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Has School Become Too Hostile to Boys?
- Thread starter tastybasslines
- Start date
I think he was agreeing with that mindset. It's silly not to when the kids already do it.
Understandable, since NCLB is a federal policy and is going to affect schools nation-wide. Partisan politics aside, it was definitely a horrible policy to implement.
For the record, whenever playing mini-golf or bowling, I never really cared about keeping score. But that's just me. 
You will never ever regulate away bullying. Bullies don't follow rules, so rules won't stop them. (The same could be said for a lot of topics but that's a derail for another day.) However, stripping away the liberties of both grownups AND children under the guise of stopping bullying or preventing victimization of any kind is pointless, useless, and (again) simply not worth the cost.
I agree with you that liberty outweighs safety. But the rules aren't completely useless are they? At least it's something of a deterrent, better than nothing. When the rules start penalizing those who abide by them is when it becomes a problem, imo.
I think back to elementary school, and even junior high and highschool, and wonder how a "No Running" rule is even allowed on the books. We have such problems with childhood obesity, and they feed kids fattening foods and don't let them exercise. The system is certainly broken.
You're making that up, right? No place could really have that rule.
Didn't read the whole thread, sorry, but just to share an anecdote... About 8th grade the middle school English teacher totally lost our son. She kept assigning essays and responses to books where the students were supposed to talk about how they feel. Anyone who knows 8th-grade boys knows the LAST thing they want to talk about is their feelings. That's girlie stuff to them. My wife is a children's librarian by training, does a lot of work with promoting literacy, and she was just shaking her head over these assignments. He's a very bright kid, creative and reads a LOT, but his English grade just tanked and the year both stigmatized him with worse grades than he should have been getting and alienated him from a whole department at school.
I can't think of any girls I know who'd be any happier. At best, they might be better at making up something that they think the teacher wants to see.
At the college level, this is called a Fluff Course.
I went to school in the '70's and '80's, and our little farming/fishing community was probably about 10 years "behind the times" then if you asked someone from a large metropolitan/cosmopolitan/urban area.
There isn't too much I could add to this thread that wouldn't result in edits, or warnings, or "demerits" or whatever they hand out here, but in short, the answer to the original question is "yes".
There isn't too much I could add to this thread that wouldn't result in edits, or warnings, or "demerits" or whatever they hand out here, but in short, the answer to the original question is "yes".
Here's 2 examples.
1. In the 8th grade, my woodshop project was a 4-gun rack with 2 shelves on the bottom to hold your boxes of shells. This hung on the wall in the livingroom above our tv for as long as I lived at home and long after. It had two 12-guages, one 20 guage, and one .22 rifle in it along with all the ammo you'd ever need. No door, no trigger locks, no nothing.
Nobody ever went crazy and hurt anyone.
2. Also in the 8th grade, we were divided into 2 classes, you could pick which one you wanted to take. One was a firearms safety training course that also included learning all the states hunting laws, etc. The other was "tree identification", a bit of a botany course. The gun training course was all guys but a couple that display "affeminate tendancies" and the farm girls. The tree class was the city girls and the couple of affeminate guys. Nobody had an issue with this, nobody cried foul. It is what it is.
Nowdays I don't hunt much if at all anymore, but I would like to be able to know what these different kind of trees growing around here are.
Thankfully, I can learn that off the internet, probably posted by somebody who was in that tree class. You can't learn how to safely handle weapons by reading books.
Imagine the uproar if I went up to my local schoolboard now and proposed such a thing. Anyone who says politics haven't taken over the education system is either blind or willfully ignorant, IMO.
1. In the 8th grade, my woodshop project was a 4-gun rack with 2 shelves on the bottom to hold your boxes of shells. This hung on the wall in the livingroom above our tv for as long as I lived at home and long after. It had two 12-guages, one 20 guage, and one .22 rifle in it along with all the ammo you'd ever need. No door, no trigger locks, no nothing.
Nobody ever went crazy and hurt anyone.
2. Also in the 8th grade, we were divided into 2 classes, you could pick which one you wanted to take. One was a firearms safety training course that also included learning all the states hunting laws, etc. The other was "tree identification", a bit of a botany course. The gun training course was all guys but a couple that display "affeminate tendancies" and the farm girls. The tree class was the city girls and the couple of affeminate guys. Nobody had an issue with this, nobody cried foul. It is what it is.
