Seventeen Years Of Sitting:

Teachers can tell you why girls are more academically adept, and many of the explanations offered here are based on my own years in the classroom. For one thing, formal education rests on a specified structure of learning, and students are expected to adhere to the regimen. Girls and women have a subtler understanding of authority. (When you have less power, it is prudent to understand how the system works) Very early, they come to understand that academic success depends on adult evaluations. So they become skilled at intuiting what teachers want, heeding instructions that accompany tests and assignments. Boys are more apt to listen with half an ear, already framing what they want to say. Teachers will tell you that in examinations calling for essays, boys usually begin writing right away, while girls spend more time thinking about how to organize their answers.

Girls are neater and more punctual. Many tests and worksheets are submitted in longhand, and girls’ writing tends to be more legible, just as the notes they take for class or homework are better organized. Among those who turn in assignments late, boys outnumber girls by a considerable margin. When it is optional, or suggested rather than required, girls are more likely to do the work. For some, the motive may be to please the teacher and obtain a higher grade. But others put in extra effort because they want to learn more about the subject. They also tend to be more at home with ambiguity and uncertainty, more tolerant of imprecise boundaries and indeterminate shadings. Girls are also more reluctant to come to quick conclusions, an inclination that does not always serve them well, especially in an age of quickly paced tests.

Education, certainly through highschool, is staffed largely by women and bears their imprint. The 2001 count by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women made up 97.8 percent of nursery and kindergarten teachers, 82.5 percent of elementary teachers, and now are a majority-58.5 percent-of high school faculty. Each year more are appointed as principals and superintendents. Although they account for less than half-43.3 percent-of all college staffs, they predominate among instructors and adjuncts, who teach most of the first courses that freshmen encounter.

A wag once defined education as seventeen years of sustained sitting, from kindergarten through a bachelor’s degree. This assumes that students learn best when they are confined to chairs in orderly rows. It hardly needs saying that boys taken together are less suited for this regimen, which requires them to remain still and largely silent for six or more hours. So we should not be surprised when, upon being released from high school, growing numbers of young men are deciding against further confinement in college.

- Andrew Hacker, “Mismatch”, ppg. 82-83

It bears noting that Professor Hacker wasn’t addressing Black boys above, but rather, WHITE ones, although he does address Black America later on in the book. In fact, his chapter has in its title, “A Portent For America” overall; he sees what’s happened there as a sign of things to come for the nation as a whole. The book was written in 2003.

While popular ideas and theories as to why Black boys are either failing school or dropping out outright such as Hip Hop, “oppositional culture” and “acting White” (to say nothing of being violent and the like-by the way, what color was the Colombine shooters?) prevails among the Education Cartels, the truth as to the reason why Black, White and now even ASIAN boys are falling out of school is simply, because the entire edifice has become Feminized-and as a result, is little reason as to why girls across the board, regardless of race, tend to do much, much better.

Which also explains why little to nothing will be done to address the problem, especially for those who need it most: because not only do Women now makeup a clear majority of the voting public, but they also makeup key, core constituencies-like the Teacher’s Union-who give generously to the Democratic Party. Moreover, Feminist lobbies like the National Organization for Women, and others, would surely make any politician’s life difficult, if he or even she, were even to suggest that boys, Black or otherwise, need a different kind of learning model, and that the current one doesn’t work, BECAUSE its largely Female.
Then, there’s the Curse of the Bureaucracy-that governmental agencies, however well intentioned at the time of their creation, inevitably become interested in its own survival, in existence more to perpetuate itself more than anything else. So, given all these factors, there is little reason to see any political will being brought to bear on the problem, particularly one that has as its “face” (though not by any means, the sole “victims” of the problem, as Hacker’s quote above clearly shows) that of young Black boys.

Which brings us to another what I consider to be fascinating point. Yesterday’s interaction with frequent commenters Deery and Jamila-two smart, highly educated African American Women-didn’t seem all that concerned with the issue. Indeed, if anything, they seemed agitated, angry even, *at* Black Men for not achieving as much as either of them had. For her part, Deery spoke of her brother in not too shining terms on the matter, and Jamila’s corrective, if one can call it that, consisted of a variation on the “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” meme that Black folk were often plied with by agitated Whites. Hmm.

This view-even, perhaps especially among African American Women themselves-all speaks to a kind of attitudinal lens through which this problem is viewed. Time will tell if indeed anything is done to address this problem, now that White Folk Who Matter are starting to feel the burn; but as it currently stands, Black boys are kind of treated like a pathogen to be contained, rather than as a national resource to be developed. One would think that, given the all-too oft-repeated “dearth of eligible Black Men” meme that the one group who would, if not spearhead some kind of change, at least cheer it on from the sidelines, were Black Women themselves. Well, if what we’ve heard yesterday is any indication, coupled with other many conversations along these lines I’ve had with other similarly disposed Black Women over the years, seeing that the dynamics that fail Black boys doesn’t seem much of a concern.

Perhaps most striking that I’ve found about these kinds of conversations, is how so many Black Women recoil at the idea that Black boys and Men need to be “sold” on the idea of education, that they need to be recruited. Why should they have to get special treatment! Asian kids don’t get that! I didn’t have to have someone kiss my ass to get an education!-and so on and so forth. Yet, when you consider that nearly every organization of any consequence not only recruits but aggressively so-from the Military, to the NFL/NBA, to the Fortune 500, and yup, even top-tier colleges and universities-the idea that actually selling the product of education to Black boys shouldn’t seem all that far-fetched, again, especially given the dire straits Black America in general, and Black Women in particular, finds itself. Yet, the very notion is akin to my suggesting that Men have sex with their mothers, despite the fact that there’s never been a successful organization that didn’t sell itself to attract recruits. It perhaps explains why Al Qaeda has no such recruitment, retention or “dropout rate” problems among young Men.

The overarching message Black boys receive from all this and more, is that not only aren’t you wanted or valued, but the sooner you’re removed the better-and so Black boys do just that. Some cities, like my hometown of Philly, has a Black Male highschool dropout rate of more than 50%. In other cities, like Detroit, it’s closer to 80%. According to Hacker’s 2003 book Mismatch, for every 100 Black Women with college degrees, there are roughly half as many Black Men. And shrinking.

That the current day educational system is thoroughly Feminized cannot be stressed enough, in large part because many Women will attempt to deny the simple facts of recent American history, such as Title IX, and instead adopt the same kind of “bootstraps” rhetoric Jamila attempted to foist on myself and my readers yesterday. To be sure, yes, their own talent, merit and effort, are not only to be noted but lauded-but please do not fool yourself into thinking that environment and “market conditions” do not play any role whatsoever in your success. Because the plain as the nose on your face data, to say nothing of just good ole commonsense clearly shows, that it indeed does.

That, of course, is a sobering fact to consider and take into account in this discussion, because one of the more popular ideas that have been ramrodded down the body politic’s throat by Feminists, is that there are no differences between Male and Female, and whatever differences are there are merely the throwbacks of patriarchal conditioning and doctrines. Yet this doesn’t easily square well with the fact that Black boys are completely zoned out of school by as early as third grade, and that now even more Asian girls do better than Asian boys. But, being as this is arguably the most ideological country in the history of human beings, such facts will only serve to confuse the powers that be.

Much to the chagrin of Jamila and perhaps others, in recent weeks I have given my readers a glimpse into my own life and educational career, if one can call it that. A major part of that sharing included my questioning many of my teachers as to the reasons why I was being asked to engage in repetitive, boring material of questionable realworld utility, to say nothing of the boring to tears manner in which they imparted such pearls of wisdom. Unsurprisingly, I was unceremoniously removed from class, and had not my mother raised the roof, would have been expelled altogether. I have recounted this question to quite a number of people since-some of you may recall my post about attending a Xmas Day dinner which included a high number of educators-and to this day, more than 20 years later, no one could answer my questions. That, perhaps more than anything, is to my mind a powerful, and truly sad, commentary of exactly where we are, in the state of our times.

Now adjourn your non-thinking outside the box asses…

The Obsidian