Interesting data, and these metrics are those that most health classes and public health professionals would probably be quite excited about. So high schoolers are engaging in less “risky” behaviors, which is what most people typically advocate for. Are you suggesting that risk-taking is an essential component of male development? Or…?
I think that it’s very important to hear men’s voices on this issue and that anything they share should be thoughtfully considered. But there are many moms of sons on this board and others who have insight into this age group, and I don’t want them to feel silenced. So though I hope to hear from more men on the issue, I don’t think that 99% of the comments should be restricted to one gender.
With that said, I’m going to answer some of the questions I originally posed.
I suspect that males in this age bracket are struggling.
Many here on CC are aware of how colleges are increasingly gender-skewed with more females attending (and graduating) than males. But it’s not just in 4-year colleges, it’s also at community colleges where one might expect men to be showing up in a higher percentage of the trades professions. And it’s also in the high school graduation rates, which I think is an area where we’d hope that everyone of all genders would successfully complete. So it’s not just a matter of video gaming males not having the social skills to ask someone out on a date or networking for a primo job. A lot of males are falling behind before they even finish high school. The question is, why?
In a thread I linked in the original post, I mentioned how many boys see education as more of a female thing as only 11% of elementary school teachers are male and 36% of secondary school teachers are male. I didn’t look for stats, but I’m confident that the percentage of male teachers for ages 0-5 is even less than 11%. I also cited an article that talked about how black students who’d had just one black teacher by 3rd grade were 13% more likely to enroll in college and those who’d had two were 32% more likely. If we switch that category from black to male, then it could be that if males had two male teachers by the time they were in 3rd grade, then it would be enough to help close the gap in terms of percentage of males going to college vs. females (original post).
In that same thread, I shared info about K-8 schools that have Girls on the Run, Girl Scouts, Girls Who Code, etc. But they had no coed or single-sex options for boys to participate in. When the administrations were asked to have coed options, they said that they had tried but that they couldn’t get teachers to sponsor any, despite offering stipends to do so.
Steps for families (based on many of the comments in this thread):
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Establish and enforce screen time limitations, particularly for video games.
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Ensure that there are positive male role models around (family, church, mentors, etc).
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Have males participate in at least one activity that involves in-person social engagement.
Steps for schools:
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Schools focus on providing coed ECs/outlets or have some kind of Title IX philosophy about making sure there are relatively equal opportunities for all students.
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Increase the use of teaching methods that more heavily engage kinesthetic learners, which most boys have as one of their more dominant learning styles.
Steps for schools/society:
- Get more males into the teaching profession, particularly in early grades. This will likely be made easier by increasing the pay (which should have been done decades ago) and also eliminating the outdated idea that teaching is a “feminine” profession (similar to how nursing used to be viewed, though that seems to be successfully shifting…likely due to the higher salaries that nurses get compared to teachers).
Steps for families/schools/society:
- Eradicate the gendering of any activities (reading, sewing, crying, whatever) or any preferences (such as liking pink/purple, or design, etc). People should not be told that they shouldn’t do an activity because it’s for the “other” gender or that people are going to think negatively of someone if they engage in those activities (which, more often than not, are considered “feminine” activities).