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Empowering
Men:
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Sex, Lies &
Feminism by Peter Zohrab
Chapter 8: The Education Lies
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1999 Version
In Education, as in every other part of Society,
Feminists have looked for female "victims", and they were able to come
up with some. We could say about Feminists and female victims more or
less what what the famous French writer and crusading campaigner Voltaire
said about men and God: if female victims don't exist where Feminists
look for them, they just invent them !
One myth that was circulating -- and probably still is circulating
-- around the education systems of Western countries was that boys dominated
the teacher's attention in coeducational classrooms. In many countries,
this myth was no doubt promulgated at taxpayer expense, and at the expense
of the union dues that male and female teachers paid to their unions.
A lot of hand-wringing ensued.
Presumably, the idea was that girls suffered as a consequence, though
I have never seen anyone actually claim this. I have had a lot of experience
of Feminist stupidity, but this has to be a classic example: Feminists
made a song and dance about this supposed dominance by boys, and don't
seem to have looked to see if it actually did anyone any harm !!
It is quite obvious that the introvert (male or female) who quietly
gets on with their work might actually have more time to do a good job
of learning than someone who was always hogging the teacher's time for
some reason. It would have been useful to have had this aspect of the
matter investigated !
However, an Australian Professor of Education, Eileen Byrne, visited
New Zealand in 1994, and I went and heard her speak at the Ministry
of Women's Affairs -- no less ! Professor Byrne holds the Chair of Education
in Policy Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. She debunked
several myths about girls in education, including this one:
"It's not true in mixed classrooms that all boys dominate the
discourse. A massive survey of 120 of those studies that are most
often cited showed that, in a third of those surveyed, neither sex
dominated and in another third, the difference was so slight as to
be not a basis for policy-making. In the remaining third, yes it was
true that girls did not dominate at all and boys did, but it was three
boys who did, or two boys, one boy. Most of the boys don't. That is
a question of classroom management. It is a matter of good teaching.
In the first place, it's bad for any three students to have excessive
air time and dominate, be they male or female. In each of those cases
there was always a girl or two who attempted to dominate. Smart Alec
girls exist too" (PPTA News, Vol. 15 No.3, April 1994).
One problem that affects boys is the growing feminisation
of the teaching profession. According to an article on page E2 of
the Sunday Star-Times of March 10, 1996, Australian Psychologist Steve
Biddulph reckons that a shortage of male primary teachers is producing
boys who "can't conceive of learning as a masculine activity."1
The boys' and men's side of the story needs to be told. If more boys
than girls try to hog the teacher's attention in a minority of classrooms,
then that may well be because most of their teachers are female and
they are attracted to them sexually. Feminist teachers, supported by
their unions, have been making such a song and dance about the supposed
problem of women and girls that boys (quite rightly !) have felt neglected,
and even demonised. This is not good for their morale, self-esteem or
(in all probability) academic performance. To give you one tiny example
of bias in schools: there is one coed school where I found that the
library catalogue listed over 300 books on "women" and "girls", and
fewer than 30 on "men" and "boys" !
In addition, Massey University lecturer Sarah Farquhar was reported
in the lead article of the Education Weekly (Vol. 8 No. 284, Monday,
3rd February 1997) as having carried out a study which showed that men
were being discriminated against in early childhood teaching. Fifty-five
percent of male teachers had had experiences of being treated as an
actual or potential child abuser -- because of all the publicity surrounding
a couple of cases of alleged child-abuse. This scared men away from
the profession, and led employers to discriminate against male applicants
for positions.
One of these high-profile cases of alleged child-abuse is still highly
controversial. What we may have here is a scenario where man-hating
Feminists have been pushing an anti-child-sex-abuse campaign to the
extent that they have managed to get innocent men convicted and lots
of men unemployed in their preferred profession. This seems to be what
has been happening in all Western countries in recent years.
But the excessive numbers of female teachers may have even more sinister
effects on the education of boys. Here is a quotation from the abstract
of a research article: 2
"These comparisons revealed systematic tendencies for teachers
to evaluate the performance of girls more favourably than the performance
of boys.... in the areas of reading and written expression teachers
showed consistent tendencies to evaluate the performance of girls
more favourably than the boys even after adjustment for gender differences
in objective test scores were (sic) made."
The authors of this study state that the reason for this bias might
be that teachers unconsciously included an evaluation of the students'
behaviour and personality in their evaluation of the students' work.
They also say:
"It is also possible that the tendency for teachers to evaluate
girls more favourably is, in part, an unintended consequence of mis-application
of gender equity principles."