Nowdays I don't hunt much if at all anymore, but I would like to be able to know what these different kind of trees growing around here are.
Thankfully, I can learn that off the internet, probably posted by somebody who was in that tree class. You can't learn how to safely handle weapons by reading books.
Imagine the uproar if I went up to my local schoolboard now and proposed such a thing. Anyone who says politics haven't taken over the education system is either blind or willfully ignorant, IMO.
If you were born in the 80's, you grew up under 'zero intelligence' rules.
In the 60's, I brought the .22 rifle my grandfather gave me to show an tell. The only rule was the slide had to be back so the chamber could be seen to be empty. No one freaked out, no problems.
Every Cub Scout had a pocket knife, and a 'knife chit'. If a teacher saw you handling the knife inappropriately, she would cut a corner off the chit. She knew if you lost all 4 corners, the Cubmaster would take your knife away, until he felt you learned better. We all kept them closed and put away.
A bully had a problem with me and 'called me out'. Of course I had to accept; after school, in the field. The assistant coach saw the crowd that gathered and was quietly in the back, unknown to us. We pretty much wore each other out with no real injuries, and eventually called it a draw. After the group broke up, we saw the a.c. He said our energy would be better spent on the wrestling team, and had us both report for the next month. I never liked wretsling and most of the time was spent in running and calisthenics so I toughed out the month and quit. Our parents were advised of everything and there was never anything made of it by the school and the bully left me alone.
Flash forward to the 90's- my youngest son ( born '80's) is being bullied. We raised him to not be violent, but if provoked beyond a reasonable point, to defend himself. I get a call from the school and have to go down there.
The bully got pushed, oh my. He started in on my son and after my son followed the school rules (asked him to stop and then reported it to a teacher), the bully came up and punched him right in front of the teacher. My son reacted by pushing the bully away from him with open hands.
The school's position was my son was to be expelled for fighting. There was no explaining exceptable because the 'zero intelligence' rules said so. I explained to the Principal and her assistant what my policy was on them requiring my son to be a punching bag. I then told my son , right in front of them, that since he had asked the bully to leave him alone multiple times, the next time he was physically attacked, he was to defend himself with his fists and not worry about what any teacher said.
I then told the Principal that she better call the bully's parents and advise them that up until then my son wasn't defending himself but that would change from now on.
They said they could see that I was the problem. I told them they were right and that my attorney would back me up if necessary. My son was not even reprimanded by the school. The bullying stopped and my son didn't have to hurt the kid (which he would have).
If I tried that today, they would probably have me in chains for making threats; but I would still do it.
It's the PARENTS fault this baloney continues. They won't stand up for their kids or what is right. If they are the unable, because the PC beast is so huge then pull them out. If I were raising my sons today, I would home school them. There are some good online schools too. There are much better was to 'socialize' kids other than terror and intimidation.
No offense to the good teachers that actually get it and are forced into an untenable situation in order just to keep their jobs. But that only goes to strengthen my point.
Rant off.
In the 60's, I brought the .22 rifle my grandfather gave me to show an tell. The only rule was the slide had to be back so the chamber could be seen to be empty. No one freaked out, no problems.
Every Cub Scout had a pocket knife, and a 'knife chit'. If a teacher saw you handling the knife inappropriately, she would cut a corner off the chit. She knew if you lost all 4 corners, the Cubmaster would take your knife away, until he felt you learned better. We all kept them closed and put away.
A bully had a problem with me and 'called me out'. Of course I had to accept; after school, in the field. The assistant coach saw the crowd that gathered and was quietly in the back, unknown to us. We pretty much wore each other out with no real injuries, and eventually called it a draw. After the group broke up, we saw the a.c. He said our energy would be better spent on the wrestling team, and had us both report for the next month. I never liked wretsling and most of the time was spent in running and calisthenics so I toughed out the month and quit. Our parents were advised of everything and there was never anything made of it by the school and the bully left me alone.
Flash forward to the 90's- my youngest son ( born '80's) is being bullied. We raised him to not be violent, but if provoked beyond a reasonable point, to defend himself. I get a call from the school and have to go down there.
