Last year, my husband, an electrician, was working on a Dallas-county courthouse remodel (Iowa). The company doing the trim carpentry represented the 5th generation of this business. He had the opportunity to observe some very young male carpenters (sons of sons of sons, presumably) for many weeks. Not only was he astounded at their craftsmanship (and my husband, also a woodworker, is very picky) but he noted they were always respectful with one another and with others on the job site, and they cleaned up after themselves. These two qualities are rare in his line of work.
What makes me thoughtful is that these young men are enjoying a professional life unavailable to most. They work in an established family business and stand to inherit it. Their line of work isn't as vulnerable to economic shifts because, despite fluctuations in the price of wood, people will always need good trim carpenters. And they have learned a trade, which means what they do involves apprenticeship, manual skill, and most importantly the ability to complete an entire project from start to finish. Unlike the work on a factory assembly line, they have the opportunity to experience fulfillment and completion on a regular basis. Are some of them unsung poets? I have no idea. But their work is not soul-bruising; poetry is possible.
Yes, I know all the "buts" and "what abouts" of my description. I'm just trying to isolate some of the factors that might contribute to a sense of wholeness and purpose. If young men no matter their occupation could have even one of these conditions--especially the sense of pride in their work--they might find purpose that serves as a hedge against..."monstrosity." How do we create the conditions that foster young men's educational and professional formation in a way that contributes not to their economic or social dominance but to their well-being?
Very thoughtful commentary, Carol -- thank you. Love this question: "How do we create the conditions that foster young men's educational and professional formation in a way that contributes not to their economic or social dominance but to their well-being?"
Your point about wholeness and ownership is exactly right. Logging once offered this possibility for young men in my hometown. But that was probably an illusory long-term profession, at least at the scale it was done in the 1970s and 80s. I do know, however, that there are many artistic and intellectual types in rural areas. Often religion provides the primary outlet for those talents. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Incidentally, I had the chance to speak to Steve Bullock (former Democratic governor of Montana) during one of his Iowa visits during the 2020 presidential campaign. I told him where I was from and described my concern about the narrow horizons that young people there faced. His only answer was that he was helping to bring broadband to Troy. High-speed Internet is of no use to anyone without a quality education, and it's even useless in a public school context if the cultural environment is toxic (due to long-term unemployment, addiction, etc). But broadband is the kind of table scrap that bureaucrats like to throw at rural communities. It's not an answer to the problem I describe here.
There aren't very many good answers to your question so long as masculinity is held up as a toxic trope to deconstruct. I think we're pretty confused, culturally, about what a good form of masculinity looks like. Same for fatherhood. This is where the Murray essay really troubles me. If mothers view their sons as ticking time bombs of masculinity, that's an awful psychological foundation for a boy.
Thank you, Josh. I'm glad I got to spend time with this article.
You write: "I think we're pretty confused, culturally, about what a good form of masculinity looks like." I agree completely, and yet, personally, I can't say that I am confused at all about what it looks like. Most of the men I know are decent, complex, good people (including the ones I sometimes can't stand because of their political opinions.) It's not like I collect them. They're not without flaws. They're just more common than not.
My son was always in trouble in school. My husband at one of our many school conferences told the principal that if the boys could go shoot baskets, or pick up trash on the side of the school road, as soon as they had learned their spelling words, or figured out their algebra assignment, that he could guarantee quick and cooperative learning. It us simply very difficult to sit that long. The principal almost looked like he agreed, but quickly said he was sorry but that could not be done. Our son did drop out at 16, so I don’t have answer.
But why can schools accommodate the physical need to move? How many adults can sit through any meeting over an hour and keep decent concentration?
Judy, I appreciate your example of physical activity. I don't know how much different things were a few generations ago, but the rigidity that you describe is one byproduct of standardized testing and other forms of educational "alignment." Whatever gains there might be in consistency across the board are offset by the inability of teachers to address the particular needs of their students -- in some cases, allowing boys and girls with a need to move chance to do so beyond the prescribed recess times. In my own case, I know that there was a little more tolerance for mischievousness than there is in school now (pranks were our way of blowing off steam during the school day, I guess, and we all remembered the teachers who were good sports about that fondly).
