Not another class of victims
Posted 5/29/2006 8:10 PM ET
By Heather Mac Donald
The moment is close at hand when the United States will be composed entirely of victim groups.
The news media have been sounding the alarm about a new gender crisis in education: Boys reportedly make up a declining portion of college students. And so the future is clear. Boys are poised to become the newest victim class.
OUR VIEW: More women graduate. Why?
That rustling sound you hear is the migration of university deans and "diversity" consultants to the next big employment bonanza: helping boys succeed!
The requisite bureaucracies are already in place: The professions and academia overflow with committees on the recruitment and retention of minorities and women; they will undoubtedly be only too happy to expand their mandate to boys.
Here's a better suggestion for the alleged gender gap in education: Do nothing. Or rather, do nothing in the name of boys per se. If boys are lagging in undergraduate enrollment, it's up to them to study harder and stay more focused. They don't need the inevitable new consulting boondoggles in order to pull up their own bootstraps.
To be sure, there is a clear culprit in the boy shortage: feminized progressive education. Teacher education programs preach contempt for competition and fact-based learning; K-12 classrooms follow suit. When schools place more importance on group collaboration than on achievement of mastery in a subject, many boys are going to tune out.
But the costs of creating wall-to-wall victim groups outweigh the benefits of using boys' new victim status to overthrow progressive pedagogy. Let's get rid of the knowledge-crushing banalities of progressive education because it drags down all students' learning, not because it hurts boys.
The refusal to declare and minister to a new needy population could be revolutionary. It could launch a shocking proposition: Not every problem requires a response from our bloated helping bureaucracies. Letting boys choose for themselves whether to compete academically just might unleash a dangerous revival of individual initiative.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.
Posted 5/29/2006 8:10 PM ET
By Heather Mac Donald
The moment is close at hand when the United States will be composed entirely of victim groups.
The news media have been sounding the alarm about a new gender crisis in education: Boys reportedly make up a declining portion of college students. And so the future is clear. Boys are poised to become the newest victim class.
OUR VIEW: More women graduate. Why?
That rustling sound you hear is the migration of university deans and "diversity" consultants to the next big employment bonanza: helping boys succeed!
The requisite bureaucracies are already in place: The professions and academia overflow with committees on the recruitment and retention of minorities and women; they will undoubtedly be only too happy to expand their mandate to boys.
Here's a better suggestion for the alleged gender gap in education: Do nothing. Or rather, do nothing in the name of boys per se. If boys are lagging in undergraduate enrollment, it's up to them to study harder and stay more focused. They don't need the inevitable new consulting boondoggles in order to pull up their own bootstraps.
To be sure, there is a clear culprit in the boy shortage: feminized progressive education. Teacher education programs preach contempt for competition and fact-based learning; K-12 classrooms follow suit. When schools place more importance on group collaboration than on achievement of mastery in a subject, many boys are going to tune out.
But the costs of creating wall-to-wall victim groups outweigh the benefits of using boys' new victim status to overthrow progressive pedagogy. Let's get rid of the knowledge-crushing banalities of progressive education because it drags down all students' learning, not because it hurts boys.
The refusal to declare and minister to a new needy population could be revolutionary. It could launch a shocking proposition: Not every problem requires a response from our bloated helping bureaucracies. Letting boys choose for themselves whether to compete academically just might unleash a dangerous revival of individual initiative.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.
