Tackling The Boy Crisis | Michael Kimmel | TEDxSydney

what is happening with our boys have you noticed that there is a national debate international debate in Australia the United States in Britain all across Europe what's happening with boys with boys in school our boys in trouble what about the boys just a few of the covers of magazines and newspapers it's been everywhere with my own contribution on the screen as well it's everywhere we look and if you look at some of the data you would conclude that boys are in fact in some real trouble the data center turn around three distinct areas first the numbers themselves in Australia and the United States 60% of all University students are female just than just the numbers alone second how about achievement across Australia and the United States girls are getting higher grades they are getting they're getting more honors the 75% in the United States 75% of the number-one graduate in high schools across the country is a girl so so our boys are boys doing worse and and then it comes to behavior in Australia boys are three and a half times more likely to be suspended five and a half times more likely to be expelled two and a half times more at risk for emotional immaturity and two and a half times more likely you thought it would be higher and two and a half times more likely to complete suicide so those are the three dimensions and if you were to follow those you might conclude that there are fewer and fewer boys they're doing worse and worse and they're getting far more behavioral problems so how are we asked to think about this problem very frequently we're told well one problem could be not enough male teachers the boys need more male role models so we have to have more male teachers another one another critique says actually it is the it's the it's feminists fault because they have completely changed the curriculum to make it more girl friendly so these little boys with testosterone surging through their limbs have to learn to how to be quiet sit still raise their hands and take naps or perhaps it is simply that we are not paying sufficient attention to different learning styles between boys and girls perhaps it's that the boys and girls are so different that we have to modify our our teaching arrangements I think all of these ignore the most important element in the in what I think of as the boy crisis that we're talking about which is the actual experience of boys and by the way the actual experience of girls as well so let me tell you a little bit about the way in which I think about this first let's just take the numbers and take that off the table it's not that boys that there are more and more girls and fewer and fewer boys the truth is more people are going to university than ever before it is true that the rate of increase among girls is greater than the rate of increase among boys but it is not at all the case that girls are sort of soaring and boys they're kind of declining so that's the first thing but let's take a look at that achievement question it is true that girls are catching up to boys in science and math that their mean scores on tests are relatively the same these days well why would that be well here's what we know girls tend to underestimate their abilities and boys tend to overestimate their abilities so what that means is that in science and math classes especially the higher-level science and math classes you have fewer girls who are really really good they bring those mean scores up but you have a lot of boys who have no business at all in those higher-level math and science classes and they bring the mean scores down that is why you have the parallel between in achievement but more than that let's take a look at the other side let's take a look at English and languages here I think we bumped squarely up into the ideologies of masculinity a wonderful ethnography of high schools in here in Australia by an education professor named Wayne Martino sat and listened to boys and girls in high schools here in Australia talk about how they felt about English and and languages and the boys said things like oh I hate English it's like there's no right or wrong answers you have to say what you feel and I hate that so a girl sitting literally next to him and the school says but that's what I like about English there's no hard and fast right or wrong answers you get to talk about what you're feeling that's what I really like so boys don't like English and language for the very reasons that girls say that they do and so the other thing so let's talk about some of these remedies then we know that boys under arrest overestimate their abilities girls underestimate them so let's talk about some of these remedies well more male teachers it's okay but to be honest there is no empirical evidence whatsoever that sex of teacher by itself has an independent effect on learning outcomes yes of course there are plenty of schools that it turns out that what you know what really matters student-teacher ratio resources in the school independently sex of teacher is way down on the list of having a real effect but let's talk about some of those other reforms the feminized curriculum for example well addressed that by talking about the ways in which boys and girls is estimate their abilities but then there's this idea that we're not adequately dealing with boys and girls different learning styles and there's a movement in the states which actually is somewhat reproducing some of the traditions that you have here in Australia which is single sex schools or even in our case single sex classrooms in public schools so when students go off to do math and science they separate the boys and the girls now I want you to think about this and those of you who are parents I want you to think about this as well about your own kids here is the kind of remedy that is being offered by these by this movement to bring in to bring our students into single sex classes so just read this with me for a moment this is the National Association for single sex public schools the us organization girls and boys differ fundamentally in the learning style they feel most comfortable with girls tend to look on the teacher as an ally given a little encouragement they will welcome the teachers help a girl friendly classroom is safe comfortable welcoming place forget hard plastic chairs put in a sofa and some comfortable beanbags the teacher should never yell or shout at a girl avoid confrontation avoid the word why girls will naturally break up into groups of 3 & 4 to work on problems let them minimize assignments that require working alone now I hope that every woman in this room is deeply insulted by this but what I also hope is that all the men are pretty insulted too the only way we could possibly learn is if we're in hard plastic uncomfortable chairs and the teachers are yelling at us constantly saying why why why and we can never work collective cooperatively this is what I think is we're being asked now to teach two stereotypes not to our children we know our children are as different as snowflakes we cannot possibly teach to this kind of stereotype so I think these are the this is the kind of issue and now I want to talk about