Konspiracy Korner - the Feminization of the K-12 System
"How to Raise an Energetic Boy," dept.

.

The Think Tank has a mind of its own :- ) and right now, it seems to be on the U.S. school system.  As y'know, we live to serve.  This post addresses sensitive gender topics.  If you don't want to be exposed to 2-way debate on gender issues, click on to the next post brotha.

If you do want to debate it, 'ave at me mate.  Say anything you like on SSI, especially if it happens to be the truth.  Only, say it in a civil, respectful manner.  This encourages the next guy to follow on.

.

"The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism." - Wole Soyinka

"In the absence of criticism and competition, all institutions inevitably morph to serve themselves." - I forget who (shoulda been the publisher of the New York Times, probably)

....

Speaking to Matt's point, Dr. D has raised a large, aggressive, masculine -- and well-behaved -- son who was abused* by the K-12 system.  This despite our best, most sincere efforts to adjust to the female* teaching staffs.  By the way, speaking to Moe's point, Dr. D himself also had no father-figure role model.  And Dr. D was a foster dad to a 7th-9th grade student (a nice, smart kid) who as an 8th-grader, could not read well enough to write his own name.  Literally.

So you're talking microbrews to a 20-year AA member.  Also you are an expert:  you have attended the K-12 system, most of you recently.

Here are a few thoughts about the whether the 2015 U.S. school system will prosper going forward.

......

I agree fervently with these three amigos.  In my mind, they're all correct:

.

SABRMatt - the educational system in the secondary and elementary levels is currently designed to cater exclusively to girls...it's not surprising that boys are getting left behind.

.

Mo' Dawg:  I'm respectfully disagreeing with Matt: Boys are getting left behind because so many of them are being raised without dads, figuratively or literally. After 34 years in the classroom, 32 at the secondary level, I'm pretty dead sure that I push the guys as much as the girls. More so, likely. They get no pass, behaviorally or educationally. Hold true for the vast majority of the teachers I've worked with, both great ones and terrible ones. More and more, we're seeing boys raised in homes with no male role-model or no steady one. Frequently, nobody at home asks them to be young men and shows them how. Hey, my dad was raised (with 5 siblings) by a tough mom and with an absentee dad and he grew up right. It can happen. But he was born in 1928, that situation was relatively rare. Not so today. You want to fix boys, start by fixing (way too many) dads. Oh, there is more to the remedy than just that......but that's a good place to start.

.

SABRMatt -  moe...it's not that teachers aren't trying to teach boys...it's that the educational establishment doesn't understand boys and their learning needs. When literature curricula are created, and books for reading chosen, no thought is given to the difference in the sexes as far as their average taste in fiction, for example. On top of that, the sit still and get blabbed at teaching model is not a good one for boys. Girls are better learners in that environment...boys need competition, exercise and hands-on learning more than girls do (again...on average...there are always a wide range of preferences from person to person). I'm not accusing educators of intentionally ignoring boys. I'm accusing the system of being run in a way that favors the women think and learn.

.

Gordon - Are girls pre-disposed to learn better that way, or do we socialize them to be that way from the time they can speak? Is "sitting still and getting blabbed at" more conducive to a majority of girls, or are they just used to it and expected to adapt even at that young age? Because after all we believe boys will be boys, and girls will be... docile. Rather than thinking that grade school teaching is working well for half the population, I actually get the feeling that it works poorly for everyone, but girls come out better on a curve thanks to social and parental pressures giving them a bit of an unfortunate headstart in that area.

.

Q.  Is there a conspiracy among teachers to serve female children better?

A.  My groundroots experience is this:  the NEA itself, the power brokers, the textbook authors (and a few "true believers" on each faculty) care more about agenda than the kids.  They care more about staying funded, and indoctrinating America to their Progressive values, than whether kids learn to write their names.  