I'm sorry to hear that your son dropped out. May I ask what he is doing now?
He struggled for a few years but is earning a living as an electrician. He enjoys driving the van, meeting customers, solving electrical problems. I think he enjoys all of being an electrician. He watches you tubes of arranging tools and figuring the math and electricity issues out. He had a girlfriend for over ten years and I’m sad that they broke up but he will be ok. (I wish I could have figured out a school solution for him. Leaving school seemed the only solution. )
Ah, yes, as one of those "un-intellectualized males" who has actually done all the reading that you and your ilk deem too passé to warrant the attention of your so highly refined sensitivities, I thank God (also passé) to we have the likes of you to defenestrate un-intellectualized males like "Adam Smith" (I put quotes around his name because I didn't want to make you feel like you should know who this irrelevant dude was, basically he was the greatest "union buster" of all time)... to dismiss all the literally thousands of years of accumulated male bullshit with just single sentences at a time, that is so much of a testament to your superior powers that it almost seems like you must have actually really said nothing of substance at all. You are a walking testament to the fact that it truly makes no difference whether one chooses to study by playing Play-Doh all day, rather than actually reading "Plato" for at least as long it takes for it to dry-out and become crumbly; p.s. "Plato", whom you are correctly unconcerned with knowing anything about, was just another old-dead-white-male, the only difference between him and the average "O.D.W.M." is that they are all "really-really" over-rated, whereas Plato is essentially Jesus Christ degrees of over-rated).
When a subject is as complex as this one, I tend to think that there is some truth to most of the thoughtful explorations of causes, and I think that about your varied analysis here. Of the many ideas I could respond to, I'll choose two opposing ones, both of which I think true. The accelerating feminist cultural shift over quite a few decades now, with more recent gender critique, has put masculinity under so much pressure that many people can barely use the term without the modifier "toxic" in front of it. But I think masculinity is real, biologically and as a gendered set of traits, so that's *problematic*, to be sure. We do need to evolve an understanding of genuine masculinity that isn't "toxic," with all that term suggests, yet isn't simply feminization of male behavioral and emotional existence. On the other hand, if some male students are feeling uncomfortable speaking their true minds in the classroom (and I have to say that hasn't been my general experience), well, that was the experience of women for how long? We have to find our way past this stage of social evolution. I do wonder what some good comparative sociology with other Western nations might reveal about the role of American anti-intellectualism in this regard and of our having, in the U.S., developed the liberally educating college as the necessary form of education for all.
Really enjoying our recent exchanges. Should I call you Jay? You're right to highlight these two opposing trends. Look at the comment thread beneath the Jessica Valenti post that I link to, and you'll see plenty of full-throated and broad-spectrum male bashing. But I quite take your point about socializing young men to suck it up in the classroom. A previous reader, Laura, mentioned the favoritism shown to men at elite institutions, where things like legacy admissions still persist. And so a young George W. Bush is still going to college and going to do quite fine for himself professionally despite any slings and arrows he might face about toxic masculinity. However, the same is not true of a first-generation Latino student from New Mexico. For young men who do not bring privilege or a sense of entitlement to college, and who really are trying to read the room and avoid pissing off people in power, it's not always as simple as just speaking their minds. In that case, I'm not sure that historical payback cuts it as an ethical argument (not saying you're making that argument, but "that was the experience of women for how long" doesn't really help a blue-collar kid who already can't afford college). Of course there will always be the knuckleheads who speak their minds freely, but who do so out of ignorance, without a good faith commitment to examining their views, and that's of no value to themselves or anyone else. That's how we get Toby Keith's "Angry American" and Donald Trump.
