The Washington Post writes up some new research indicating that the much-fretted-over "boy crisis" in education doesn't actually exist -- "both sexes have stayed the same or improved on standardized tests in the past decade" and family socioeconomic factors are a much larger demographic determinant of outcomes than is gender. Of course if you read Sara Mead's June 2006 paper on this topic you already know all this.
« Only Time Will Tell.. | Main | Veterans' Benefits »
The Myth of the Boy Crisis
20 May 2008 12:41 pm
Comments (41)
This article also says nothing about the gender gap in colleges.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1104051
The whole notion of the boy crisis is the fact that so few of them are going to college.
Now, if you don't consider that a crisis, then fine. There isn't a problem. But, to me, a paper that avoids this key component is pretty unpersuasive.
Matt: I'm removing you from my favorite list. I've tried reading your blog because Andrew Sullivan seems to like you so much. And you talk about the NBA.
But I really think you should stop the blog, take 10 years off doing whatever, and then start it back up again. Because currently, you sound like an out of touch Ivy League grad. Someone without any real, life experience.
Justin, blogs are generally a substitute for the op-ed columns of newspapers, not a subtitute for real, substantive research, which is done by people who know what they're talking about (which eliminates just about everyone in Washington, DC not working for a university, laboratory, or a long-time civil service position requiring serious expertise).
If you have higher expectations from MattY than you would out of your average think-tank fellow or newspaper op-ed columnist, you're going to be pretty disappointed.
Re Justin's comment "The whole notion of the boy crisis is the fact that so few of them are going to college "
-----------
As has been discussed here in several threads, the question is whether that's all that big a deal.
Whether college -- or at least certain majors --is any longer an intelligent investment for the oncoming future
See e.g,
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/wheres_the_skill_upgrades.php#comments and
comments
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/wage_gap.php#comments and comments
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/harvard_as_hedge_fund.php#comments and comments
Justin, you lose points for not using the phrase 'trust-fund scumbag.'
I do think the college numbers should be looked at in the 'big picture,' but they also need to be looked at in the 'bigger picture'-- what do those boys who don't go to college make five years, ten years out? Are they delaying college and getting their degrees later?
Anyone have any speculation or data on that?
Um, Matt, the posters here are making valid points. As the Times article points out, the study suggests that girls are still being cheated because . . . (white, professional) women don't receive equal pay for equal work. While an Ivy-educated female executive at Lehman Brothers may earn less than her male counterparts, this has exactly NOTHING to do with the challenges that face our boys across the race/class spectrum. The study oozes a vile man-hating quality which in no way advances the cause of gender equality.
My wife -- a Berkeley-educated feminist with years of experience in New York City government but also the mother of three sons -- practically snarled as she read the article to me, an antipathy that goes to the heart of the conflict between Second and Third Wave feminists. This kind of older white female "victimization," further embodied by Geraldine Ferraro's hateful comments, explains why so many women under the age of 45 prefer Obama to Clinton.
Frankly, I'm shocked that you and Sara Mead would applaud the naked anti-male bigotry here. While my reaction is not as harsh as Justin's, I do feel you owe your readers a more nuanced take, the sooner the better.
I repeat the point I made above. Matthew's post above only addressed part of the subject because it is part of a discussion here that's been going on for several days.
It's not meant as a standalone essay but a continuation of a debate. Someone coming in late doesn't realize that.
The study oozes a vile man-hating quality which in no way advances the cause of gender equality.
Wow. I have no idea what article you just read, or how bile-colored your sunglasses are, but I'd be interested in seeing even one piece of evidence.
Somehow, citing pay inequality - which is real! and you acknowledge it as real! - amounts to "vile man-hating"?
Belle Waring wuz rite about this comments section. Yuck.
"...the naked anti-male bigotry here"
This seems like a good time to ask the ever-popular question "What brand of crack are you smoking?"
I read the article. I read it again. I don't see any evidence of bigotry whatsoever, neither naked nor fully clothed, nor any intermediate state of undress. I see a very bland, poorly written article about two rival interest groups touting two different sets of data, which is pretty much business as usual in the Washington Post.
For example, Alan Blinder --former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve -- certainly questions Justin's claim that "The whole notion of the boy crisis is the fact that so few of them are going to college."
