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The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men, by Christina Hoff Sommers
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An updated and revised edition of the controversial classic--now more relevant than ever--argues that boys are the ones languishing socially and academically, resulting in staggering social and economic costs.
Girls and women were once second-class citizens in the nation's schools. Americans responded w ith concerted efforts to give girls and women the attention and assistance that was long overdue. Now, after two major waves of feminism and decades of policy reform, women have made massive strides in education. Today they outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic, and vocational well-being.
Christina Hoff Sommers contends that it's time to take a hard look at present-day realities and recognize that boys need help. Called "provocative and controversial . . . impassioned and articulate" ("The Christian Science M"onitor), this edition of "The War Against Boys" offers a new preface and six radically revised chapters, plus updates on the current status of boys throughout the book.
Sommers argues that the problem of male underachievement is persistent and worsening. Among the new topics Sommers tackles: how the war against boys is harming our economic future, and how boy-averse trends such as the decline of recess and zero-tolerance disciplinary policies have turned our schools into hostile environments for boys. As our schools become more feelings-centered, risk-averse, competition-free, and sedentary, they move further and further from the characteristic needs of boys. She offers realistic, achievable solutions to these problems that include boy-friendly pedagogy, character and vocational education, and the choice of single-sex classrooms.
"The War Against Boys" is an incisive, rigorous, and heartfelt argument in favor of recognizing and confronting a new reality: boys are languishing in education and the price of continued neglect is economically and socially prohibitive.
- Sales Rank: #34193 in Books
- Brand: Simon Schuster
- Published on: 2015-09-01
- Released on: 2015-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.37" h x .70" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
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Most helpful customer reviews
85 of 89 people found the following review helpful.
A PRECARIOUS SITUATION
By Hu(man)
The author writes (p. 199): "The public has given no one a mandate to pursue a policy of privileging girls." And yet, as Christina Hoff Sommers repeats in the revised edition of her 2000 book, a small group of ideological feminists have claimed that Americans should do that, and from many quarters there is evidence that they have. This "New and Revised Edition" of "THE WAR AGAINST BOYS" is a welcome return of an important book. Sommers, a philosopher by education and a mother of two boys, shows that the trend she identified in the late 1990s to see boys as defective girls and therefore somehow in need of retooling has continued, and its effects have spread. The importance of Sommers' book lies especially in pointing out the misrepresentations of fact by leading advocates of making over boyhood. She takes to task the reputation of a major research institution for having missed oversight of assertions presumably based on scientific investigation that are, in fact, wishful thinking on the part of high-profile faculty. Her target is Carol Gilligan in particular, who managed to convince important activists, journalists and others in the media about the presumed defectiveness of boys that results from the dominance of patriarchy in American society. Go to this book if you are a parent. Take it to school administrators especially if your children are in grade school but realize that contempt for men and masculinity is now pervasive in higher education as well. If you are paying $50,000+ a year for a son's education, check out what courses are being taught that are disparage the young men in class. Sommers is a feminist in the way anyone who is clear-thinking is a feminist: someone who supports women in having access to education and employment opportunities of every kind. She is, however, a potent opponent of ideological feminists (contemporary "gender equity" feminists). As Sommers points out, regardless of the claims of social constructivists, boys and girls are different, and they cannot be refashioned to feel and experience and act in ways that are not part of their disposition (her word). There are biobehavioral realities that are well-documented but simply ignored by a small group of feminists (male and female) who insist loudly that even the possibility of basic differences between the sexes exist. She is a fan of masculinity in the traditional sense. It is pretty obvious that so are MOST women, too. Sommers provides examples of schools that harm boys and schools that support them. She points out that federal government opposes many initiatives in public and private schooling that would support boys in their growing up. She notes that in Australia and the UK such efforts to do better by boys are under way, but they are nipped in the bud in the States, mostly by virtue of the threat of law suits. She points to the complicity of all three branches of the federal government in standing in the way of even trying boy-friendly practices in school. Finally, she repeats that the tendency of thinking of boys as somehow psychologically ill as a result of being raised as their bodies tell them they must experience the world must be distinguished from the consequence of real harm suffered by boys in an environment that tells them there is something wrong with them for being boys. This is an important book for speaking out on behalf of boys and cutting through the rhetoric and false claims of so-called gender specialists who have taken over academe and whose pronouncements resound in the echo chamber (her metaphor) of the media.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
THE AUTHOR OF “WHO STOLE FEMINISM?” DEPICTS THE CURRENT STATUS OF AMERICAN BOYS
By Steven H Propp
Christina Marie Hoff Sommers (born 1950) is a former philosophy professor in Ethics at Clark University and is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. She has written other books such as Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today, One Nation Under Therapy - How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance, Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life: Introductory Readings in Ethics, Right and Wrong: Basic Readings in Ethics, etc. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 251-page hardcover edition.]
She wrote in the Preface to this 2000 book, “This book tells the story of how it has become fashionable to attribute pathology to millions of healthy male children. It is a story of how we are turning against boys and forgetting a simple truth: that the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world… Boys need discipline, respect, and moral guidance. Boys need love and tolerant understanding. They do not need to be pathological… For many years women’s groups have been complaining that boys are benefiting from a school system that favors boys and is biased against girls… The research commonly cited to support the claims of male privilege and sinfulness is riddled with errors… In this book I try to correct the misinformation and to give an accurate picture of ‘where the boys are.’ A review of the facts shows boys, not girls, are on the weak side of an educational gender gap.” (Pg. 14)
She observes, “boys are resented, being seen both as the unfairly privileged gender and as obstacles on the path to gender justice for girls. There is an understandable dialectic: the more girls are portrayed as diminished, the more boys are regarded as needing to be taken down a notch and reduced in importance. This perspective on boys and girls is promoted in schools of education, and many a teacher now feels that girls need and deserve special indemnifying consideration. (Pg. 23-24) Later, she adds, “The gender theorists and activists… have recently begun to tell us that boys too need attention… because ‘under patriarchy’ males are socialized to destructive masculine ideals… The belief… is inspiring a movement to ‘construct boyhood’ in ways that will render boys less competitive, more emotionally expressive, more nurturing---more, in short, like girls.” (Pg. 44)
She acknowledges, “Sex differences in violence are very real: physically, males ARE more aggressive than females… Unfortunately, many educators have become persuaded that there is truth in the relentlessly repeated proposition that masculinity per se is the cause of violence… Of course, when boys are violent or otherwise antisocially injurious to others, they must be disciplined, both for their own betterment and for the sake of society. But most boys’ physicality and masculinity are not expressed in antisocial ways.” (Pg. 62-63)
She states, “The natural gender differences between men and women mean we cannot hope to get statistical male-female parity of competence and aptitude in all fields. The same seems true of preferences: there will always be far more women than men who want to stay home with children; there will always be more women than men who want to be kindergarten teachers rather than helicopter mechanics. Boys will always be less interested than girls in dollhouses. This does not mean that our sex rigidly determines our future.” (Pg. 88-89)
She asks, “Why, in the face of so much persuasive counterevidence, do so many social theorists, psychologists, and educators persist in maintaining that gender is socially created? The answer is fairly obvious: many fear that the findings of such research could be used against women. From a historical perspective, that fear is understandable. It wasn’t all that long ago that intelligent men were deploying the idea of innate differences to justify keeping women down socially, legally, and politically… It was then taken for granted that women were not just innately different but naturally inferior and naturally subject to men.” (Pg. 91) But she adds, “I would argue that turning a blind eye to real differences and dogmatically insisting that masculinity and femininity are ‘created by culture’ pose even more serious dangers of their own… This movement to change our children’s concept of themselves is unacceptably invasive---indeed, it is deeply authoritarian.” (Pg. 98)
She then engages in a lengthy critique of Carol Gilligan, who “is the theorist who, almost single-handedly, initiated the fashion of thinking about American girls as victimized, silenced Ophelias. Her views on male and female development are beacons for gender-equity activists and teachers everywhere.” (Pg. 99) She adds, “Gilligan… presents very little in the way of data to back up her claims. Most of her published research consists of anecdotes that are based on a small number of interviews. Apart from these interviews, her data… are unavailable for review, giving rise to some reasonable doubts about their merits and persuasiveness. Despite the glaring lack of published data, Gilligan’s conclusions have largely gone unchallenged.” (Pg. 102)
She says, “Because [Gilligan’s In a Different Voice] the book was published by Harvard University Press and because its author is a professor at that premier university, readers naturally assume that she did genuine studies, with the usual controls and professional review.” (Pg. 108) She concludes, “With the success of ‘In a Different Voice’ and with the considerable resources available to her at Harvard, Gilligan might have gone on to answer her scholarly critics… But that is not what she did. In the years since the publication of ‘In a Different Voice’ Gilligan’s methods have remained anecdotal and impressionistic---with increasingly heavy doses of psychoanalytic theorizing and gender ideology.” (Pg. 111) Later, she adds, “Gilligan’s central thesis---that boys are being imprisoned by their conventional masculinity---is not a scientific hypothesis. It is an extravagant piece of speculative psychology of the kind that sometimes finds acceptance in schools of education but is not creditable in most professional departments of psychology.” (Pg. 133)
She suggests, “Fathers appear to be central in helping sons develop a conscience and a sense of responsible manhood. Fathers teach boys that being manly need not mean being predatory or aggressive. By contrast, when the father is absent, male children tend to get their ideas of what it means to be a man from their peers. Fathers play an indispensable civilizing role in the social ecosystem; therefore, fewer fathers, more male violence.” (Pg. 130)
She summarizes, “American boys do not need to be rescued. They are not pathological. They are not seething the repressed rage or imprisoned in ‘straightjackets of masculinity.’ American girls are not suffering a crisis of low self-esteem; they are not being silenced by the culture. The vast majority of girls and boys are psychologically sound. But when it comes to the genuine problems that do threaten our children’s prospects---their moral drift, their cognitive and scholastic deficits---the healers, social reformers, and confidence builders provide no solutions; on the contrary, they exacerbate the problems and stand squarely in the way of what needs to be done to solve them.” (Pg. 157)
She concludes, “We are at the tail end of an extraordinary period of moral deregulation that is leaving many tens of thousands of our boys academically deficient and without adequate guidance. Too many American boys are foundering, unprepared for the demands of family and work. Many have only a vague sense of right and wrong… We have created serious problems for ourselves by abandoning our duty to pass on to our children the moral truths to which they are entitled and failing to give them the guidance they so badly need… we must again recognize and respect the reality that boys and girls are different, that each sex has its distinctive strengths and graces... we must dedicate ourselves to… improving the moral climate in our schools and providing our children with first-rate schooling that equips them for the good life in the new century… I am confident we can do that. American boys, whose very masculinity turns out to be politically incorrect, badly need our support… If you are a mother of sons, as I am, you know that one of the most agreeable facts of life is that boys will be boys.” (Pg. 212-213)
While some of Sommers’ arguments may not be persuasive (e.g., her prescriptions for “moral education”) to all, and she perhaps criticizes Carol Gilligan at too great length, this is a remarkable, and very thought-provoking book about American boys (and, by extension, American girls!), that will be of great value to anyone wanting to inquire into this area.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Informative, Insightful, and Outraged
By Brian Drexler
Informative, and very well meaning. It highlights the poor research on which public school policy is currently based, and makes an impassioned plea to help correct the underlying problems that have developed in our education system. It paints certain educational movements with a broad brush. While acknowledging that boys can be successful in the current system I came away with the impression that there was malice underpinning the whole educational strata which is not what the author suggests, it is just the impression I take away. This book will ignite a fact-fueled indignation.
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