Ye, please call me Jay. And you, Joshua or Josh? I'm enjoying the exchanges too. You're right. I didn't intend to make that terrible argument. (What comes of trying to abbreviate to avoid excess length.) What I hoped to convey, I think, and did poorly, was that there is never going to be an ideal balance of comfort among students in their reception of their education and their sense of their own voice being accessible to them. Beyond stating the obvious in that, and the inevitable overcompensating reactive swings in mores and policy, is, I think, the intricate individual level at which every student is living out their experience. Maybe that first-generation male Latino or African American student not in line with current campus ideological trends feels intimidated to speak his mind (as a different student in a contrary way might have in 1955). Maybe it's more specific to some current challenges to masculine modes. Maybe it's because as a first-generation college student raised perhaps in a family without an intellection culture, he lacks confidence in his own ideation and views. Maybe, from that specific background or not, he is one of those people not compelled to share his opinions with the world. It isn't his mode of being. Maybe he doesn't even want to be in college, but he's told that's where he needs to be to find opportunity in life. There are so many possibilities to get wrong outside of one-on one relationship. and the possibilities for that are limited. There are certainly general trends, but our approach to them, to shifting culture where only some of us at any time think it should go, is like a bus driver with thick hands steering a tractor trailer through a Formula One racecourse. The turns are always going to be wide and late and success, if there is any, mostly means not driving off the road.
Thanks -- Josh is what I'd prefer. You offer a great list of all the possible reasons why a young man might feel uncomfortable speaking his mind. I think the purpose of DEI programming is often to create that "ideal balance of comfort among students": a welcoming, inclusive space. But we all know there are very clear rules about what *not* to say in such a space. And I saw some of the most profound dissonance in young men of color, who knew that their views were highly sought after on race, but that their fairly traditional views of gender or sexuality were verboten. The good thing about teaching a writing-intensive course is that a teacher doesn't have to guess about these things: they manifest in a student's writing. And so, while I quite take our point about the tractor trailer on the racecourse, I think the metaphor does not hold for a small college like the one where I taught. Partly because there are many opportunities for one-on-one conversation with each student. Partly because writing allowed me to know my students better in certain ways than many family members might have. And partly because the data points in such an environment are vast. I observed my students as they walked across campus, how they behaved and who they sat with in the dining hall, how they carried themselves on the playing field or court. Coming to class 10 minutes early and asking the wrestler what he puts in his protein smoothie as other students were trickling in was one of many ways I tried to know my students.
But the real conundrum was the sense that no change to the assignment structure would have helped some of my students. More credit for participation? Doesn't help the man of few words. More credit for informal writing? Doesn't help the student who struggles to keep up with low-stakes daily tasks. More weight on high-stakes formal assignment? Doesn't help the student who is unprepared for college and saves everything until the last minute. The only thing that moved the needle often was intensive mentorship, and some of those young men got that through their teams. Others did not. The wrestling team had an excellent culture. Their coach preached a version of the platitude, "How you do anything is how you do everything." You can't phone it in during class and then suddenly flip the switch to a champion mentality in the gym. So those wrestlers sat in the front of every class, they participated, and typically they thrived.
You would probably find Nietzsche's 1869 lectures on academia entitled "Anti-Education" incredibly illuminating... and highly disturbing to realize where so much of what remains in place to this very day under the banner of "progress" came from originally.
This is one of the most thoughtful articles about higher education I've read and it touched on a lot of themes I have been thinking about.
I work with college athletes in their academic endeavor and I see firsthand the imposter syndrome. The frustration, mostly from males but also from females, of young people who are used to doing and producing something you can measure, being forced to constantly write essays, discussions and placed into philosophical courses. Although many eventually manage and feel a sense of accomplishment from "vanquishing the academic struggle", they still continue to view themselves as athletes first, and often their Plan B has nothing to do with what they learned in college. They either go back to the work in the family or get into modeling and other celebrity/media careers where they make more money than a regular college career.
And I've had the same experience as you with the young men that quit. They knew they should've done it, but they also continued to feel they are not people that "talk' but people that "do" things. I think the reason males are afraid to speak up is because we are not used to speaking to solve problems. We do things, we don't talk about them. So young males feel uncomfortable in this position, while girls are used to talking. It's a symptom of how we teach, not the root of the male problem. Not everyone is cut for philosophical inquiry, and not everything in life is a philosophical problem. By forcing everyone to follow this path, we have created a nation of talkers and philosophers wannabes. Every problem in real life has become a college discussion assignment, where we argue on social media what should be done, but few of us are trained to actually fix things.
I have come to believe we need to reform higher education into 3 paths/formats:
- Vocational/technical (2-3 years most with 1-2 years vocational mixed with 1 year general liberal arts); these days there are many careers tied to technology (media tech, GIS, computer tech, etc.) where you can have higher earnings; it's not all about manual trades.
