this is my cranky face.
15/6/06 17:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schmericaHey, 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.
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.
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16/6/06 10:19 (UTC)