"Head in sand, to say no problem with boys" (CEO, Can. Council on Learning)

By Carolyn Abraham, Globe and Mail, October 15, 2010
It’s no mystery that talk of males in need can become a powder keg of sexual politics, said Paul Cappon, president and CEO of the Canadian Council on Learning. “We don’t like to talk about it, because we think it’s denigrating the achievements of females, but that’s not the case,” he said. “You have to ask what is happening, and you have to ask why. It’s a head in-the-sand, politically correct view to say there’s no problem with boys."
Whether parents, with lower expectations of their sons graduating from university than their daughters (60%-70%), or video games as distractions, or the old nugget that 'boys develop more slowly than girls, or the perennial "boredom" with school on the part of boys, or some other background factors influencing the facts, there is a problem with the achievement of males in Canadian education. And it is not necessary to complicate the facts or the politics of those facts by equating them with the denigration of women.
While there is no denying that, according to one source, 32% of boys are achieving A averages, (compared with 46% of girls), and that the presence of every boy in a post-secondary institution is an investment in Canada's future, as is the presence of every girl, there is also no denying that there is considerable loss of both talent and development.
One male education professor, Jay Bradley, at McGill, told the Globe reporter that he felt embarrassed whenever he mentions this deficit in male academic achievment.
Gender politics is still a very hot political topic in North America, and that certainly includes Canada.
There is not a day that goes by that we cannot find another male behaving badly in terms of notice to the law enforcement community, or to the school authorities, and thereby to the "news media" which thrives on "bad news."
There is no doubt that whenever an average person thinks about a simple concept like "bully" or "robber" or "thief" or "abuser" or "derelict" or "no-good" or "fighter" or "troubled" or "sick" or "dangerous" or "pervert" or "deviant" or "bum" or "drunk" or "unemployed" or "swindler" or "cheater" or "sicko" ....that average person is picturing a "male" in the frame of the concept. And the trouble is that such pictures prevail in the minds of both men and women.
They are cultural stereotypes, even cultural archetypes. These are words we apply to "men" and not to "women."
There is also clinical evidence, especially from adolescence, that the male mind is far more fragile and vulnerable than the image those same males project in their interractions. And so adept are they in their capacity to "act" out their cover-up, that they have convinced many of their parents, teachers and people in positions of authority that the mask trumps the reality.
All of us need to stop buying the "macho" image which every adolescent male born in the last century has either mastered, or at least attempted to foist onto the belief system of some adult(s), in an attempt to cover his fear, his vulnerability, his confusion, his detachment, his superiority, his awkwardness and his hatred of school and all of the implications of that mask.
He does not want to do homework; he certainly does not want to be the teacher's pet with all the right answers, because that would bring the avalanche of contempt from his male peers; he does not want to imagine himself in an academic role, because to do so would include all those pictures of "the student" and the "goody-two-shoes" that conflict with his needs to rebel. He does not want to be seen as another of those do-gooders who volunteer for Doctors without Borders, not at sixteen or seventeen. He does not want to aspire to be a courtroom lawyer, unless his father or mother are coaching him in that direction. He certainly does not want to be an actor, artist, dancer, pianist, or sculptor because to go in that direction risks the bullying of being called a "fag" by his peers which is one of the most hated epithets a young male can have hurled at him. You see he actually believes, wrongly, that the only route to self-discovery is through the hamlet, village, town, city, province and state called "What-the-Hell!"
 Rebellion is the self-imposed medication for all the pains of weakness, for the adolescent male. And because all males take the dose, it is not only an individual thing; it is cultural.
And school does not fit with the prescription, and certainly neither does post-secondary school.
Of course, these comments are something of an exaggeration; nevertheless, they merit some careful consideration when we are considering the plight of males, and we need not be wasting our time or energy in false conflicts with the worthy and laudable achievements of females in school.