Where the Boys Are (The Bradley Lecture) longish post..
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"Philip Lewis" phillewi...@hotmail.com
31/5/00 Where the Boys Are http://www.angryharry.com/tgWhere%20the%20Boys%20Are.htm Christina Hoff Sommers A Bradley Lecture delivered at the American Enterprise Institute I am Christina Hoff Sommers, W.H. Brady Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. For most of my professional career I have been writing on ethics and moral philosophy. I have also written extensively about the influence of feminism on American culture. This evening, I will talk to you about some themes in a book I am writing called The War against Boys.
I will tell you something about how boys and girls are faring educationally and otherwise. There is a lot of misinformation on this topic. Too many advocacy groups are shaping the discussion and painting their own alarming pictures. I will try to give you the best and most up-to-date information on the true state of affairs. ...
... There is a story making the rounds in education circles, about a now-retired Chicago public school teacher, Mrs. Dougherty. Mrs. Dougherty was a dedicated, highly respected sixth grade teacher, who could always be counted on to bring the best out in her students.
But one year she had a cl*** she found impossible to control. The students were rowdy, unmanageable, and seemingly un-teachable. She began to worry that many of them had serious learning disabilities-or mental disorders-or something. So, one day, when the principal was out of town, she did something teachers were forbidden to do in that school. She entered the principal's office and looked into the special files that listed student's IQ's.
To her shock she found a majority of the cl*** was way above average in intelligence. A large cluster was in the high 120-s -128, 127, 129; several scored in the 130s; and one of the worst cl***room culprits was in fact brilliant. He had an IQ of 145.
Well, Ms. Dougherty was furious. She had been feeling sorry for those kids.
Giving them remedial work. Making excuses for them. Things were about to change.
She went back to her cl*** and a new era began.
She read them the riot act. They would comport themselves like ladies and gentlemen. She doubled the homework load, raised the standards, gave draconian punishments to any malefactor.
Slowly but perceptibly their performance began to improve. By the end of the year, this cl*** of ne'er-do-wells was the best behaved and highest performing of all the sixth grade cl***es.
The principal was of course delighted. He knew about this cl*** and its reputation for incorrigibility. And one day he called her into his office and asked her: What did you do?
She felt compelled to tell him the truth. She confessed that when he had been out of town, she had looked up children's IQs.
The principal forgave her. Congratulated her. Then he said something surprising.
"I think you should know, Mrs. Dougherty - those numbers, next to the children's names, they're not IQ scores, they're their locker numbers." I heard this story from Dr. Carl Boyd, who is president of an educational foundation in Kansas City. He says the story is true, and I believe him. The moral for teachers is obvious: demand and expect excellence from students and you'll get the best they can give. Be tough on them. Be like Mrs.
Dougherty.
Some of you may think that this is self-evident, that it's only common sense. Who questions setting and enforcing high standards for students?
The answer is a lot of education experts.
Many professors and deans at our leading schools of education have convinced themselves and others that American children are vulnerable, fragile, and in crisis. They believe children are harmed by teachers who enforce high standards. They want teachers to pay attention to the child's self-esteem and emotional stability. The fashion in many cl***rooms is for teachers to break the cl*** up into small, non-threatening, cooperative learning groups - the teacher is more of a supportive facilitator-rather than a demanding task master. In the early nineties it was the girls who were portrayed as being at special risk, in need of a therapeutic pedagogy; now it's the boys as well.
My own view is that the child-crisis is a myth. And I believe that taking a therapeutic approach to education is a very bad idea for all students. But, as I shall try to show, it is especially harmful to boys.
The idea that our children are fragile, being harmed by the dominant culture which forces them into feminine or masculine gender stereotypes, is now the fashion in education. Let me tell you who promoted and popularized this idea and then give you my reasons for rejecting it.
The girl-crisis came first, and a single professor at Harvard University is the person most responsible for promulgating it.
In 1989, Carol Gilligan, a professor at the Harvard School of Education and a pioneer in the field of women's psychology, announced her finding that the nation's adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, "As the river of a girl's life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in danger of drowning or disappearing." Gilligan believes girls are silenced -"they lose their voice" as they enter adolescence in our male-centered society. Her distressing portrait of endangered girls had no basis in reality-as I shall show. But it fascinated an uncritical media who helped gain for it a widespread acceptance.
Soon after Gilligan issued her admonition about our drowning, silenced, and disappearing daughters, feminist researchers and women's advocacy groups began reporting that the nation's teenaged girls are academically "shortchanged," drained of their self-esteem by a society that favors boys.
