(Response) In our feminized and litigious society where everything is too dangerous and subject to legal liability the male approach of hands on with acceptable risk to leaning is impossible. In today’s world benzene and metallic mercury are reasons to call for protective suits and specially trained crews to deal with these highly dangerous materials.

In the sixties, it was common practice for organic chemist to wash their hands in benzene and kids to amalgamate pennies with mercury. One kid attempted to make nitro-glycerin in my dad’s high school chemistry class and successfully made enough to send hot con-nitric acid spraying a lab bench. Electrolyzing water into hydrogen and oxygen and collecting the mix in glass Coke bottles and igniting the explosive mix was high school chemistry. Amazing but boys found this “cool.”

The UMKC chemistry department had a good source of most chemicals necessary to do basic research until about 1991 when it was determined that they were too dangerous. Most chemistry lab experiments were reduce to paper.

Boys thrive and learn their limits on an element of danger. Unlike women, they want to shoot guns and make loud explosions, show physical prowess, take risk and test authoritative limits. All this has been removed and if they don’t act like little girls they are punished. Boys aren’t motivated to learn when forced to act like girls. The boys reason and logic and natural instincts are subordinate to female emotion.

Proof that our society is gone nuts: A young man was expelled from school. Yes, apparently the school was passing out condoms and the young man was caught on his hands and knees praying for an opportunity to use it.

Please read Sommers’ book “THE WAR AGAINST BOYS before it goes out of print.

Students all but lived in the Chemistry Department, Mallott Hall at KU and there were at minimum half a dozen present 24-7, 365 days a year. One was lucky to find anyone in the chemistry department after six or on weekends at UMKC.

At KU students were motivated by the desire for knowledge and the thrill of scientific discovery. At UMKC students were seeking only a piece of paper awarding them a degree.

“Before people, especially males, learn from life experience, they must learn the basics, how to learn, to apply reason and logic to facts and develop a love of knowledge. They must have a positive learning experience in their formative years.”

Heres the problem with that, they are not getting anything positive out of school.
They are not learning any logic , emotion yes, logic no.
Why am I at a Mens site? Public education brought me here, the common sense has kept me here. Seeing mistakes i’ve made with mine when I was single, and being able to change “my” attitude has been very beneficial to my boys. This is a fantastic site, you may not think women don’t belong here, but the fact is we are raising boys and not all of us are looking for them to be mommas boys.
Until education gets a major overhaul (i’m not holding my breath) the least amount of time spent in prek thru 12, the better. However I don’t know about anyone elses experience w/special ed. But, my middle son has been doing fantastic. The teachers are more creative and more hands on, he has tested thru the roof.
my 2 cent

Having taught at both the community college and local university branch level, I know there are plenty of kids who are just riding the schooling conveyer belt without much purpose or intent simply because they can. My best students were always those who had had a decade or so in the ‘real world’ and had become motivated to get courses and degrees they needed to do what they wanted to do and get where they wanted to be. It was definitely harder for them to do school and work and family, but they got way more out of it and appreciated it more. So it may be premature to condemn those who drop-out in their mid-teens to permanent life-long loser status.

I see where Denise Noe is going with this and I like it: People should have a variety of options in how they pursue their life.

Just what options are you suggesting? It’s ok to be ignorant and choose to spend one’s life making all of the possible errors an educaton might have prevented. It’s OK to live in ignornt bliss as it ones right.

An ignorant person has the same right to make choices as to how society is governed in a democracy. Why do we have a society that that ignores reason and logic in favor of political correctness?

“One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that it’s all right not to know anything.” – Carl Sagan

Denise:

Have you read Sommers’ book “THE WAR AGAINST BOYS?”

(Denise) No, I have not.

To suggest “Perhaps the dropout crisis is no crisis” is sheer lunacy.

Before people, especially males, learn from life experience, they must learn the basics, how to learn, to apply reason and logic to facts and develop a love of knowledge. They must have a positive learning experience in their formative years

(Denise) I’m just saying that people may wish to leave off formal education at different time periods and that we should not necessarily oppose that practice.
I have long suggested that schools need to be more aware of differing learning styles. The receptive learning style which is most amenable to listening to lectures, taking notes, and reading, is more common among girls and is the style to which most formal schooling is currently oriented. The active learning style, which consists of taking things apart and putting them back together again and exploring one’s environment, is more common in boys. We need more classes with a structure that allows for the more active learning style.

Have you read Sommers’ book “THE WAR AGAINST BOYS?”

To suggest “Perhaps the dropout crisis is no crisis” is sheer lunacy.

Before people, especially males, learn from life experience, they must learn the basics, how to learn, to apply reason and logic to facts and develop a love of knowledge. They must have a positive learning experience in their formative years.

Sorry ladies but I find this post and response simply preposterous and as posted on MND are directed towards males. Apparently neither of you have read Christina Hoff Sommers’ book “The War Against Boys.” Sister Sommers is apparently the only one well enough educated to understand the problem.

It is ridiculous to conclude that either men or women don’t benefit from at least twelve years of education and I suggest that education is a lifetime process.

(Denise) I strongly agree that “education is a lifetime process.” Perhaps for some people, the best education is in the “real world” of work rather than the academic world of the classroom. If people end formal schooling at 16, they don’t stop learning. They may learn a great deal on the job and elsewhere.

I woke to study after the first 6 or 7 years in the military. I did a degree in 2 years, part time; another at honours in three, also part time and both whilst holding down a 70 hours a week military career job; and a Masters in one.

Even bright boys can be intellectually cramped by the school classroom. Many, like me at that time, needed action; the small adventures of youth; the exploratory impulse is high, and the rules, especially the ‘quiet’, ‘conforming’ ones simply irritate. I would be there at school on the days we played rugger but bugger the rest.

The structure of the classroom is feminine geared. Create the ambience suitable for boys and the boys might stay in it. It certainly isn’t just an issue of intellectual capacity.

No one I know considers this: there is more to fill in a boy.

It is ridiculous to conclude that either men or women don’t benefit from at least twelve years of education and I suggest that education is a lifetime process. It is a matter of proper motivation and full realization of the distinct differences between men and women. Contrary to popular female thinking, boys and girls need different motivation and techniques and trying to make boys act like little girls is destroying young males desire to continue education.

Education is more than parroting “facts” which females do better then men on average. Education is or should be defined as training the mind to apply reason and logic to a given set of data and produce a productive successful outcome. Men far surpass women in this aspect. Ending feminist control of education and permitting boys to be boys will solve the sorry state of American education.