Female teachers and boys growing into men

There was a professor with a doctorate in Education I had a couple of years back (definitely ENFJ) who was a joy to listen to, even if you didn't agree with him. Used a lot of analogies and specific examples from his own experience to back most things up. One day, in the middle of a lecture, he went off for 30 minutes about how "it's not acceptable for boys to be boys anymore" and how we medicate and browbeat them into submission while growing up. And he laid on all of the differences he had seen in the last 10-15 years versus his 40-year professional career.

I had never really considered what he was talking about before (being INFJ and a naturally a bit more on the SNAG side of things), and decided to sit down and really think about it... And came to the overall conclusion that while he was overreacting a bit, he was generally on the right track. At first, the pendulum is all the way to one side, then it swings all the way to the other... And eventually, one hopes it finds a balance between the two sides.

That said, we're also overlooking a host of modern chemicals in most everything we eat or drink that mimic estrogen. So it's not just the education front that is contributing to the problem.

Elwood92 said:

Well, that's because we are thinking solely on a meta-level and you are also thinking from your own personally (fixed) perspective. And if I were to involve my own situation in this discussion (like you do), then I'd say that I completely agree with you. However, I'm thinking in terms of a social problem that has to be solved and I'm trying to be honest about it. I won't let my own luxury position as a relatively developed mind and generally succesful person get in my way of seeing the problem. I won't ignore the problem simply because it's not my problem (and I'm not saying that you are doing this, but your way of thinking allows for that to happen).

EDIT: lol I wrote "NOT to be honest about it". Of course I meant " to be honest about it"... Please don't tease me with Freudian theories!

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Is it really a social problem that needs to be solved? Sure, I'm thinking about it in a fixed perspective, but I see no conclusive evidence from my experiences that men are at a significant advantage - or if the teaching style is even the issue. All I see is poor correlation to a problem, not causation.

Not saying that this is the case, but there are plenty of other things that could be affecting men over a female-centric curriculum. Anything from nerds not being cool, math/physics/chemistry not being interesting no matter how you teach it, football players/rappers making significantly more than the average engineer (which would cause the average teen male to value sports over academics), puberty affecting the sex-obsessed men more than women (relatively speaking have clarity of mind over a teenage boy), etc.

We are both walking evidence that the system is not broken for men. I would love to see educational reform to make it more effective (for both sexes), and societal reforms (for the sake of progress of civilization), but I find that blaming the system for favoring females over men is kind of... eh...

wiarumas said:

Is it really a social problem that needs to be solved? Sure, I'm thinking about it in a fixed perspective, but I see no conclusive evidence from my experiences that men are at a significant advantage - or if the teaching style is even the issue. All I see is poor correlation to a problem, not causation.

Not saying that this is the case, but there are plenty of other things that could be affecting men over a female-centric curriculum. Anything from nerds not being cool, math/physics/chemistry not being interesting no matter how you teach it, football players/rappers making significantly more than the average engineer (which would cause the average teen male to value sports over academics), puberty affecting the sex-obsessed men more than women (relatively speaking have clarity of mind over a teenage boy), etc.

We are both walking evidence that the system is not broken for men. I would love to see educational reform to make it more effective (for both sexes), and societal reforms (for the sake of progress of civilization), but I find that blaming the system for favoring females over men is kind of... eh...

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Your point of view is not wrong, I can even agree with it for the largest part. There are many possible causes for the phenomenon we are discussing here and perhaps we're going about this all wrong by thinking in terms of a 'social problem' that needs to be solved. We could simply say that these differences between men and women are inevitable and might even be good from a cultural/evolutionary point of view. But if we do that, we can easily turn into these social conservatives/ social darwinists who don't want to change anything although there are people who don't get the chance they deserve in the current system. Of course this doesn't mean we can blame our own scholastic failures on 'the system'; we should always be personally responsible and proactive. But that's not a reason for us to not care about others who are also responsible and proactive but are being thrown overboard by the system anyway... I can respect your point of view and I can even agree with you when it comes to individual approaches to this subject, but I can't just forget about those who are less fotunate than I am. Which is why I will continue to see this as a social problem untill there's no reason for me to believe this problem exists anymore (which won't be anytime soon).

wiarumas said:

I believe the difference is that I don't view it as that big of a deal and that you are overestimating how dire the situation is.

