Why American boys are failing at school—and men are losing in life

[Professor Emeritus]

2. Obviously men have value...but the online popular discourse, especially with women these days, is that men are useless.

I literally never see that discourse on Facebook or on any message board I use. But that's because, outside of here, I spend my time in regular community groups and such and am not seeking out attention-seeking loudmouths with hot takes. In regular community circles none of that shyt is there are all. You are letting some 3% of toxic women somewhere drive the discourse for you.

One community group I'm on has 40,000 users. Just a regular cross section of people living in the community. People feel free to say all sorts of shyt - sometimes their comments get deleted but there's only one mod so stuff stays up for a long time before anything gets deleted or banned. I literally never see general comments putting down men, neither in the posts nor in the comments on the posts.

And outside of a Gilette ad here or there, you will hardly see any mainstream media campaigns celebrating men's value whereas this is certainly the case with women. Women say it explicitly and the culture says it implicitly.

Bullshyt - the large majority of main characters and heroes in Hollywood movies are men. The large majority of people covered by mainstream news (politicians, business leaders, sports figures) are men. There are massive media efforts to prop up veterans, cops, firefighters, soldiers, all of whom are 90% male in the public image. We have an entire national holiday almost every other month that is largely focused on men's value: Memorial Day, Father's Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Veteran's Day. Many of our other holidays (MLK Jr. Day, Lincoln's Bday, Washington's Bday / President's Day, Easter, Christmas) are centered around men as well. The implicit value of men is highlighted by the media and culture both.

Not that this even needs to be a thing. You're begging for an ad campaign to tell men they're valuable, which not only would be ineffectual like most public service media but all sounds lame as hell.

I suspect age is a facto here too. You're 40. You're not talking to younger 30-something women or 20-something women. There is absolutely a narrative of "men are trash" or "men are worthless." Hop on a dating app if you want...you'll see it right there in their profiles, which is kind of mind-blowing.

I work with people younger than myself all the time. Both of my sisters are in their 30s too, and literally all of my cousins are in their 20s or 30s (I'm the oldest son and my dad is the oldest of 6 siblings). I have friends in their 20s and 30s and some of my friends in their 40s-50s now have daughters in their teens and early 20s. I literally never hear this in real life. And sorry, but I'm sure that 90% of women don't have "men are trash" in their dating app profile and if you're basis your feelings on random bitter dating app women, you've lost.

3. Is a bad faith restatement of what I said. If women are out-achieving men, and the pool of men that can substantially IMPROVE the lives of women economically while also checking romantic & sexual boxes shrink, this is definitely going to lead to violence as long as men still have linear expectations around achievement & romance. Most dudes aren't that well-adjusted breh.

There have ALWAYS been a large pool of men who weren't able to achieve. That's not something new. If some men are so fukking maladjusted that they are going to turn to violence if women make more than them, then that is the problem that needs to be solved. You claimed there was no solution other than to limit female achievement.

I respect your posts & knowledge drops elsewhere, but this is one of those things where I think age matters a great deal in terms of understanding what's going on. I look at how my younger cousins & friends are increasingly talking about women, and I think you're missing how destabilizing it is to have women increasingly finding dating & relationships w/ the average or median male unattractive.

Women develop legitimate support systems via their friends...they can cuddle each other, express platonic love openly, etc. etc., and not have any stigma around being gay or unwomanly. Lonely men don't have the same out at the moment. And that lack of connection or any reason to aspire to anything IS dangerous.

This is one place where I 100% agree. Men need better support systems and that's always been true. I also think we need UBI and more socially acceptable outlets for productive work (volunteer work, ministry, youth work, non-commercial art, writing and music) that aren't based on capitalist goals. Why not work on that rather than blaming female achievement for the problems?

 

[Reality]

I literally never see that discourse on Facebook or on any message board I use. But that's because, outside of here, I spend my time in regular community groups and such and am not seeking out attention-seeking loudmouths with hot takes. In regular community circles none of that shyt is there are all. You are letting some 3% of toxic women somewhere drive the discourse for you.

One community group I'm on has 40,000 users. Just a regular cross section of people living in the community. People feel free to say all sorts of shyt - sometimes their comments get deleted but there's only one mod so stuff stays up for a long time before anything gets deleted or banned. I literally never see general comments putting down men, neither in the posts nor in the comments on the posts.





Bullshyt - the large majority of main characters and heroes in Hollywood movies are men. The large majority of people covered by mainstream news (politicians, business leaders, sports figures) are men. There are massive media efforts to prop up veterans, cops, firefighters, soldiers, all of whom are 90% male in the public image. We have an entire national holiday almost every other month that is largely focused on men's value: Memorial Day, Father's Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Veteran's Day. Many of our other holidays (MLK Jr. Day, Lincoln's Bday, Washington's Bday / President's Day, Easter, Christmas) are centered around men as well. The implicit value of men is highlighted by the media and culture both.