Look at Alan Blinder's essay in Foreign Affairs -- cited here in the earlier discussion:
I'm not sure when this really got going, but the contemporary version of the backlash against feminism is a bunch of whining about the dire plight of boys and men. You hear this sort of thing quite often with racist groups these days, too. (Oh, the poor, oppressed white people!)
The only news here is that the most privileged groups in our society have learned how to effectively play the identity politics game.
It seems that BryklynLibrul and Dave didn't follow MY's link to Sara Mead's article, which certainly addresses the variation in college enrollment:
"To hear commentators tell it, college campuses are becoming all-female enclaves, suffering from a kind of creeping Wellesleyfication. But Figure 4 shows a different story—men are enrolling in college in greater numbers than ever before and at historically high rates.
"This is undeniably good news for the nation, as more and more future workers will need college credentials to compete in the global economy. Why, then, all the anxiety? Because, as Figure 5 shows, women are increasing college enrollment at an even faster rate."
...etc.
Come on, Matt, please read the articles before you link them. The headline doesn't match the data:
"AAUW's study does show female students outperforming male students in some measures. Women have earned 57 percent of bachelor's degrees since 1982 and outperformed boys on high school grade-point averages. In 2005, male students had a GPA of 2.86 and girls, 3.09."
The Post mislead their readers, and so did you by linking the article.
Just to clarify: back in the early '90s, when the Sadker study revealed the structural problems girls face in education, there was a strong consensus that something needed to be done. (The Sadkers even released a book version of their research, "Failing At Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls" -- and there were a couple of other related titled that tackled the topic.) Over the course of the '90s, though, the pendulum swung the opposite direction as educators over-corrected, something Christina Hoff Somers popularized in her work and for which she was vilified by many, many Second Wave feminists, who simply could not accept the idea that in subtle, under-the-radar ways boys might be treated in worse ways than girls.
Anecdotally, during that decade I worked for several self-proclaimed Second Wavers in a female-dominated media industry. Frequently in meetings I was the only man in the room. And I can't tell you how often I was expected to chuckle at castration jokes from these older, well-educated white women. Seriously. For someone who considered himself progressive, who'd studied Nancy Chodorow and Simone de Beauvoir and other feminist writers in college, this was an eye opener: that women with power often behave as abysmally as men. Does this color my response to how this research is presented? Absolutely -- and for every father and mother of a boy, it should.
My apologies to Sara Mead if I misread her position. It's crucial, though, to address what's going wrong with the ways we educate our sons, paying special attention to the glaring issues of African-American boys. They deserve better.
"men are enrolling in college in greater numbers than ever before and at historically high rates"
There are lies, damn lies and statistics. This proves that maxim. Sure there are more men in colleges in absolute numbers, but that is because of population growth. The fact is the ratio of men to women in colleges has been declining steadily since 1970.
The fact is the ratio of men to women in colleges has been declining steadily since 1970.
But has the overall proportion of men going to college, as a percentage of the population, been increasing?
From the WaPo article:
"The report by the nonprofit American Association of University Women, which promotes education and equity for women, reviewed nearly 40 years of data on achievement from fourth grade to college and for the first time analyzed gender differences within economic and ethnic categories."
Yup, I'm sure this organization did an objective study and had no interest in reaching a certain conclusion.
Matt, please.
whenever a thread involving gender comes up I am reminded that middle-class white guys excel in two areas: libertarianism and misogyny....
whenever a thread involving gender comes up I am reminded that middle-class white guys excel in two areas: libertarianism and misogyny....
"I can't tell you how often I was expected to chuckle at castration jokes from these older, well-educated white women"
ok, so the Duke, the Cardinal and the castrato walk into this bar, see......
(is this guy for real!?)
Yep, Nick, anytime the subject comes up, the sheer number of sexist comments on a liberal blog demonstrate just how much sexism is still considered acceptable compared to, say, racism. It's quite astonishing and depressing.
But you're right, of course: it's represented disproportionately among liberals here because a certain kind of male is over-represented here.
Yes, Nick, there were numerous times when my fifty-something Smith-educated boss joked in an editorial meeting, "I know some guys I'd like to castrate . . . "
Yes, this did happen. Multiple times. And I was the only man in the room. And my younger female colleagues were horrified and embarrassed. There were several instances when female superiors said things to me that had a man said to a woman employee would have easily constituted grounds for a firing offense.
Reverse sexism does exist, Nick. It may be less overt and insidious and widespread as the traditional kind, but it's out there.
