Saving our 
SONS

What Every Parent MUST Know!

by  Joe Manthey

PARENT'S JOURNAL feature story
Saving Our Sons
Parents and teachers simply must know how
our sons are different and how to help them.
October 1999
Sonoma - Mendocino Counties, California

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Joe Manthey is a public school teacher who leads 'Kid Culture in the Schools' seminars for educators and parents. He lives in Petaluma, where he was born and raised.

        "For years we’ve thought the boys had it fine,

        that girls had all the problems. But we can’t

        hide from the fact that boys are not getting the

        education and development they need either.

        Boys are being ripped off."

               - Michael Gurian, The Boston Globe, 1/6/97

........................................................................................

In an 18 month span our nation experienced seven suburban school massacres. The perpetrators had many similarities: they were all angry, were all teased, taunted and physically assaulted for being under or overweight, all were loners, all were into violent imagery, and all were obsessed with guns. The mass media have investigated these commonalties to no end.

    With few exceptions, the most significant similarity has been left unsaid: all of the murderers were boys. In news reports they are usually referred to as "subjects," "students," and "young adults." Leading up to this phenomenon has been an intense media campaign waged by women/girl advocacy groups promoting the idea that "girls are being shortchanged in the schools," cumulating with wave after wave of "girls get a voice" stories that claimed that girls, unlike boys, are suffering a self-esteem crisis that is silencing them.
 
    "Since women have been oppressed for centuries," the all too familiar reasoning goes, "it’s therefore girls/women that we need to study/assist."

    Girls can be immensely fragile in adolescence. And programs put in place for them have yielded positive results. But those gains have come at a great cost-boys were labeled ‘the privileged gender’-blamed for societies past inequities, guilty until proven innocent. By definition boys are not an at-risk population. For instance, we automatically accept that being a minority and a woman presents more obstacles than being a minority and a man. ‘Boys have it easier [than girls],’ says the conventional wisdom. Do they?

    A local school district trustee once told me, "I think it’s great that girls are doing better than boys." Not just ‘better,’ ‘better than boys.’

    Indeed, researcher Marilyn Stephens has been quoted as being concerned against any move to say "poor boys are being academically outperformed by girls; we must put more resources into boys." She also blames boys, attributing the declining performance to ‘macho masculinity.’ She is not alone in her thinking. The ‘State of Our Nation’s Youth’ surveyors attributed the gender gap in education to ‘poor study habits’ of boys. Researcher Brownyn Cross also minimizes the gap and states that it’s primarily because boys are lazy. Another researcher, Jean Luddock, says the issue is "poor organizational skills and that they lack the understanding of hard work." (Italics added.)

    Yet these are the same individuals who say that we should never ‘blame the victim’ especially when the individual is female. Imagine the outcry if the word ‘boy’ was replaced with girl, minority, handicapped, addicted, low income.

    Most programs in the schools to aid boys are efforts to make them less aggressive; the assumption being that aggression equals violence. Violence prevention and conflict resolution programs focus on males as perpetrators and females as victims. Even on the rare occasion when these programs do acknowledge male victimization, the solution is to socialize boys to be less competitive; the assumption being that competition equals violence. Sexual harassment is likewise portrayed as boys/perpetrators, girls/innocent victims. Only boys are expected to take responsibility for their behavior.

    Despite the fact that advocating for boys is still politically incorrect, a growing number of individuals are seeing beyond this divisive "us vs. them" mentality and are pointing out the silent crisis facing boys. A host of academic research on boys has appeared as of late with a surge of popular literature on the subject.

    While media coverage is hardly widespread, a growing number are bringing this issue to the public including: Oprah Winfrey, KGO, San Francisco Chronicle/San Francisco Examiner, and your own Parent’s Journal. Support among women’s groups is also growing, including the Independent Women’s Forum, Women’s Freedom Network. Even Susan Faludi, in her new book Stiffed, shows compassion for the gender straight jacket facing males - young and old alike. She stops short, however, of acknowledging the misinformation, male bashing and censorship that has been a product of the girl power/feminist movement.

    We, as a culture, are just opening the doorway into a fascinating world. As Michael Gurian points out in A Fine Young Man, "Opening the door that reveals the overall culture boys create for themselves does not close women out; it makes their lives easier. Recognizing the world-within-a-world of rules, tests and rituals of our young men does not rob women; it spreads the responsibility."

    At a time in history when our boys are, as one psychologist put it, "crying bullets" in our schools, it’s not a moment too soon to join together to move beyond stereotypes and gender politics and begin listening to all our children. Instead of blaming boys for the difficulties they are experiencing, the time has come to acknowledge the negative effect of fatherless homes on boys (and girls), the negative effect of the lack of male school teachers (86 percent of elementary school teachers are women) on boys (and girls), and educate ourselves to the psycho-biological differences between boys and girls - and then act accordingly. As the late anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, "When one sex suffers, both sexes suffer."