ENDEAVOUR FORUM NEWSLETTER No. 115, JUNE 2004

Home | Contact Us | Newsletters

A landmark study launched in March 2004 for the Australian Family Association by Bob Birrell, Virgina Rapson and Clare Hourigan of Monash University's Centre for Population & Urban Research, entitled "MEN AND WOMEN APART: THE DECLINE OF PARTNERING IN AUSTRALIA" highlighted the plight of a growing underclass of men, victims of the economic changes of the past 20 years as manufacturing and blue collar jobs for men without post-school education decline.These single, low-income males are not in full-time work and have insufficient resources to marry and have a family. This has a serious effect on the birth rate in Australia. While the AFA emphasises that the solution to this situation demands industry policies to place the underclass of men in meaningful full-time work, my view is that the source of the problem begins much earlier, i.e. in the disadvantage in educational outcomes for boys compared to girls. 

In the developed world, the serious gap in educational achievement of boys compared to girls, and the horrendous consequences that flow from this for their future employment, marriage and life prospects has become apparent over the past thirty years. 

I became aware of the statistics during my research as a Member of the Victorian Committee on Equal Opportunity in Schools in 1975. This Committee, comprised entirely of feminists and education bureaucrats (who are nearly all feminists too) was dedicated to improving the educational opportunities for girls. It was alleged that girls were not doing as much science and maths as boys, and were being channelled into the humanities and domestic economics. However, when I looked more closely at these disparities, I found that sex differences in interest and aptitude played a significant role in the subject choices of girls, and a far more disturbing picture emerged of the failure of many boys to achieve basic standards of literacy. It was apparent that it was boys who were seriously disadvantaged in education, not girls. 

Although the statistics I quote are from Australia, they are similar to data from the USA and UK and other English-speaking countries, and broadly apply to all the First World developed nations. Boys outnumber girls by about 4: 1 in needing remedial or special education. In Australia, the success rate of girls in the matriculation exam is approximately 15% higher than for boys. Many boys fail to achieve basic standards of literacy in elementary school, and this burden of disadvantage affects all their future educational, employment and life prospects. However teacher unions and the feminista who control education are unwilling to acknowledge this, let alone do anything about it. 

As an example, although the Victorian Committee on Equal Opportunity in Schools made a number of recommendations to our state government, they deleted my recommendation, although it was supported by a sub-committee on remedial education, that before students entered secondary school, there should be an effective remedial program so that no child was unable to read and write at the appropriate age and grade level. The reason my recommendation was deleted was because the entire ideology behind the Committee's work was that it was girls who were disadvantaged, and if they had to show the data for the recommendation on remedial education it would be obvious that it was not girls but boys who were the disadvantaged group. So an entire generation of boys who needed help, has "fallen through the cracks", because feminists were unwilling to acknowledge the truth. Following the rejection of my recommendation on remedial education, I wrote a Minority Report (1) 

The feminist/teacher union policy of ignoring the special educational needs of boys is in clear breach of Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Principle 7 of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child(1959) and Article 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), all of which express the rights of the child to receive education ".....which will enable him on a basis of equal opportunity to develop his abilities, his individual judgement .... and to become a useful member of society”. 

United States Experience

In the USA, April 24 which is "Take Our Daughters To Work Day", was renamed "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" after complaints from men's groups. The unofficial holiday originated with a now discredited 1992 report by the American Association of University Women that claimed US schools 'shortchange' girls. In reality, in 1992 and even more so today, it is boys not girls who need special educational attention and funding. Boys at all levels are far more likely than girls to be disciplined, suspended, held back or expelled. By high school the average boy is a year and a half behind the average girl in reading and writing, and is less likely to graduate from high school, go to college or graduate from college than a typical girl. (2) The discrimination against boys affects minority groups in particular. In the US it is a national tragedy that there are more African-American men in prison, on probation or on parole than in college.  

Twenty five years after my Minority Report, alarmed by statistics showing the comparatively poor performance of boys in education, the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, published a report, "Boys: Getting it right" (October 2002) which recommended that the national strategy for "gender equity" be rewritten because it is based on a faulty approach - trying to change boys so they become more like girls. The Report also recommended a return to "explicit, intensive, systematic phonics instruction" in the teaching of reading in schools. The 'whole word' approach implemented across Australia and other English-speaking countries from the late 1960s is linked with significant reading failure - especially among boys. 

Jennifer Buckingham, Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney, in her analysis of the Australian House of Representatives Report, wrote: "What is most surprising is that the report fails to acknowledge a link between family structure and stability ...and boys’ educational problems, despite research and anecdotal evidence to the contrary (3). 

Brain Imaging

Boys’ problems, however, go beyond family structure. Dr. James Dobson of . Focus on the Family, in his new bestseller, "Bringing up boys", writes: "The unisex movement prevailed until the late 1980s when it fell victim to medical technology. The development of magnetic resonance imaging and PET (positron emission tomography) scans allowed physicians and physiologists to examine the functioning of the human brain in much greater detail. What they found totally destroyed the assertions of feminists. Men’s and women's brains looked very distinct when examined in a laboratory. Under proper stimulation they "lit up" different areas , revealing unique neurological processes. It turns out that male and female brains are 'hardwired' differently, which along with hormonal factors accounts for behavioural and attitudinal characteristics associated traditionally with masculinity and femininity.....Unfortunately, the ideas that were spawned in the seventies and perpetuated in a different form today are deeply ingrained in the culture, even though they have never made sense. Many parents are reluctant or ill-equipped to teach their boys how they are different from girls or what their masculinity really means. There is also a new source of confusion emanating from the powerful gay lobby". 

