Modern Sexism

In this post at Phi Beta Cons Blog, the last line says it all.

CNN reports that federal statistics released last week reveal that the gender gap is widening — with women in the lead. "Women now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate — from biology to business — and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine and other advanced degrees."

This is not news. It makes perfect sense, since women also outnumber men in college and dominate the rankings in elementary and secondary school. Why are the boys failing?

In January, Newsweek ran an interesting cover story investigating "The Trouble With Boys." In "Sexism in the Classroom," my analysis of the article, I quoted a stunning statistic that underlies the root of the problem. The statistic, "In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes," lends credence to a quote from Lindalyn Kakadelis of the North Carolina Education Alliance: "[Blame it on] 30 years of a politicized attempt to remediate societal unfairness to girls." The boys aren't broken, but maybe the system is.

Even the Newsweek article admits, boys are being treated "like defective girls."

Thanks to Kant, here we have another application of attacking the law of identity. (As well as the technique -- followed by Seattle Public Schools in "defining" racism -- of attacking something by defining it out of existence.)

Education Posted by Cyrano at June 6, 2006 10:47 AM