The AAUW study may well reveal some important trend lines about gender and education. But Linda Hallman's comments, as reported in the Times, were egregiously sexist, which is why so so many younger feminist voices, your Dahlia Lithwicks and Emily Bazelons and Hanna Rosins, are speaking out against that generation, saying "Not In Our Name."
Keith Ellis, I'd really like to see some evidence for the assertion that school-aged boys are "privileged" when compares to school-aged girls. Their outcomes aren't better. Are they given more opportunities in some way that I'm unaware of? Thinking back to my high school experience, all of the advanced placement classes were filled overwhelmingly with girls, except for the science classes, which were like 50-50. I don't think that means girls are privileged, but it's hard to argue that boys are.
It's possible to dispute the nonsense that boys are doing badly without arguing the converse (that girls are suffering).
The college deficit is almost exclusively among poor and working class boys, who are also the populations that see a lot of boys going into the military.
The "college" needed for many female oriented jobs (preschool teacher, nurse, secretary) is also skewing the results. Everyone thinks that "more girls going to college" means "more girls are becoming lawyers and doctors" and this is nonsense. More girls are going to college and becoming secretaries. Boys are becoming plumbers, which still doesn't require college, and still pays much more.
Where boys really suffer bias isn't in test scores, but in grades, and the best way to solve that is stop allowing teachers to issue grades by any standards they choose.
"Their outcomes aren't better."
Of course their outcomes are better. Men have more opportunities and make more money than women. If you can't tell the difference between middle-school grades and real-life, then I'm afraid there's not much hope for you.
When I was referring to "outcomes," I meant, the shape boys and girls are in when they leave high school and in the few years following. I don't think you can chalk up everything that goes right or wrong in someone's life to how they were treated by the school system. On the other hand, their SAT scores, whether they get into college, and so on, are pretty direct outcomes of their school experience.
And there's no need to be rude.
It's also not clear that men have better outcomes overall, in the sense you were suggesting. Men make more money on average, but they're also far more likely to wind up in prison or dead at a young age. Sure, those things are often the result of freely chosen life courses, but then, jobs and wages are often the result of freely chosen life courses, too.
I don't get it...
Boys are improving, Girls improving faster = no crisis
Minorities improving, Whites improving faster = crisis
Standardized tests = bad, unreliable if they show racial/ethnic achievement gap
Standardized tests = not bad, unreliable if they show boys and girls relatively equal
Grades = important for college
Grades = unimportant for measuring gender gap
Let's look at some evidence from somebody who knows what he's talking about, Nobel Laureate James Heckman, who wrote in 2007 a study of the high school dropout rate over the last half century. He noted that the high school dropout rate had worsened from a minimum point around 1970 and that:
"The decline in high school graduation is almost exclusively concentrated among young males. The overall male graduation rate fell 7 percentage points from the first to the last cohort, while the female rate fell by only 1 point ..."
By the way, The college graduation rate has been improving, reaching 24 percent for men and 36 percent for women born in 1980. But even this growth has been tailing off lately as the high school graduation slump feds through.
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080101_dropout.htm
It was a "study" by a comically biased group. Rather a joke actually.
Talk about a pre-ordained conclusion. This was worthy of Bush contemplating Iraq in 2002.
Now Matt, of course, went to prepschool and then Harvard.
He's never attended a class with an African-American or working class (what few there were, of any race) male who hadn't first been screened by an admission's office.
He has no idea what public school is like.
None.
Had 'The Wire' (Matt's number one source for all things of color. 'The NBA on TNT' is, of course, number two.) done more on this topic Matt might have strong feelings on this.
It didn't so Matt's just ignorantly copping the feminist line. Then, yeah, there's his girlfriend, Nice plug, dude.
If nothing else the overt bias of the study is pretty fucking glaring.
"both sexes have stayed the same or improved on standardized tests in the past decade"
Yes and the Rich as well as the Poor both saw rises in their real incomes since 1981. That's not the issue. Are the gains to the real income of the poor, in percentage terms, equal to or keeping pace with the gains of the rich? Is the gap widening?
The tortured rationalizations in this thread are embarrassing. For example, rory is confused that "boys are improving, girls improving faster = no crisis" while "minorities improving, whites improving faster = crisis". Well, moron, the reason is because whites have always had a lead over minorities and so this is only more of the same injustice. In the case of boys and girls, boys have always been the privileged ones and it's going to take a big lead, for a long time, by girls to make up for that difference.