The American ***ociation of University Women called what was happening to girls "an unacknowledged American tragedy." The state of the nation's girls was being described in increasingly lurid terms.
A Los Angeles Times writer talked of the "widespread process of psychic suicide among ordinary teenage girls." Here is Mary Pipher in Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (this book stayed high on the New York Times bestseller list for more than one year). According to Pipher: Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn.
The allegedly low estate of America's girls moved the United States Congress to p*** the Gender Equity Act, categorizing girls as an "under-served population" on a par with other discriminated-against minorities.
Millions of dollars in grants were awarded to study the plight of girls and to learn how to cope with the insidious bias against them. At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the American delegation presented the educational and psychological deficits of American girls as a pressing human rights issue.
Later in the 90's, the crisis talk would turn to boys.
Here again Gilligan is a moving spirit. She claims to have found that boys too are traumatized by the way they are "socialized" in what she calls the "patriarchal social order." She and some of her male disciples in the New England area are promoting a movement to rescue boys from the hostile male culture that is harming them.
You may already have noticed a lot of recent stories about the crashing "selves" of boys.
On June 4, 1998, McLean Hospital, the psychiatric teaching hospital of the Harvard Medical School, issued a two-page press release announcing the results of a new study on boys. The study, entitled "Listening to Boys' Voices," was conducted by Dr. William Pollack, Director of the Center for Men at McLean Hospital and ***istant professor of psychology at Harvard.
Pollack's conclusions are sweeping and alarming. He says that even seemingly normal boys are "in trouble"-they are "disconnected," unable to relate to people and unable to express emotions. Echoing the talk of girls as Ophelias, Pollack refers to American boys as "young Hamlets [who] succumb to an inner state of Denmark." He urges immediate action on a nationwide scale: "[A]s a nation, we must address these boys' pain before it reaches epidemic proportions and severely disrupts our society." Stories about the boy crisis appeared in a number of leading newspapers-the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe-the crisis made the cover of Newsweek and was the subject of an ABC 20/20 segment; the Today show devoted two programs to it.
Gilligan, Pipher, Pollack and their many colleagues speak of saving, rescuing, reviving.
By using Ophelia and Hamlet as symbols, the child crisis writers offer a dark and unwholesome portrait of America's girls and boys. But is it accurate? Is it helpful? Are American children well served by being portrayed as tragic and psychologically ailing?
My answer to all three questions is an emphatic no.
The first thing to notice is that none of the crisis writers has published their alarming findings in any peer-reviewed social science journals.
Byp***ing the scrutiny of peer review both Gilligan and Pollack simply announced their conclusions in the popular press.
More conventional scholars, who abide by the protocols of respectable social science research, see no evidence of crisis.
Dr. Anne Peterson, a University of Minnesota, adolescent psychologist, reports the consensus of clinicians and researchers working in adolescent psychology: It is now known that the majority of adolescents of both genders successfully negotiate this developmental period without any major psychological or emotional disorder, develop a positive sense of personal identity, . . .and manage to forge adaptive peer relationships at the same time they maintain close relationships with their families." Daniel Offer, the University of Michigan Professor of Psychiatry, refers to "a new generation of studies" that find a majority of adolescents [80%] normal and well-adjusted." Just consider the contrast between William Pollack's ...
"White~Dragon ?®" serve...@hotmail.com
...
"Louise" Lou...@no.spam
Feminists have been warned, in my school, to read everything Sommers writes because she's dangerous.
Thanks for giving me another snippet of her lies, diarrhea, slanderous and libelous statements (especially on Gilligan), its a wonder Gilligan hasn't taken her to court......I personally hope she gets shut down but since she strokes male agendas, I dont suppose she'll have any shortage of men wanting to publish her and pay her nicely for each word she can write that bashes true feminists ...
...
"White~Dragon ?®" serve...@hotmail.com
I actually found her to be lucid, honest, and factual <snip bullshit> ...
nos ...@spam.com (GodEvolved)
You mean, dangerous to their lies that boys and girls are the same? Dangerous to the idea that girls are shortchanged?
You mean truths?
<Snip>
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"...What you have to understand, young lady, is that the Greeks, not content with dominating the culture of the Cl***ical world, are also responsible for the greatest, some would say the only, work of true creative imagination produced this century as well. I refer of course to the Greek ferry timetables. A work of the sublimest fiction. Anyone who has travelled the Aegean will confirm this..." Professor Watkin - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
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AlephNull ...@yahoo.com (Aleph Null)
Dangerous, because everything she says is rue.
