Jack Kemp

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there reading this.

Jack


The Boy Crisis, The Dad Solution

Rachel Alexander

For Father’s Day, I interviewed Dr. Warren Farrell, co-author (with John Gray of Mars/Venus fame) of the just-published "The Boy Crisis.” While Dr. Farrell identifies ten causes of the boy crisis, he found that by far the biggest cause is a lack of father involvement. He explains why children who have minimal or no father involvement (who are "dad deprived”) suffer in more than 70 different areas in comparison to children who are "dad-enriched.”

Farrell says the boy crisis is global. Among the 60 largest developed nations, boys are falling behind girls in every academic area, as well as in social skills, career preparation, mental health and physical health. He found that in developed nations, with fewer survival concerns, there was less stigma for women to have children without being married. In the U.S., for example, 53 percent of women under 30 who have children are not married. Among these women, dad-deprived children are the norm. Dad-deprived girls suffer considerably, but the boys (with no role model) suffer even more.

Developed nations also give more permission for divorce. And among those children of divorced parents who see little of their dad, once again the girls suffer in most of the 70 areas, and the boys suffer even more intensely. As Farrell puts it, "the boy crisis resides where fathers do not reside.”

Read the rest at Townhall.

A word from Tim:

She's right; men teach boys how to channel their natural instincts and aggressions. Women - especially single mothers - will try to suppress them. Not that they mean to do harm but they don't really understand those drives and don't know how to deal with them. That is a huge difference and it is critical to have both approaches.

I disagree with her first two solutions, particularly that first about empathy training in schools. You know how that will go; the liberals will turn it into a tool to indoctrinate the children. The program won't do what it's intended, but instead will become a weapon against the "reactionary" types.

Also, I think more male teachers is great, but they need to be alpha males and not the beta male types who go into education. We don't need wusses providing weak male role models. Also, what good does it do if a kid just interacts with a man for fifty minutes with sixty other kids? There needs to be some sort of mentoring program, and that fairly intensive. I fear this is another thing the Left will take over. There would be a huge push to hire male homosexuals, for instance, or transvestites to teach kids.

I heartily agree with vocational schools; not everyone is cut out for college, and it needs to be made clear that you can succeed without spending the rest of your life paying for the liberal indoctrination of college. Also, some people like working with their hands. It is honorable, and it is fulfilling.

And recess? You betcha! Kids need more of it. I hear from parents all the time about how little unstructured time the kids have. And teachers pour on the homework these days to cover up the fact they aren't doing a proper job in the classroom. My mother was a school teacher and she always disdained teachers who loaded up the homework. She said it was worse than ineffectual, not really teaching any lessons but souring the kids on education and it was done to relieve the teacher of responsibility, not to teach a proper lesson to the kids. Nowadays kids have six hours of homework a day or more and yet they can barely read and write. Speaks volumes.

It's why the Greeks had the concept of gymnasium; a balance between mind and body. Today kids are fat and stupid and that is a direct result of the way the educational system treats them.

But this makes perfect sense if your goal is to create a subordinate class, a nation of obedient servants. Don't let them explore, don't teach them where boundaries lie, keep them confused, fat, obtuse, and ignorant. Raise their expectations and then fail to fulfill them, so the government can step in as the hero, to "fix" the "problem". Ignorance and failure are the most expensive social programs in America.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 740 words, total size 5 kb.