Whichever of these two explanations is the correct one -- or even
if they are both correct -- it would seem that the bias is more likely
to be present in female teachers than in male teachers. That is another
reason why there should be more male teachers -- preferably fifty percent
of the total number of teachers.
Thomas (1993) points out that, at kindergarten and primary school,
girls out-perform boys -- and this may be a result of the preponderance
of female teachers at that level. He cites surveys which showed that
teachers consistently praised girls more than boys, and criticised boys
more than girls.
Research evidence from UCLA supports this. When kindergarten children
learned reading from a self-teaching machine, the boys did better than
the girls. But when they were taught to read by a woman teacher, the
girls did better than the boys.
It is now becoming increasingly common for the news media to report
that girls are doing better academically than boys:
In Britain, the findings of Professor Richard Kimbell, of the University
of London, on this topic have received international publicity.
According to an article on Page 7 of the COSA Newsletter of December
1996, 3 (11), the Christchurch 3
Health and Development Study has found that, in all educational comparisons,
boys aged 8 to 18 years did worse than girls.
One further reason for this may well be that curricula, teaching
methods, and assessment methods are systematically being altered to
favour girls over boys -- whether this is the result of a deliberate
conspiracy or the accidental result of the general feminisation of the
Education systems in many countries, is hard to say.
For example, competition, which boys seem thrive on more than girls
do, is now Politically Incorrect, and is being discouraged in the education
system. Continuous assessment is steadily replacing examinations in
some countries 4.
Continuous assessment removes the anonymity of written examinations
and allows full scope for teachers' anti-boy bias. A further factor
is the banning of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment has a salutory
effect on the behaviour and attitude of some boys, and its removal from
the school system is seen by some politicians as a major reason for
the increase in suspensions from schools in such countries as New Zealand.
Specific subject areas may be subject to the same trend, though I
don't have much information on this at the moment. According to an article
in the New Scientist of 5 April 1997 ("How Speech is Built from Memories",
by Robert Pool),
"Neuroscientists in the US ... suggest that women keep more
words in memory than men.... men are more likely than women to have
difficulty with regular verbs after diseases that damage the procedural
memory. But both have problems forming the past tense of made-up words
such as 'spuff' ('spuffed'). This suggests... that women store more
words in memory than men, and fall back on the rules only when presented
with unfamiliar words."
This would seem to indicate that emphasising grammatical rules in
language teaching would favour boys, while de-emphasising rules would
favour girls. It seems to me that the trend in language-teaching in
recent years has been in the direction of de-emphasising the rules.
2002 Version
CHAPTER 3
THE EDUCATION LIES
In education, as in every other part of society, Feminists have looked
for and found female "victims." To paraphrase what Voltaire
said about men and God: if female victims don't exist where Feminists
look for them, they just invent them!
One myth they are still circulating is that boys dominate the teachers'
attention in coeducational classrooms. In many countries, this myth
was no doubt promulgated at taxpayer expense, and at the expense of
the union dues male and female teachers paid to their unions. Regardless
of who paid the bill, the result was the same: a lot of hand-wringing.
Primarily, they contend girls suffer as a consequence of (slightly)
lower participation rates, and even when the data clearly indicate boys
are worse off than girls, they still find a way to make girls the greater
victims:
Department of Education research also shows that boys repeat grades
and drop out more than girls. Yet girls who repeat a grade are more
likely to drop out of school than boys. (American Association of University
Women 1999
www.aauw.org/1000/eseamyth.html)
I have had a lot of experience with Feminist stupidity in academic
fields, but this has to be a classic example: they make a big fuss about
the supposed dominance by boys, and ignore who is really harmed! It
should be obvious that the introvert (male or female) who quietly gets
on with their work might actually have more time to do a good job of
learning than someone who was always hogging the teacher's time for
some reason. It would have been useful for them to investigate this
aspect of the matter.
Ironically, when Eileen Byrne, who holds the Chair of Education in
Policy Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia, visited New
Zealand in 1994, she debunked several myths about girls in education,
including this one:
“It's not true in mixed classrooms that all boys dominate the
discourse. A massive survey of 120 of those studies that are most often
cited showed that, in a third of those surveyed, neither sex dominated
and in another third, the difference was so slight as to be not a basis
for policy-making. In the remaining third, yes it was true that girls
did not dominate at all and boys did, but, it was three boys who did,
or two boys, one boy. Most of the boys don't. That is a question of
classroom management. It is a matter of good teaching. In the first
place, it's bad for any three students to have excessive air time and
dominate, be they male or female. In each of those cases there was always
a girl or two who attempted to dominate. Smart Alec girls exist too.”
