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The glory of God is man fully alive.                 St. Irenaeus

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Location: Aztec, New Mexico, United States

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax

I just read a fascinating book called Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax. Apparently huge numbers of boys are doing badly in school and then never finding a nitch as adults. Many of them live with their parents and just get by and are happy with that. The book gives five reasons for this problem:

Boys Adrift is about a couple of generations of boys (40 years) who are unmotivated by such traditional factors as girls (desire to please so as to date and marry a good one), money (work hard so as to have a nice toys and a nice house for the lady to live in), and traditional standards of masculine duty (the obligations of an adult male to protect and provide for). The name assigned to this group by Sax is ‘Failure to Launch’.

Sax reports that the first indications can show up as early as kindergarten indicated by lack of motivation, class disruptions and, underachievement. When these children become young adults, an astonishing number are stalling with many leaving home and then returning to live for years or decades in their parents homes. In 1949, 70% of undergraduates were male. In succeeding decades, the numbers dropped to 64%, 59%, 49%, 46%, 44% respectively and was 42% in 2006. Some of this is due to women becoming more successful at overcoming female stereotypes, but men are both enrolling in and finishing college at ever decreasing rates. Over that same time period the number of able bodied men who could find work but are unemployed and not looking for work has changed from 1 in 20 to a current 1 in 7 men who are content to not work or work part time or at minimum wage while employers seeking skilled craftsmen are having an ever greater difficulty finding workers.

A lawyer joke introduces the chapter concerning the shortage of workers. A lawyer with a luxury house has a plugged toilet. He tries without success to clear the blockage with a plunger and called a plumber. The plumber cleared the blockage and handed the lawyer the bill. The lawyer looked at the bill and exclaimed; “$250 labor, you were only here 30 minutes, that’s more than my hourly rate and I’m a lawyer.” The plumber replied; “I know; I used to be a lawyer”.

Five Reasons Boys Are Doing Poorly:

1. Changes in the way we teach: Kids are going to school too young. Kindergarten used to be mostly constructive play. The emphasis has changed to teaching the skills prerequisite to reading, writing and math resulting in children and especially boys being required to do ‘schoolwork’ before they are developmentally ready. Finland, whose students have the highest scores on standardized testing, don’t start school until age seven while our children are expected to do the same work at age five. School has changed so it is a much better fit for girls than boys. Some issues have to do with the fact that boys and girls are different and these differences may be unknown or even believed to be wrong and needing to be changed. Physical differences that many teachers don’t know about include the fact that girls’ hearing is better than boys and if a female teacher speaks loud enough for the girls to be comfortable, the boys at the back of the room may not even be hearing the teacher. Boy’s eyes have a higher percentage of receptors that see in black and white and respond to motion, speed and direction and less of color and texture. This affects what they see and what interests them in a classroom. Societal definitions of healthy relationships and appropriate behavior can result in normal boyish behavior common to both human and animal male play being ‘treated’ with drugs or simply discouraged. Boys can then come to believe that school is not for them, school is stupid, school is for girls and nerds. In any case, many boys are completely unmotivated and under achievers by the third or forth grade.

2. Video Games: Certain kids with a strong desire to control their environment find that they have a home in the video world where they are in control. Unfortunately, the environment is not healthy and quite addictive. In addition, the brains of these kids have physical changes to centers for motivation and direction with the result that they don’t care about much of anything except the games. The changes appear to be long lasting.

3. Prescription drugs associated with ADD: These drugs affect the same brain area as the Video games and have the same effect in reducing motivation with the result that the boys change from active energetic little boys to lazy, unmotivated, and often overweight kids who hate school. Some of them may still actually need the drugs, but the side effects may include permanent brain malfunction resulting in a kind of laziness that the parents and kids can’t seem to find a way to overcome with the result that they can end up taking 6-10 years to make it through college and then can’t hold down a job. I have a nephew who has a roommate who is a very talented guy and who currently makes just enough money to pay the rent and food and turned down a $120,000 job offer because he would have to work 50 hours per week. My nephew says this guy is a slug and fits the description of the boys in the book to a tee.

4. Endocrine Disruptors: There are two chemicals that are given off by clear plastics which are made from petroleum which that act as estrogen mimics. They first discovered the problem in fish in the Potomac River; the females were normal, but the males while having male organs, were producing eggs instead of sperm. They have since found the same problem in fish elsewhere, alligators, mammals of all kinds, and little boys. Researchers eventually identified two different chemicals that have that same effect in high levels in all those species. Researchers have known for a long time that males of many different species including people play differently from the day they are born. When the give the level of the chemical to animals equivalent to what would be found in a clear plastic water bottle or a baby bottle, the play instantly changed. The chemicals had no effect on the females, but the males became hyperactive for a while and then later became lazy, not wanting to play or even to eat well. In San Juan, Puerto Rico girls were going through puberty as early as eight and in the rest of the USA, girls are going through puberty about 2 years earlier than in the past. When they investigated the cause, researchers found high levels of the chemicals in the girls systems. The drugs appear to reduce testosterone in boys reducing drive and motivation and with identifiable brain dysfunction and serious problems with the reproductive system.

5. Devaluation of Masculinity. In my mind this an effect rather than a cause, but Sax says that masculine values need to be taught to boys by men and many boys are raised in homes without men around. There is some research that boys with the problems listed above can be cured by going to an all boys school. The caveat is that the school has to be run by men who define masculinity for the boys with enforced values and modeling of the behaviors.

All in all a very interesting book.