 2001, over 40 percent of children in their twenties lived with their parents (a dramatic increase from 27.5 percent in 1981). Whereas people in the early 1970s on average married in their early twenties, couples are now putting marriage off until their late twenties, and women are putting off having children even longer. The reasons for this later entry into adulthood are complex, but include the decreased value of youth labour, the challenge of competing with baby-boom success, and the need to become established in careers.
Some sociologists speculate that young men are having problems getting motivated because they are unsure about their role in today’s world. Young males were once heavily parented and socialized to be the breadwinner, the guardian, the domestic hero; everything revolved around them, and they were forced to develop a sense of duty. There was also both a carrot and a stick: if they didn’t buckle down, they would not get the girl, who demanded, above all, a provider with sound economic prospects. But few young women today—independent, educated, sexually confident, and with ready access to contraception—look to young men as lifetime supporters.
Australian psychologist and author Steve Biddulph says that part of this shift is related to the change in traditional family structures and specifically the lack of a father as role model. He calls the present crop of young males among the most under-fathered in history. Many boys are brought up by divorced or single mothers—since the 1960s the percentage of single-parent households has risen steadily in Canada—with fathers playing only a transitory role. Grandparents, uncles, friends, coaches, and others attempt to act in loco parentis, but this too is transitory, and those boys who grow up in standard nuclear families often have fathers perplexed and hesitant about what lessons they should teach their sons.
Boys growing up without a male role model at home and hard-pressed to find one among their teachers are at considerable risk. Especially in the elementary years, where female teachers represent a large majority, there is always the danger that young male students faced year after year with female teachers will begin to resent them as authority figures and switch off learning altogether.
Comments (6 comments)
Mika'il: When does issues with children become the fault of the parents instead of schools and popular media. I don't understand this disconnect. If your boy child is lazy and overly competitive in school to the point where he doesn't see the point of working hard. That's not because he's a boy. It's because that's how you, his parents, taught him how to be a boy. I'm not overly competitive. Though I'm not particularly feminine, but I hold more to the "feminine" co-operation learning style. So, I say teach your boys co-operation, sharing work, and thought. Tell your boys they are smart, and to treat people well, and stop using pop culture as a scapegoat. RAISE YOU KIDS! February 16, 2007 15:57 EST
algodees: Under educated and therefore under employed males scare me. Young men are easily led and undereducated young men even more so. If more balance is not achieved in education, we will eventually have an easily manipulated and resentful cadre of young men ready and willing to do anything some charismatic leader spouting some ridiculous and dangerous philosphy cajoles them to do. Nazi Germany is a good example of what happens in these situations. I think a good way to start addressing this situation is to encourage young men to go into the teaching profession and try to get a better gender balance within the profession. We have managed to lift up the female population, at least within academia, and now it is time for a concerted effort to do the same for the males. We must do whatever it takes to rectify this situation before Canadian society becomes even more polarized. Historically, angry young men have been much more dangerous to societies than have angry young women. Beware of ignorant and angry young men as they will cause havoc eventually. February 18, 2007 07:34 EST
juviall: As a professor of psychology who has taught the Psychology of Gender for the past 15 years, I really enjoyed this article. However, it's a shame that the authors wait until more than half way through to specify the nature of the problem, as well as the possible reasons. This isn't a gender problem; it's a gender by race/class problem. Upper-middle class boys are still going to university; it's the lower class boys and, in the US, African-American and Hispanic boys who do not. The question now becomes: why not? Father absence is huge factor. Boys who are not actively involved with their biological fathers — or a father figure — don't do as well at school as boys who live with their dads. We may not be sure why but one thing is clear: this is a family and social problem not a problem with the schools or the media. The solution is to help fathers stay engaged with their sons, perhaps with more enlightened social policies that recognize a father's impact on his children. February 20, 2007 15:36 EST
louise: I really enjoyed this article. While education styles have changed over the years, boys have definite patterns of learning that do not fit the current system. As youth are seen as 'clients' in the education system and not as human beings, then they will be lost as will the females in this system of education. I also agree that gender and class, economic standing allows for boys to attend school with insufficent qualifications and often given work in the family firm or something close to it. Either way, we have bred a generation of males who are well below in many components of life, including being educated enough to survive in this evolving world. And we have a generation of women looking for a decent guy, and few to pick among for a potential peer and mate. How would I know. Mmm. A father and three brothers give me some insight into male behaviour and thinking as well as my women studies specialist work gave me the language to frame the context. And I guess I could say working in a traditionally male field of work, also gives me insight that men, even my peers are struggling to survive in a society where women are in theory to have equal footing as them.
