Guest Post by Morbo
A lot of ink has been spilled over the so-called “[tag]war against boys[/tag],” and lately I’ve found myself wondering if the whole thing isn’t a bit overblown — kind of like that “war against Christmas” awhile back.
Two factors heightened my suspicions: One, this story has been everywhere. After the umpteenth newsmagazine cover, the phenomenon started to look more like pack journalism and clever book marketing than a real problem. Two, many of the people promoting the idea are right-wing anti-feminist crusaders with a larger agenda.
I lacked the time and resources to debunk it myself, so I waited for credentialed researchers to do the job. They have arrived right on time. The Washington Post recently ran an interesting opinion piece by Caryl Rivers, a professor of journalism at Boston University, and Rosalind Chait Barnett, a senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, arguing that the “boys-in-crisis” line is largely a media-driven myth. The real problem, they assert, is not one of gender but of class and race.
The “boys-in-crisis” line got started in part because several studies have shown that these days, more young women go to college than young men. This is true — but only for certain demographic and racial groups. In well off suburbs, young white men continue to go to college at about the same rate as their female counterparts. Write Rivers and Barnett:
The alarming statistics on which the notion of a crisis is based are rarely broken out by race or class. When they are, the whole picture changes. It becomes clear that if there is a crisis, it’s among inner-city and rural boys. White suburban boys aren’t significantly touched by it. On average, they are not dropping out of school, avoiding college or lacking in verbal skills. Although we have been hearing that boys are virtually disappearing from college classrooms, the truth is that among whites, the gender composition of colleges is pretty balanced: 51 percent female and 49 percent male, according to the National Education Association. In Ivy League colleges, men still outnumber women.
This is not to say there is not a problem. There is — it’s just not the problem we think it is.
The problem is one of limited opportunities and soul-crushing poverty in inner-city and rural areas. I would argue that it boils down to resources and access to them. People who live in affluent suburbs simply do not tolerate sub par public schools and tumble-down libraries. They have the tax base and political influence to make sure this does not happen.
Affluent parents also often have the luxury of time and are themselves usually well educated. This makes a big difference because it means more parental involvement and an intellectual environment at home — critical factors in good education. If a child is told from first grade that he is expected to go to college, it’s no surprise when he does. A child whose parents volunteer in the classroom, buy him books and read themselves is better off than a child whose parents do none of these things.
I’m not suggesting that inner-city and rural parents are stupid or that they don’t care about their kids. They often lack the same resources — good schools and libraries and the ability to have a rich intellectual life — that many suburban parents take for granted. A single inner-city mom working two jobs to keep her head above water is unlikely to have much time left over to volunteer in the classroom or even attend a PTA meeting.
Finally, there is the question of money. In the well off suburbs, parents can usually afford to pay for their children’s higher education outright or have access to home equity loans, pre-payment plans or other options. For a poor kid, college seems financially out of reach in this age where Pell Grants and low-interest loans have dried up as tuition spirals ever higher.
So, the problem isn’t so much that boys are in crisis across the board. Rather, it’s that poor people are in crisis. No surprise there. But we don’t want to deal with that problem. It makes us uncomfortable. It forces us to confront unpleasant questions about class, income distribution and the wisdom of continuing to give huge tax cuts to the rich.
Rather than face these questions, it’s preferable to create a phony crisis and pretend there is an easy fix. One anti-feminist “[tag]boys-in-crisis[/tag]” writer actually suggested that all colleges have to do is encourage more fraternities and establish hockey teams to draw young men.
It’s an old story in America: We fail to properly identify the problem and then wonder why a solution eludes us.