(PPTA News, Vol. 15 No.3, April 1994).
One problem affecting boys is the growing feminisation of the teaching
profession. According to an article on page E2 of the Sunday Star-Times
of March 10, 1996, Australian Psychologist Steve Biddulph observed a
shortage of male primary teachers is producing boys who "can't
conceive of learning as a masculine activity."1 We need to hear
the boys' and men's side. If more boys than girls try to hog the teacher's
attention in a minority of classrooms, could that be because most of
their teachers are female and they are attracted to them sexually? Or
do Feminist teachers tend to pay so much more attention to girls that
boys rightly feel neglected, even demonised? This is not good for their
morale, self-esteem or (in all probability) academic performance, if
that's what is happening.
To give you one example of bias in schools: in one coed school I found
the library catalogue listed over 300 books on "women" and
"girls" but fewer than 30 on "men" and "boys"!
I know of teachers who automatically assume that all women are kind
and well-meaning – and that men and boys are the opposite. If
I try to put pro-men items onto the agenda for meetings of my teacher
union branch, they sometimes get put below "General Business",
so that I have little or no time to discuss them – or someone
comes in late to the meeting and make a lot of noise, so as to disrupt
my presentation.
In one study, Massey University lecturer Sarah Farquhar found that
men were discriminated against in early childhood teaching. (Education
Weekly, Vol. 8 No. 284, Monday, February 3, 1997.) Moreover, 55 percent
of male teachers report being treated as actual or potential child abusers
because of all the publicity surrounding a couple of cases of alleged
child-abuse. This scared men away from the profession, and now many
employers discriminate against male applicants for teaching positions.
Thanks to the Feminists' anti-male agenda, courts are convicting innocent
men and, in many professions, few men are able to find employment.2
But the excessive numbers of female teachers may have even more sinister
effects on the education of boys, according to one study:
These comparisons revealed systematic tendencies for teachers to evaluate
the performance of girls more favourably than the performance of boys....
in the areas of reading and written expression teachers showed consistent
tendencies to evaluate the performance of girls more favourably than
the boys even after adjustment for gender differences in objective test
scores were (sic) made.3
The authors of this study believe the reason for this bias is that teachers
unconsciously included an evaluation of the students' behaviour and
personality in their assessment of the students' work. They also say:
It is also possible that the tendency for teachers to evaluate girls
more favourably is, in part, an unintended consequence of misapplication
of gender equity principles.
Whichever of these is correct – or even if they are both correct
– it would seem the bias is more likely to be present in female
than male teachers. That is another reason why there should be more
male teachers – preferably fifty percent of the total number of
teachers.
Anti-boy bias
Thomas (1993) points out that, in kindergarten and primary school, girls
out-perform boys and this may be a result of the preponderance of female
teachers at that level. He cites surveys showing teachers consistently
praise girls more than boys, and criticise boys more than girls. Research
from UCLA supports this.4 When kindergarten children learned reading
from a self-teaching machine, the boys did better than the girls. But
when they were taught to read by a woman teacher, the girls did better
than the boys.
It is increasingly common for the news media to report girls are doing
better academically than boys. At the beginning of July 1999 in New
Zealand, there was a conference in Waitakere City (in Greater Auckland,
New Zealand) on Boys in Schools, following which the Education Review
Office published a report about it. Then, on July 29th, 1999, Susan
Wood, of the Holmes TV programme, interviewed the Minister of Education,
Nick Smith, and the Principal of Scots College, Wellington, who said
more men needed to be brought into primary (elementary) teaching, and
that they needed to be reassured that unsubstantiated allegations of
sex abuse or sexual harassment would not ruin their careers.
In Britain, the findings of Professor Richard Kimbell, of the University
of London, on this topic have received international publicity. And
"men have become the new underclass at university in Australia,"
according to the article, "Men: the blondes of the nineties,"
in the NZ Education Review, November 4, 1998.
Fergusson and Horwood (1997) found that, in all educational comparisons,
boys aged 8 to 18 years did worse than girls. Their data would be compatible
with a conclusion that teacher bias against boys is partly to blame.
The Principal of Motueka High School noted many boys said "teachers
favour girls over boys" (The New Zealand Education Gazette of 14
June 1999, page 4), though he didn't agree with them.
When girls say such things, Feminists rise up in arms to support them,
but they were boys and the Principal did not take them seriously. I
think we need to take these boys at their word – after all, they
are the consumers of the educational process and their feelings and
opinions deserve to be taken seriously. If they aren't, then that itself
is an indication of bias against boys.