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the thing is is that if this escalates even further towards or to a full blown emasculation of our boys, then we'll have to fight even harder to regain masculinity for our little men. i do not wish for this thread to be about feminism, but feminism has already made it taboo to fight for mens' rights (and boys' rights)(i don't feel like i am quite communicating what i wish to say, but this is what i got right now). i just dont want to see men or women back down from this issue just because of the social stigma that feminism has put on mens' rights (and boys' rights).

so where is the line drawn? when do we start saying that it is a problem? maybe it isn't right now, maybe it is, but when does it become a big enough problem to start fighting for what is just?

environmentalist try to start conservationism for whatever when the problem first shows, not when all hell has broken loose and its a desperate struggle to get things back to normal.

Introspiritual said:

There was a professor with a doctorate in Education I had a couple of years back (definitely ENFJ) who was a joy to listen to, even if you didn't agree with him. Used a lot of analogies and specific examples from his own experience to back most things up. One day, in the middle of a lecture, he went off for 30 minutes about how "it's not acceptable for boys to be boys anymore" and how we medicate and browbeat them into submission while growing up. And he laid on all of the differences he had seen in the last 10-15 years versus his 40-year professional career.

I had never really considered what he was talking about before (being INFJ and a naturally a bit more on the SNAG side of things), and decided to sit down and really think about it... And came to the overall conclusion that while he was overreacting a bit, he was generally on the right track. At first, the pendulum is all the way to one side, then it swings all the way to the other... And eventually, one hopes it finds a balance between the two sides.

That said, we're also overlooking a host of modern chemicals in most everything we eat or drink that mimic estrogen. So it's not just the education front that is contributing to the problem.

Click to expand...

in my last year of university, i took a a class about the evolution of the family (looking at it from the English evolution of it) and one thing that the prof went on about for nearly a whole class was about how in the past, if children wanted to play, they went outside. with the invention of the car, the kids in urban areas could no longer go outside to play in the streets (every so often a kid would get hit by a car and so parents brought the kids indoors i think, cant quite remember how that worked). the streets now belong to the cars. our outdoor world is a lot less child friendly than it once was is basically what the prof was saying. i wish i could remember more about that lecture and the one after it, he was talking about how the family dynamics changed once kids started playing indoors. it may have just been that TV became the tool to keep kids busy or something.

I'm a high school math teacher myself, and upon reading everything in this thread I find myself agreeing some and disagreeing some.


I think the main thing is that I see no direct goal in education to devalue masculinity or try to "make boys be more like girls". It's just a by-product of the other goals of the education system, which mainly are to keep everyone in line. I'd say there's a much bigger emphasis on trying to devalue thinking than anything else.



But I also think that only certain things are making this any more different than things have ever been...schools have always tried to have kids sit down, be quiet, follow the rules, work hard, etc. That's a total conservative, traditional model of the education system. It's like I once read: "School is designed by SJ's, for SJ's."

And when we teach everyone the exact same thing, lump them all together, and put them in huge classes, what else can you expect? Maybe it's because I teach math, but it's kind of hard to teach the majority of students if others are being distractions. This typical "boyish" behavior wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't keep other kids from being able to learn.



The only two areas where I see a change in more recent years were mentioned in the first article: The fear of lawsuits and the increased medication. But those are things that are beyond the control of any teacher.



So I agree that this is happening, but I'd say it's more of a side-effect of other things in the education system, not a softening of male behavior. Besides, I'm an S, I focus on the details right in front of me, and I teach great students and bad students of both genders, all races, different backgrounds, etc.

teddy564339 said:

I'm a high school math teacher myself, and upon reading everything in this thread I find myself agreeing some and disagreeing some.


I think the main thing is that I see no direct goal in education to devalue masculinity or try to "make boys be more like girls". It's just a by-product of the other goals of the education system, which mainly are to keep everyone in line. I'd say there's a much bigger emphasis on trying to devalue thinking than anything else.



But I also think that only certain things are making this any more different than things have ever been...schools have always tried to have kids sit down, be quiet, follow the rules, work hard, etc. That's a total conservative, traditional model of the education system. It's like I once read: "School is designed by SJ's, for SJ's."

And when we teach everyone the exact same thing, lump them all together, and put them in huge classes, what else can you expect? Maybe it's because I teach math, but it's kind of hard to teach the majority of students if others are being distractions. This typical "boyish" behavior wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't keep other kids from being able to learn.



The only two areas where I see a change in more recent years were mentioned in the first article: The fear of lawsuits and the increased medication. But those are things that are beyond the control of any teacher.



So I agree that this is happening, but I'd say it's more of a side-effect of other things in the education system, not a softening of male behavior. Besides, I'm an S, I focus on the details right in front of me, and I teach great students and bad students of both genders, all races, different backgrounds, etc.