- Professional Masters (why do we have a bachelor and a master in a profession? shouldn't everyone know everything about their career once they graduate?)
- Research/PhD careers (for those who truly want to spend time analyzing things and teach about them)
I think these paths are equally valuable and students should be able to choose which one they do because neither one is better than the other. Students can return to college and do another path later in life. The one-size-fits-all model of education does not work anymore.
I too am a father of two sons and a girl. The girl finished college already and is happy in her career. My son, he preferred to go into the Army to get the kind of jobs he wants. He did not follow in my liberal arts educator footsteps. The other son is an artist and he is learning through a trade/art school because he wants to do art, not read about it. We need to change how we do higher education or we'll continue to lose young people to careers where they can make a lot more money without having to spend 4 years sitting in a classroom listening to a professor talk.
This is particularly well said: "I think the reason males are afraid to speak up is because we are not used to speaking to solve problems. We do things, we don't talk about them. So young males feel uncomfortable in this position, while girls are used to talking. It's a symptom of how we teach, not the root of the male problem. Not everyone is cut for philosophical inquiry, and not everything in life is a philosophical problem. By forcing everyone to follow this path, we have created a nation of talkers and philosophers wannabes. Every problem in real life has become a college discussion assignment, where we argue on social media what should be done, but few of us are trained to actually fix things."
I was always plenty comfortable talking, but I also had no trouble earning a PhD. The young men who struggled in my classes were cut from exactly the mold that you describe, and they presumably learned that from the men in their lives. There's real value in the military for that mentality. Who needs a critical thinker when there is a chain of command and a mission to be executed? The same was true during my time as a seasonal firefighter with the Forest Service. Overthinking can be dangerous in a lot of work situations.
Your closing examples anticipate a post I'm queueing up for next week. To a large extent, I think the undergraduate curriculum -- at least the gen-ed curriculum -- has been diluted to the point that it no longer requires a PhD. So if that is the direction that colleges want to continue to pursue, then something about how college teachers are credentialed needs to change. Virtually no prospective student or parent that I spoke to over 16 years cared one whit about my dissertation topic or how many peer-reviewed articles I'd published. That sentiment is more pronounced all the time. I think a professional master's with a certificate in college teaching could easily replace a traditional PhD for many undergraduate institutions. A topic for another time, perhaps, but thank you for reading and taking the time to respond at such length and with such care.
The professional master's you mention is exactly what I am thinking. A PhD is about research; teaching is a vocation and a set of skills we apply; in other words, a profession.
I'm looking forward to your post next week. Too much of the college conversation revolves around the monetary value of a degree and around eligibility in admissions. Those are important topics, but what we teach, how we teach it and how the degrees conferred are organized are never questioned. We should.
Are you on LinkedIn? I think I connected to you via a social media account but can't remember which.
Joshua, today with distance from reading your original article and reviewing the comments, I wonder if we are asking too much of higherEd. I went to high school and undergrad overseas and then a Masters & PhD in the US, did startups here and overseas and now I teach (non-tenure track) at a University. Don't get me wrong, there's much to be fixed in higherEd, but many of the issues around boys, men, masculinity clearly stem much earlier from our homes, communities and the many fables and truths we tell ourselves about American exceptionalism, how the West was won, and what being men (or women) is supposed to be. As several other commenters have stated, clearly different folk (not just along gender lines) respond to different ways of being taught (be that essay writing, playing team sports). So whilst higherEd can and must do things to address this, I wonder how much of this needs to start much earlier?
this is a theme that Prof Scott Galloway has discussed many times and his latest covers that and some new ground in his inimitable style. Check it out, link at the bottom.
This is a great point. I'm curious about your thoughts on how masculinity is constructed or perceived in other educational contexts abroad? As you say, the American mythology surrounding masculinity has grown quite confused. In some ways we still raise boys on the same origin stories American have always told, but in many other ways American education confounds the values driving those stories. I have more to say about this in an upcoming post after having spent the past week in Montana visiting family. But I think the MAGA-style defiance you see in rural communities stems in part from this dissonance.
