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TechnoratiNo way to raise a boy
Do boys have to be bored, fat and dumber than their sisters?
A ten year old boy, whom I watch with an eagle’s eye, is reading The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden. The book is teaching him how to play poker, build a go-cart from scratch, how to fold a paper glider so that it really flies, to makes a paper water bomb and much, much more. He has found his Holy Grail. Wedged in between the book’s black arts are spirited short essays on heroic battles, good manners and, yes, girls. Be forewarned, gentle reader, this book is definitely not politically correct, and worse, it could turn around a boy’s life.
The 10-year-old I have in my sights is a busy home-schooler whose days and heart are torn between pitching in the town baseball league and his beloved violin. While a leader on the ball field and popular with his mates, I have to admit, he is sort of "out-of-it." When the talk moves from the ballgame to video games, the kid is a wash-out. When the conversations moves on to television, as it does regularly…(television and movies being the lingua franca of boys from six to that ever-moving outer boundary of adolescence)…, the boy is a dunce. He thinks "24" is the definition of a day. He wouldn’t recognise Paris Hilton if she tried to run him over. He’s focused on learning how to step into a pitch and to do something with his violin that I don’t comprehend.
He is clearly out of step with modern boydom. But how and when things changed for boys is hard for me to pin down. Somewhere not too long ago, boys went indoors. When they don’t have their eyes glued to some screen, whether computer, TV, movie or even, yes, cell phone, they are shuffling along alone or in sullen groups at the mall. Building tree huts and shooting at squirrels with beebee guns lost out big time to the latest version of Xbox and the newest action-adventure fantasy at the Cinaplex.
And they look so bored! How can a 12-year-old boy be that bored… unless he has been made so passive with canned pleasure that he doesn’t know what else to do. He has never learned to do anything other than turn on his toys. He doesn’t have the reading habit because DVDs are easier. He doesn’t play outside in the neighbourhood. First, the other guys aren’t there. They are indoors and are stuck to their own screens. Second, he and his peers’ parents are convinced that if he is outside, he’ll be kidnapped, beaten up by bullies or meet a recruiter from the North American Man Boy Love Association.
Our modern boy doesn’t get much exercise which you can tell from his rounded shoulders and the baby fat which he should have been shed years earlier. But how could he. He is driven or bussed to school for safety reasons. When he gets exercise it is part of an adult-saturated, over-organised sports world where physical contact between boys is only allowed when they are covered head-to-toe with enough protective gear to make movement barely possible. Arguments about whether a referee [yes, of course, they have to have referees] made the correct call is strictly verboten. A scuffle with another player could get him banned from the league and his anxious parents in the grandstands would be forced to live in infamy.
Other than manipulate the "on" and "off" switches, the volume controls and a few other knobs, modern boy doesn’t know how to do much. He has never had to do much and the men in his life have conveniently disappeared or are too busy with their work or their own pleasures that they have never taught him to do anything. He doesn’t know how to wash a car, saw wood, hammer a nail, trim a hedge, weed a garden [let alone raise a vegetable garden], bait a rat trap, or repair a punctured bike tire. Maybe with sufficient nagging, he can make his bed [sort of], take the dishes out of the dishwasher and put out the garbage, chores that in another day would have been the province of his sister.
Then there is school. In recent decades, no part of society has become more feminised, more boy-unfriendly. First of all, for young boys to sit quietly in desk seats for six or seven hours a day has long been contrary to the laws of nature. However, in the past, children walked to school in the morning, walked or run home for lunch and did the same at 3:00, only to get their ball and glove and work off the pent-up energy from the school day.
Second, there are fewer and fewer male teachers. The principalship, once the province of men, is now more and more the province of the fairer sex. Those male teachers that are left live in fear of intimacy or even putting a hand on a boy’s shoulder, lest they become a tort lawyer’s meal ticket.
Third, the academic ante has been raised in our schools. The stakes are higher and there is more and more pressure to get the children ready to compete in the global economy. That can be translated into students becoming more and more skilled at the manipulation of symbols, tasks at which our boys are not genetically endowed and, thus, are falling behind.
Most educators are scratching their heads at what is now called the "crisis of boys." On the other hand, girls are doing well. They outshine boys in all aspects of the symbol-driven world we live in. They get better grades and have higher aspirations. Girls outnumber boys in Advance Placement programs, in most math and science courses and in all extracurricular activities except sports. In 2006, girls represented 58 per cent of the student bodies at US colleges and universities.
It is little wonder that junior is in a funk. He is not living according to his nature, and while he may not know it, he can feel it. Somehow we have changed the way we live and while there appear to be many benefits, the way we are living is having disastrous effects on our boys. Given all the other crises facing the world, getting excited and making serous changes in how we raise our boys may not vault to the top of our collective priority list. But think about it. A nation without men, with only pleasure-saturated, spineless screen-watchers is a truly frightening prospect.
