Excerpt from The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Here are some other conclusions from the MetLife study:

• Girls are more likely than boys to see themselves as college bound.
  


• Girls are more likely than boys to want a good education.
  


• More boys than girls (31 percent versus 19 percent) feel teachers do not listen to what they have to say.

The MetLife report informed a conference busily lionizing Carol Gilligan that the nation's boys needed attention more than its girls. The participants were hearing -- many for the first time -- that the conventional talk about studies that show "girls losing self-confidence...and as a result perform[ing] less well" in school was simply untrue. This should have been big news for media long inundated with findings on the tragic fate of our nation's girls. But where girls are concerned, good news is no news.

There were other dissonant notes at the conference. During a panel discussion on race and gender issues in schools, one high school panelist said that at her school, a selective Washington, D.C., public high school, it is so rare for a boy to do well that "it's a big occasion when a guy gets into an honor society or wins an award." No one commented.

At another session, "How Do the Academic Experiences of Boys and Girls Differ?," Nancy Leffert, a child psychologist at the Search Institute in Minneapolis, reported the results of a massive survey she and her colleagues had recently completed of more than 99,000 sixth- through twelfth-graders. The children were asked about their "developmental assets." The Search Institute has identified forty critical assets ("building blocks for healthy development"). Half of these are external -- for example, a supportive family, adult role models -- and half internal -- motivation to achieve, sense of purpose in life, interpersonal confidence. Leffert explained to the PEN audience, somewhat apologetically, that girls were ahead of boys in thirty-four of the forty assets! On almost every significant measure of well-being, girls had the better of boys: they felt closer to their families, they had higher aspirations and a stronger connection to school -- even superior assertiveness skills. Leffert concluded her talk by saying that in the past, she had referred to girls as fragile or vulnerable, "but if you look at [our survey], it tells me that girls have very powerful assets."

The original AAUW study, so successfully promoted by the AAUW, had been based on a survey of three thousand children. The Search Institute research that Leffert summarized was incomparably more reliable -- it was based on a survey of nearly a hundred thousand students. This massive study definitively showed that the shortchanged-girls premise -- on which the PEN conference was based -- was false.

Yet no one called this to the attention of the conferees. The allegedly tragic fate of girls in "our sexist society" remained the dominant motif. Leslie Wolfe, president of the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., duly denounced the "hidden curriculum of sexism" in the schools. "We must teach boys that male supremacy is unacceptable," said Wolfe. Workshop speakers held forth on subjects like "girl empowerment" and "proven classroom strategies to boost achievement and engagement of females." David Sadker led a session in which he described "the ocean of gender bias [against girls] that exists all around us."

The "official" view, uncompromisingly articulated by the then AAUW president Jackie DeFazio in 1994, has yet to be challenged by the education establishment: "Girls still receive an unequal education in the nation's schools. Whatever the measure -- test scores, textbooks, or teaching methods -- study after study showed that girls are not living up to their potential as boys are" (emphasis is added).

British Concern, American Neglect

Britain has no Carol Gilligan, no Mary Pipher, no AAUW. It is therefore unsurprising that in Britain the plain truth about male underperformance has been reaching an informed and concerned public. For almost a decade, British newspapers and journals have been reporting on the distressing scholastic deficits of British schoolboys. The Times of London warned the prospect of "an underclass of permanently unemployed, unskilled men." "What's Wrong with Boys?" asked the Glasgow Herald. The Economist referred to boys as "tomorrow's second sex." In Britain, the public, the government, and the education establishment are well aware of the increasing numbers of underachieving young males and they are looking for ways to help them. They have a name for them -- the "sink group" -- and they call what ails them "laddism."

Copyright © 2000 by Christina Hoff Sommers