An essay on progressive education.....

[Obvious Li]

"In a Closed System, Stupidity Tends to Increase Until It Reaches a Maximum"



April 30, 2014



In something called Upshot, apparently the love child of the New York Times, I find a piece  happily chronicling the failures of boys in school. This has become a ritual for feminists and pussy-whipped male Sonderkommandos.  If smugness and condescension were oil, these tail-wagging unmen would be gushers, maybe a gas field.



After running on about the superior social skills of girls (meaning that they are docile, obedient, easily managed, and seek approval from teachers), the author, David Leonhardt, points out that girls are getting far more four-year college degrees, etc. All true.



What he does not point out is that schools at all levels have been made (deliberately, I think) so hostile to males (the endless sexual-harassment propaganda), with so heavy an emphasis on procedure instead of material mastered (neat homework, pretty pictures pasted into projects), and so much emphasis on socialization to feminine norms and on inculcation of Appropriate Values, that boys are asphyxiated. It is intellectual water-boarding. And has produced the desired result.



There is in all of this much schadenfreude from women who enjoy seeing boys fail, and a great deal of passive aggression: "Bobby, we are making your life miserable and doing our best to turn you into an involuntary lesbian for your own good. Now keep quiet, take your Ritalin, and don't move an inch, you little bastard."



A thread running through it all is the notion that boys are just, well, to put it frankly, not very smart, good perhaps for carrying heavy objects but not suited to a modern world founded on intelligence.  A couple of quotes catch this:



"As the economy continues to shift away from brawn and toward brains, many men have struggled with the transition." And "'Boys are getting the wrong message about what you need to do to be successful,' Ms. Buchmann says. 'Traditional gender roles are misguiding boys. In today's economy, being tough and being strong are not what leads to success.'"



Women of feminist stripe have always resented the physical strength of men and have argued that either it doesn't really exist or that it doesn't matter (women in the infantry), and that anyway women are more intelligent if not held back by oppressive etc.  It may well be true that women are more suited to a bureaucratic society in which order, procedure, following rules, and placidity are paramount. However, in the matter of brains and their importance for the economy, it is interesting to check the facts.



Boys are not less intelligent than girls. In post-pubertal IQ, males have only a small advantage in mean IQ, perhaps because of their slightly larger brains or perhaps because it is an artifact of testing. What is not debatable is that men have higher variance in intelligence, meaning a broader range of scores—i.e., there are more very smart men than women, and very stupid men than women. The math predicts that at two standard deviations from the mean, IQ 130, there should be two men per woman. Checking Mensa membership by sex (Mensa requiring 130 for membership, the top two percent) we find—who would have guessed it—that the membership is 66% male. Two to one.



The Graduate Record Examination is a high-end test given to college graduates, usually because they want to go to grad school. The scores are broken down by career field (the chart is worth a glance) and by verbal and mathematical ability. The eight highest-scoring fields—physics, mathematics, computer science, economics, chemical engineering, materials science, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering—have blistering math scores, and are all...all...dominated by men.



The two lowest-scoring careers are education, overwhelmingly female, and public administration. Thus we have morons, administered by slightly worse morons, trying to teach boys who, at the high end, are so much smarter than the teachers as to constitute another species.



I suspect that the psychologists, ed majors, therapists and suchlike clutter who hold forth on schooling on boys simply have no idea of what high intelligence is or why it matters. In the foregoing I mentioned standard deviation:



sigma = sqrt{frac{1}{N} sum_{i=1}^N (x_i - mu)^2}, {rm   where  } mu = frac{1}{N} sum_{i=1}^N x_i.



 For the little boy who one day will pop 710 on the math GREs, such things are neither frightening nor off-putting. They are fascinating. Such kids could certainly grasp the notation above while taking eighth-grade algebra. From these boys—they are almost always boys—come the things that make for international competiveness. We would be very wise to keep this in mind. We will not.



For decades and decades, America has made pandering to political groups—teachers' unions, racial lobbies, feminists—more important than quality in schooling. In 1980, in a piece for Harper's, I wrote, "Evidence of this appears periodically, as, for example, in the results of a competency test given to applicants for teaching positions in Pinellas County, Florida, cited in Time, June 16, 1980. To pass this grueling examination, an applicant had to be able to read at the tenth-grade level and do arithmetic at the eighth-grade level. Though they all held B.A.'s, 25 percent of the whites and 79 percent of the blacks failed. Similar statistics exist for other places." Morons to the left, morons to the right, and not a drop to drink.



