Of all the possible explanations, the notion of a loss of the male role in life, especially for the disadvantaged, seems the most profound. The 2003–2004 US Department of Education report cited above states that of those undergraduate students from low-income backgrounds attending post-secondary institutions, just 40 percent were male. For students from high-income households, the gap narrowed substantially, 51 percent for females and 49 percent for males. For low-income Hispanics, the figures were 61 percent for females and 39 percent for males. And for low-income African-Americans, the gap widened to 64 percent for females and 36 for males. The clearest evidence in Canada of this role conflict may come from First Nations communities, where the divide between male and female university attendance is acute. Patricia Monture, a Mohawk scholar who teaches in the department of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan, says: “An elder once explained to me that these days First Nations women don’t have the same kind of role conflict that men do. First Nations men don’t have their role and identity anymore. But women still have this island of identity as mothers. When we start trying to get our lives together we have some little bit of ground to stand on. The men just don’t.”
While Canada does not chart social change patterns using race-based statistics and indices to the same degree, it seems that here too, across the racial and income divides, young males are losing “their little bit of ground to stand on.” They tend to drift, avoid, and play. For so many of them thirty might be the new twenty, but the real clock keeps ticking, and eventually it is too late to think about a long income-free period to acquire a university education.
The problems facing young men at Canadian universities are part of a much broader trend, according to the 2004 Statistics Canada report “Where the Boys Are.” In the wake of the growing debate about the educational experience of American males, a group of academics, educators, and public commentators formed The Boys Project. Under the leadership of Judith Kleinfeld, a psychology professor at the University of Alaska, this initiative “seeks to accomplish for young men what The Girls Project so successfully accomplished for young women—to increase academic skills, to increase college success, and to develop the confidence, drive, and determination to contribute to American society.”
The Boys Project’s view of the problem is that “a large, sullen, poorly educated group of men will not keep the nation vital in the twenty-first century. The nation needs the energy, initiative, and ambition of its young men as well as its young women.” Consider these statistics gathered by the Project on gender disparity in the United States: for every 100 women who earn a master’s degree, 62 men earn the same degree; for every 100 girls expelled from public elementary and secondary school, 335 boys are expelled; for every 100 females aged 20 to 24 who commit suicide, 624 males of the same age kill themselves; for every 100 women aged 18 to 21 in correctional facilities, there are 1,448 men in correctional facilities. The Canadian numbers are not as dramatic, but the trajectory appears much the same.
Can anything be done about male academic underachievement? Based on the experience with women, we have an extensive set of tools that can be applied to underachieving males if we so choose. Summoning the will won’t be easy. Possibly related to a prevailing view that women still need to catch up in terms of income equality and penetrating male-dominated fields, there appears to be little interest in addressing male underachievement through new public policy. More locally, most university senates are still a long way from implementing programs to specifically attract and benefit males.
But the starting point for meeting this challenge must be an open discussion of the problem and a frank airing of views about the causes, consequences, and solutions. Schools, parents, universities, and the media can each tackle male underachievement in different ways. Given broad public awareness of the issue, schools would be empowered to act on male learning needs. Parents would realize that their sons cannot be left to find their own way, that they require firm guidance. Wide recognition of the problem should end media clichés of the dumb and dumber males and inspire some deep thinking about the appropriate role of the twenty-first century male.
Articulating the appropriate role of the male is the greatest challenge. Negative messages—stop being lazy and do your fair share of the housework, stop avoiding your child-rearing obligations, don’t expect a wife or mother to keep running after you—may be reality checks, but they do not create aspirations. In a rapidly changing work world, where the promise of low-skill high-wage jobs is diminishing, young males need to envision a positive role for themselves.
American universities and colleges operate in a more competitive and diverse environment than do their publicly funded Canadian counterparts, and certain US public and private educational institutions practise affirmative action, selecting students in part on the basis of gender, ethnicity, and other attributes. But having generally won the high-school competition with young men, impressive and accomplished young women should not be blocked from their preferred post-secondary institutions by virtue of the very success of the female cohort. Likewise, in Canada, it would be a fundamental error to turn the success of young women into a justification for limiting their access to preferred universities. The task is not to strip young women of opportunities, but rather to motivate young men to be more competitive, to do better at school and university, and to enter graduate and professional programs the same way young women have: by being the best among their peers.
Two decades of declining proportional university participation seems less than a mere societal correction, and ignoring the apparent widespread disengagement of young men could result in a huge loss of human capital for Canada. Our education systems need to collaborate on defining the problem and in providing solutions. Parents need to be told that the issue is national and not limited to the video-game addict in their basement bedrooms. Universities, particularly those short of students and uncertain about their economic prospects, have a tailor-made opportunity to enhance their enrolments through the careful and deliberate cultivation of potential male applicants. Despite record numbers, many of Canada’s universities have fewer applicants than they desire and they would benefit from developing the messages and programs necessary to reach out to young males.
The most cursory review of contemporary Canadian society reveals that while some women have broken through, men remain very much in control. Women are still seriously underrepresented in corporate boardrooms, provincial and federal cabinets, and in the senior administrations of public institutions. Will this change in the near future as the growing pool of well-qualified, highly motivated, and extremely capable women wend their way through the workforce? If not, we have ahead of us a bubbling cauldron of conflict, dissatisfaction, and social distress. We’ll have one large group of men blocked from progress due to their failure to keep up academically, while another cohort of eager and highly educated women finds itself stymied in its attempt to reach the top.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Snail Males
« page 3 of 3 »
Why are men falling behind in universities while women speed ahead? NMA nominee: Illustration
by Ken Coates and Clive Keen
Published in the March 2007 issue. » BUY ISSUE
Care to comment? Please send your response to letters@walrusmagazine.com. Subscribers can also post comments online at walrusmagazine.com.
For more on this and other articles in the March 2007 issue, click here.
Previous page | Next page
The Walrus E-Newsletter
Online exclusives, events, offers:
get news of everything Walrus.
Media Centre
Latest Blog Posts 
Web 2.0 Museum 
Blizzard Survivalism 2.0
Four-Colour Words
The second part of our interview with cartoonist Lynda Barry
Sportstrotter
Sports in 2008: I was mostly right, except when I was wrong
World Famous in Korea
South Korea's perpetual students
Shades of Green
A Bhutanese Road Trip
Article Tools
» RSS Feed
» More in National Magazine Award Nominee
IN THE NEWS:
Society
Taking the Cure
John J. Verigin Sr, the longtime leader of the Russian Doukhobors in BC, has died. Read our feature on the Doukhobors here...
Upcoming Articles in The Walrus
- December 2008
- The Architecture of Fear by Charles Montgomery
The Lynching of Louie Sam by John Vaillant
A new Kenyan tongue by Arno Kopecky
David Lees on American eels
Alexandra Redgrave on Montreal dance
and
New fiction by Peter Behrens
« ADVERTISEMENT »
« ADVERTISE WITH US »
© 2008 The Walrus Foundation | RSS Feeds | Privacy Policy | Contact | Subscribe | Customer Care | Sitemap | Additional Resources
| Privacy Policy | Contact | Subscribe | Customer Care | Sitemap | Additional Resources
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