Many boys who are growing up in single-mother families are deprived of successful male role models. It is therefore incomprehensible that Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, opposes amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act which would enable scholarships to be offered to males to attract more to the teaching profession. Latham pontificates a great deal about fatherhood, but does little to help boys deprived of fathers especially through the feminist-biased operations of the Family Law Act. 

My research on the development of boys and girls leads me to believe that boys may do better in single-sex schools. Boys are developmentally about 6 months behind girls of the same age. Boys feel humiliated when girls of their age outperform them. I was moved at a recent school swimming sports day when a small boy sobbed at the end of a race because - he said - he was defeated by a girl. In Australia swimming races for children under 12 are either "Open" events in which both girls and boys can compete, or "girls only" in which boys cannot compete. This little boy was defeated by a girl in an "Open" event, and no doubt he will be teased by his classmates. 

It doesn’t get any better when you grow up, Mate!

The situation is no better for adult men - many Municipal Councils charge male sports teams twice as much as female teams are charged, for the use of local sports grounds. This form of “affirmative action” is particularly iniquitous as male sports teams may be the only opportunities boys living in single-mother households have to interact with adult males. Surely evening and weekend sport is preferable to association with gangs involved in vandalism and petty crime. One gutsy Dad, Mr. Ron Brentnall complained to the Equal Opportunity Commission, which somewhat predictably rejected his plea. However he is pursuing legal action with the Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal. As men’s life expectancy is six years less than women’s, it could be argued that men need sport and exercise even more than women do.  (A Herald Sun Voteline poll on 20 April showed that 75% of callers opposed women’s teams paying less than men’s teams to hire sports grounds).  

Difficulties for boys emanate from sources other than family problems and faulty teaching methods. They also arise from the feminist ideology which dominates teacher unions, elementary school textbooks and the aura of schools, even when individual teachers do not subscribe to these ideas. Basically the theory goes something like this: 'Women are an oppressed minority. Who is doing the oppressing? Obviously, men. Men therefore are the enemy who have created an oppressive patriarchal society which prevents women from achieving their full potential.'

Another sub-text is that gender identity is learned, not innate, and any boy who cannot be tamed to conform to female patterns of behaviour, is suffering from testosterone poisoning. In co-ed schools, normal, youthful male exuberance (running, jumping, rough-and-tumble play) is unacceptable. (Put your boy on Ritalin if he is too exuberant). With the objective of "gender equity", boys must be encouraged to play with dolls, and, as preschoolers tend to prefer same-sex play which reinforces gender stereotypes, teachers must force boys to play with girls and vice versa. This is for kindergarten children!

Christina Hoff Sommers in her definitive work "The War Against Boys" (4) highlights the role of the US Department of Education in promoting "gender equity", and in ignoring the natural differences between boys and girls. From an early age boys show a distinct preference for active outdoor play with a strong predilection for games with body contact, rivalry and clearly defined winners and losers. All this is to be suppressed as a manifestation of 'testosterone poisoning'. The typical classroom is geared to the docile proclivities of girls - long stretches of sitting down and being quiet.

Human Rights cannot depend on a denial of the basic facts of human nature. The consequences of the discrimination and disadvantages experienced by boys in the education system, particularly elementary education, leaves a sub-group functionally illiterate, unable to benefit from higher education, unemployable or condemned to a lifetime of lower-paid, lower-skilled jobs, and with unattractive marriage prosects as they can offer little to a prospective spouse. These men will drift to the margins of society, poor and lonely. For men, their job and 'provider' role is the main source of self-esteem and identity. In Australia it is now estimated that about a third of young men - in the low-income, unskilled groups, are not in a position to marry.  Women, on the other hand, always have a biological role. The consequence is that there are now many single mothers who need to be supported by taxpayers, and at the other end of the financial scale, there are many lonely and childless career women - and some of these women are deliberately deciding to "go it alone" and  have a child without a spouse or partner. 

If we don't get it right in the education of boys, we deprive society of the manly virtues of courage, honour, self-discipline, competitiveness - and the inventiveness which has given us so many labour saving and life-saving devices.  If it were not for male inventiveness, we might still be living in cold, dark caves,  but we live with electricity and washing machines and computers. Ironically it is these labour-saving machines that  have given feminists the time and energy to indulge in 'consciousness-raising' about the evils of a patriarchal society.

We don't need to pathologise boys, we need to celebrate their maleness, it is this difference which has enriched human life.

References:

(1) Minority Report, Babette Francis, Victorian Committee on Equal Opportunity in Schools.

(2) Glen Sachs, Male View, Jan-March 2004 (UK).

(3) "Getting it right - some of the time", Jennifer Buckingham, Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney

(4) "The War Against Boys", Christina Hoff Sommers, Simon & Schuster, 200l.

Member Organisation, World Council for Life and Family

NGO in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC of the UN