Trollking linked a much-discussed (on Reddit) article about the dilemma facing boys in early life. They are failing in school, being eclipsed by girls, feel no sense of belonging, etc. These articles have been coming out with tiresome frequency for some years now, and although I’m not happy with the turn higher education has taken since the advent of state-enforced feminism I think I have a rather different take on this issue from most others:
There are already plenty of boys in school — perhaps too many.
Higher education in the West has become something of a cult. A college degree is supposed to “open doors,” but as far as I can tell all this hype about school is only closing doors to people who do not have, and do not want to have, college degrees.
As for female success in school, this is a monumental waste of effort. STEM subjects, more important to innovation and economic progress, are still dominated by bright males. Young women major in psych, English lit. and other soft subjects and then end up in some corporate HR department, which wouldn’t even exist without legislation demanding adherence to federal equality laws. While obtaining their degrees, they drink themselves silly and ruin themselves for potential husbands by sleeping with any “hot” guys they can get their hands on. They also ruin humanities programs by eliminating any remaining traces of masculinity, turning classes on Shakespeare and the like into feminist gripe sessions.
College has become a monstrous energy sink, and the requirement that people have degrees is humiliating to many young men who are perfectly capable of hard work, even if they aren’t star athletes or math and science whiz kids. Except for a few limited areas, such as the aforementioned STEM subjects and college sports, higher education has become a female ghetto that any normal young man would find a highly annoying, if not painful, experience.
So I’d argue that there really isn’t anything “wrong” with young men who are supposedly slacking. They have good reason to avoid college, but the dunderheads in HR and government have decided that it must be a prerequisite for anything besides digging ditches alongside illegal immigrants.
Most young men and women would be better served by trade school following high school. A four year degree is something only about 25% of the population can use effectively, but the common line is that your kids must attend college or fail. If a young man shows promise in engineering or an uncommon talent for logic and verbal analysis, sure, college might be a good idea. But if he really just likes to work on cars, pilot boats or draw pictures of machines, why not let him get to work as soon as possible?
I suspect that the real source of the malaise young men feel is the withdrawal of the opportunity to do something useful. What normal young man feels that listening to some professor drone on about “gender” and then being forced to write some garbage proving he has actually read the mind-numbing subject material is in any way productive?
Give young men the opportunity to do something, and they will seize it. For the majority of young men, school does not and cannot provide that opportunity; it is simply a kind of purgatory where the masculine spirit goes to wither away.
