ninme

The Sunday Telegraph – Feminising education is of benefit to no one

Since the introduction of GCSEs in the late 1980s, however, the school environment has been subtly adjusted in a way that minimises the natural advantages of the male and maximises those of the female. An emphasis on coursework favours the conscientious – and girls are often very conscientious. (Teenage boys are less so, to put it mildly.) Then came the new form of A-levels, whose emphasis on “modules” – how did previous generations survive without modules? – further played down the competitive spirit that kicks into action with the words “turn your papers over now”.

If some state school classrooms have become anti-competitive, neglecting the problem-solving that boys traditionally enjoy, that is partly the result of the ideological prejudices of the educational establishment. But it may also have a more straightforward cause: the shortage of male teachers.

According to government figures for 2006, the ratio of newly qualified female to male teachers under the age of 25 was approaching seven to one. That is a ridiculous state of affairs, given that boys slightly outnumber girls in Britain. (The ratio does not reach 50:50 until the age of 30.) It is no offence to excellent women teachers to say that boys also need male role models in the classroom.

What the hell is a module?

Instapundit’s been on and on about The Dangerous Book For Boys, which I’ve never gotten around to saying anything about. I like the one post where he says whenever he mentions it he gets emails asking for books for girls (as if there’s a lack of books for girls). Why not give them The Dangerous Book For Boys?

Anyway, there have been a couple stories in the past …two years, maybe. Don’t ask me to get links or we’ll be here all day:

Two years ago, about, a little girl in England, about 2 years old, got separated from her play group and toddled down the street, found herself in someone’s back yard, fell into a garden pond and drowned. After the hysterical search for her and then the ensuing bad news, it emerged that (and I only heard about this in a column written for the Telegraph podcast but which didn’t appear in the newspaper) a man drove by her and noticed her but decided not to stop because she might not have been separated from her minder who might have come around the corner at that moment and accused him of being a pedophile.

Then there was a story about how men aren’t going into primary and secondary education because everyone would think they’re pedophiles.

Then there was a story about how Big Brothers and Big Sisters of New York can’t get any Big Brothers even though they’ve got a surfeit of Big Sisters.

Then there’s the big story about men not wanting to get married anymore. But that’s been in a million places with a million different angles.

Then there was a poster, I forget where it appeared, but a bus or subway ad or something, that showed a man holding a little girl’s hand and it said “Does it look wrong?” and a phone number to report it. The man might have been her father. But apparently fathers are all pedophiles too, for holding a little girl’s hand.

So little girls are drowning in garden ponds, boy students are being badly educated with no male role models, young at-risk boys who might actually be actively seeking help can’t get any, and men aren’t getting married and raising their kids because fatherhood “looks wrong” and will get you thrown in jail, your reputation destroyed, and your life torn up.