The bully got pushed, oh my. He started in on my son and after my son followed the school rules (asked him to stop and then reported it to a teacher), the bully came up and punched him right in front of the teacher. My son reacted by pushing the bully away from him with open hands.
The school's position was my son was to be expelled for fighting. There was no explaining exceptable because the 'zero intelligence' rules said so. I explained to the Principal and her assistant what my policy was on them requiring my son to be a punching bag. I then told my son , right in front of them, that since he had asked the bully to leave him alone multiple times, the next time he was physically attacked, he was to defend himself with his fists and not worry about what any teacher said.
I then told the Principal that she better call the bully's parents and advise them that up until then my son wasn't defending himself but that would change from now on.
They said they could see that I was the problem. I told them they were right and that my attorney would back me up if necessary. My son was not even reprimanded by the school. The bullying stopped and my son didn't have to hurt the kid (which he would have).
If I tried that today, they would probably have me in chains for making threats; but I would still do it.
It's the PARENTS fault this baloney continues. They won't stand up for their kids or what is right. If they are the unable, because the PC beast is so huge then pull them out. If I were raising my sons today, I would home school them. There are some good online schools too. There are much better was to 'socialize' kids other than terror and intimidation.
No offense to the good teachers that actually get it and are forced into an untenable situation in order just to keep their jobs. But that only goes to strengthen my point.
Rant off.
Born in the '70s and a schoolkid in the early '80s. In a lot of ways, I feel like we had a foot in both worlds- on the one hand, you had the old guard still punishing you for being a brat; and there were no automatic trophies for every kid who breathed- you were expected to achieve like crazy to compete with your Soviet counterparts, including some damn intense gym classes- but at the same time, they were just beginning to phase in the self-esteem classes, the save-the-world stuff, Earth Day, and all the guidance counseling.
All in all, I'm still forever glad that I got to live the '80s and miss them terribly. Wouldn't trade that amazing decade for anything.
I once got into a schoolyard fight with a kid in my class. He was a bully whose mom was a teacher there, and the two were the wife & son of a local mucky-muck small-town politician. He picked a shoving match with me out of nowhere, and I finished it by throwing him into a display of a Christmas tree at the front of the classroom.
I'd probably have been whisked off to juvie, sued, or prescribed meds if that had gone down nowadays. Come to think of it, the Christmas tree wouldn't even have been there in the first place today, because it might've offended Zoroastrian-Americans or something.
The hell of it all? I'm not even a political conservative; not even close. I just miss the '80s indescribably and hate PC
The Nike "All Damn Day" shirts are against the school dress code...
:scowl:
I don't really see how that's relevant to discussion of schools being hostile to boys.
Kids and adolescents are going to be distracted if there's a swear word, no matter how mild, clearly posted near them. A shirt with "Damn" written on it would be disruptive in the classroom by most people's measure.
It's not like there's any expressive value that needs to be protected in that advertising slogan anyway, let alone some kind of positive encouragement of boys.
I agree with you. I think the "zero tolerance" phenomenon is a direct result of a generation or two of horrific parenting, where the schools are now forced to deal with an extreme combination of "me first" parents and those who can't be bothered to shape their kids' behavior. To call the whole thing a giant conspiracy against boys is typical cry-baby nonsense from the same people who helped create this mess.
It was probably a decade or more ago that Christina Hoffs published her book about The War on Boys.
And for further reading Kathleen Parker's Save the Males.
And for further reading Kathleen Parker's Save the Males.
I can't add much more to that. I think you nailed it in the part that I bolded.
I'm not sure that I'd blame it 100% on "horrific parenting" though. In many cases, yes.
But I'd rather say that another cause would be the whole "entitlement" angle. There needs to be a balance, and that's where things often poop out. You need to make sure that your child is self confident, absolutely, but you also need to make sure that your child knows that the world does not wholly revolve around them and their needs. They're part of the world and need to navigate through it, they're not at the center where things need to navigate around them. Not doing so is not necessarily horrible parenting, just maybe "selfish parenting", I'd say.
If we could achieve that balance, things the need for "zero tolerance" would be nullified, IMO. Too many parents and now their kids are approaching life with this 'entitlement" mindset.