what I have found I've been working with with a with some some boys schools here in Australia and I've been doing some workshops with them and here's basically the the basic conclusion that I've come to looking at boy boys approach their education across the United States and in Australia and this is the key to what I want to tell you today boys regard academic disengagement as a sign of their masculinity how little they care about school is a badge of honour among their got their male friends say it another way academic engagement is really seen as kind of questionable this is the key then that boys have come to regard academic disengagement as a way to prove their masculinity and I would ask the men in the room to think about when when did you learn this because we all got these kinds of messages and what I've been doing in my work with these boys and what I was going to like to suggest for the the men in the room as well to think about is how we incorporated this how did we learn this this isn't natural to us we're naturally if you've ever watched a two or three-year-old there we are naturally unbelievably curious somewhere along the way we lose that and so the workshop I do and then I'm gonna ask ask the men in the room just to think about this for a minute when you wake up in the morning this is oh this is what the kind of exercise I do with the with the boys and with men in lots of different countries when you wake up in the morning men and you look in the mirror you say to yourself you're a good man at your funeral you want it to be said of you he was a good man what does that mean to us what does it mean to be a good man this is what men say they say honor integrity do the right thing stand up for the little guy be responsible be a good provider a good protector sacrifice put yours put others before yourself that's what we think it means to be a good man and when and then I say where'd you learn that and they say well it's everywhere it's an it's it's Homeric it's Shakespearean it's the judeo-christian heritage and that's true those ideas about what it means to be a good man are pretty much universal across our countries so then I say okay that's what it means to be a good man now you tell me if those are the same phrases words and ideas that come up when I say man up be a real man and then the boys say oh no no no that's completely different that's be strong be tough never show your feelings play through pain suck it up the number one thing that boys say in the United States never cry it is the hyper-competitive win at all costs get rich get laid that's what it means to be a real man so I asked the boys where did you learn that and they say in order father coach my male friends my older brother women mothers girlfriends grandmothers started about number seven on that list we learn what it means to be a real man from other men from our mates so I think what I want us to begin to tell our own sons is not the story of how awesome we are but rather the The Times and every man in this room has had this I know it every man in this room has had the experience at some point in your life when you have the ass been asked to betray your own ethics your own values of what it means to be a good man in order to prove you were a real man too other guys we all have that that's the stories I think we have to tell our own children I would love to tell my 17 year old son how awesome I am but what I really need to tell him is the times I did the wrong thing I still remember I was in year 8 in the locker room and the boy next to me in the locker room was being bullied by some other guys and I knew what to do I knew what it meant to be a good man what do you do when the person next to you is being bullied you stand up for them you do something you intervene right that was the moment my shoes became so fascinating I could not take my eyes off them I just sort of moved them this way I kind of moved them this way I could not look up because I was scared I was scared that if I intervene and I did the right thing they would come after me so I did the wrong thing and what I want my son to know is it cost me I was ashamed of myself I couldn't look at myself in the mirror quite the same way again so this is the kind of argument I think we want to bring to men this is the kind of conversation that we have to have between men and boys about the cost to us for betraying our own values in the name of proving our masculinity to others and fortunately here I think we have an enormous amount of help because this is somewhat of one of the arguments it seems to me that the women's movement has been making for the past 40 or 50 years is men are already knowing we already know how to have those kinds of relationships we already know what it means every man in this room already knows what it means to love a woman and want her to thrive because we're not just men we're not just men we are fathers we are sons we are grandfathers and grandsons we are brothers and lovers and partners and friends and husbands we all know what that feels like already we already know what it feels like so we're not asking men to do something dramatically different we're thinking this is a way for men to do just to do what we're already doing you want to meet an instant feminist talk to a man whose daughter just hit puberty and he is gonna say to you oh my god there are boys out there who are looking at my daughter the way I was taught to look at women this has got to stop this has got to stop today headline in the onion recently sort of illustrates this Eminem terrified as daughter begins dating man raised on his music right he's finally reading his own lyrics but through a different lens you want to meet another instance instant male feminist talk to an older man who's who's grown daughter is facing discrimination in the workplace and he will say wow that workplace has got to change right now I had no idea so my feeling is we already know the answer to this we already know what it feels like to support women to love women to want them to succeed so I think in some ways you have this we have this phrase in in our cultures you know how like we say oh you can talk the talk but you can't you're not you have to walk the walk I think we have to go one step further than walking the walk I think we have to talk our walk I think we have to say publicly that this is who we are that we love women we care about them because the women it because we feel that way about the women in our lives so this see it seems to me is the place where we begin that conversation but if the conversation is about masculinity what we think it means to be a man and the and the really interesting and probably most hopeful thing I could say is that we are not asking men to be different or to change we're asking us to remember we are asking men in fact not to be different but to be more authentically ourselves thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 51,853

Rating: 3.0444446 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Australia, Education, Anthropology, Childhood, Children, Education reform, Feminism, Gender, Learning, Men, Society

Id: wnLmKmTdAgM

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 14 2016