June 07, 2007 16:35 EST
rick lynn: I have been working on this since 1993 when I noticed the leveling off of men entering college and Females surging ahead. My learning theory will show how our individual environments do greatly affect thinking, learning, motivation to learn, and mental/emotional health. This is a brief excerpt from my learing theory on the Growing Male Crisis. The complete paper to all on request at mayfieldga@bellsouth.net
High layers of mental frictions are one reason Males are falling behind in society and even internationally. The nineteenth century belief "Males should be strong" has left open a window of Free Aggression toward Males from birth onward (aggression allowed upon Males that is considered inappropriate toward Females). Such Free Aggression toward Males may have seemed necessary in the nineteenth century where the physical world and its ruthlessness played a greater role in society. However, in the information age, Free Aggression today is having detrimental effects upon the mental, social, emotional, and academic growth of Males. This aggression given Males not only creates high layers of mental frictions it also creates the Male ego or defensive cushion developed from a young age designed to protect Males that aggression they receive. High layers of mental frictions and the Male ego or defensive cushion impedes and even isolates many Males from much valuable, interpersonal and various mental, emotional, and social and other needed supports that over a period of years add up to a large deficiency for Males.
The nineteenth century belief Males should be strong, also held "Females should be protected”. For many Females there is indulgence along with various continuous social supports from society from an early age onward. This indulgence provides an expressway of interaction for accumulation of much mental, emotional, social, and academic support and learning over time. Today, the two influences of Free Aggression toward Males and over-protection for Females along with various supports from society have created collectively high layers of mental frictions for Males and collectively low layers of mental frictions for Females. Males are collectively beginning to fall behind academically and will later fall behind economically. Females are beginning to use society's protection and societal support for greater opportunities of mental and emotional growth. In the future, the glass ceiling for women in business will fall and the Males will be on the outside.
It is incorrect to view the Male Crisis on role models. The lack of role models is the result of the problem, not the cause. If you had a bag full of sand with a hole in the bottom, you would “not” say there is less sand in the bag; you would say there is a hole in the bottom of the bag. Indeed, we should fix the hole in the bag by providing Males with tools to develop long-term, mental/emotional stability so they can better compete mentally and emotionally in the information age. One professional was attempting to find more role models for Male children. He boasted that a Male child’s esteem goes up when they have one positive role model. What he was unknowingly saying was that Males have such little attention that when they do receive that attention, they are very grateful. This creates the large rise in esteem. The fight for attention could be creating misbehavior in Male children.
In society today, men are given love, honor, respect, and support or the essentials of their self-worth based on achievement, money, power, status and image. They must fight through the still present, nineteenth century confrontations allowed by society upon them from an early age to achieve those benefits and feelings of self-worth. Since women are given through overprotection, even indulgence, the benefits of love, honor, respect, and continual support, all of the benefits of self-worth from an early age without qualification (simply because they are girls), they are working with much continual support, attention, and interaction to accumulate more continual mental, emotional, social, and academic knowledge and skills that can be transformed easily into money, power, status, and image. Even after this society’s protection, continued support and view toward beauty and charm continually helps them in the information age.
May 20, 2008 12:08 EST
rick lynn: The above article is only a small part of my overall learning theory that has applications other than explaining the Male Crisis. It provides us with tools to help teachers, students, and parents learn how to approach their lives more delicately and differently to continually improve thinking, learning, motivation, and mental/emotional health. These tools are essential to help end the Male Crisis and also help release everyone from the horrible myth of fixed intellligences which leave effort as the only variable. It will go to all on request. I do not know how much will be accepted in this format. The full article with graph and Figure will go to all on request.
August 14, 2008 17:59 EST