The disadvantages that women face compared to men are large and ubiquitous. The degree to which boys are supposedly disadvantaged relative to girls, if indeed they are, is insignificant in comparison. If girls are advantaged, the overall result when they enter the world as adults is going to be a moderate improvement in their continuing disadvantage relative to males.
Meanwhile, men are whining when women—anywhere, in any context—have an advantage, ever, as if any of these examples are egregious instances of injustice that society must correct immediately. You know what that attitude is an example of? Privilege. It's the rich guy insisting that the police pay a great deal of attention to the case of his stolen sports car.
The way that white men complain and whine about any little injustice they face is pathetic and embarrassing. Get a fucking clue and a sense of perspective.
There is a complete air of unreality about Matt's post, and Keith is a particularly obnoxious defender of this sort of thing.
Boys have a problem with being sent to prison in droves.
Boys have a problem with being medicated, expelled, and driven out of the school system at wildly disproportionate rates.
The male to female ratio, especially in the humanitites, has become incredibly lopsided, and matters across the board are even more dramatically skewed among minorities.
There are large disparities in grades, they enter college at a lower rate than girls, a smaller fraction of them graduate college, and so on.
These are all facts, and we get self-serving cherry picking that tries to sweep these things under the rug. Statistical evidence like this was used, properly, to improve matters for girls; it's now clear that boys have some unmet needs in the system. And now its women who are not taking it seriously, along with the PCer-than-thou male crowd exemplified by Keith. The only tortured rationalizations here are from defenders of the status quo.
I find it sadly humorous that you are calling my arguments "cherrypicking". The definition of this fallacy is that one picks relatively rare examples of something to buttress an argument while ignoring the ubiquitous counterexamples. I didn't even offer examples, but you have! And those have been some ways in which boys and men are (allegedly) systematically discriminated against, even though they are few and far between. In contrast, the ways in which girls and women are systematically discriminated against are many and ubiquitous. Your argument exemplifies "cherrypicking". It's dishonest and, as you're male, it's special pleading.
It'd be nice if the "unmet needs in the system" of boys were met. It'd also be nice if everyone had a pony. Concentrating upon the few disadvantages that boys face when girls and women still face such strong and ubiquitous challenges is morally suspect. Why do you concentrate on the smaller problem at the expense of the larger? Your obvious concern for the fact that I'm a male, which is entirely irrelevant, reveals that your motivation is as a male, protecting your own interests. Don't pretend that you're concerned about social justice. You're just jealously protecting your own privilege.
I guess that minority males don't exist in your lily-white universe Keith. I'm not surprised; you simply assert as fact these disadvantages that young women today face which are "strong" and "ubiquitous", and that boys aren't facing any special problems of their own. Progressives lost a great deal from identity politics, and I have nothing but contempt for the oppression sweepstakes.
Another obnoxious tactic you employ is the implicit zero-sum fallacy. e.g. re-evaluating zero-tolerance policies (which have a disproportionate effect on boys, especially minority boys) and our approach to incarceration somehow comes at the expense of girls.
You assert that I have to care about your mealy-mouthed platitudes, and that you can dismiss anything I say because of my gender. I care about my son, I care about my daughter, and I know your type. There is a certain sort of holier-than-thou PC male that I got to know and dislike from many years in progressive circles. The quick accusations of bias; the assertion of contested things as facts; rejecting any inquiry into such claims as bigotry; and so on.
You are the one asserting privilege: the privilege to mock and shout down anyone who doesn't subscribe to your particular dogma. I think it's a bloody crime that we're indiscriminately diagnosing children, mostly boys, as ADD and medicating them. You're mewling about how I have no right to be worried about that since girls have it "so much worse." You're assigning me motives I don't have, and putting claims into my mouth I didn't make. And you're also doing so in an obnoxious and aggressive manner (again, consistent with the PC avenger theme) and making no attempt to even acknowledge there may be an underlying issue.
You just made the claim, twice, that I deny that "boys are facing any special problems of their own". That's untrue. I never made any such assertion. This, along with your absurd accusation of "cherrypicking" makes it hard to take anything you write seriously.
Your preoccupation with "political correctness" says more than you intend. And since you're so supposedly concerned about minority men, let me ask you this: if minority boys were getting slightly higher grades than white boys and had slightly higher college matriculation rates, would you be leading the charge to correct a supposed discrimination against white boys even when white men were still getting better jobs and making more money and had greater opportunity than minority boys, better middle-school grades and college enrollment notwithstanding?