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Teddy--I'm an SJ and school wasn't that great from my perspective. Math was particularly miserable. There was no hands on, it was rote work, and relevancy was not established.

Don't get me wrong, math is needed and we all must learn it, but the way we teach it--no wonder the boys are checking out.

The way I see it, boys don't fit into the neat little boxes that society has for them. They are more disruptive and teachers can't have that, so they recommend testing to see what the problem is, and then out of frustration the parents give the boy ritalin to make everyone happy. Doesn't matter that it is doing the kid no good, or that we are administering a drug to control behavior--because there isn't a physical test that will determine whether or not a child actually needs ritalin, just a subjective check list of behaviors that most boys have. Check the boxes and pick up your prescription on the way out. Parents, teachers, society can't be bothered with kids that are kids. We have to have miniature adults so they don't inconvenience us.:angry:

I think we ought to tie math and other subjects to actual real life examples of where these skills are used. If you are teaching fractions, use the stock market, or if you are teaching trig, use a DSO--there are a bazillion applications--math is in everything and nothing exists without math.

Yeah, this whole boy thing is a hot button of mine. Sorry to rant--I just feel the system is backwards. Instead of making the child fit into an unnatural education system, what is wrong with making the education system work for the child? Too many boys are given drugs because we are too lazy/preoccupied/whatever to meet their needs.

Ah, I'll shut up now before I really get going.:blushed:

niss63 said:

Teddy--I'm an SJ and school wasn't that great from my perspective. Math was particularly miserable. There was no hands on, it was rote work, and relevancy was not established.

Don't get me wrong, math is needed and we all must learn it, but the way we teach it--no wonder the boys are checking out.


I think we ought to tie math and other subjects to actual real life examples of where these skills are used. If you are teaching fractions, use the stock market, or if you are teaching trig, use a DSO--there are a bazillion applications--math is in everything and nothing exists without math.

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I didn't mean to imply that all SJ's love school, and my guess is most of them don't. But they're much more equipped to survive it and find enjoyment in it than the other temperaments...or at least I get that impression from a number of people I talk to.

About the whole relevance issue, you're right, but at the same time, the issue is much deeper than that.

Concerning math education, this is a fantastic essay, one of the best I've ever read, though it's pretty long:

http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf



Anyway, you're right that there's not enough relevance, but that's because of the way college is. At least in my state, all math classes beyond Algebra 1 have curriculum's set up for basically the sole purpose of "getting students ready" for college level math, which is basically all abstract and theory based.


Increased relevance would certainly help the situation a lot, but it's not like it's a magic solution that makes everyone love math. Students have all kinds of interests, and they often don't care about how something is useful in life unless it's immediately relatable to their own lives. This is the problem with teaching everything to everyone...you can't expect everyone to take an interest in the same things.

Don't get me wrong, like I said, it helps a lot to have a subject more interesting and applicable. When I taught Discrete Math a few years ago, students would tell me all of the time it was the best math they had ever taken, that it was interesting, and that they could always see it's purpose. I wasn't shackled with a standardized test, I didn't have to worry as much about "getting students ready for the next math", and I had enough time to do things that kids enjoyed more and saw the purpose in. Of course, like I said, this didn't make the whole thing easy and wonderful, because like I said, there's no one-size-fits-all. But it certainly was much better.

And that's part of the problem with math in itself...it builds on itself so much, and teachers switch every year. In elementary schools kids are trained not to think, not to be creative, just to do rote memory drill work. Even then, a number of them don't even have the basics. By the time they get to high school, it's hard enough just to get them to understand the simple work itself, much less how it's applied....that takes actual thinking and mental work, and so many kids these days are lacking those abilities because they never do them until they get to high school, if then.

niss63 said:

Yeah, this whole boy thing is a hot button of mine. Sorry to rant--I just feel the system is backwards. Instead of making the child fit into an unnatural education system, what is wrong with making the education system work for the child? Too many boys are given drugs because we are too lazy/preoccupied/whatever to meet their needs.

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Basically, the problem is that no one cares about education. Most people probably put school behind them once they graduate and only care about it or revisit it when they have kids of their own. Even then, most people only care about their own kids, not all of the other kids in school or education in general. And politicians don't care about education either.

There are all kinds of policies put in place to make politicians and education systems look good in the public eye, and these policies do nothing to help students actually learn.

To really have an education system focused on that, it would take a lot more money, a lot better training of teachers, and a set up that starts in elementary school and goes through the university system. So call me a cynic, but I never see that happening.



Didn't mean to derail the thread, but like niss said, this is a subject I feel kind of strongly about as well.