Monday, February 06, 2006

SHAFTING BOYS

(By Ilana Mercer)

Boys (and men) have been in trouble for some time, but "progressives" have only just noticed. In "The Trouble with Boys," Newsweek, a representative of the species, articulates the problem:

"By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind. In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes. High-school boys are losing ground to girls on standardized writing tests. The number of boys who said they didn't like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001.. Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses. Thirty years ago men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body. Now they're a minority at 44 percent."


The magazine then implicates the perennial "progressive" bugaboo: "quantifiable and narrowly defined academic success," for which "activist parents" are responsible. The writers blame parents for ensuring that "school performance has been measured in two simple ways: how many students are enrolled in accelerated courses and whether test scores stay high."

Other than pushy parents, Newsweek also faults "curricula [that] have become more rigid." Too much teaching at the expense of the cult of the "whole child" has, seemingly, caused boys to stumble. The scribes, four women and one man, must be confusing America with Singapore. Curiously, the magazine allows that boys used to do okay at school. What happened to change that is an enigma, best left to the experts. The experts-also the people who put boys in this predicament in the first place-aver that, while a considerable investment was made to empower girls, boys were neglected.

There's a problem with this reasoning. If boys used to do well at school, then an "investment in girls" would not explain their deterioration. Unless "investing in girls" is Orwellian for privileging girls at the expense of boys, which is precisely the impetus behind Title IX and other legislative loadstars. Presently, boys toil under elaborate affirmative action initiatives in secondary and tertiary schools that subordinate merit to the equal representation of girls in every field of endeavor, including sports. "Experts" such as the National Education Association-the largest union in the country and the al-Qaida of education-will say we spend too little money and tolerate unacceptable teacher-student ratios. Oh, come off it. We shell out more per child than any other developed country, and at 1:16.5, the teacher-student ratio has never been lower. Soon there'll be more adults than children in the system.

The travails of boys, moreover, need to be put in perspective. American high-school kids, boys and girls, have been crowned the cretins of the developed world, as measured by every conceivable international test. That carnivorous girls have climbed to the top of this pile is no great achievement. No, the galloping ignorance among American students is proportional to budgetary profligacy.

The problems plaguing boys are not pecuniary, but paradigmatic: the progressive, child-centered worldview and feminism. For decades now, America's educators have insisted that learning be made as natural and as easy as possible, when it is neither. To this end, content-based, top-down teaching was replaced with pop-culture friendly, non-hierarchically delivered flimflam. But as classicists such as E. D. Hirsch Jr. have pointed out, effective, analytical and explicit instruction is very definitely not a natural but a highly artificial, often-unintuitive process.

Evidence abounds that boys thrive in the more disciplined, structured learning environment. America's loosey-goosey schools, however, shun discipline and moral instruction. Boys are also biologically predisposed to competition. But in the progressive school, cooperative experiences and groupthink are preferred to individual achievement. And girls favored over boys.

When boys bubble over with unbridled testosterone, instead of challenging, disciplining, and harnessing their energies, as teachers once did, they are emasculated or medicated. The former means being made over in the image of woman; the latter entails being diagnosed as "learning disabled" and drugged with Ritalin. It is a consequence of the demonization of male biopsychology.

The school is a microcosm of society. Both have been thoroughly feminized. The false feminist narrative suffuses every aspect of a boy's life. Women everywhere are depicted as brawny, brainy, and beautiful; men as buffoons. On celluloid, an 80-pound waif manages to wallop a 200-pound gangster with no punctures to the silicone sacks. When male teachers manage to infiltrate the public school system, they are of the androgynous genus-and every inch as feminist as their XX-carrying colleagues. The quintessential male role models-the Founding Fathers-are persona non grata in courses, as are other so-called pale, patriarchal pigs. A boy risks purgatory and worse should he mention weaponry or female anatomy.

In addition to a core-curriculum, banished too from America's feminized and foolish schools is the "archaic" idea of a literary canon. Not only do boys have to internalize feminism's lumpen jargon; they must also synchronize their male brains to Oprah's challenged synapses. English teachers expect them to study "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "The Secret Life of Bees."

If epic literature worms its way into the school's shopping-mall assortment of flimsy courses and frivolous subject matter, then it is duly deconstructed and shred: Boys are taught to see great works of art through feminism's grim and distorting prism. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and T. S. Eliot were members of the ruling class of oppressors; their artistry no more than a manifestation of the alleged power relationships in society.

Progressive schools-and the feminist and feminized "education" they inflict-are ultimately extremely bad for boys and girls alike. But while they favor girls, casting them as a besieged class of helots; they are hostile to boys, who are perceived as members of a ruling elite that refuses to let go of patriarchal privilege and power.

In an e-mail to me a young man described his daily grind under this mirthless and unmerciful ideology:

"I cannot seem to escape the biases of feminism no matter where I turn. Every female teacher somehow manages to bring the argument around to point out that males overrun everything. If I produce any artwork with any sort of tall thin form in it, I'm immediately criticized for producing artwork that involves phallic symbolism. Thus meaning that I obviously am promoting male dominance in society."


He said he felt "worn down" by the experience. Others like him just walk away.




Florida Supreme Court Sends Students Back to (Public) Schools

Florida's Supreme Court recently ruled 5-2 to strike down the state's Opportunity Scholarship Program, more commonly referred to as school vouchers, which are continually given to students in the state's failing schools. CFIF Senior Vice President & Corporate Counsel Renee Giachino recently spoke with Clark Neily, one of the attorneys who argued the case before Florida's high court, about the impact of the decision on 733 schoolchildren at 53 schools statewide. What follows are excerpts from the interview that aired on "Your Turn - Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense" on WEBY 1330 AM, Northwest Florida's Talk Radio.

