Headline, October 17 2022/ ''' '' GIRLS -MEN- BOYS '' '''

''' '' GIRLS -MEN-

 BOYS '' '''

 

THE CRISIS OF GIRLS -MEN- BOYS AND THEIR LOST OPPORTUNITIES :

Richard V. Reeve's new book, '' Of Boys and Men,'' is a landmark, one of the most important books of the year, not only because it is a comprehensive look at the male crisis, but also because it searches for the roots of that crisis and offers solutions.

IF YOU'VE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO THE SOCIAL TRENDS, you probably have some inkling that boys and men are struggling, in the U.S. and across the globe.

THEY are struggling in the classroom. American girls are 14 percentage points more likely to be '' school ready '' than boys at age 5, controlling for parental characteristics. By high school two-thirds of the students in the top percent of the class,ranked by G.P.A., are girls, while roughly two-thirds of the students at the lowest decile are boys.

In 2020, at the top 16 American law schools, not a single one of the flagship law reviews had a man as editor in chief.

MEN are struggling in the workplace. One in three American men with only a high school diploma -five million men - is now out of the labor force. 

The biggest drop in employment is among young men aged 25 to 34. Men who entered the workforce in 1983 will earn about 10 percent less in real terms in their lifetimes than those who started a generation earlier.

Over the same period, women's lifetime earnings have increased 33 percent. Pretty much all of the income gains that middle class American families have enjoyed since 1970 are because of increases in women's earnings.

Men are also struggling physically. Men account for close to three out of every four ''deaths of despair'' - suicides and drug overdoses. For every 100 middle-aged women who died of Covid up to mid-September 2021, there were 184 male deaths.

I learned a lot I didn't know. First, boys are much more hindered by challenging environments than girls. Girls in poor neighborhoods and unstable families may be able to climb their way out. Boys are less likely to do so.

In Canada, boys born into the poorest households are twice as likely to remain poor as their female counterparts.

In American schools, boys' academic performance is more influenced by family background than girls' performance. Boys raised by single parents have lower rates of college college enrollment than girls raised by single parents.

Second, policies and programs designed to promote social mobility often work for women, but not men. Reeves, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, visited Kalamazoo, Mich, where thanks to a donor, high school graduates get to many colleges in the state free. 

The program increased the number of women getting college degrees by 45 percent. The men's graduation rates remained flat. Reeves lists a whole series of programs, from early childhood education to college support efforts, that produced impressive gains for women, but did not boost men.

Reeves has a series of policy proposals to address the crisis, the most controversial of which redshirting boys - have them begin their schooling a year later than girls, because on average the prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum, which are involved in self-regulation, mature much earlier than in boys.  

Many men are just less ambitious. College women are roughly twice as likely to enroll in study abroad programs as college men.

In 2020, amid Covid, the decline in college enrollment for male students was seven times that of female students. As Reeves puts it : ''It's not that men have fewer opportunities. It is that they are not taking them.

I come away with the impression that many men are like what Dean Acheson said about Britain after World War II. They have lost an empire but not yet found a role. Many men have obsolete ideal : Being a man means being the main breadwinner for your family. Then they can't meet that ideal. Demoralization follows.

Ambition doesn't just happen ; it has to be fired. The culture is still searching for a modern masculine ideal, It is not instilling in many boys the nurturing and emotional skills that are so desperately important today. 

A system that labels more than a fifth of all boys as developmentally disabled is not instilling in them a sense of confidence and competence.

Masculinity has gone haywire, Reverting to pseudo-macho cartoons like Donald Trump and Josh Hawley doesn't help.

The Honor and Serving of the latest Global Operational Research and Writings, on Students : Men, Boys and Girls, continues. The World Students Society thanks author David Brooks.

With respectful dedication to Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : the exclusive ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless