Last week, with not inconsiderable trepidation, I picked up a copy of Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. The book is by Dr. Leonard Sax, who wrote the very troubling and numbingly essentialist Why Gender Matters a couple of years ago. I read WGM last year and was disturbed by Sax’s claims, most of which seemed to be largely in service of his pet issue: advancing the spread of single-sex education, which he argues is vitally important for boys.
But a couple of people who disliked WGM told me that they’d read “Boys Adrift” and thought that it was significantly better, if still flawed. It’s a quick and easy read, and I made my way through it during “chinchilla out time” last Saturday.
I’m going to review this book in two parts. The criticism comes today, the praise later this week.
First off, there’s much here that is troubling. Though this may be an instance of the pot calling the kettle black, Sax is still prone to the whopping and unsupportable generalization. In discussing the importance of competition, he opines:
Most girls value friendship above team affiliation…Boys are more likely to understand that friends don’t have to be teammates, and teammates don’t have to be friends. And boys are more likely to be invested in the success of their team regardless of whether any of their friends are on the team.
Dr. Sax, please, come and watch some of the girls I mentor and teach play soccer and softball. If “Megan” is playing catcher, and her best childhood friend “Melissa” is a runner for the other team trying to steal second base, I guarantee you that “Megan” isn’t going to hesitate for an instant in trying to throw out her closest confidante! I’ve worked enough with both male and female athletes to know that team solidarity and competitiveness flourishes just as effectively among girls as among boys. I suspect Dr. Sax spends very little time with young female athletes.
Of course, sometimes the good doctor focuses on the science he is far more qualified to discuss. But like most of those who defiantly cling to the “nature” side of the argument, the evidence doesn’t necessarily support his conclusions. For example, Sax has an interesting section about why boys don’t like reading any more. It’s not, according to him, because video games are inherently more interesting (though he is, I’m relieved to say, no fan of them). It’s because the kind of questions teachers ask about reading assignments don’t address boys’ concerns.
Sax comes up with the following scenario: a junior high-school English teacher has assigned the kids “Lord of the Flies.” An essay question is given for homework:
“Write a short essay in the first person, in Piggy’s voice, describing how you feel about the other boys picking on you. Remember to include lots of detail.”
Sax writes:
This homework assignment boils down to: How would you feel if you were Piggy? When I spoke with the teacher who assigned this homework, she explained that she wanted to teach the children about empathy… I submit that this assignment didn’t teach anything about empathy. Instead, the message reinforced for (boys) is that doing homework is for girls, not for real boys. No self-respecting boy, in this boy’s frame of mind, would do such a homework assignment.
The answer (you knew this was coming) is that boys and girls have different brains:
It’s easy for most middle school and high school girls to answer a question like “How would you feel if you were X?” because the area of the brain where the feeling is happening is closely linked to the area of brain where talking happens. For boys, that’s not the case… it’s not easy (for them) to answer, in a genuine and articulate way, the question “How would you feel if…?” He may attempt to produce the answer he thinks the teacher wants to hear, but it’s a chore. A better question for most boys would be “What would you do if…” That question may sound similar, but it’s actually a different question, and much more boy-friendly — for most boys.
I’m willing to concede that biological differences may explain why some boys have a hard time articulating feeling. I’m not qualified to disprove that possibility. But for heaven’s sake, one of the most vital tasks the schools have is to help young people overcome natural obstacles. If there are differences in the brain that make it more difficult for boys to empathize with fictional characters (or make it more difficult for girls to understand calculus), that’s hardly a case against teaching empathy or higher math! Rather, it’s a signal to teachers and parents that we have to work even harder with certain students (who may be clustered in one sex or another) to help them develop into full and complete human beings.
Dr. Sax complains that for a boy, it might not “be easy to answer, in a genuine and articulate way, the question “How would you feel if…” Fine, I concede his point. But boys do hard things all the time. Getting to level 346 on the latest video game is hard. Getting in shape for football is hard. Building muscle, building reflexes — these aren’t “natural”. Sometimes, getting in shape to be a soldier or a quarterback feels like a chore, but no one suggests that because it’s difficult for the young to do, they ought to be excused from doing it!
I suspect (and hope) that Dr. Sax is genuinely concerned with the well-being of young American men. I share his concern and his commitment. But he draws dangerous conclusions from his own considerable research. His diagnosis may be accurate, but his remedy is wrong. Though for the sake of discussion, I am willing to concede that his findings about brain differences are real, I think he sells boys woefully short by suggesting that these differences are so significant that they serve as obstacles to the development of empathy, tenderness, and an articulate vocabulary for one’s own inner emotional terrain.
Feminists are often accused of suggesting that “there are no differences between boys and girls, between men and women.” We’re accused of ignoring nature and over-emphasizing nurture when it comes to psychological development. Though some feminists may have denied difference, most feminists today accept that brains and hormones may operate differently between the sexes. But we also point out that once you start characterizing boys and girls as fundamentally different, you immediately encounter so many exceptions (sensitive boys, aggressive girls) that the usefulness of the whole damn dichotomy becomes moot.
More importantly, some feminists (I include myself in this bloc) argue that the whole purpose of social institutions (be they churches, schools, or extended families) is to help each individual achieve full human potential despite whatever limitations are imposed by biology. Access to birth control helps address the biological reality that women get pregnant and men don’t. Toilet training socializes children to overcome their own physical impulses. “Nature” might have us all peeing our pants; “nature” might have every woman the mother of ten. Though real biological differences do exist, they ought never be used as an excuse for failing to develop our children into complete, effective, kind, tolerant, well-rounded human beings.
I’m willing to accept the premise that for biological reasons, it may be harder for some boys to articulate empathy — and for some girls to do advanced mathematics. But all that tells me as a teacher and a mentor is that we may need to redouble our efforts to help our sons and daughters reach their full potential. Rather than doing as Dr. Sax suggests, and re-phrasing the questions in order to make things “easier” for boys, we need more commitment from teachers and parents to help our sons “do hard things.” And while “hard things” might include making the football team or playing a fantasy game at a very high level, it also includes learning to identify emotionally with the vulnerable.
In the end, feminists don’t deny nature. But we refuse to be in thrall to it. And we sure as heck refuse to buy the tired excuse that “nature” means that our sons cannot all be kind, gentle, articulate and ambitious.
Part Two soon.
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