Not that this even needs to be a thing. You're begging for an ad campaign to tell men they're valuable, which not only would be ineffectual like most public service media but all sounds lame as hell.






I work with people younger than myself all the time. Both of my sisters are in their 30s too, and literally all of my cousins are in their 20s or 30s (I'm the oldest son and my dad is the oldest of 6 siblings). I have friends in their 20s and 30s and some of my friends in their 40s-50s now have daughters in their teens and early 20s. I literally never hear this in real life. And sorry, but I'm sure that 90% of women don't have "men are trash" in their dating app profile and if you're basis your feelings on random bitter dating app women, you've lost.






There have ALWAYS been a large pool of men who weren't able to achieve. That's not something new. If some men are so fukking maladjusted that they are going to turn to violence if women make more than them, then that is the problem that needs to be solved. You claimed there was no solution other than to limit female achievement.






This is one place where I 100% agree. Men need better support systems and that's always been true. I also think we need UBI and more socially acceptable outlets for productive work (volunteer work, ministry, youth work, non-commercial art, writing and music) that aren't based on capitalist goals. Why not work on that rather than blaming female achievement for the problems?

Alright man. I'll just say this...every media channel that you're referencing is older. Facebook, message boards, Hollywood movies...these places are not where younger people are. And "random bitter dating app women" are also joined by women in relationships in that open, soft, tongue-in-cheek misandry is tolerated & accepted. And I don't know why you as a 40-something think you're going to be hearing about men from your much younger cousins & your friends' daughters.

Re: my take on men lacking in achievement, that was a hypothesis re: the inevitability of what's to come, not me offering a solution. The solution is for men to become better adjusted in their expectations and social support networks. I don't think that happens quickly enough...maybe society doesn't fall apart, but I think we've already started to see men unraveling a bit.

We can leave it there. I don't think we'll persuade each other on this issue. Maybe you ask your younger male cousins if they think men are valued and let us know what they say. Don't take it from me.

 

[ogc163]

Bringing Home the Bacon: Have Trends in Men's Pay Weakened the Traditional Family?​

Key Points

• Both the populist right and left claim that raising a family on one income has become harder and that men’s declining economic prospects are behind rising single parenthood. They argue men have become less “marriageable” over time.
• Based on marriageability thresholds set at what typical young sole-breadwinning fathers earned in 1979, young men are at least as marriageable today as they were in the 1960s, when sole-breadwinning and two-parent families were far more common.
• The family transformations of the past 60 years are more the result of affluence than of changing male earnings, which have increased over the past 30 years. The earlier decline in male earnings was more an effect of family change than its cause.

Read the PDF.

Executive Summary

The past 60 years have seen dramatic changes in the American family. Traditionally, conservatives have worried more about these changes, blaming them on cultural shifts, while progressives have viewed them as benign, positive, or problems with economic causes. However, Donald Trump’s politically successful fusion of economic and cultural populism has blurred these lines. Populist right politicians and researchers not only lament the demise of traditional sole-breadwinner families and two-parent families; they blame these trends on an economy that has left men without the resources to support families.

But is it true that raising a family on one income has become harder? Are fewer men marriageable? Can changes in marriageability explain the decline in the two-parent family?

This report examines trends in young men’s pay and the extent to which that pay exceeds levels typical of sole-breadwinning fathers in the nostalgia-tinged past. It finds that while young men’s inflation-adjusted pay declined for an extended period between the early 1970s and early 1990s, it has largely recovered over the past 30 years. “Marriageability,” as defined by the pay typical of young sole-breadwinning fathers in 1979, remains at, near, or above historic highs, depending on the measure. This remains true when looking at trends for disadvantaged men.

To the extent that men’s pay has not improved at the rates seen in the 1950s and 1960s, declensionist views may get the diagnosis backward in important regards. Rather than economic problems hurting men’s ability to provide for families, trends in men’s pay may reflect choices men and women have made in response to rising affluence. Some of these choices are cause for concern, such as the replacement of husbands’ earnings with the expanded safety-net benefits a richer society can afford. But some choices reflect important gains, such as wider professional opportunities for women and the greater flexibility that has afforded husbands.

The impulse to find economic scapegoats for choices made by men and women in an affluent society is understandable. However, in fundamental ways, it is in conflict with the facts. We can—and often should—lament our collective decisions, but we should not be under the illusion they reflect increased economic duress in America. Policymakers who embrace the narrative of economic declensionism may effectively stoke populist outrage, but the stories they tell will not lead to improvement in Americans’ lives.