In my experience as a teacher in New Zealand, anti-male bias is so
entrenched among my colleagues that they are incapable of recognising
it when they see it. In one department I was teaching in, a female teacher
had a prominent sign at her desk, which read, "Men can't do anything."
I complained to the Head of Department, who got the teacher to remove
it. No doubt, the teacher had thought of it as a joke, but where in
the Western World could a male teacher have a sign at his desk saying,
"Women can't do anything " - on the pretext that it was just
a joke ? A senior female (and Feminist) colleague once remarked how
a proportion of six females to two males at a union committee meeting
was "excellent gender balance" (she later received further
promotion), and the male chairperson of a teachers' regional union meeting
said men were "too stupid to handle combination locks" (on
toilet doors). Neither he nor anyone else smiled. When I raised the
issue later at an executive meeting of my teacher union branch, most
of the men just laughed! As far as leftist teachers are concerned, sexism
against men and boys is okay. Only sexism against women warrants concern.
If I hadn't mentioned these three issues to others, no one would have
noticed – they are just typical of the day-to-day misandry (man-hatred)
endemic in the teaching profession. Presumably, that is why Sue Wood
of the Holmes TV programme had to go to the Principal of an upmarket
private school to find someone who would speak out publicly in defence
of boys (July 29, 1999).
One further reason for this may well be that curricula, teaching methods
and assessment methods are systematically being altered to favour girls
over boys – whether this is the result of a deliberate conspiracy
or the accidental result of the general feminisation of the education
systems in many countries, is hard to say.
For example, boys seem to thrive on competition more than girls, but
competition is politically incorrect and educators discourage it. Continuous
assessment is steadily replacing examinations in some countries.5 This
removes the anonymity of written examinations and allows full scope
for teachers' anti-boy bias. Another factor is the banning of corporal
punishment, when corporal punishment has had a salutary effect on the
behaviour and attitude of some boys (in my experience as a teacher).
Many politicians in New Zealand believe removing it from the school
system is a major reason for the number of suspensions of boys. About
three quarters of suspensions involve boys. (New Zealand Education Gazette,
June 14, 1999, page 5.)
Specific subject areas may also be subject to the same trend. According
to an article in the New Scientist, April 5, 1997 ("How Speech
is Built from Memories," by Robert Pool):
"Neuroscientists in the US ... suggest that women keep more words
in memory than men.... men are more likely than women to have difficulty
with regular verbs after diseases that damage the procedural memory.
But both have problems forming the past tense of made-up words such
as 'spuff' ('spuffed'). This suggests... that women store more words
in memory than men, and fall back on the rules only when presented with
unfamiliar words."
This suggests emphasising grammatical rules in language teaching would
favour boys, while de-emphasising rules would favour girls. The trend
in language-teaching in recent years has been in the direction of de-emphasising
the rules and allowing students of average ability to develop superficial
oral survival skills as quickly as possible. This is the focus of the
Communicative approach to language teaching. Language teaching is a
female-dominated profession which has discarded the old grammar-and-translation
approach as too academic and elitist – especially in countries
such as New Zealand, where languages are not a compulsory part of the
curriculum. To make this optional subject attractive to students, teachers
are not inclined to make it seem too difficult.
Conclusion
However, three encouraging educational developments have occurred recently
in Australasia: The National Executive of the Post-Primary Teachers'
Association (PPTA) now has a designated member with specific responsibility
for Boys' Issues – and I was elected to the position of Men's
Contact of The Correspondence School branch of the Post Primary Teachers'
Association, with responsibility for Boys' Issues and Men's Issues in
parallel with the Women's Contact's long-standing responsibility for
Girls' Issues and Women's Issues.
Both these developments took effect from the beginning of 1999, but
by the beginning of the year 2000 my hopes had been dashed, to some
extent. The first man chosen by the PPTA to promote Boys' Issues finally
revealed himself to be a Male Feminist (in an article in the PPTA News,
14 February 2000), and I resigned my branch position in 1999 when I
was unable to get support from the members to fight a management decision
to advertise for students in a periodical for women, but not in any
periodical for men. Susequent TV advertisements also targeted programmes
typically viewed by women, rather than sports programmes, for example.
However, I believe that Male Feminists will not be able to monopolise
such positions in the long term.
In 1999, the University of Tasmania Students' Union voted to create
the position of "Men's Officer." This brought about a Feminist
backlash, of course, and I was told by that Students' Union's Education
Officer (a woman) that the referendum had been declared unconstitutional
and would take place a second time, at which time she was confident
that the decision would be reversed.
Like Henry Ford, I don't like making predictions – especially
about the future ! Nevertheless, I am optimistic that the crown of victimhood
will be wrested from the heads of girls.
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