I hope not. But if someone did have such strong concerns (and you'll find exactly this theme on racist websites), then wouldn't you be suspicious of their motives if they were white?
The concern for men here in these comments, and in the so-called "men's rights movement", and elsewhere is disproportionate and almost without exception a reactionary opposition to feminism. While it is seen by many or even most as acceptable here, the equivalent special pleading about the plight of white people is correctly seen as a reactionary racism.
For example, I don't recall if it was you who put the canard about "men being victims of violence more than women" on the table. But it's a revealing claim to make. It's true only if you don't include domestic violence in the statistics. It's also only true as an average—the risk to a man of violence is extremely dependent upon socioeconomic status. In contrast, the rate of violence against women, including rape and domestic violence, is much less dependent upon socioeconomic status and is distributed much more evenly.
This sort of thing is the very essence of the dishonest fallacy of cherrypicking, which you absurdly accuse me of.
I don't categorically deny that boys may be being discriminated against in the US in primary and secondary education. I'm not convinced of it, but I've not claimed that it wasn't true and I can certainly imagine that it might be. But discrimination against girls and women is still both wide and deep with unambiguous and incontestable economic and cultural effects. If this supposed discrimination against boys was resulting in a society-wide discrimination against men, it'd be something to be especially worried and angry about. But it's not. It's not even close to doing this. Therefore, being especially worried and angry about it is disproportionate and morally suspect, especially when it's a man who is worried and angry, as it almost always is.
A hundred years ago—before women were allowed to vote—men were incarcerated more often than women, men were more often the victims of violent crime (outside the home) than women, and girls did better in elementary school than boys. Most of your arguments, then, would have applied to boys and men of 1908. Was there, therefore, a crisis in discrimination against boys and men in 1908? Of course there wasn't. If women had been, in general, otherwise equally advantaged as men, then it would have been a crisis. But they weren't, in fact quite the opposite. Well, quite the opposite is still true. There's only marginally more reason to worry about these disadvantages of boys and men than there was a hundred years ago. There may come a time when such concerns are worthy of great concern and outrage. That time isn't now and great concern and outrage about the "plight" of boys and men is, if anything, even less appropriate than concern and outrage about the "plight" of white Americans.
Finally, you write: "and I have nothing but contempt for the oppression sweepstakes". Really? You seem to have a great deal invested in the "oppression sweepstakes" with your claims about the "special problems" of boys and the "bloody crimes" being committed against them. If you actually knew what "mealy-mouthed" and "platitudes" were, almost every accusation you have made would apply to yourself. It's a tour de force of hypocrisy.
As the report points out, boys have made gains. In standardized tests, their scores have been climbing steadily. Their high school graduation rates are rising, and more of them than ever are going on to higher education. If these numbers are all pointing up, then where's the "boys' crisis" in education?
· Girls outperform boys in some areas, boys outperform girls in others. One gender does not seem to be harming the other. The crisis in education is economically based.
· There is a crisis in education: for African American and Hispanic students and students from lower-income families — BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS.
Keith, I love it when I am called a moron... its such a step up from what my wife calls me.
Anyways... I read your last post and I think you are confusing issues.
I am not disputing that their is sexism and discrimination against women.
What I would argue is that our current school system, style of teaching, social expectations, are all aimed at women.
Boys and girls score similarly on standardized tests, yet boys have significantly worse GPA's and college graduation rates then women.
The everybody is doing better line is just a bunch of crock.
The standard of living among families in poverty is significantly higher than it was 50 years ago, yet we still have poverty.
Everything is relative...
Keith, I love it when I am called a moron... its such a step up from what my wife calls me.
Anyways... I read your last post and I think you are confusing issues.
I am not disputing that their is sexism and discrimination against women.
What I would argue is that our current school system, style of teaching, social expectations, are all aimed at women.
Boys and girls score similarly on standardized tests, yet boys have significantly worse GPA's and college graduation rates then women.
The everybody is doing better line is just a bunch of crock.
The standard of living among families in poverty is significantly higher than it was 50 years ago, yet we still have poverty.
Everything is relative...
Comments closed June 03, 2008.
| 
Heads in the Sand
And we all know standarized tests are the only measure worth looking at. Is this some kind of odd way of admitting that you think No Child Left Behind is a great idea?
Posted by Dave | May 20, 2008 1:12 PM