I pray my son's future teacher reads Bringing Up Boys by Dr. Dobson

I originally posted this last Spring in May 2010 after listening to and then reading (with a highlighter) Bringing Up Boys. I didn't have a blog back then so I had to post it as a Note on my PURE Parenting page, but now that I have a blog I felt the need to repost it.

I wish I had read this book before my first year of teaching because it gave me so much empathy towards boys and what they must go through in the classroom. It explained so much about why one of my students had to be standing up at his desk rather than sitting in a chair to get any work done or why one concentrated better when he was allowed to sit on the couch in the back with clip board. Or why taking recess away as a punishment didn't just punish him, but us as well. I always let my kids walk the perimeter of the playground if they misbehaved rather than making them sit or stand still. I remember as a teacher we always wanted the class that had more girls than boys in it and you always felt sorry for the teacher that had a large amount of boys. This type of thinking would obviously set the tone for the rest of the school year. And now when someone says they are having a boy,  people always say something like, "Oh get ready. You are going to have your hands full with him." They use adjectives like Wild and "into everything" or strong willed. I suggest we try to not label those still in the womb with anything negative.

According to Dr. James Dobson my precious baby boy could be attacked by feminism and be labeled as a little, immature, troublemaker simply because he is a boy?! Christina Hoff Summers, author of "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men", says, "this is a bad time for boys in America because of the bias against them in our educational institutions. This hostility found its manifesto in an inaccurate and terribly biased report written and released in 1992 by ultraliberal American Association of University Women (AAUW). It was titled "How Schools Shortchange Girls," and it resulted in years of discrimination against boys." This report stated that girls were not called on as much or weren't allowed educational resources. It also stated that boys were permitted to speak 8 times more often than girls which was misinterpreted from an old 1981 study that actually said that boys were reprimanded 8 times more than girls along with many more distortions in the AAUW study. Even though the report has been widely discredited now at the time even Oprah presented it as fact. Then the U.S. Congress passed a bill called the Gender Equity in Education Act, which allocated the bias against girls. They wanted to "reprogram" teachers to not be so sexist against girls. This is weird to me since the majority of elementary classrooms are designed by women to fit the temperament and learning styles of girls. "The bill sailed through Congress because few politicians dared vote against "equality." It gave feminists the money, the power, and access they needed to retool the nation's schools. Numerous federal programs favoring girls began flowing from the flawed AAUW report." Millions of dollars went to promote getting girls interested in science, but nothing for boys. There has simply been a de-emphasis on boys.

"British schools in contrast to American public education, recognized several years ago that their boys were falling behind academically and warned of the possibility of "an underclass of permanently unemployed, unskilled men." Sommers says, "The British government reacted with a highly successful back to basic program in the primary schools, whose explicit purpose is to help boys catch up with girls. They also allow gender sterotypes in their schools by allowing all male classes. They found that boys enjoy and will read adventures with male heroes. They even allow war poetry and classroom competition. "In American schools boys are taught at a tempo that doesn't fit them. They are taught in a way that makes them feel inadequate, and if they speak up they are sent to the principal. The things at which they excel--gross motor skills, visual and spatial skills, their exuberance--do not find as good a reception in school. Children are also being placed in formalized education settings at younger ages which is very hard on boys. Boys are in agony when required to endure long periods of inactivity, a prohibition on noise. They long to run, jump, wrestle, laugh, and climb, which the system simply can't tolerate."

Michael Thompson wrote, "Energetic boys are likely to be disciplined for simply behaving normally." Dr. Thomas Sowell says, "Boys in elementary school have been punished for being politically incorrect toward girls. One of the reasons American children do so badly in international tests of academic skills is that our schools are preoccupied with politically correct social crusades." He tells the story of a 6 year old boy who kissed a girl on the cheek on the playground. This playful offense was reported to the principal and the little boy was charged with sexual harrassment and suspended from school. Another example is the 3rd grade boy accused of touching a girl on the "breasts" during a game of tag.

Is this the image of a "little, immature, troublemaker" in the making
or just an energetic little boy?

This whole thing just bothers me so much. I feel like we need to be advocates for boys in these days of male discrimination.