Male educational issues deserve attention

Katie Strickland thinks being concerned about boys’
educational problems means one doesn’t want girls to succeed
(“Smart women must be stopped!”, July 24). I beg to
differ; boys matter too and our neglect of their issues has
resulted in serious adverse effects on society.

According to the First Biennial Report of the New Hampshire
Commission on the Status of Men, 70 percent of learning-disabled
students are male and two-thirds of Ds and Fs go to boys. They are
far more likely than girls to drop out of high school, have
learning disabilities, be held back a grade, be placed in special
education, become homeless, or die from suicide. Male college
enrollment has dropped from 58 percent to 44 percent.

When problems carry on into adulthood, men today make 85 percent
of homeless adults, 92 percent of occupational deaths, 90 percent
of prisoners, 80 percent of deaths by suicide, and have higher
death rates than women for each of the 10 leading causes of
death.

Meanwhile, fatherlessness remains the leading predictor of crime
in a community.

The illusion of male privilege at the top of society masks male
disposability at the bottom and the rest of society.

Feminism has become a billion-dollar industry, while men’s
issues remain severely neglected due to a combination of political
correctness, chivalry, misandry and the myth of male power.

Our federal government now has seven offices of women’s
health but still no office of men’s health. Thousands of
government-funded commissions for women flourish while only one
commission on the status of men exists, that in New Hampshire.

The commission, which is unfunded, detailed in its report its
findings of serious social problems resulting from the continued
public neglect of issues affecting men.

Blaming boys does little to solve this problem, and it also
ignores reality. Psychology Professor Judith Kleinfeld from the
University of Alaska, Fairbanks found that schools are teaching in
ways that boys are less receptive to than girls are.

For example, teachers emphasize reading literature and talking
about feelings, whereas many boys prefer reading nonfiction, such
as history and adventure books. The number of boys who said they
don’t like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001,
according to a University of Michigan study.

Home-schooled boys, on the other hand, perform just as well as
their female counterparts. As Kleinfeld explained, “When they
are taught at home, parents are more likely to let them follow
their interests.”

Thankfully, not everyone dismisses the boys’ educational
crisis with a simplistic “girls-are-gooder” attitude.
As U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has stated, the
problem has “profound implications for the economy, society,
families and democracy.”

Angelucci is a 2000 UCLA law alumnus and president of the
Los Angeles chapter of the Coalition of Free Men.