They care more about getting "Jessica has two moms" into 1st grade (!!) than they care whether the students grow up self-sufficient.  "Social justice" is the most important thing, don't you know.  (Starbucks' purpose is coffee; Midas' purpose is to fix your car; your elementary school's purpose was supposed to be reading, writing and 'rithmetic - not political indoctrination.  But that mission had been well-and-truly hijacked at the schools my kids attended.)

...

BUT!  When my kids hit school, I was also quite surprised to find that most classroom teachers are sincere, well-intentioned, and -- even, neutral about politics.  The average female 3rd-grade teacher, even in Seattle, might very well be a member of your local Baptist church.  We only ran into one or two progressive "true believers" among the 30-odd classroom teachers we worked with.  (Of course, conservative "true believers" dare not touch on politics in the classroom in any way.)

My brother -- fine, let's suppose he was the only person in the world like this; it doesn't affect the debate -- was a University prof and a militant homosexual who had a radical antipathy to anyone right of him.  He spent his classroom time mostly on indoctrination.   We had been braced for an avalanche of classroom teachers in his mold.  When we got there, that simply was not the case.  At ANY K-12 school.  No teacher, kindergarten through 12th grade, even in Seattle, was anything like my brother.

In the big picture, the power brokers do win.  "Jessica has two moms" becomes part of the 1st-grade curriculum, and the teachers blink and do as they're told.  But day-to-day, teachers are not picking on boys.  They're trying to be empathetic and helpful.

Mo Dawg is clearly one of those sincere teachers with robust skills, who does his best to help all of his students.  If he's typical, he's wading through sludge to do it - for example, kids who come to class unprepared, uninterested, and unaccountable to family.  And if typical, he has no real tools to instill accountability himself (it's not like he's going to take a paddle to a misbehaving kid, or even send him home to his parents for discipline.  Yeah, I'm doodling, Teach.  Whatchoo gonna do about it?).  

If typical, he's working in a nightmare, no-win situation regarding many of the kids.

.

Q.  What can be done for boys?

A.  Camille Paglia is a lifelong educator, a 1960's feminist, an atheist, and a lesbian, so she's hardly locked in to the masculine point of view.  But she's capable of seeing the world through others' eyes.  She calls Emperor Has No Clothes on the entire basic K-12 paradigm, making two points about K-12 and our society:

  • Men must become "allowed to speak."  And in their own voices, not one coerced by feminists.
  • The K-12 system (a) restrains boys physically too much, and (b) actively beats masculinity out of them.

My son was like that.  He needed recess, and P.E., and woodshop, and sports after school, and more.  He is naturally a hunter-gatherer.  He needed to express physical energy, and with a lot of force.

To strap Arnold Schwarzenegger into tight clothes, and a tight schooldesk, for 6 hours, and tell him to sit there and say nothing?  That's a little different than asking the same thing of Patty Murray.  So we're asking whether men are naturally more physically forceful and aggressive.  

Have we learned nothing from anthropology?  Do women in Togo prefer to hunt wildebeest rather than to look after their birthchildren?

....

I remember a meeting with my son's teachers in a charter school, 9th grade.  The four teachers were all women, and effete ones at that.  Two were obviously frightened of my son's physical power.  Two others had sons of their own and were comfortable around him.

The two frightened ones made it their business to "shape" John into a more docile person.  The two others did not, but also did not show interest in dealing with his identity confusion.  They were neutral.

You think these four women had read "How to raise an energetic boy"?  It was their business to make him sit still.

....

Some subset of boys -- 30%? -- have it in them to go with the flow, do well in school, get good grades, while retaining their natural masculinity.  Some subset of them -- 10%? -- enjoy it.

.

Q.  How is it for girls?

A.  My daughter's experience:  it was all wonderful, from first day to last.  She settled into her chair, took the debate classes, enjoyed the information exchange and the talking and the reading and the listening and the sharing of feelings.

She might have been an exception.  Her friends certainly were no exceptions.  They also loved school from start to finish.