 Thus did we, and thus do we. We have dumbed down tests, simplified curricula, and debased grading to make various groups look better than they are.



Boys flourish, as do men, when they are allowed to compete, preferably in the company of other males, in fields of their choosing, without strangling social rules. Silicon Valley is the wild west of such endeavor. Consider the following start-ups, and who started them:



Google (Sergei Bryn, Larry Page), Intel (Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce), Apple (Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak), Microsoft (Bill Gates), Dell Computer (Michael Dell), Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), YouTube (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim), Netscape (Mark Andreesen), Yahoo (Jerry Yang, David Filo), AMD (long list of guys from Fairchild Semiconductor), Twitter (Jack Dorsey), Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger), PayPal (Peter Thiel), Ebay (Pierre Omidyar). Et very cetera.



Forgive me for laboring the point, but I think it important for the country's future to understand who we need to encourage. Who invented the following?



Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry. Algebra. Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon. The Anabasis. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Almost every symphony ever written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram. The Pill. The condom. Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Roads. Buildings. Elvis. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, those are nerve agents, and maybe we didn't really need them.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray. Diffie-Hellman, public-key cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera.



Enough. Leonhardt ends on a note of almost kinky submissiveness:

"The problem doesn't simply involve men trying to overcome the demise of a local factory or teenage boys getting into trouble. It involves children so young that most haven't even learned the word "gender." Yet their gender is already starting to cast a long shadow over their lives."



Just so. But it is not their own gender casting the shadow.

[Romero]

Okay, so the male author says that women are "smug, condescending, tail-wagging, hostile, propagandizing their sexual harassment, intellectual torturers,  placid, less smart, morons, and panderers". And apparently they're no good at business and invention.



Calling women all these horrible things is somehow supposed to be evidence that women treat males poorly.



I've rarely seen anything so ugly and hateful towards women. How easy it is for some men to forget that women are our mothers, sisters, daughters, spouses, family, friends, coworkers, teachers and caregivers.

[Romero]

Meanwhile, back in Reality Land:

55 Colleges Face Sexual Assault Investigations



Facing mounting pressure from lawmakers, sexual assault survivors and activists, the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday released for the first time a comprehensive list of colleges and universities under Title IX investigation.



Survivors applauded the move but want to ensure the department is still taking steps to protect the anonymity of survivors so they don't face retaliation on campus by peers or administrators.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/college-sexual-assault_n_5247267.html">//http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/college-sexual-assault_n_5247267.html

Sexual harassment and assault are rampant among our colleges and universities. Insisting that women should not be sexually harassed and assaulted is not "propaganda".

[Obvious Li]

Okay, so the male author says that women are "smug, condescending, tail-wagging, hostile, propagandizing their sexual harassment, intellectual torturers,  placid, less smart, morons, and panderers". And apparently they're no good at business and invention.



Calling women all these horrible things is somehow supposed to be evidence that women treat males poorly.



I've rarely seen anything so ugly and hateful towards women. How easy it is for some men to forget that women are our mothers, sisters, daughters, spouses, family, friends, coworkers, teachers and caregivers.

ya tha'ts what it's all about......you are welcome to make up your list of successful business women and female inventors......that's not his point.... the point being, you can try and force gender neutralization all you want...it will not ever and cannot ever, work...all you will get is a bunch of males requiring drugs to ungender them to the states satisfaction.....it's time we went back to letting boys be boys, learning the way boys have always learned and maybe we will end up getting men acting like men again ........just saying homy

[Obvious Li]

Meanwhile, back in Reality Land:

55 Colleges Face Sexual Assault Investigations



Facing mounting pressure from lawmakers, sexual assault survivors and activists, the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday released for the first time a comprehensive list of colleges and universities under Title IX investigation.



Survivors applauded the move but want to ensure the department is still taking steps to protect the anonymity of survivors so they don't face retaliation on campus by peers or administrators.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/college-sexual-assault_n_5247267.html">//http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/college-sexual-assault_n_5247267.html

Sexual harassment and assault are rampant among our colleges and universities. Insisting that women should not be sexually harassed and assaulted is not "propaganda".

i like how the modern progressive vernacular states that these women, who may have had someone look at them funny or pinch their ass are known as "survivors"...fuck my mother and any other women from past generations would laugh their heads off at such silliness.....survivor they would say..you want to talk about surviving shit.....let me tell you....lol the world is completely fucked up.

