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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives I just finished a book I wish I had never started. Several times through the book I was tempted to put it down and I should have. It would have saved me some of my precious reading time. The book is, "The War Against Boys" by Chistina Hoff Sommers. Her subtitle is "How misguided feminism is harming our young men." That subtitle is a better clue to what the book is really about. The title could only be seen as an attempt to market the book through shock values. It is inflammatory and misleading. I came across a reference to the book in an article by Gerry Garibaldi which was sent to me by a friend. I should have quit after I read the article. After reading the book, I realized the article did not interpret the facts as I would have. So far as I could decipher, the real purpose of Sommers' book was to trash other feminists and perceived feminists. That seems to be one of the ongoing sporting activities of the feminist movement. If these women spent as much energy going for the brass ring as they do trashing each other they might well become a real force in America. They might well liberate all of us. When we finally reach the point where we are not compelled to create special organizations to promote special demographic groups, we will be liberated. Mankind will have come one hell of a long way. Sommers was not particularly discriminate in her attacks on other feminists. Although she singled our Gilligan and Steinem for special treatment, she unleashed a broadside against a whole gang of feminists and feminist organizations. Most people know of Steinem as the founder of Ms. Magazine. Gilligan, who is less known, is a professor of gender studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Other targets of Sommers' blasts are the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the Wellesley Center for Research on Women, the National Organization of Women (NOW) and the Federal Department of Education in all its guises. We can guess the reason Sommers and many other feminists like to trash Steinem. Steinm, after all, built a successful business and gave the big living lie to the myth of the glass ceiling. Of course, on the other hand, Steinem is not really a feminist, she is an opportunist. She wears the feminist cloak, but she has more in common with Hugh Hefner than she does with Betty Friedan. They have identical MO's. It's standard procedure in marketing. You identify a demographic group then you design an advertising vehicle to attract and pander to that group. Then you sell them out to the marketing industry. It's the same thing AARP does so well. For sure, there is a war in our educational system, but it
is not a war particularly against boys. It is a war against common
sense and Sommers is one of the main antagonists. This war has
been going on since the beginning of human consciousness. Sommers is strident, but for me she does not make her case. What she is describing is no different that the built in anti-male bias that has always existed in our schools. I experienced it and every man I have know, except a kid I knew named Donald, has experienced it. Donald was a shin kicker. He did not need to be conditioned to behave like a girl. He was raised in an all female environment and his behavior revealed it. The other boys would not associate with him. No one even bother to punch him out. The thing is, kids are naturally curious and want to understand. Given their head they will tend to confront us, challenge us, and constantly ask why. For young girls, this natural tendency is softened by the other natural tendency to nurturing. That nurturing tendency is what we reenforce in girls at the expense of their intellectual tendencies. In boys we reenforce the confrontational tendency at the expense of their less pronounced gentle side. Even with the use of polarizing and inflammatory words Sommers falls short of her goal He evidence is very weak. She substitutes worsens for declines to give a spin to a marginal fact. She likes words like timorous and phrases like dire consequences. Here is one example. "Girls evince more positive academic behavior," or how about, "Girls are more engaged." Huh? Talk about soft words for evidence! I think it means they suck up better than boys. They do not ask questions, they do as they are told, they believe what they are told without question. Is that what we want? When she talks of boys being behind girls academically he standards of measurement are tests and studies. Hard facts from test scores and studies are given equal weight. In the tests, the statistics do not show a significant difference. Although there is a separation, the numbers given are well within the range of normal error. True, the survey studies show larger discrepancies, but who created them and what was their bias? How can we know? What it all comes down to is Sommers' view that boys are not dong as well academically as girls, but the separation is based on standard tests. These standard tests are what the kids must pass for the schools to get the bribe money from the government agencies. They are also an indicator of the kind of financial success a kid might achieve as an adult. So what does that mean? The standard of success Sommers and every other protagonist holds up is the college educated comfortable middle class drone. This is the American ideal, a 5 or 6 bedroom house in the suburbs with a 2 acre lawn, a 4 car garage, and kids who become sociopaths. I am her to insist, these are not the people who are going to solve our pressing problems. In the light of what we currently face, this whole argument about boys and girls becomes irrelevant. We need geniuses and what Sommers and her appointed adversaries advocate will not give us geniuses. At best they will give us formula type engineers, people who have to be told what to develop because they cannot think independently. They have been conditioned to not think, to obey, to do as they are told. Our educational system has never produced genuses and it never will so long as they concentrate on behavior rather than learning. Neither Sommers nor her bogeymen (bogeywomen?) ever look at
or think about education. Their whole focus is on behavior. In
a very real sense all of these protagonists are waging a war
on common sense. In real education, behavioral issues would not
be relevant, because the kids would be to busy having fun learning.
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