She said she absolutely did not get it - it was a completely foreign culture to her - but 'those teachers loved those boys.'

He's in great shape, while a number of the college-age boys in our circle aren't.



slacker boys

I keep hearing the same story.

Our friends' college-age girls are great. They're smart, confident, pulled-together, focused, etc. (With exceptions, of course.)

But the boys worry me.

They're not quite getting off the dime. One couple we talked to, while we were in L.A., said that their college-age son was probably going to have to drop out for awhile. He has a good therapist, so they're hoping the therapist will help him get on his feet.

Another friend said her son wanted to have fun and spend money, but didn't want to get a job.

Another told me a story about her cousin's family. The daughter is the usual family superstar: taking AP calculus, finishing high school, touring colleges, Bright Future Ahead, etc.

The son, who is a couple of years older, 'isn't like that.'

I'm hearing these stories too often — and I feel as if I'm watching this process unfold in some of the boys around me here.

They start out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

But by the time they reach 7th or 8th grade, they're not looking so good. The parents wonder where their bright little boy went, and the boys must wonder, too.

Here's a narrative I've heard more than once:

"He was one of those boys who loved math. When they'd be driving around in the car he'd make them give him math problems. Then he got to middle school and his grades weren't good. He was sloppy, he made careless errors. The school told his mom to sit with him when he does his homework, so she does. She enjoys it. But she says his bad grades are his own fault. He's sloppy."

I've heard a variant of this more than once, about more than one boy. I suspect there are more than a few children in this category, if only because the 'Disappointment Narrative' fits so well with the other Master Narrative, which has to do with aggressive Irvington parents thinking their kids are geniuses when they're not.

PAUSE: Let me say that NO Irvington teacher or administrator would say, flat-out, Irvington parents are aggressive people who think their kids are geniuses when they're not.

Instead, this feeling is simply there, present in many, many exchanges. I can't tell you how many times I've been told, by people at all levels of the district — and by other parents — that 'pushy parents' got their kids into Phase 4 when they didn't belong. It's a shared narrative.

Last but not least: I have no idea how often girls are the subject of these narratives. The Pushy Parents In Phase 4 meme could be an equal opportunity storyline for all I know.

Still, I get the feeling that girls don't get as much grief for being girls as boys do.



what goes unsaid

What goes unsaid is that this isn't just about boys being hyper and girls being able to sit still.

There's a political problem.

From Day One, elementary schools stress the existence of oppressed groups, and tell their sad stories.

Always, the oppressors are white men. Always, always, always.

OK, the oppressors are white men. I don't have a problem with that! My problem is: there's no reason in the world for a 7-year old to feel that he is personally resonsible for slaughtering native populations around the world.

Each and every year, there's a women's history month & a black history month. These Months are faithfully observed and celebrated in the schools.

There's no longer a Take Our Daughter to Work Day, because somebody sued, but apparently its official replacement — Take Our Sons and Daughters To Work — is just as bad. (I can't remember if Irvington does TOS&DTW or not, but if so there's zero propaganda involved. A serious Plus in the Irvington column.)

When he was little, every time women's history month rolled around Christopher would ask me why there wasn't 'men's history?'

To him, it only seemed fair that there should be a history month for his group, too.

When black history month rolled around, he'd ask me why there wasn't white history.

Exactly how verboten is that question?

ANSWER: VERY VERBOTEN.

So there I'd be, trying to make him understand that he could not under any circumstances suggest a White History Month at school, and I'd be trying to do this without making him feel he'd just said something shameful and repellant.

For his part, Ed would explain, reasonably, that historians didn't used to write about women & blacks very much, so women's history month and black history month existed for that reason only. Ed would also tell him he didn't believe in women's history month & black history month. That was the right thing to say, but it added fuel to the fire. If his dad didn't think there should be women's history month and black history month, and his dad was a historian, then why did they have women's history month and black history month?

Then Christopher would want to know, constantly, how come on TV the boys were always the stupid, weak ones who lost. I'm serious about this. On Nickelodeon, according to Christopher, the girl characters are not only smarter, they're physically stronger. When they play football with the boys, or fight with the boys, they win.

A friend's son, in 6th grade, asked her this:

How come 'feminist' means 'hates men' and it's good, but 'misogynist' means 'hates women' and it's bad?

They are a liberal Democratic family, and this boy has heard nothing but good things about feminism. I assume his mother considers herself a feminist.

Yet her son believes that 'feminist' means 'hates men.' (She doesn't hate or dislike men, and has certainly never said such a thing to her son.)

Then there's the 'feminization' of content at school. While technically we don't have book banning in the U.S., you don't see a lot of kids reading The Matchlock Gun. (Which is a FANTASTIC novel, btw. Riveting.)



Lionel Tiger on male original sin

Meanwhile, the publicly financed educational system is at least 20% better at producing successful female students than male, yet hardly anyone sees this as remarkable gender discrimination. While there is a vigorous national program to equalize male and female rates of success in science and math, there is not a shred of equivalent attention to the far more central practical impact of the sharp deficit males face in reading and writing.