Friday Fundamentals in Film: Intermission

I’m taking a little time out to watch some more movies and to try to get a little ahead of the pace I’ve set for myself with these reviews. I’ve got a couple of films queued up and should be back next week with a new movie for the series. This week, however, I want to focus on a subject that I see as being closely intertwined with this series: educating boys.

As I’ve said before, this series started out as a way to illustrate positive character traits to teenage boys in an entertaining way. I think one of the greatest failings of the modern U.S. education system is the way it suppresses boys’ natural behavior and instincts through its educational orthodoxy and even with drugs, simultaneously dampening their natural desire and ability to learn in their own manner. At the same time a further disservice is performed by our culture of entertainment that, instead of suppressing boys’ instincts, plays to the basest of these. Alternately numbed and overstimulated, we have a generation of young men who may be easy to manipulate but hard to educate.

I’m not a distinguished pedagogue, but I am male and I have followed this subject for some time. I am also sympathetic to the impulses of the schools. There are many times in the youth group my wife and I lead where if I had a tranquilizer dart gun I’d be seriously tempted to use it on the young teen males in the group. I’d rather have them rambunctious, however, than sitting in a stupor because it’s easier to engage them during the former. I know that boys have high energy and learn kinetically, often by doing rather than listening. Sitting still disconnects something in their brain, yet “sit still” may be the thing they hear the most in school.

Since I was in college, much has been made about how schools have to do a better job in creating a “safe” learning environment for girls where boys don’t dominate the lessons, or unintentionally intimidate girls from participating in class. If this premise was ever true, it seems that the enforced solution has been effective if you look at the statistics offered by Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens, co-authors of “The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life.” Using data from the Department of Education, the State Department and other sources, they report that boys:

Receive the majority of D and F grades given to students in most schools, as high as 70 percent.

Create 80 percent of classroom discipline problems.
Account for 80 percent of high school dropouts.

Represent 70 percent of children diagnosed with learning disabilities and 80 percent of those diagnosed with behavioral disorders.

Are an average of a year to a year-and-a-half behind girls in reading and writing skills. (Girls are behind boys in math and science, but to a lesser degree.)

Represent 80 percent of schoolchildren on Ritalin or other medications used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Make up less than 44 percent of America’s college population.

In this article from the January 22nd Washington Times, Guerian and Stevens say that a key reason boys are not performing as well as girls is that there are neurobiological differences that are not recognized by most teachers.

“We have an industrial schooling system to educate the greatest number of people, and this system — with its emphasis on reading, writing and talking — is set up for the female brain, not the male,” Mr. Gurian says. “And this verbally motivated environment will leave out large groups of males, who are not very verbal.”

He says boys cannot benefit optimally in an environment where they are under tight control.

“When boys sit down, their brain shuts down,” Mr. Gurian says.

Some boys need to be more active in the classroom, and because of this, they are more likely to become discipline problems, he says. Although Mr. Gurian acknowledges that not all boys will be lost in the current system, about five boys in a class of 30 will be left behind.

(Read the whole article for some more great insight into this subject. Also, I think one of the reasons Calvin and Hobbes was so funny, poignant and successful is that people could relate to Calvin’s imagination, energy and rebelliousness, especially as counterbalanced by Suzie Derkins.)

My observation from growing up and from hanging around young men now is that boys see through false “self-esteem building” exercises that are too easy, but they can be challenged to excel by appealing to their competitive yet cooperative natures and by holding out an inspiring and chivalrous ideal. Credit for that idea has to go to King Arthur, and the British certainly understood the value of what was learned “on the playing fields of Eton.”

An example that occurred to me once was to picture an island in the middle of a raging river. Imagine the island has arable land and a small population of men and women. It is capable of supplying enough food for everyone until the population grows. The women might suggest a method for equitably rationing food, but the masculine response would be to think, “If I can just build a bridge across this part of the river, we can find more land to feed our families. Oh, and you say I might die trying to build that bridge? Cool!” Sure, that’s the kind of thinking that leads to war sometimes, but it’s also what has pushed exploration and civilization forward. It’s not exclusively the province of the male chemistry, but it shows what can happen if you harness, rather than benumb boys.

This “Fundamentals in Film” series isn’t a solution to the problem, but my hope is that it can help provide part of that virtous inspiration in an engaging way and that it will be helpful for parents, home educators and youth leaders who want to counter the media’s portrayal of men as either mindless brutes, mindless slugs or — if they have a mind — as nerds. Illustrating and encouraging strong character and channeling your strength for the benefit of others is beneficial not just to the boys but to society as a whole.

(Along the same lines is a great on-line program meant to encourage boys, young men and even older men to read. Called Guys Read, it has a fantastic understanding of what kinds of stories interest males of all ages and tries to use these books and stories to kindle a love of reading that will also ultimately lead to more academic success. Check it out.)

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