As school begins in the coming
weeks, parents of boys should ask themselves a question: Is my son really
In all these cases, school officials
found the children to be in violation of the school’s zero-tolerance policies
for firearms, which is clearly a ludicrous application of the rule. But common
sense isn’t the only thing at stake here. In the name of zero tolerance,
our schools
are becoming hostile environments for young boys.
Girls occasionally run afoul of
these draconian policies; but it is mostly boys who are ensnared. Boys are
nearly five times more likely to be expelled from preschool than girls. In
grades K-12, boys account for nearly 70% of suspensions, often
for minor acts of insubordination and defiance. In the cases of Christopher,
Josh and Alex, there was no insubordination or defiance whatsoever. They were
guilty of nothing more than being typical 7-year-old boys. But in today’s
school environment, that can be a punishable offense.
Zero tolerance was originally
conceived as a way of ridding schools of violent predators, especially in the
wake of horrific shootings in places like Littleton, Colo. But juvenile
violence, including violence at schools, is at a historic low. The Bureau of
Justice Statistics reports that in 2011, approximately 1% of
students ages 12 to 18 reported a violent victimization at school. For serious
violence, the figure is one-tenth of 1%. It does no disrespect to the victims
of Columbine or Sandy Hook to note that while violence may be built into the
core of a small coterie of sociopathic boys, most boys are not sociopathic.
On the other hand, millions of
boys are struggling academically. A large and growing male
cohort is falling behind in grades and disengaged from school. College has
never been more important to a young person’s life prospects, and today boys
are far less likely than girls to pursue education beyond high school. As our
schools become more risk averse, the gender gap favoring girls is threatening
to become a chasm.
Across the country, schools are
policing and punishing the distinctive, assertive sociability of boys. Many
much-loved games have vanished from school playgrounds. At some schools, tug of
war has been replaced with “tug of peace.” Since the 1990s, elimination games
like dodgeball, red rover and tag have been under a cloud — too damaging to
self-esteem and too violent, say certain experts. Young boys, with few exceptions, love
action narratives. These usually involve heroes, bad guys, rescues and
shoot-ups. As boys’ play proceeds, plots become more elaborate and the boys
more transfixed. When researchers ask boys why they do it, the standard reply is, “Because it’s fun.”
According to at least one study, such play rarely escalates into real
aggression — only about 1% of the time. But when two researchers, Mary Ellin
Logue and Hattie Harvey, surveyed classroom practices of 98 teachers
of 4-year-olds, they found that this style of play was the least tolerated.
Nearly half of teachers stopped or redirected boys’ dramatic play daily or several
times a week — whereas less than a third reported stopping or
redirecting girls’ dramatic play weekly.
Play is a critical basis for
learning. And boys’ heroic play is no exception. Logue and Harvey found that
“bad guy” play improved children’s conversation and imaginative writing. Such
play, say the authors, also builds moral imagination, social competence and
imparts critical lessons about personal limits and self-restraint. Logue and
Harvey worry that the growing intolerance for boys’ action-narrative-play
choices may be undermining their early language development and weakening their
attachment to school. Imagine the harm done to boys like Christopher, Josh and
Alex who are not merely discouraged from their choice of play, but are
punished, publicly shamed and ostracized.
Schools must enforce codes of
discipline and maintain clear rules against incivility and malicious
behavior. But that hardly requires abolishing tag, imposing games of tug
of peace or banning superhero play. Efforts to re-engineer the young-male
imagination are doomed to fail, but they will succeed spectacularly in at least
one way. They will send a clear and unmistakable message to millions of
schoolboys: You are not welcome in school.
From Time Magazine August 19, 2013 By
Christina Hoff Sommers,
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
