this is my cranky face.

[schmerica]

Hey, so, this article includes not only one but TWO vaguely infuriating and bizarre claims within its short length! Not only do we get the classic "Oh noes, the world is being feminized, what will our poor little boys do in girly schools???" but for the same price, we get a free extra helping of "Girls like to read because it's the only place to find real men nowadays!"

No, seriously.

But you could also see this inter-gender "reading gap" as part of a more worrying trend. It is a colossal and unremarked social change that this year far more women than men enrolled at university, and the gap is growing every year.

That is a stunning turnaround, when you consider that it was only 20 years ago that the male-to-female ratio was about four to one. Women are advancing to the front of the service-based economy, not just literate but emotionally literate. It is a fantastic change, wonderful, irresistible.

The question is whether this girl-friendly educational system is starting to be skewed against natural male aptitudes - and there are signs that it is.

Dr Tony Sewell, an educationalist attached to Imperial College, London, says the whole process of instruction has become "feminised".

There is too much coursework, he says, and not enough of the adrenaline-pumping terror of the exam. Boys need competition, he says, or they slump back into apathy and thuggishness.

.......

And as for the girl on the Tube, with her nose buried in her novel, she is on the same quest. The reason women devour so much fiction is that it is the only place where they can find a certain idea of masculinity. It is a spirit that has been regulated out of the workplace and banished from the classroom.

Women turn to fiction, I would guess, because it is the last reservation for men who are neither violent thugs nor politically correct weeds, where a girl can still get her bodice ripped without the bodice ripper being locked up.

Comments

[terpsichoreslyr.livejournal.com]

Gag. It reminds me of this interview on the Today show the other day. Basic premise: Boys are falling behind girls in school. What, oh what shall we do? "Education Guru" says: "30 years ago, to conteract years of neglect by teachers, we tutored girls in math and science so that they could be on par with the boys." Blah blah blah he says some other crap. Matt asks a couple of questions and then he says, "Now we've got to do the same thing for the boys." and goes on to explain how the curriculum needs to be changed and teaching methods need to be changed in order to benefit the boys. And I'm looking at the TV and asking Matt why the hell he isn't pointing out that that is NOT the same thing.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

It's actually a bizarrely common view in a lot of places: the whole line from 1) Girls are doing well --> 2) Boys (and therefore masculinity) are in a crisis --> 3) everything must be changed to allow masculinity to flourish.

[queenofhell.livejournal.com]

Oh, dude, thats not even the worst. There were a bunch of articles a while ago (here (http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0525/p11s01-legn.html)'s an example) all about how schools cater to girls, because girls of course love to sit quietly and share feelings, while boys naturally need to run around and do physical things, and thats why boys are behind on the learning curve. As though schools weren't about sitting quietly and learning through a lecture format fifty years ago when boys were outperforming girls!

[terpsichoreslyr.livejournal.com]

Yes! That was my thought too! Boys were still boys back then. And yes, that was one of this education guru's points. It just pissed me off to no end.