Kevin Ryan founded the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at Boston University, where he is professor emeritus. He has written and edited 20 books. He has appeared recently on CBS's "This Morning", ABC's "Good Morning America", "The O’Reilly Factor", CNN and the Public Broadcasting System speaking on character education. He can be reached at .
To Darren Hall:
Strong independent women won’t win? You sound pretty sure of that.
I wonder just how long you’re going to stay sure before it becomes clear that you’re incorrect?
Right now it -seems- as though you’re saying that once there are “Bad Boys”, there’s literally nobody that can defend against them.
Your fear of Bad Men is by no means unfounded; after all, men -are- responsible for over 76% of crime in general, and upwards of 82% of violent crime. In fact, the only three categories of crime women outperform men in are embezzlement, prostitution, and ‘runaways’, and by no means are any of those three ‘dominated’ by women.
Thankfully, the violent are not automatically the ‘powerful’ in our society; you might note that democracies founded on the protection and happiness of their citizens possess -far- more power than any dictatorship in the world today.
So, if ever the world turns into the chaos you’ve just imagined, you can rest assured that the organized, strong women will never lose to the disorganized, amoral hodgepodge of bad men.
Strong women aren’t just able to win; if it ever comes down to this imagined battle, they will.
Sincerely,
- Koko
If this continues, only “bad boys” will act like boys, and they’ll grow up to be bad men. Who will defend against this male aggression unburdened by rules and morals? Strong independant women? They won`t win.; Feminized men? They`ve lost already and will run to the strong, independant women to hide behind. Wil and G.H. and others are right.
I have one son who is soon to finish earning his Eagle Scout rank. Years ago my wife and I agreed that we would limit his time in front of any type of electronic screen. We read to him excerpts from exciting tales and classic poems and kept him outdoors as much as possible. We spent many, many hours watching birds and sneaking up on squirrels, finding birds nests (with eggs), camping in the great outdoors (backyard)and, later, how to shoot a BB gun, when, and why. He is now on the school’s rifle team. A few times during all this he asked me why he couldn’t spend more time playing games. We had bought him a playstation but limited his time with it. I told him that many young boys were becoming “vidiots”. They knew all the cheat codes and moves in their games but had never caught fireflies at dusk the way we did or watched a lunar eclipse or held a baby mockingbird in their hands (gently, son, very gently). Today he looks around at his friends who are still better at gaming but not nearly as good at free style thinking and he knows. He knows.
It is refreshing to see that many others recognize that boys needs are different than girls and that they are treated as defective girls at school. As a school board member in a suburban area in Pennsylvania, I have found it impossible to influence the hiring of more male teachers and administrators. Everything is zero tolerance with encouragement toward tattling. I encourage parents to contact schools to discourage them from treating our sons as though they are broken.
I appreciate Mr. Ryan’s insightful article which reinforced many thoughts I have had regarding the treatment of boys in the U.S. My husband and I are met with cold stares of other parents because we have toy guns for our son but all the boys love to come here to play with them. Some are aghast that my husband brings out cans for target practice with the b.b. gun which our son received as a gift from Santa. We also fish often. I think that “Anonymous” and others like her will choke on this post.
I attended a conference given by Leonard Sachs, M.D. at Central Catholic High School (all male) where he presented evidence of physical differences in males and females and how those differences impact learning in males especially. He also described many insightful ways to assist your sons in their quest for knowledge. I highly recommend reading his books.
Huh, imagine a nation without men?
... sounds pretty damn cool to me. What with men being responsible for 98% of rape and all.
But what exactly are you getting at, I wonder? Personally, I’d prefer men to be “pleasure-saturated, spineless screen-watchers” instead of the physically powerful domestic dictators of old.
And what are women supposed to do? Apologize? Oh no, women finally have the upper hand in society. God forbid.
I honestly shudder to admit that most of these comments are positive. I can only offer my sincerest hopes that they all snap out of it.
I’d like to make it clear that I’m not advocating sitting in front of a screen all day, or denying the benefits of unscheduled physical play. But.. “shooting squirrels with beebee guns”? C’mon, if you haven’t learned already that that’s barbaric, I’m truly and deeply scared that you’re allowed to raise children.
Oh, and on a literary note, it’d be nice if you kept your tone in one piece throughout your article; switching back between sarcastic and serious is a good way to get people lost. But… oh well, sarcasm has its place.
God Bless!! Teehee!
Re: the fellow speaking about the influence of his GrandPa on his youth.........AS IT SHOULD BE. God bless your family and may your traditions be handed down to your future generations.
Great article. The lead reminded me of my own youth.