I agree that it's too much to expect higher ed to fix these things. However, the John Struloeff example (and me -- I came from the same background as John) still holds. Higher ed was once a place where young men like us could bring all of our problematic socialization into the classroom and struggle with it, get mad when challenged, reflect on that debate afterward, and slowly evolve. I really do think the conversation in higher ed has hardened into more of a rehearsed consensus that is alienating to young men, in particular. And that coupled with the rigidity of assessment-driven policies (standardization, alignment, and the kind of portfolio model that I describe in this post) is not good for young men from low-income backgrounds, in particular. Boys and men from privileged backgrounds still do quite well and always will.
I wonder if it'll ever occur to you to consider the possibility that your notion of "MAGA-style" "defiance", which you perceive in, and presume to be in a position to characterize despite your disconnect from, and general ignorance of, rural communities, might be a result of your own dissonance. Socrates was a metropolitan character too, but he never presumed himself to possess an understanding of the agrarian G reeks whose lifestyles he was thoroughly repulsed by... but then again, Socrates was a seriously un-serious thinker who admitted when he literally said: “all I know is that I know nothing”, you probably know a whole lot more than that ole'-know-nothing-socrates ever did.
One thing's for sure: conservative Supreme Court justices will never find it objectionable that a sort of affirmative action for men is already occurring at some selective universities to address the enrollment imbalance.
Great point and a good reminder that the nuances are different at elite institutions. I suppose my focus is more on low-income or lower middle class students. And the trend is even more concerning if men of color are self-selecting out of college.
That's a weird take. The conservative supreme court opinions on affirmative action have not changed once since the issue of affirmative action first hit the supreme courts, the only confound in the conservative supreme court consensus on affirmative action pertains to whether it should be argued against on the grounds of the 14th amendment (which would likely fail to pass, but is the clearly more principled constitutional argument), or the more unprincipled argument made on the basis of the MANY federal education non-discrimination policies affirmative action clearly violates (this would be the effectual argument, but would require a tremendous sacrifice of constitutional principle because the federal education mandates are an even more egregious violation of an even greater number of constitutional principles than affirmative action).
Also, rest assured lady, dudes like me aren't exactly scrambling to join our alleged intellectual betters in their choice to incur a lifetime of debt in exchange for a degree that is somehow less than worthless... in fact, dudes like me found ourselves with 80-95k salaries right out of high school because we decided to prioritize goofing around with software engineering rather than reading another god-awful piece of shit book by some histrionic moralizing moron who thinks she's "deep" because she naval-gazes with such perspicacity that she frequently finds herself becoming lost in her own belly-button. Don't worry though, I make quite enough money now to buy all the books your university probably told you weren't important enough to read for yourself: which is why I am not just in any kind of debt with a solid career, but I'm actually better educated than the deluded ignoramuses who went into debt for the service of being made dumber. The fact that we continue to encourage young women to be used and despoiled in this way is actually quite appalling to me, but hey, what the hell do I know, maybe being an indentured servant with a degree in "political science" or some other such non-sense is truly the best a woman can hope for.
Perhaps I have misunderstood you, but you seem to argue men are beasts, that women are right to think none of them good--but that they should still go to college and get into lifelong debt to be told they are beasts.
I wouldn't go to to college either.
Better to learn a trade.
As you say "If men who would subject their classmates to tirades are staying home and finding other outlets for their angst, perhaps the drop in male students is a good thing."
I argue no such thing. I do take some pains to show that concerns about toxic masculinity are valid. But I also show that viewing all aspects of conventional masculinity as toxic is really harmful. See the reference to Murray's essay, for instance.
I believe that young men benefit from education and that a good education might be a way of unlearning some of the unhealthy tropes of manhood that persist. But no one responds well to being labeled as a beast, and I sympathize with young men who avoid such conversations.
Ultimately, I think we all suffer if education is inequitable or inequitably accessible. Hopefully that's a little clearer.
I am one woman (among many) to say that no blanket statement about any group or categorization of people is the right thing to do. Plenty of women in my experience who are less than angelic, plenty of men who are wonderful human beings. A woman can be a feminist and still appreciate men. If we can't see and talk nuance, we're done for.