Bringing Home the Bacon: Have Trends in Men's Pay Weakened the Traditional Family?

The family transformations of the past 60 years are more the result of affluence than of changing male earnings, which have increased over the past 30 years. The earlier decline in male earnings was more an effect of family change than its cause.

www.aei.org

 

[ogc163]

 

[ogc163]

 

[WIA20XX]

It's funny that Ezra told ol boy not to appear on Rollo's show, lol.

 

[ogc163]

 

[shonuff]

I had a argument with a chick - she said a man has to give a woman a ring to show his commitment to her as more than a boyfriend ...

I asked her sincerely what does a woman show to do for a man that shows she's more committed than a "girlfriend"

She went on about howa woman gives her time ...

And MISSED OPPORTUNITIES WITH OTHER MEN ....

When I explained that there is a cognitive dissonance in what she explained versus what she declared she said I was being un realistic ....

 

[re'up]

That's someone operating from an extremely traditional and (fearful) value system, of being left behind, or being left to fend for themselves.

 

[shonuff]

That's someone operating from an extremely traditional and (fearful) value system, of being left behind, or being left to fend for themselves.

i think its more about how women get told they can have their cake and eat it too..

i mean on a social level the expectation is that as a man you are depriving a woman of her ability to support herself if you have a traditional marriage andshe stays home while you work

but in this modern age - where we are supposed to be equal the idea still is that men STILL have to demonstrate their worthiness to be" married " ... all the while mind you there are chicks that seem to choose the most unworthy dudes and when shyt goes bad they are given a pass on the ( obvious ) bad choice they made .

so there is still a crosstalk - women say they want a man to commit but dont want to demonstrate that same commitment....except do the shyt they are supposed to do.

its like that Chris Rock joke about nikkas wanting credit for shyt they are supposed to be doing in the first place. Chicks want to claim that what they are SUPPOSED to be doing is somehow an indication that they are doing something exceptional ....

 

[WIA20XX]

Anti-male gender bias deters men from healthcare, early education, and domestic career fields, study suggests

A new study finds evidence that occupational gender bias has consequences for men who may consider entering healthcare, early education, or domestic fields (HEED). The findings indicate that men avoid HEED careers because they expect discrimination and worry about acceptance and judgment of...

www.psypost.org

 

[ogc163]

Racial disparities in the high school graduation gender gap​

Richard V. Reeves, Simran Kalkat

In previous work, we showed the wide gender gap in on-time high school graduation rates for the states where data broken down by sex is readily available. Here we repeat this analysis with more up-to-date data for 36 states. We then dig deeper into the intersection of race and sex. In this article, we analyze graduation data only for the five largest states where the data is readily available by both sex and race with cohort sizes: California, Florida, New York, Michigan and Virginia. Our main findings are:

• In 2021, in the states with available data about 89% of girls graduated on time compared to 83% of boys—a 6 percentage-point gap
• But there are big differences in the gender gap by race in the five large states, with a 9 percentage-point gap between Black and Hispanic girls and Black boys compared to 4-point gender gap for white students and a 3-point gap for Asian students.
• In some states the on-time high school graduation rates for specific sub-groups are quite low. In Michigan, for example, only 61% of Black boys graduate high school on time, compared to 75% of Black girls, 81% of white boys, and 87% of white girls

The fact that the data for on-time high school graduation rates cannot be analyzed in this way at a national level—because states are not required to report this data by sex—impedes our understanding of educational disparities by race and gender. Given the growing attention to these issues, for example in the formation of the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys, this is a data gap that legislators ought to address.

Girls graduate high school at higher rates than boys​

Because the data is not available nationally, we collected high school graduation rates by gender from individual states. Specifically, we examine the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR), the most precise measure of high school graduation rates. As discussed in the previous Brookings analysis on gender gaps in high school graduation, the ACGR adjusts for cohort changes such as emigration, transfer, and death, and is more reliable than its predecessor, the Adjusted Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR).

For the graduating class of 2021, only 36 states have readily accessible graduation data reported separately by sex. Of those 36 states, 30 report cohort sizes, accounting for approximately 74% of students nationally.[1] The 2021 graduation rate across these 28 states was 89.1% for girls and 82.9% for boys. (Of course, 2021 was a year that was impacted by the pandemic, so these results and those that follow should be viewed in that light). Figure 1 shows the ACGR for boys and girls in the 36 states with some graduation data by sex:

Both the gender gap and the overall level of on-time high school graduation vary widely by state. In New Mexico, boys trailed girls by almost 9 percentage points in high school graduation, whereas in Vermont, the state with the smallest gender gap, boys were behind girls by just over 2 percentage points. But in every single state where data are available, boys’ graduation rates lag those of girls. This is just one of the education disparities discussed in Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.