[Romero]

Your head is buried in the sand. The vast majority of sexual harassment and assaults are a lot more than just ogling and ass pinching.



1 out of every 5 women will be raped in their lifetime. That's not propaganda, that's a fact.

[RW]

Why oh why can't I just stay away?



Typical Romero.  You've turned a case for the failings of the education system for boys into an issue of offense to women, sexual assault and rape.  Thank you for once again proving the point regarding the stifling of socially relevant conversation with bullshit PCism.



Munday, there is no doubt in my mind that school doesn't work for boys.  As stated in the article, it panders to the types who can sit still and listen for hours on end, which generally translates to girls.  The same model applies to colleges and universities for the most part.



Boys tend to be more hands on.  They learn better by building, inventing, dissecting, troubleshooting, repairing, etc.  There is a real push in the education sector for reform that creates a learning environment where boys can excel.  They have seen successes in gender segregated classes in terms of male learning but have found it creates socialization issues when it comes to the opposite sex.  We are a ways off a working solution but at least it's being viewed as an issue worth serious investigation.

[Anonymous]

Why oh why can't I just stay away?



Typical Romero.  You've turned a case for the failings of the education system for boys into an issue of offense to women, sexual assault and rape.  Thank you for once again proving the point regarding the stifling of socially relevant conversation with bullshit PCism.



Munday, there is no doubt in my mind that school doesn't work for boys.  As stated in the article, it panders to the types who can sit still and listen for hours on end, which generally translates to girls.  The same model applies to colleges and universities for the most part.



Boys tend to be more hands on.  They learn better by building, inventing, dissecting, troubleshooting, repairing, etc.  There is a real push in the education sector for reform that creates a learning environment where boys can excel.  They have seen successes in gender segregated classes in terms of male learning but have found it creates socialization issues when it comes to the opposite sex.  We are a ways off a working solution but at least it's being viewed as an issue worth serious investigation.

Fuck RW, every now and again you REALLY surprise me. A well balanced post that anyone without an agenda cannot find fault with. GOOD STUFF!!

[Chickenfeets]

Forgive me for laboring the point, but I think it important for the country's future to understand who we need to encourage. Who invented the following?



Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry. Algebra. Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon. The Anabasis. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Almost every symphony ever written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram. The Pill. The condom. Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Roads. Buildings. Elvis. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, those are nerve agents, and maybe we didn't really need them.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray. Diffie-Hellman, public-key cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera.

He forgot nuclear weaponry.



Seems to me a few well-detonated hydrogen bombs will make short work of anything on the list.



That's got to count for something, no?



Yes, yes, boys will be boys, I understand.

[Obvious Li]

Why oh why can't I just stay away?



Typical Romero.  You've turned a case for the failings of the education system for boys into an issue of offense to women, sexual assault and rape.  Thank you for once again proving the point regarding the stifling of socially relevant conversation with bullshit PCism.



Munday, there is no doubt in my mind that school doesn't work for boys.  As stated in the article, it panders to the types who can sit still and listen for hours on end, which generally translates to girls.  The same model applies to colleges and universities for the most part.



Boys tend to be more hands on.  They learn better by building, inventing, dissecting, troubleshooting, repairing, etc.  There is a real push in the education sector for reform that creates a learning environment where boys can excel.  They have seen successes in gender segregated classes in terms of male learning but have found it creates socialization issues when it comes to the opposite sex.  We are a ways off a working solution but at least it's being viewed as an issue worth serious investigation.

Fuck RW, every now and again you REALLY surprise me. A well balanced post that anyone without an agenda cannot find fault with. GOOD STUFF!!

[/b]



i know.....isn't she just the cutest thing.....and no she is not allowed to stay away...and furthermore WHY would she want to stay away from us.....we are her people...... :ugeek:

[Obvious Li]

Forgive me for laboring the point, but I think it important for the country's future to understand who we need to encourage. Who invented the following?



Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry. Algebra. Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon. The Anabasis. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Almost every symphony ever written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram. The Pill. The condom. Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Roads. Buildings. Elvis. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, those are nerve agents, and maybe we didn't really need them.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray. Diffie-Hellman, public-key cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera.

He forgot nuclear weaponry.



Seems to me a few well-detonated hydrogen bombs will make short work of anything on the list.



That's got to count for something, no?