Before I say anything at all, I will say the following as my fundamental belief on these things: all "misandry" is likewise "mysogny", and all "misogyny" is likewise "misandry", therefore, anything that is in any way "misogynist" or "misandrist" is better and more aptly termed: MISANTHROPY. Misanthropy is what must be totally rejected, and it has been my observation that there are becoming an increasing number of things which ARE misanthropic but not so offensive as to turn people away from it.
While I appreciate the sentiment, in practice, this "nuance" has produced a situation of an even worse kind of misanthropy than offensive misanthropy, that greater evil being: subtle, covert, and always "nuanced" misanthropy. An example of what I'm referring to that pops to mind is the trend a while back in which feminist mothers dressed their very young boys in a shirt with the following message: "Boys will be *[boys]* Good Humans!". This seems pretty clear to me, but I understand how the obvious meaning of the shirt could be overlooked by according some kind of "nuanced interpretation", regardless, I would make rather be dealing with Valerie Solanas who at least has the deficiency to know what she hates when she's hating it... it is disturbing that so many mothers didn't realize that the meaning of the shirt they'd dressed their son with is this: boys will not be boys, but will instead rather than being the particular sort of human that boys are, he will be just generally human and therefore good. These sorts of situations drive me crazy, how could the message that "boyness" is mutually exclusive to any kind of "humanity that is Good rather than Evil" be called anything but misandrist misanthropic garbage. "A boy who is a boy is an an evil non-human", that is this shirt's message, and some how people manage to convince themselves that it isn't an obviously terrible shirt to make your little son wear.
I love having these conversations, and I have never once found myself feeling "uncomfortable" for deciding to participate in debating of these issues; in my experience, it is the one's who define themselves by the imagined condition of being "oppressed" who become absolutely enraged when "white boy" doesn't shut the hell up when they tell him too.
Last year, my husband, an electrician, was working on a Dallas-county courthouse remodel (Iowa). The company doing the trim carpentry represented the 5th generation of this business. He had the opportunity to observe some very young male carpenters (sons of sons of sons, presumably) for many weeks. Not only was he astounded at their craftsmanship (and my husband, also a woodworker, is very picky) but he noted they were always respectful with one another and with others on the job site, and they cleaned up after themselves. These two qualities are rare in his line of work.
What makes me thoughtful is that these young men are enjoying a professional life unavailable to most. They work in an established family business and stand to inherit it. Their line of work isn't as vulnerable to economic shifts because, despite fluctuations in the price of wood, people will always need good trim carpenters. And they have learned a trade, which means what they do involves apprenticeship, manual skill, and most importantly the ability to complete an entire project from start to finish. Unlike the work on a factory assembly line, they have the opportunity to experience fulfillment and completion on a regular basis. Are some of them unsung poets? I have no idea. But their work is not soul-bruising; poetry is possible.
Yes, I know all the "buts" and "what abouts" of my description. I'm just trying to isolate some of the factors that might contribute to a sense of wholeness and purpose. If young men no matter their occupation could have even one of these conditions--especially the sense of pride in their work--they might find purpose that serves as a hedge against..."monstrosity." How do we create the conditions that foster young men's educational and professional formation in a way that contributes not to their economic or social dominance but to their well-being?
Very thoughtful commentary, Carol -- thank you. Love this question: "How do we create the conditions that foster young men's educational and professional formation in a way that contributes not to their economic or social dominance but to their well-being?"
Your point about wholeness and ownership is exactly right. Logging once offered this possibility for young men in my hometown. But that was probably an illusory long-term profession, at least at the scale it was done in the 1970s and 80s. I do know, however, that there are many artistic and intellectual types in rural areas. Often religion provides the primary outlet for those talents. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Incidentally, I had the chance to speak to Steve Bullock (former Democratic governor of Montana) during one of his Iowa visits during the 2020 presidential campaign. I told him where I was from and described my concern about the narrow horizons that young people there faced. His only answer was that he was helping to bring broadband to Troy. High-speed Internet is of no use to anyone without a quality education, and it's even useless in a public school context if the cultural environment is toxic (due to long-term unemployment, addiction, etc). But broadband is the kind of table scrap that bureaucrats like to throw at rural communities. It's not an answer to the problem I describe here.