AlephNull ...@yahoo.com (Aleph Null)
Here's more: watch her toas and embarr*** Gilligan in public: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/08/letters.htm
"BrettG" bre...@home.net
Probably because, unlike what *you* write, CHS has not written any "lies, diarrhea, slanderous and libelous statements" otherwise she most likely would have been sued already, you cretin.
Why don't you write to her and tell her that to her face (metaphorically speaking), you cowardly piece of shit. That way you might learn firsthand how libel laws work
"Philip Lewis" phillewi...@hotmail.com
Hello, Louise!
You wrote on Sun, 03 Mar 2002 14:36:41 GMT: L> Feminists have been warned, in my school, to read everything Sommers L> writes because she's dangerous.
Yes the truth is always dangerous to liars...
L> Thanks for giving me another snippet of her lies, diarrhea, L> slanderous and libelous statements (especially on Gilligan), You make very broad highly generalised claims but offer not a whit of logic or evidence to back them up - yup - I believe YOU are another of those feminists that are long overdue to be ***igned to the abyss.
L> its a wonder Gilligan hasn't taken her to court...
If you weren't such a blinkered ideologue you mightn't wonder at all!
L> ...I personally hope she gets shut down but since she strokes male L> agendas, I dont suppose she'll have any shortage of men wanting to L> publish her and pay her nicely for each word she can write that bashes L> true feminists Yes it must been a "honeymoon time" before feminists like Sommers with some genuine integrity came along and raised doubts about the poisonous trash you were pumping into the mainstream media - as far as I am concerned you can keep your own poison and choke on it.
L> "Philip Lewis" <phillewi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message L> ...
>> 31/5/00 >> Where the Boys Are >> http://www.angryharry.com/tgWhere%20the%20Boys%20Are.htm >> Christina Hoff Sommers >> A Bradley Lecture delivered at the American Enterprise Institute >> I am Christina Hoff Sommers, W.H. Brady Fellow at the American >> Enterprise >> Institute. For most of my professional career I have been writing on L> ethics >> and moral philosophy. I have also written extensively about the >> influence L> of >> feminism on American culture. This evening, I will talk to you about >> some themes in a book I am writing called The War against Boys.
>> I will tell you something about how boys and girls are faring L> educationally >> and otherwise. There is a lot of misinformation on this topic. Too >> many advocacy groups are shaping the discussion and painting their >> own alarming pictures. I will try to give you the best and most >> up-to-date information L> on >> the true state of affairs. ...
>> ... There is a story making the rounds in education circles, about a >> now-retired Chicago public school teacher, Mrs. Dougherty. Mrs.
>> Dougherty was a dedicated, highly respected sixth grade teacher, who >> could always be counted on to bring the best out in her students.
>> But one year she had a cl*** she found impossible to control. The >> students were rowdy, unmanageable, and seemingly un-teachable. She >> began to worry that many of them had serious learning disabilities-or >> mental disorders-or >> something. So, one day, when the principal was out of town, she did >> something teachers were forbidden to do in that school. She entered >> the principal's office and looked into the special files that listed >> student's >> IQ's.
>> To her shock she found a majority of the cl*** was way above average >> in intelligence. A large cluster was in the high 120-s -128, 127, >> 129; L> several >> scored in the 130s; and one of the worst cl***room culprits was in >> fact brilliant. He had an IQ of 145.
>> Well, Ms. Dougherty was furious. She had been feeling sorry for those L> kids.
>> Giving them remedial work. Making excuses for them. Things were about >> to change.
>> She went back to her cl*** and a new era began.
>> She read them the riot act. They would comport themselves like ladies >> and gentlemen. She doubled the homework load, raised the standards, >> gave draconian punishments to any malefactor.
>> Slowly but perceptibly their performance began to improve. By the end >> of L> the >> year, this cl*** of ne'er-do-wells was the best behaved and highest >> performing of all the sixth grade cl***es.
>> The principal was of course delighted. He knew about this cl*** and >> its reputation for incorrigibility. And one day he called her into >> his office and asked her: What did you do?
>> She felt compelled to tell him the truth. She confessed that when he >> had been out of town, she had looked up children's IQs.
>> The principal forgave her. Congratulated her. Then he said something >> surprising.
>> "I think you should know, Mrs. Dougherty - those numbers, next to the >> children's names, they're not IQ scores, they're their locker >> numbers." >> I heard this story from Dr. Carl Boyd, who is president of an >> educational foundation in Kansas City. He says the story is true, and >> I believe him.