Yes, yes, boys will be boys, I understand.

now CF...you know deep down you agree with the point the writer is trying to make...by allowing boys to act like boys maybe, just maybe we can turn them into men...instead of Homero clones....and then maybe just maybe they can resume their place in the family structure, which has been sadly lacking for 40 years...you see we know there is a problem we know why and what needs to be done...why are we allowing the basic fabric of society to be torn apart on the altar of a political agenda....what a waste....the price is too high..... :ugeek:

[Anonymous]

Forgive me for laboring the point, but I think it important for the country's future to understand who we need to encourage. Who invented the following?



Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry. Algebra. Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon. The Anabasis. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Almost every symphony ever written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram. The Pill. The condom. Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Roads. Buildings. Elvis. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, those are nerve agents, and maybe we didn't really need them.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray. Diffie-Hellman, public-key cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera.

He forgot nuclear weaponry.



Seems to me a few well-detonated hydrogen bombs will make short work of anything on the list.



That's got to count for something, no?



Yes, yes, boys will be boys, I understand.

Are you saying brilliant minds should NOT have learned to harness nuclear energy? No hydrogen filled balloons? The  Hubble Space Telescope is also powered by nickel-hydrogen batteries? What were these brawny, but brainless men thinking? They should have invented Spanx instead.

[RW]

Shen darling, whilst you pigeon hole me a brainless leftie, I have always have formed my positions on an issue by issue basis.  I am rather intimately involved with education as I have taken a very active role in the school life of my two children, one who happens to be a boy.  I've watched my bright little peanut struggle in an education system that does not meet his learning needs.  I've talked to many other parents who see their boys face the same challenges. I've been to seminars, lectures and dialogues about this very issue.  



Gender equality isn't always about treating everyone the same.  It's about affording genders the same opportunities by creating constructs that work on both gender levels as a means of success.  We cannot pretend that what works for the goose also works for the gander or vice versa.



I also can't pretend I'm not sick to death of having anything that addresses male issues or promotion as being seen as sexist or viewed as some attack on women.

[Anonymous]

Shen darling, whilst you pigeon hole me a brainless leftie, I have always have formed my positions on an issue by issue basis.  I am rather intimately involved with education as I have taken a very active role in the school life of my two children, one who happens to be a boy.  I've watched my bright little peanut struggle in an education system that does not meet his learning needs.  I've talked to many other parents who see their boys face the same challenges. I've been to seminars, lectures and dialogues about this very issue.  



Gender equality isn't always about treating everyone the same.  It's about affording genders the same opportunities by creating constructs that work on both gender levels as a means of success.  We cannot pretend that what works for the goose also works for the gander or vice versa.



I also can't pretend I'm not sick to death of having anything that addresses male issues or promotion as being seen as sexist or viewed as some attack on women.

I agree with this statement very much..



Some of my girlfriends that have their boys in the public school have told me the same thing.

[Chickenfeets]

Are you saying brilliant minds should NOT have learned to harness nuclear energy? No hydrogen filled balloons? The  Hubble Space Telescope is also powered by nickel-hydrogen batteries? What were these brawny, but brainless men thinking? They should have invented Spanx instead.

Of course not, Shen.



It's just that, over and against the type of puerile chest-beating and suspender-snapping displays such as the one I quoted in my post, I do not believe brilliant minds are brilliant because they're the products of male brains. Brilliance has no gender.



But, as OL has (rightly) pointed out, this is not the issue.



On the issue itself, I'm undecided because (and just because) I don't know enough about it. I don't have any children myself so, other than articles I read here and there, I have no real clue what goes on in K-12 classrooms these days. Yes, I'm aware--hard not to be--that there's a "boy-learning" crisis at the moment that may--may--be due to newfangled approaches to education (which often centre on sensitivity training and peaceful resolution of conflicts... deemed by the more traditional set to be feminine values). My gut tells me to side with RW on this one... that education needs to be gender-differentiated. I resist this idea, though, because, for obvious reasons, I also tend to believe that gender itself is a social construct. There are a million or more ways to be a man and a million or more ways to be a woman. Why would we teach boys only one and girls only one? Again, though, beside the point. Because what we're doing is teaching both boys and girls simultaneously that there's only way to be--for both.



But dear OL and I differ on this point mainly; that the way boys (and girls) used to be was the best way for them to be. To echo RW's sentiments, I think the best way for both boys and girls to be is still somewhere ahead of us in a future that will take into account how boys learn best and how girls learn best, so that both can have a shot at brilliance.