Much bigger gender gaps for Black and Hispanic students​

Of the 36 states with readily-accessible data on high school graduation by sex, just 10 of those states provide information by race, sex, and cohort size.[2] Here we focus on the five largest states that have high school graduation by race and sex along with cohort sizes among that group: California, Michigan, New York, Virginia, and Florida. The average graduation rates by race and sex across those five states are shown in Figure 2.

White and Asian students are more likely to graduate high school on time than Black and Hispanic students. But there is a big difference in the gender gap by race. The gender gap is the highest among Hispanic and Black students at 9 percentage points compared to white students with a roughly 5 percentage point gap in high school graduation. In 2021, 76% of Black boys finished high school compared to 87% of white boys. In Figure 3, we show the graduation rates by race and sex for the five largest states for which we have the data.

The overall picture is of large, overlapping gaps by both race and sex. In every state, the white and Asian graduation rates are higher than those for Black and Hispanic students. But there is significant variation in the intersection of race and gender. In some states, such as Florida and Virginia, Black girls and white boysgraduate at similar rates, even as Black boys fall well below white boys, and white girls have much high rates than Black girls. In other states, such as California, Black students – male and female – are faring much worse, while Hispanic students are doing somewhat better. Of the five states, Florida and Virginia have smaller gender gaps overall. And in Michigan, only 61% of Black boys finished high school on time in 2021, which is 14 percentage points lower than the rate for Black girls in the state, and 20 percentage points lower than for white boys.

Can we get the data, please?​

As we wrote in our previous piece, policymakers are rightly focused on making sure even more young Americans successfully complete their high school education and on further narrowing gaps between various subgroups. To that end, the Department of Education requires states to report high school completion rates for the prior academic year to track progress at a national level.

The Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015, requires states and local education agencies (LEAs) to report the ACGR disaggregated by subgroups. Currently the law states that the data must be disaggregated by race, economic disadvantage, disability, foster care, homelessness, and for English learners. But not by sex or gender. The disaggregated data has proven valuable for assessing progress towards more equitable outcomes, especially for marginalized groups. But there is one glaring omission in the subgroups for which data is available: sex. This means we do not know the national high school graduation rates for girls and boys, nor for subgroups by race and gender, for example for Black boys. Considering how the gender gap in high school is also a racial one, it is important for policymakers to push for more complete data.

Requiring states to report their high school graduation data by sex, as well as by sex and race would not impose a new burden: states are collecting the data already. Given the growing concerns of policymakers to address educational inequities, especially considering the impact of the pandemic, it is time to address this oversight.

Racial disparities in the high school graduation gender gap

In previous work, we showed the wide gender gap in on-time high school graduation rates for the states where data broken down by sex is readily available. Here we repeat this analysis with more up-…

www.brookings.edu

 

[DJK]

As an education reporter in Gainesville, Fla in the 2000s,
I focused on struggling students in a one-year interview project.

I asked educators in Community college
My Q: Why do students struggle and fail at this level?
Their A: They come in so far behind from high school.
I asked educators in high school
Q: Why do students struggle and fail at this level?
A: They come in so far behind from middle school.
I asked educators in middle school
Q: Why do students struggle and fail at this level?
A: They come in so far behind from elementary school.
I asked educators in elementary school
Q: Why do students struggle and fail at this level?
A: They come in so far behind from pre-school.
I asked educators in pre-school
Q: Why do students struggle and fail at this level?
A: They come in so far behind from home.

It makes me wonder what's the purpose of schooling

 

[WIA20XX]

In light of that situation with the Black girl, the phone, and the pepper sprayed teacher.

What are y'alls thoughts on how to deal students in schools these days, in particular with their phones?

I see a lot of calls for "more law and order" essentially, but we know that school officials watch Black Boys like a hawk, and tend to punish behavior that they let slide for everyone else.

Any type of zero tolerance, affects us first, more of us, and we get the worst of it....

What's a thoughtful way to deal with these type of school behavior issues? (especially know that a lot of this behavior is taught by the parents, often a single parent, often a single mom)

 

[Wild self]

In light of that situation with the Black girl, the phone, and the pepper sprayed teacher.

What are y'alls thoughts on how to deal students in schools these days, in particular with their phones?

I see a lot of calls for "more law and order" essentially, but we know that school officials watch Black Boys like a hawk, and tend to punish behavior that they let slide for everyone else.

Any type of zero tolerance, affects us first, more of us, and we get the worst of it....

What's a thoughtful way to deal with these type of school behavior issues? (especially know that a lot of this behavior is taught by the parents, often a single parent, often a single mom)

The Scandinavian "TED Talks" style of education. The age of standardized testing and high-pressure testing already came to an end.