I don’t know how this anecdotal observation applies, but when I graduated high school (1967), the majority of the honor roll was female as well.

[When I graduated, the top third of the class was male. Ok, yes, there were only three in the class.]

I am not calculus loving (personally, I don’t care to make predictions about objects in spatial motion, though when I read Plato I realize that nothing is harder than predicting the courses men travel), nor piano playing (though from ages 5-12 I took lessons, I don’t own a piano (neither would my home have space for one)), nor overeducated (I possess exactly the appropriate amount of education necessary for my task (living a life in pursuit of Christ) with the opportunity and skills to sit and learn at the feet of the masters), but I am a man.

Specifically, I am a man living a life among the very men you describe. Sports-loving, un-mannered, work-averse would all be accurate terms for many of them. However, those characteristics are symptomatic and not in and of themselves the root cause.

The breakdown in family structures, the changing nature of education and the ways in which we educate, the rise of sports culture, the relegating of men to secondary roles instead of primary roles in the creation and sustaining of new life, all these things are more root.

I can’t tell you the number of times that my students, especially the women, have told me that fathers are just a delivery vehicle for sperm. Most can’t fathom “father” as an active verb because all they know is “mother”, because that is all they’ve ever seen.

The problem is both. Boys become men in a society. In particular, they become men in a society that exalts for rude sexual comments, … sports, beer-drinking, and getting laid, and propagates all sorts of myths about the consequences of these activities.

I guess accountability and personal responsibility for failure is something conservativea only desire for women and minorities.

Odd. When Rick Santorum, Bill Cosby, and other social conservatives point out that society’s disparagement of stable, married families has a very negative influence women, minorities, children, what-have-you, are you among those criticizing Santorum and Cosby, or are you just not listening?

(I say this as a calculus teaching, piano playing, overeducated man.)

Society’s at fault for male academic failure? Really?

I guess accountability and personal responsibility for failure is something conservativea only desire for women and minorities. But men, well, society hasn’t helped them enough.

To that I say as a calculus loving, piano-playing overeducated man:

Man up, dudes, take responsibility, and stop whining.

Also, behaving like beer-drinking, girl-chasing, gym rats through their education did nothing for their competence in their fields.

Quite frankly, because of this, most people will hire a pregnant woman over a single male. I would.

Teach your “aggressive males” to keep a civil tongue in their heads and avoid rude sexual comments, learn some discipline, and prioritize work and education over sports, beer-drinking, and getting laid and maybe we’d have something to discuss about society’s “problems” with men.

The problem is men. Not society. Suggesting otherwise continues a conservative whine about how tough males have it. Such a theme is nonsense.

If it’s true that girls excel at “order and compliance” and boys “are dominant, physical, aggressive beings,” surely that gives boys certain advantages, just not with regard to the honor roll.

I apologize for that attack. Upon rereading it, my words were more personal than I intended.

What I should have said, more eloquently, is that when you work with and in communities where males (primarily ethnic minority) are being systemically emasculated and subsequently becoming non-factors in the educational system (60% of all AA males in the city I live/work in drop out of high school) and therefore non-factors in the above-ground/legitimate job market which leads to lives of dependence, illegality, prison and forsaking of responsibilities (as the popular culture (which is also the culture that establishes legal norms) would define them, then you should be more concerned. Perhaps you are as concerned as I am, but the tenor/tone of your response appeared to convey a, “well, things are finally balancing out”, approach.

I agree with you that nobody should (emphasis here) be disenfranchised, but someone will and as long as it is men, don’t expect them to stick around in marriages where there is little (biologically) keeping them there. That is not how the world works and it will remain that way until HE returns with all power.

JustinR,

I don’t understand how you presume to know my “desires”—since I hardly staked out a position—and since you don’t know me, you have no idea how my “world” is affected by what the original post describes. If you are implying that yes, indeed, the system should be “rigged” in favor of men, because it is better to err on the side of “disenfranchising” women, since that will keep them home caring for babies, I disagree. I think nobody should be disenfranchised.