Boys are not failing our schools.   Our schools are failing boys.   Such is the message contained in the January 30th issue of Newsweek magazine.   If you have children, be they boy or girl, or if you are otherwise in anyway interested in the education of children in these United States, this issue of the periodical is a must buy and read.

I don't have a subscription for Newsweek but I happened to catch an interview with one of the authors for the magazine's cover story, "The Boy Crisis."   What I heard told me I had to run out and buy the issue to read it.   Fortunately, for you, you can read it online for free here.   I'm out the $3.95 I paid for the magazine.

The bottom line here is, decades ago, there were a lot of misconceptions engendered by the women's rights movement.   One of these went something like boys and girls are basically the same and the way we raise them creates their gender identities.   Boys are rough because we encourage them to be rough.   Girls are "in touch with their emotions" because we teach them to be this way.   That misconception has been entirely debunked by science.   Science tells us that from "sometime in the first trimester, a boy fetus begins producing male hormones that bathe his brain in testosterone for the rest of his gestation" and "that exposure wires the male brain differently."   Sometimes girls' brains get bathed in testosterone and sometimes boys' brains don't.   When this happens, you get girls whose brains are more like boys or girls whose brains are more like boys.   This has nothing to do with socialization.   These are real, biological differences which have a major impact on behavior.

Long ago this country's educational system (or systems) began changing in order to create greater opportunities for girls.   As the father of two girls and no boys, I applaud those efforts for the opportunity they have afforded my daughters.   But this also began a chain of events which have essentially taken opportunities away from boys.   Unfortunately, what was good for the goose was not particularly good for the gander.   We made gradual changes to the classroom which rewarded girls for being girls and punished boys for being boys.

Today boys are expected to sit still in school just like the good little girls which form the "gold standard" of behavior.   But boys don't learn very well in the environment we created to help girls.   We have become the ADHD nation because our system and conventional wisdom told us classic boy behavior was wrong.   We "classified" boy behavior and boys, and placed many in "special education" which is a euphemism for go sit in the corner with a dunce hat.   In our kinder, gentler way, we "mainstreamed" boys who were calmed by drugs.   Parents actually became grateful when their sons were classified, prescribed drugs to tone down their boy behavior, and permitted back into the normal classroom.   But an underlying problem with American education today is it stresses conformity at almost any cost.   Conformity at all costs stifles creativity.   And creativity is the engine which makes American society go.

If you take a look around you at the myriad technological devices we all benefit from, these were not merely the inventions of a class of scientists who sat calmly while teachers lectured.   Many of this world's greatest technologically advances were the product of non-conformists, school dropouts or other misfits.   Today, it is necessary for any budding creator to meet a minimum standard of scientific knowledge.   Our system of conformity at all costs, pushes the budding experimenters of tomorrow into circumstances in which they'll be lucky to achieve subsistence by taking a job at the local carwash.   We simply have to do better.

And by no means are our educational system's failures only going to manifest themselves in science and technology arenas.   Business has a place for conformists, it's called a clerical position.   Successful businesses are led by people who "think outside the box."   What this cliche means is it is insufficient to follow established rules in order to succeed.   successful business leaders must take long established systems and re-engineer them to achieve greater efficiencies.   They must not become preoccupied with what is.   They have to see what will be and establish the systems which will take them there.   This is not the place for good little kids who do everything they are told.   This is the place for people who say, "no, that way is stupid, let's try this."

Our future lies in the hands of children.   It is up to us to educate these children, to raise them like precious orchids, to teach them knowledge while not breaking their spirits.   Long ago, we embraced radical ideas which are today the norm despite the fact that they have been discredited.   The time to re-engineer our educational systems is today before it is too late.   We must think "outside the box."   Conformity is for automatons.   Boys will never be girls.