GIACHINO: Clark, I have invited you back on the program to discuss the same case that we have following with you - that is the case that you helped argue before Florida's highest court, the case commonly referred to as the school voucher case -- although I think the technical term for the program is the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Before we turn to that subject, can you please share with the listeners some information about the Institute for Justice?

NEILY: The Institute for Justice is a libertarian public interest firm based near Washington, D.C. and we basically sue the government to try to secure the right for people to engage in the occupation of their choice, to own and enjoy private property, to express themselves under the First Amendment and, of course, also to send their children to schools of their choice and not where somewhere bureaucrat tell them where they should send their children. If people want more information we have a website and it is ij.org. We would love to have you check out the website and we would love to hear from you if you have any questions or if you have anything that you want to talk with us about.

GIACHINO: Clark, you mentioned that one of the missions of the organization is to sue the government. But in the case that we are going to discuss, am I right that you were actually on the same side as the Florida state government?

NEILY: Yes. This is one of the settings in which the Institute for Justice does actually end up on the same side as the government. The reason for that is that there are some state governments and even local governments that have been very forward looking on the issue of school choice. Florida is frankly the most forwarding-looking state in the country - they have the highest number of school choice programs and the broadest applicability of such programs. So really Florida is delivering school choice to the most number of people in the country. The good news, that is the silver lining of this case, is that continues to be true even in the wake of this very unfortunate Florida Supreme Court ruling striking down the Opportunity Scholarship Program. There are just over 700 kids in that program. They want to be able to finish up the school year. But the program is going to be over as of the end of this school year. The good news is that there are over 30,000 children in other school choice programs in the State of Florida and those have not been challenged yet so they are going to continue to go on.

GIACHINO: Clark, before we talk more specifically about the ruling in the voucher case, I want to back up a little bit for the benefit of some of the listeners who might not have tuned in during either of your two previous appearances with us. If you would please describe for the listeners what we are talking about when we say school choice and school vouchers here in the State of Florida.

NEILY: Sure. There is a basic philosophical difference there. Some people believe that the government is in the best position to tell you where your kids should go to school. Then there are people who believe that the parents are best situated to make that choice. And what really is going on here in Florida is that the governor decided that the best way to make sure that kids are getting a good education in the State of Florida was to say to parents, "look if your child is trapped in a school that is not getting the job done, if your child has been trapped in a school that has been rated by the state as failing, we are going to give you the option of taking your child out of that school and either sending them to a higher performing public school or to a private school of your choice. And the state is willing to give you a voucher so you can send that child to a private school."

It is a wonderful, wonderful program and it has had a wonderful impact both on the children who have been receiving the state aid to go to the private schools and also on the schools that have been forced now to compete for the students and recognize that they cannot just keep going on as business as usual. There have been four different independent studies of the program and every single one of those studies shows that public schools exposed to competition from this program improved dramatically and it is very, very unfortunate that the program is not going to be around much longer to spur that kind of improvement.

GIACHINO: Am I right - I think that the last time that you joined us you explained that these vouchers don't just come into play after the school has received its first failing grade but that they are given multiple opportunities to improve that grade before the voucher program may be invoked in their physical school?

NEILY: Yes, that is true. To become eligible for the voucher program, a school has to have gotten two "F" grades - two failing grades, within any two consecutive years. So, yes, you are right, it is not as if the state just steps in out of the blue and says that all of the kids here qualify to transfer out. Instead it is targeted at schools that have a chronic problem and just are not able to get the job done.

It is a common myth that this is some how an attack on the teachers or the people who work at this school. It is no such thing. There are a lot of basic structural problems in our public education system that would prevent even very effective teachers from being able to really educate the kids in their classroom. My father is a public school teacher. I know this for a fact and have seen it in his job and he has told me of the things that he faces that prevent him from doing an effective job in his classroom.

So really all this program says to parents is that we are not going to demand that you leave your children trapped in a failing public school - this chronically failing public school, while we tinker with it and try to straighten it out. Which who knows how long that might take - a year or five years or even ten? Even one day in a chronically failing school is too long for anybody's child and I think the only way that anybody would put up with that is if it were somebody else's child who is going to be trapped in that failing public school. I have never met a single person in the whole State of Florida with a child trapped in a failing public school who wasn't a supporter of this program.

GIACHINO: When the parents then make it known that they want to be a recipient of the voucher or that they want to be a part of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, the state doesn't dictate which schools that they go to right - it is up to the parents?

NEILY: That's right. It is up to the parents. And of course they have a choice of remaining in the public school system and transferring to a higher performing school if that is at all an option. But of course one of the problems there is that the higher performing public schools are more popular and will not have the class size to accommodate these new kids. So sometimes the only real option for these parents is to transfer into a private school and the state would pay at least a portion of the tuition - they get a voucher and there is a maximum cap on that voucher. Of course these parents are able to take their children out of that failing public school and enroll them in a private school of their choosing.

Of course I should add that this is a form of school choice that wealthier parents exercise every single day throughout this country. People with enough money to do it exercise school choice either by putting their children into private schools or by moving to school districts where they have good public schools. We believe that everybody in the State of Florida should have the same ability to exercise school choice and to ensure good educational opportunities for their children, regardless of whether they have the money to afford private school or to afford living in fancy school districts. That is what this case is all about and that is what this program is all about. I am sad to say that the Florida Supreme Court really turned its back on that in this case....

More -- much more -- here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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