Are Boys Really in Trouble?

"I understand the need for an academic report to find villains, etc., but to denigrate us seems unnecessary. We have devoted immense resources and basically our very lives to helping solve the issues children face in this culture. . . .

"It has seemed necessary for two decades in the academic piece of the gender debate to handle with suspicion the obvious brain differences between girls and boys. Academic reports want to minimize these differences because there has been such a long history of female oppression over the centuries -- oppression emboldened by old biological notions. I understand this urge to minimize. When I began studying brain research in 1983, I had to resist the urge to minimize also. When I published "The Wonder of Boys" [a book written by Gurian] 10 years ago, some folks said similar things as this report says. Minutae of language was argued over, and people even said, 'He's a throwback' (and worse!)

"But the reality is that every teacher and every parent knows how different boys and girls are. . . . Some folks are still debating the issue academically, yes, but tens of thousands of people are already using the brain and biological sciences to solve the problems faced by boys and girls. The Gurian Institute, especially under Kathy's wonderful direction, is solution-oriented, and we've been able to help communities and schools innovate toward helpful change based on neural science. It's good stuff, it's working, and I think it proves that science-based practical tools are very worthwhile in schools and homes."

Stevens said:

"We do, of course, have a lot of wonderful scientific evidence on this issue, and we recognize that what we know today is only a fraction of what we will someday know. But, we cannot afford to WAIT until we know everything about the differences to pay attention to what we DO know, because there are too many children who will be affected in the meantime.

"We certainly agree that more research is needed, and we are working and participating in organized efforts to promote such research. But, without our work, and the work of others in the field, no one would even be talking about the issue, and nothing would be happening.

"So-we should thank the media for paying attention, and sometimes doing what some media does by over-reacting to the word 'crisis' but ultimately by getting attention to focus on something we believe needs attention. I personally find the media we work with pretty careful about what they print, making sure to check a variety of reliable sources before publication."

I asked for comment from Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. He said the "insistence that gender doesn't matter simply doesn't jive with reality. For example: last month I led several seminars on gender and education at Dickinson State University, in Dickinson, N.D. -- about one hundred miles west of Bismarck. This university's enrollment is almost 100 percent white, with a small smattering of Asian students. Nevertheless, the leadership of the university shared with me that their biggest concern is the attrition of male students. Fewer than 40 percent of men who enroll at any state university in North Dakota will ever graduate, they told me -- compared with more than 60 percent of women.

"These are all white men, mostly from middle-class families. And I could give many other examples. Just one more example: The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram (Maine's largest-circulation newspaper) ran a four-day series of front-page articles on 'The New Gender Gap,' March 26, 27, 28, and 29, 2006. The opening article, Sunday March 26th, was entitled 'Boys in Jeopardy At School,' which -- along with its companion article, 'Sometimes dropping out is [a] measure of lost interest' -- occupied almost the entire front page. The photo accompanying that article showed one boy sitting in a classroom surrounded by girls. The caption explained that the boy, Nick Danton, is the ONLY boy in his high school's AP Literature class. Maine, like North Dakota, is a state where more than 90 percent of the students are Caucasian. The Maine public schools portrayed in this series of four articles are all in middle-class neighborhoods. But these middle-class white boys are giving up on school in unprecedented numbers. The authors of the Education Sector report need to look beyond NAEP test scores and other reports from the National Center for Educational Statistics. They need to get out of Washington, D.C., and New York City and go visit some real schools."

For an independent appraisal from someone not deep into the gender issue, I asked Craig Jerald, an educational consultant with great experience analyzing national school data, to give his view:

"Mead's relative even-handedness is important because there's a danger this might turn into one of those black and white debates where one side says there's an awful crisis and the other says there's nothing at all to be concerned about. The answer is somewhere in between, pretty much as Mead characterizes it in the last few pages.

"Ed Sector is right to call foul on all the crisis rhetoric, and we should stop using that word, though there are a few troubling statistics and trends that deserve further investigation, both those she mentions and those she underplays, such as the huge gap in writing skills and troubling trends in reading among older boys. And I agree with the recommendation that those issues deserve more study by researchers and attention by classroom teachers, rather than a full-scale assault with lots of new policies and programs, especially if it would pull attention and resources away from the racial and economic achievement gaps that dwarf all other educational problems.

"That said, I'm a bit more concerned about the confluence of gender, poverty, and race for some groups such as Black and Hispanic boys than she seems to be. She acknowledges this, but says we should focus on the race gap to solve the gender gap for those groups. I'm not entirely sure. There might be a need to focus on males in the context of our efforts to solve the racial achievement gap even if there's no general 'boy crisis.'

"Black boys in particular are terribly bad off, their life chances are so dismal compared to any other group, that they might need extra help beyond what educators and policymakers are already doing to address racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps. I would characterize the gender gaps as cause for some concern and further study, the racial and socioeconomic gaps as a crisis, and the plight of black boys as a downright social disaster."

There is much more to be said, but I think I share the view of all of these writers that it would be good to have more and better research on this topic, which is going to be a key part of the education debate for many years to come.