Boys' Antisocial Behavior

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Boys' Antisocial Behavior In almost any college class you walk into you will find that there are more female students than male. This wasn't the case years ago. David Thomas' article " The Mind of Man" points out that women are progressing readily in today's society, but where are the men? Years ago men were the only ones permitted into colleges. But as time went by people's ways of thinking changed dramatically. People began to realize that girls were not getting the education boys were, and things had to be changed. I think of this change, that society made, as a pendulum. Years ago, the pendulum hung to one side. The side of boys' education. This side completely dismissed girls education. Society wanted to fix this wrong by moving the pendulum towards girls' education. The ideal thing would have been for the pendulum to have hung in the middle, with equal educational opportunities for both sexes. The problem though, according to Thomas' article, is that the pendulum went too far, and now the boys are being disregarded as the girls once were. There isn't a problem with girls being educated and getting ahead in the world, that's fantastic; the problem is, boys are not getting the same education. Thomas' believes that the problem begins in grade school. Something is occurring in elementary schools that is turning boys away from education. This something is, predominantly, female teachers. Being female myself I don't think that female teachers are bad, rather that most of them are unconsciously encouraging the anti-social behavior of boys. "Women teachers consistently praised girls more than boys, and equally consistently criticized the boys' behavior, often regarding it as a serious problem requiring remedial treatme... ... middle of paper ... ...school teachers was increasing. Boys, however continued to out-perform girls in scientific and technical subjects where teaching was still dominated by men" (122). With the statistics provided we can see that boys are performing poorly academically when in the hands of women. It isn't known for sure what's causing this problem or how it can be fixed, but one must start by realizing that there is a problem. The only solution that I can think of is that each and every teacher must work at putting positive ideas and positive feelings into each and every child. It is a hard task, especially living in today's world, but if teachers can show children that there is a bright future waiting for them they will work towards getting there. Work Cited Thomas, David. "The Mind Of Man." The Presence of Others 3rd Edition. Bedford/St. Martins, New York. (2000) : 120-25.

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