I did not have “The Dangerous Book for Boys” by Conn and Hal Iggulden then but, instead, I had my retired grandpa who was never idle. While dad was in the office, grandpa was around the house: working as ever. He would not allow us, his grandchildren, to be idle either. So, the boys have to get the hammer and nail to fix the fence with him; trim the lawn with him; repair a broken window… always with his company. And since he’d got humanistic talents and skills, he taught us to draw, to carve wood… aside from awakening in us interest in reading books and even writing essays and poems. Thanks to grandpa’s company, we have an architect in the family who’s crazy about baseball; an engineer and an artist who are into basketball; a journalist who looks always for time to play badminton; and an economist who is into every sport.
Of course, my dad should also be given credits. He did to us just the same. (He grew up with grandpa!)
I am convinced we were saved from this so-called “crisis of boys” because of my dad and my dad’s dad.
Good article. I agree with it totally. Boys just aren’t given enough good role models in todays society. The vast majority of primary/infant/pre-school teachers are female, I myself didn’t have a male teacher until I was aged 11. Also in the media, men are portrayed as lazy, seedy slobs who drink beer and are generally stupid. I remember when i was young thinking masculinity was undesirable if you ended up like the men on TV. I think the feminist movement has dealt a huge blow to masculinity and Its causing huge problems in society.
As a mother of 2 teenage girls and a 13yr old boy, I have a predominantly female household since my husband lives and works in another state. He visits most weekends but my boy lacks a constant male influence. He exhibits all the indolence and addiction to computers and game consoles in the article. In his all male secondary school most of the boys are the same! I am seriously thinking of enrolling him in a co-ed school but that might be even worse.Never thought the problem was so universal.
Nigerian mum
JMJ
Dear Kevin,
As you requested in your comment, you wanted to know if I had seen it, and I did today.
This past Sunday, one of my sons-in-law and I were talking about the games and activities that he and the children of his generation played when they were young. He was very bothered about the inactivity of children these days. I was happy to tell him about your article and how it was just what he was talking about. See, we never know who we may influence, and hopefully, we will be good Christian examples.
By the way, I have been blessed with six grandsons and fourteen granddaughters, and God willing many more. I am going to look into buying The Dangerous Book for Boys for my grandsons.
Take care, and again may your article reach many more parents.
God’s Blessings,
Jean
I am terribly troubled about the amount of time boys spend in front of electronic screens. My own boys seem to have adapted well to fairly restrictive TV and computer usage rules. No computer or TV-based games are permitted in the house. So what do they do? They each play at least two musical instruments. They do sports - baseball, soccer, and ultimate frisbee. They love to go fishing and bicycling.
I concur with Jean Fallace that this article should gain wider publication in Catholic periodicals. Parochial school administrators should pay particular attention. Our parochial school is good on the whole, but tends to treat boys like defective girls. They won’t sit still and insist on climbing the trees. We moved them to an all-boys school.
Sounds like I need to find a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys.
I agree that there has been a steadly demasculinization of our culture, largely, I think, due to the overwhelming “feminine power” hype. A recent graduate of UCLA, there were times when I even felt intimated by those of my own sex.
Males seeking acceptance from females have a hard time acheiving that acceptance without being boring and fat and doing lots of “indoorsy” activities.
Of course there are the males who are just plain lazy, but I’m speaking in generalities that they can be hurt be the harshness of the fair sex, when woman condemn men for acting the way they do.
I agree with Bob de Bray’s comment that the same issue exists with girls too. *All* children could use more opportunities for child-directed play outside and more “hands-on” learning activities rather than drill-and-kill worksheets. An involved father is good for daughters as well as sons, though the latter are more at risk for problems when it’s lacking. Girls may be better at coping with today’s unhealthy environments than boys, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for them either.
The gender gap in college degrees is a bit misleading since many male-dominated trades actually pay good money but do not require college. Occupations such as plumber, electrician, high-end auto mechanic, HVAC technician, etc. In my area, a skilled one can make six figures and he doesn’t have to worry about his job being outsourced to India or China.
Dear Jean: This is the first time I’ve responded to a comment...and I’m not sure if I’m doing it correctly, so I’d appreciate you responding if you get this.
And thanks so much for your encouragement.
Kevin
In the early 70’s I taught at a boys school that thought as you do. The school was criticized for having the boys go canoeing for extended periods and to learn to walk on snowshoes. The school’s chores were done by the boys and in so doing they helped to keep the cost of running the place down. We had a meat program where we produced hams, bacon.sausage,and chickens all done ,under supervision and in concert, with a teacher. The product was sold,by the boys, in a nearby city, and the profits used to fund the school. There was a recognition by the school that the students were far more capable than society gave them credit for. I saw boys have many small successes that added up to a self confidence that was marvelous to behold. The best example of this confidence was when I saw a group of grade 11 boys reading the poetry that they had written to each other with no signs of embarrassment just self- confidence.
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