Discouraging Our Boys

Boys are continually being short-changed in western educational systems by being denied access to curricula that contain much that is of interest to them. They are also being forced daily to deal with their school work through a feminine and feminist perspective.

But it surely makes no sense at all to disadvantage educationally the very group of people - males - upon whom virtually the entire progress of the human race has depended, and upon whom, clearly, it will continue to depend.

Here is the outline of a conversation that I had with a bright, keen ten-year old boy only a few days ago.

"How's school going, George?"

" It's OK."

"Are you getting on well?"

"Yep: I'm in the top group for everything."

"That's great. Well done. What's your favourite subject?"

"Maths."

"Are you good at Maths?"

"Yes. Quite good."

"And what about the language work - the English?"

"Hmm. It's OK."

"Do you like it?"

"No. Not really."

"Why not?"

"We have to write stories."

"Don't you like writing stories?"

"Nah."

"But surely you can write whatever you like - most of the time?"

"We have to keep writing about people's feelings."

"No, we can't. We have to keep writing about people's feelings."

And the following is a true anecdote concerning a young fellow who was being taught by my missus about 4 years ago. This was one of the brightest children that she had ever come across. He ended up being offered scholarships in all the top London schools to which he had later applied.

At age 10.5 his Maths performance levels were about the same as those of an average 16 year old. His reasoning ability was easily in the top 0.5% of children his age. He was also a very hard worker. And do you know what he did whenever he had to write a story?

He cried. And he cried. And he cried.

He cried. And he cried. And he cried.

And, without any exaggeration, it could take him an hour just to write four sentences of 'a story', so upset, so resentful and so helpless did he feel at having to do what, for him, was virtually an impossible task.

Well. How many boys are going to end up making a living writing stories in which they have to describe people's feelings?

Hardly any.

So, what is the point in forcing all of our boys to spend so much of their precious educational time (starting usually at about age 7.00) doing such things?

Where is the benefit? - given that it has such a negative affect on the attitudes of boys toward education.

And if there are, indeed, any good reasons why boys should be given some insight into the art of writing stories that require the analyses of 'feelings', then why can this aspect of the curriculum not be delayed until the boys are about 13 or 14?

And if teachers think that they really must get boys at a very early age to think about 'feelings' during their lessons, well, that's fine.

That is not the problem!

The problem is that they are forcing boys at an early age to spend hundreds of educational hours devoted to something that, by and large, has an extremely negative affect on all of their education and, for the vast majority of boys, there does not seem to be any benefit to be gained from doing this.

Indeed, there is no valid objective research yet carried out to demonstrate that getting young boys to write about their feelings or anybody else's feelings is of any value at all! Further, of course, if it was natural for boys to want to write about feelings whenever they create their stories then, presumably, they would happily do so.

It is also worth noting that our politically-corrected teaching profession has for some time been advocating strongly that children should not have their spellings or their punctuation corrected (especially with red pens) in their creative writing because this might discourage them from being creative.

Why is it then that the fact that boys are hugely discouraged from the whole subject area by having to attend to 'feelings' both in their writing and in their reading does not seem to trouble the teaching profession at all!?

Dec 2007

Boys To Be Taught Netball And Dancing Schools have been told to encourage boys to play netball and take dance lessons in the name of equality.

Thousands of schools are being forced to ensure that pupils are more "gender balanced" as part of discrimination legislation introduced this year.

They must also ensure more girls study traditionally masculine subjects such as science, while increasing numbers of boys take options such as drama or dance.

Also see,

Stop Helping The Boys

... which provides fairly strong proof to buttress my claim that there has been a concerted political effort to undermine the education of boys and that some very senior public officials are actually trying to block any extra help for boys.

(This is happening all over the western world, not just in the UK.)

Also see,

Lerning to Reed