Imagine 100 children in an elementary school Christmas program. The whole town of proud mothers and fathers gather to hear them sing and act out the merry songs. Each song is preformed flawlessly, only adding to the joy of the Christmas season. Suddenly there is a transition. “Dashing through the snow” tornados into a new song as the girls spin around and their backs face the crowd in a act showing this next song is all for the boys. Only the boys are left to portray the antics as they sing “I ain’t gettin’ nothin’ for Christmas- cus I ain’t been nothin’ but bad!”
As humorous as it may seem at first, a slight hint of doctrinization is folded into this actual scenario. However, as trivial as it may seem, this is only a glint of the whole picture involving many who are very dear to you. I speak of the boys of today. Keep in mind a boy who may be dear to you, (one of your sons, a nephew, a little brother, any little buddy close to you, that may even look up to you; see if what I say in this speech is evident in his life.
First imagine what happens in school, beyond his immediate learning. Programs have been instituted through the public education system such as the guide called “Gender Violence/Gender Justice.” This guide was created by Nan Stein and her colleagues in the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 1999 to combat sexual harassment as it begins at the ages of 13-18. This program provides lessons for the young, promoting awareness and prevention of the social problem- sexual harassment. We need programs like this to help rear respectful and considerate members of society. But an underlying agenda was pressed into the curriculum. Students were asked to close their eyes, (and I quote:)”once they’ve closed their eyes, say Imagine that the woman you care about the most (your mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend) is being raped, battered or sexually abused Give them 30 seconds to think about the scenario before asking them to open their eyes.” The guide then asks that the teacher explains, “We need to understand how boys and men are learning to equate violent behavior with manhood’ in order to de-link the concepts.”
You can’t help but wonder why the perpetrator has to be male and the victim has to be a woman. Feminism ideology, especially in this case, provokes anger against the male gender, thus boys get the burden early on, in their most impressionable years. They start with boys as young as kindergarten age with the program in con junction with “Gender Violence/Gender Justice,” an antecedent program called “Quit It!” This program was instituted in 1998 by the Wellesley Center and the Woman’s Educational Equity Act Publishing Center. “Quit It!” includes several activities designed to reform boys and make them less volatile, less competitive, and less aggressive by teaching that “we must do a much better job of addressing aggressive behavior of young boys to counter act the prevailing messages they receive from the media and society in general.”
The question that comes to my mind is, why are the boys singled out?’
And, singled out they are when we look at other programs such as holidays for girls “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” introduced by in 1991- which did not include a Take Your Son to Work Day’ until numerous protest from parents and teachers. In fact, the first “Son’s Day was planned for the 20th of Oct. in 1996. The Ms. Foundation for Women planned the event with guidelines for the activities. These guidelines focused on “ending men’s violence against women,” “Playing a game without keeping score” to discourage competitiveness of boys, and having the boys do chores and helping the family get ready for work and school or having them help plan the family dinner on “Son’s Day.”
The whole notion that I speak of all started when feminist groups like the AAUW and the Ms. Foundation for Women, published a stream of books and pamphlets saying that “schools short-change girls.” This probably being an assumption for why men are the leaders of math, science, medicine, politics, and society. Even after their non-peer-reviewed claims and research is now proven to be erroneous, they still have not retracted their claims and still push their programs as “gender-awareness.”
Thomas Sowell, a well-respected professor of economics at Stanford University, relates his experience saying, “Unknown to most parents, there are federally financed programs to prevent boys from acting the way boys have always acted before. The things done by those who have taken the role of changing boys range from forbidding them from running and jumping during recess to having them wear dresses and pretend to be girls or women in the classroom. [This] is accompanied by a barrage of propaganda prepared by radical feminists for nationwide distribution with the blessing and the money of the U.S. Department of Education.”
As told by Dr. James Dobson, a renowned psychologist with a Ph.D. in Child Development, the results of this movement has changed the face of public school ideology completely:
“At a Boston area elementary school, nobody objected when girls wore shirts emblazoned with Girls Rule’ or when they taunted boys with a chant that goes, Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider; girls go to college to get more knowledge.’ But when boys donned shirts emblazoned with Boys Are Good,’ there was a protest. One of the teachers protesting sported a button saying, So many men, so little intelligence.'”
Indeed, boys have always acted rambunctiouslywhich poses the next issue. According to Psychologist and author of the book “Raising Cain: protecting the emotional Life of Boys,” Michael Thompson, “The things at which they excelgross motor skills, visual and spatial skills, Their exuberancedo not find as good a reception in school.”
Radical feminists want to make our children androgynous. They believe we all were without gender from the beginning. Like the feminist philosopher, Sandra Lee Barkty who speaks for many feminist organizations when she says that we were all born “bisexual” into our patriarchal society and then are taught to be masculine and feminine, with one being superior and “destined to command, the other to obey.” For this reason, feminist feel they need to change the educational upbringing of boysin essence, your son, brother, nephew or little buddy is wrong for acting like a boy while at school and outside of it. But, we now know that boys have to be boys. Over the past 15 years, several scientific studies have conclusively proven, as Dr. Dobson would say, that boys are “hardwired” differently than girls. For this reason, they act different, are motivated different, and are interested in different things. They are different than girls- you cannot teach them like you would teach a girl or even teach them to be girls.
Now for the facts about boys being masculine and being this way in school. Think of your favorite boy when well-known researcher and Clinical Psychologist, William Pollack, says that ” boys are now twice as likely as girls to be labeled as learning disabled,’ constitute up to 67% of our special education’ classes, and in some school systems are up to ten times more likely to be diagnosed with a serious or emotional disordermost especially and attention-deficit disorder (for which many boys receive potent medications with potentially serious side-effects).[compared to girls,] boys’ scores on reading are lagging behind significantly and continue to show little improvement. Recent studies show that not only is boys’ self-esteem more fragile than that of girls but also that boys are substantially more likely to endure disciplinary problems, be suspended from classes, or actually drop out from class entirely.”
Think of your favorite boy when Pollack, in his book “Real Boys” also gives these staggering statistics: “eight-grade boys are held back 50% more often than girls. By high school, boys account for two thirds of the students in special education classes.”
Think of your favorite boy when the U.S. Department of Education and several recent universities studies, in response to show that “Girls get better grades,” “Girls read more books,” “they out perform boys on artistic and musical ability,” “more girls than boys study abroad,” “Boys are less committed to school than girls,” “By 12th grade, boys are four times more likely as females not to do homework,”
Now our boys are suffering because when one sex is favored dramatically in the culture, the other is destined to lose. My argument is simple; girls need to be noticed and helped as much as boys. Valid concerns needed to be addressed by feminist but not by lowering and neglecting the opposite side. Dr. Michael Gurian once said, “Every time you raise a loving, wise, and responsible man, you have created a better world for women. Women [today] are having to bond to half-men, with boys who were not fully raised to manhood, don’t know how to bond, don’t know what their responsibilities are to humanity, and don’t have a strong sense of service.” If we take away masculinity, and teach all student as if they are girls, as the feminist propose, only the girls succeed and the boys (your sons, a nephew, a little brother, or a little buddy of yours) are lost, confused, and reprimanded time and time again for being who they are. It is like Mr. Incredible, in the new movie “The Incredibles,” who was prohibited to be Mr. Incredible, and forced to be like the rest. He turned to secrecy and then was reprimanded for it over and over again. But, when they needed his special abilities, he wasn’t there. When we need good men in the world, they won’t be there.
