How U.S. Schools Are Stifling Male Students

Mary Pipher's "Saplings in the Storm" and William S. Pollack's "How U.S. Schools Are Stifling Male Students"

Mary Pipher's "Saplings in the Storm" and William S. Pollack's "How U.S. Schools Are Stifling Male Students" are two writers that are very different but at the same time striving to get to the same goal which is to improve the lives of young children. They go about getting the same results two very different ways. Pipher is a female psychologist who concentrates on the adolescent development of females in today's society. Pollack is a male psychiatrist who writes about boys and the developmental stunting by schools in the United States. Their audience seems to be the same group of people, that off parents, but different kinds of people, parents with girls vs. parents with boys. This would point out that both writers seem to be trying to reach a friendly audience, but this is not apparent in the approaches they take.

Pipher's tone in her piece seems to be more of a concern about the fate of young girls in today's society as she would say it. She takes this tone to try to be more emotionally attached with her audience. For example in one instance she's talking about Polly and how she felt when she started her period, "This left Polly confused and shaky."(Pipher p.240) Including Polly's personal emotions on the situation allows you as the reader to understand emotionally what she is going through. Also to try to get her audience more in touch with her the author she adds direct anecdotes about herself, "Recently I sat sunning on a bench outside my favorite ice-cream store."(Pipher p.241) This adds to the intimate tone she try's to keep throughout the whole piece. She's not just a database of information, but more of a intelligent concerned individual. She wants it be different, she wants a change and she wants this change to come quickly before they loose all their individualism and when she talks about these things her tone slightly changes almost allowing the reader to hear the importance of the situation in her writing, such as "Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls in droves."(Pipher p.241) You can hear the sincerity, the importance of this situation to her in her writing. At the same time she doesn't give any examples of what can be done to remedy this problem.