L> The >> moral for teachers is obvious: demand and expect excellence from >> students and you'll get the best they can give. Be tough on them. Be >> like Mrs.
>> Dougherty.
>> Some of you may think that this is self-evident, that it's only >> common sense. Who questions setting and enforcing high standards for >> students?
>> The answer is a lot of education experts.
>> Many professors and deans at our leading schools of education have L> convinced >> themselves and others that American children are vulnerable, fragile, >> and L> in >> crisis. They believe children are harmed by teachers who enforce high >> standards. They want teachers to pay attention to the child's >> self-esteem and emotional stability. The fashion in many cl***rooms >> is for teachers to break the cl*** up into small, non-threatening, >> cooperative learning groups - the teacher is more of a supportive >> facilitator-rather than a demanding task master. In the early >> nineties it was the girls who were portrayed as being at special >> risk, in need of a therapeutic pedagogy; now it's the boys as well.
>> My own view is that the child-crisis is a myth. And I believe that >> taking L> a >> therapeutic approach to education is a very bad idea for all >> students.
L> But, >> as I shall try to show, it is especially harmful to boys.
>> The idea that our children are fragile, being harmed by the dominant L> culture >> which forces them into feminine or masculine gender stereotypes, is >> now L> the >> fashion in education. Let me tell you who promoted and popularized >> this L> idea >> and then give you my reasons for rejecting it.
>> The girl-crisis came first, and a single professor at Harvard >> University L> is >> the person most responsible for promulgating it.
>> In 1989, Carol Gilligan, a professor at the Harvard School of >> Education L> and >> a pioneer in the field of women's psychology, announced her finding >> that L> the >> nation's adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, "As the river >> of a girl's life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in >> danger of drowning or disappearing." >> Gilligan believes girls are silenced -"they lose their voice" as they L> enter >> adolescence in our male-centered society. Her distressing portrait of >> endangered girls had no basis in reality-as I shall show. But it L> fascinated >> an uncritical media who helped gain for it a widespread acceptance.
>> Soon after Gilligan issued her admonition about our drowning, >> silenced, L> and >> disappearing daughters, feminist researchers and women's advocacy >> groups began reporting that the nation's teenaged girls are >> academically "shortchanged," drained of their self-esteem by a >> society that favors L> boys.
>> The American ***ociation of University Women called what was >> happening to girls "an unacknowledged American tragedy." The state of >> the nation's L> girls >> was being described in increasingly lurid terms.
>> A Los Angeles Times writer talked of the "widespread process of >> psychic suicide among ordinary teenage girls." Here is Mary Pipher in >> Reviving >> Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (this book stayed high >> on L> the >> New York Times bestseller list for more than one year). According to L> Pipher: >> Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as >> planes L> and >> ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the >> selves L> of >> girls go down in droves. They crash and burn.
>> The allegedly low estate of America's girls moved the United States L> Congress >> to p*** the Gender Equity Act, categorizing girls as an "under-served >> population" on a par with other discriminated-against minorities.
>> Millions of dollars in grants were awarded to study the plight of >> girls L> and >> to learn how to cope with the insidious bias against them. At the >> Fourth >> World Conference on Women in Beijing, the American delegation >> presented L> the >> educational and psychological deficits of American girls as a >> pressing L> human >> rights issue.
>> Later in the 90's, the crisis talk would turn to boys.
>> Here again Gilligan is a moving spirit. She claims to have found that >> boys too are traumatized by the way they are "socialized" in what she >> calls the "patriarchal social order." >> She and some of her male disciples in the New England area are >> promoting a movement to rescue boys from the hostile male culture >> that is harming L> them.
>> You may already have noticed a lot of recent stories about the >> crashing "selves" of boys.
>> On June 4, 1998, McLean Hospital, the psychiatric teaching hospital >> of the >> Harvard Medical School, issued a two-page press release announcing >> the results of a new study on boys. The study, entitled "Listening to >> Boys' >> Voices," was conducted by Dr. William Pollack, Director of the Center >> for >> Men at McLean Hospital and ***istant professor of psychology at >> Harvard.
>> Pollack's conclusions are sweeping and alarming. He says that even L> seemingly >> normal boys are "in trouble"-they are "disconnected," unable to >> relate to people and unable to express emotions. Echoing the talk of >> ...
Michael Snyder msny...@redhat.com
The fact that Gilligan hasn't taken her to court might tell you something.
Gilligan can't take her to court -- because everything she says is true.
...
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