.

Q.  So what can be done?

A.  If the K-12 system were to legitimately shape its attitude so that boys' perspective were equal 50-50 with girls, it would have a better chance of achieving the Reading, Riting and Rithmetic aims.  What do you think the chances are of its doing that?  Are boys soon going to be allowed to speak in their own voices, disagreeing with feminism if they so choose, and so forth?

The entire K-12 paradigm, you realize, is very recent in history.  More natural and more persistent, over the last 5,000 years, are the ideas of family, apprenticeships, and trade guilds.  Who said you have to put a 9-year-old boy into a little confinement seat to spend his day?

This can still be done.  The moment it was practical, we got John into some contacts with trade unions, mentors in labor, and vocational opportunities.

........

Supposing the K-12 system were competitive?  And charter schools were just as accessible as the local NEA institutions?  Might the K-12 system adapt to serve children rather than faculty?

It's like the Seattle Times and the internet.  In the absence of criticism (and competition)...

You can argue this, that and the other about charter schools.  You can range 20 bullet points on the left and right sides of the ledger.  But at the most fundamental level, you won't argue about whether you want Chase to take over all banking in the U.S.  :- )

Dr's Prognosis:  the K-12 system, struggle as it might, is in a position analogous to that of the Seattle Times print newspaper.

.

Q.  So a kid without a dad is doomed?

A.  But this all goes to Moe's point that John had an ideal support environment in his own house.  John's family trumped the problems he had in the K-12 system.

A strong family can trump the problems imposed on it from the outside.  Love conquers all.

Without that, you get the 8th-grade foster kid who cannot write his name.  That young man is currently working as a janitor, and succeeding at it.  Even the most-abandoned kids (of whom I personally am one) can reach the age of 17 and then choose to succeed, despite a blank start in life.

.

Q.  What can be done about the feminization of America?

A.  It's like a sensei told me:  You can repress truth for 1,000 years.  But it will crop up like grass in your driveway.

Sports are way, WAY too popular in America, as are Jason Statham-type movie heroes.  We watch people behave in a truly masculine way.  Especially in Seattle, the delerious, drunk CLink crowds walk into their yellow-striped "masculinity zones" and go absolutely nuts.  Because they will have to walk back off the yellow-striped zones and act in "properly civilized" ways.

Your great-grandfather, fresh off butchering a hog the day before, didn't need to go to a sports event to blow off some steam.  He didn't need to self-identify, vicariously, with some other man who conquered his challenges through physical force.  He'd had quite enough physical confrontation himself that week, thank you.  With the mule who stepped on his foot, with the clods in the dirt, with the rain pounding his face as he dug a posthole.

His wife had probably not suffered the mule's hoof or the sprained ankle or the coal mine, but then again she did not have a back-pressure of testosterone that needed expression.

The SEATTLE Sounders get 2x the attendance of any other MLS team, and has one of the top 10 fanbases in world soccer.  This is ridiculous.  Seahawk fans are of course also ridiculous - rabid to a point well beyond "healthy fun."  It is a pressure valve syndrome.

.........

Baseball is different that way.  I would venture to guess that you and I -- most of us reading this -- are not particularly repressed in our daily self-expression.  It's no accident that our sports tastes are more measured.  

..........

America was built on freedoms.  The DEBATE of controversial issues made the country great.  

The OPPRESSION AND CENSORSHIP of opposing worldviews never leads to anything good.  I can call your most treasured beliefs "hate speech" or "insensitivity" or "dangerous" and I can attempt to silence you, rather than debating you.  But it will backfire on me.

Where the pendulum swings too far one way, it swings back, and you just hope it doesn't destroy the grandfather clock when it does.

In the meantime, God bless the MoeDogs who fight the good fight.  America still has a lot more freedom, and a lot more grassroots horsepower to the back wheels, than 99% of the countries that have ever existed.

Long live the internet,

Dr D

Add comment

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.