Is there a "boys' crisis"?
I am one of 18 journalists who are New York Times Company Foundation fellows, chosen to attend a conference, "The Status of Boys: Crisis or Not." As you may know, the press has been filled with stories in recent years of the "crisis" boys are facing: boys are more likely than girls to drop out from high school, be treated for ADHD, commit suicide, and fail to go on to college. At the same time, though, there has been a steady chorus of naysayers, mostly feminists who suggest the numbers are being skewed and that, in fact, we're seeing a backlash against girls' progress.
The first day of the conference was devoted to giving us a big picture view of this issue. In the morning, Marcellus Andrews, Ph.D., a Yale-trained economist who describes himself as a "leftie," spoke about a large segment of men in this country who have become what he calls "surplus males." They are, he says, not just "unemployed, but unemployable." No skills, no education, no training.
A large chunk of these men end up in prison, with statistics showing that the vast majority of inmates having a high school education or less. Whereas in the past, men without a college degree could make a decent living as a blue collar worker, those jobs have evaporated, as our economy has moved from a manufacturing based economy to a knowledge economy. Women seem to be adjusting better to this shift, attending to colleges in record numbers, Andrews said.
Yet, it needs to be said (he didn't say this): women still earn less than men in virtually every profession and at every rung.
In the afternoon, we heard from a group with opposing views on the subject. What I found most telling was that it was the journalists (Peg Tyre from Newsweek, Tom Chiarella from Esquire, and Richard Whitmire from The New Republic) who were asserting that there was a "boys' crisis," asserting that boys were struggling in school in part because of changes made in education to accommodate girls. The academics and wonks--Rosalind Barnett, Ph.D., a Brandeis University psychologist and women's studies professor, Caryl Rivers, a Boston University journalism professor, and Sara Mead, a senior policy analyst at Education Sector, a D.C. think tank---were arguing that the "crisis" had been overhyped. "There is no boy crisis," says Barnett. "There is a some boy crisis."
In essence, they said girls are doing much better than they had been, while boys' progress has been stagnant. There hasn't been a steep decline in the number of young men attending college, for instance, but there has been a steady increase in the number of young women in college. However, some boys--especially poor minorities--are struggling and faring much worse than their female counterparts.
I found the academics' presentations (especially Mead's) persuasive, as they were grounded in facts--statistics and studies. By comparion, the journalists' work--especially Tyre's Newsweek story-- just didn't hold up under scrutiny.
Tyre relied on "experts" who were dubious at best and didn't bother to seek out the many feminist academics who might disagree with her thesis. Whitmire, at least, seemed a little abashed after hearing the academics' exegesis of the studies and said he would be more skeptical of some of the experts he had relied upon for his story (which was a little more balanced and seemed more of a real attempt to grapple with all sides of the issue.)
I can't quote from Tyre's talk to us; annoyingly, she insisted that Newsweek policies required that only their public relations person speak on behalf of the magazine and that her talk was therefore off the record. (I found this to be disingenous; how many Newsweek reporters are on TV on a regular basis talking about their stories? We weren't planning to quote her on Newsweek's policies, but rather how she put together this story and responds to criticisms of it.)
It was, though, very instructive for me. It's very easy to find anecdotes and experts to support your thesis; editors love sexy, high concept stories, especially if they involve middle class suburbanites. Would Newsweek have splashed the story on its cover if it said, "Some low income boys, especially AFrican American and Latinas, are having trouble in school"? Doubt it.
Stumble It!
posted by pam at 6:17 AM
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