Boys and Young Men DO Need Help
And boy, did this NYT headline get it wrong.
So, it’s been one week, and the New York Times hasn’t changed the headline of this garbage opinion piece.
Previously, I’ve written about how men of varying ages have been neglected from a mental health perspective. The more recent question is whether or not teenage and younger boys have been neglected educationally.
The above article by this author, who I think makes some decent points, doesn’t offer much in the way of substance about why young boys underperforming in school isn’t an issue.
Instead, this headline and op-ed are cannon fodder for what more and more people seem to silently think:
Young boys aren’t facing any problems currently, and this is a non-issue.
Let’s Break This Down
An overwhelming amount of Australian men are committing suicide, with recent statistics (as of this year) showing that 75% of all suicides are male.
Some are as young as 15 years old.
EdWeek recognizes that boys are underperforming in school because teachers feel they “can’t sit still, appear less focused,” and are “less motivated” than their female counterparts.
On top of that, they are also taking on fewer leadership roles in the classroom, which I believe runs counter to the idea from the Times’ piece that the author posits:
“I also wondered if boys are being socialized at home to know that they don’t have to put in as much effort as their mothers and sisters, which might have a knock-on effect. So much of doing well at school and in the modern work force is executive function and organization.
If every domestic task or household plan is carried out by a woman, boys may not learn that they need to try.
As one high schooler interviewed about why boys take on fewer leadership roles in school told Education Week’s Elizabeth Heubeck earlier this year, “Guys know that if they sit back and relax, something will get done by somebody else.’”
This is an incredibly short-sighted take, based on one quote from one student with an N=1 experience.
The author, who has two girls, fails to see that boys taking on fewer leadership roles isn’t just a failure of the parents (if we even feel safe making that assumption, because I don’t).
It’s a failure of the teachers, too, who are mostly female (about 77% of all elementary and high school teachers).
As we work our way out of cancel culture and these cringe conversations about “the patriarchy,” I think we honestly need to reckon with the fact that it’s okay to empower young boys.
They’re not going to turn into the next groping, cheating CEO just because a teacher told them to step up to the plate and lead a group assignment.
I’m not saying all teachers are failing at this, but to direct all the blame to parents when boys feel depressed, isolated, and like killing themselves is just plain asinine.
This seems to me like the crux of the issue, one that starts and ends in the classroom. If more boys were encouraged and incentivized to lead in the classroom, wouldn’t performance improvements follow?
The idea that boys are waited on hand and foot by their sisters and mothers is outlandish, putting it nicely, and hardly representative of most households these days, I would wager.
Find me swaths of young boys who don’t do any chores, and I’ll shut up.
Solutions
Let’s be real, no young boy wants to read about how girls are outperforming them in school. Even if they never outpace the girls in GPA or overall performance, they (and I’m speaking on behalf of any boy over the age of 13 with some testosterone in their system) will get defensive and competitive in an unproductive way over this statistic, if they ever get around to reading it with today’s attention spans.
Short of just caring more for the boys in your life, there are actionable ways to make sure that even if academic success doesn’t improve that young boys grow up feeling supported with a safety net of self-utility into their teenage and adult years.
Limiting Phone Use
“Touching grass,” as the kids say, is the most surefire way to get young boys more involved as the main characters of their lives. Generation Z and Generation Alpha practically live on their phones, detached from the analog world — that of actually doing tasks, making money through hard labor, and succeeding without ChatGPT — and relying on the automated world.
From the perspective of someone who didn't own a smartphone until the age of 17, parents, keep a cellphone or tablet away from your kids as long as you physically can.
TikTok might not be the Chinese Psyop we thought it was, but no doubt spending countless hours on that app is not fueling academic productivity.
Mental Health-Focused Extracurricular Activities
Sports are great, and as an aspiring dad who wants my future child to play a sport, even I understand that my son or daughter might not have an affinity for sports like I did. It has to come naturally.
And if it doesn’t, you have to push the envelope on social activity as much as possible in some arena.
Mock trial. Band. Drama club. Something.
Get the boys to do something together with their friends. The student interviewed in the EdWeek article attended an all-boys school where a student council of sorts organizes weekly to plan events, meetings, and collaborations with other schools on the importance of healthy peer-to-peer relationships.
Parents, if your school doesn’t have something like The One Love Club for your students, call your administrator right now.
Make it cool to talk about things not on the internet with other people next to you.
Destigmatized “Office Hours”
Contrary to the belief of Jordan Peterson that young boys aren’t successful because of a lack of male teachers, boys don’t need to see someone “who looks like them” in a role of success to believe they can be successful.
I believe this is more of a marginalized community topic, and men are represented, well…everywhere. So a lack of male teachers ain’t it.
Male or female, though, teachers can offer young boys a chance outside of the traditional classroom setting to learn 1:1.
I get that most teachers don’t get paid enough for this — a whole separate issue — but it’s something my teachers did for me. Even though it took me a while to silence my ego and stay after school for 20 minutes before practice to master some complex pre-calc formula, I did it, and so did quite a few other jocks at my small, catholic school.
It didn’t feel like we were behind. It felt like we were cared for. Like our teacher — a fresh college grad, if I’m remembering her correctly — didn’t just care about the security of her job, but that we passed her class on the first try.
I’m Not An Educational Expert,
But I think these could all be a start.
Are we sure dismissing young boys underperforming in school is a good idea?
Because I’m fucking not.
Diverse as the future of CEO’s, Presidents, and Leaders may eventually be, leaving one gender behind just because they’ve historically held the position more seems to be the wrong choice.*
*This isn’t to say this is the NYT author’s intent, but one might read it that way.