There aren't very many good answers to your question so long as masculinity is held up as a toxic trope to deconstruct. I think we're pretty confused, culturally, about what a good form of masculinity looks like. Same for fatherhood. This is where the Murray essay really troubles me. If mothers view their sons as ticking time bombs of masculinity, that's an awful psychological foundation for a boy.
Thank you, Josh. I'm glad I got to spend time with this article.
You write: "I think we're pretty confused, culturally, about what a good form of masculinity looks like." I agree completely, and yet, personally, I can't say that I am confused at all about what it looks like. Most of the men I know are decent, complex, good people (including the ones I sometimes can't stand because of their political opinions.) It's not like I collect them. They're not without flaws. They're just more common than not.
My son was always in trouble in school. My husband at one of our many school conferences told the principal that if the boys could go shoot baskets, or pick up trash on the side of the school road, as soon as they had learned their spelling words, or figured out their algebra assignment, that he could guarantee quick and cooperative learning. It us simply very difficult to sit that long. The principal almost looked like he agreed, but quickly said he was sorry but that could not be done. Our son did drop out at 16, so I don’t have answer.
But why can schools accommodate the physical need to move? How many adults can sit through any meeting over an hour and keep decent concentration?
Judy, I appreciate your example of physical activity. I don't know how much different things were a few generations ago, but the rigidity that you describe is one byproduct of standardized testing and other forms of educational "alignment." Whatever gains there might be in consistency across the board are offset by the inability of teachers to address the particular needs of their students -- in some cases, allowing boys and girls with a need to move chance to do so beyond the prescribed recess times. In my own case, I know that there was a little more tolerance for mischievousness than there is in school now (pranks were our way of blowing off steam during the school day, I guess, and we all remembered the teachers who were good sports about that fondly).
I'm sorry to hear that your son dropped out. May I ask what he is doing now?
He struggled for a few years but is earning a living as an electrician. He enjoys driving the van, meeting customers, solving electrical problems. I think he enjoys all of being an electrician. He watches you tubes of arranging tools and figuring the math and electricity issues out. He had a girlfriend for over ten years and I’m sad that they broke up but he will be ok. (I wish I could have figured out a school solution for him. Leaving school seemed the only solution. )
Thank you for asking.
I wouldn't discount "union busting" as part of the un-intellectualization of males.
Ah, yes, as one of those "un-intellectualized males" who has actually done all the reading that you and your ilk deem too passé to warrant the attention of your so highly refined sensitivities, I thank God (also passé) to we have the likes of you to defenestrate un-intellectualized males like "Adam Smith" (I put quotes around his name because I didn't want to make you feel like you should know who this irrelevant dude was, basically he was the greatest "union buster" of all time)... to dismiss all the literally thousands of years of accumulated male bullshit with just single sentences at a time, that is so much of a testament to your superior powers that it almost seems like you must have actually really said nothing of substance at all. You are a walking testament to the fact that it truly makes no difference whether one chooses to study by playing Play-Doh all day, rather than actually reading "Plato" for at least as long it takes for it to dry-out and become crumbly; p.s. "Plato", whom you are correctly unconcerned with knowing anything about, was just another old-dead-white-male, the only difference between him and the average "O.D.W.M." is that they are all "really-really" over-rated, whereas Plato is essentially Jesus Christ degrees of over-rated).
When a subject is as complex as this one, I tend to think that there is some truth to most of the thoughtful explorations of causes, and I think that about your varied analysis here. Of the many ideas I could respond to, I'll choose two opposing ones, both of which I think true. The accelerating feminist cultural shift over quite a few decades now, with more recent gender critique, has put masculinity under so much pressure that many people can barely use the term without the modifier "toxic" in front of it. But I think masculinity is real, biologically and as a gendered set of traits, so that's *problematic*, to be sure. We do need to evolve an understanding of genuine masculinity that isn't "toxic," with all that term suggests, yet isn't simply feminization of male behavioral and emotional existence. On the other hand, if some male students are feeling uncomfortable speaking their true minds in the classroom (and I have to say that hasn't been my general experience), well, that was the experience of women for how long? We have to find our way past this stage of social evolution. I do wonder what some good comparative sociology with other Western nations might reveal about the role of American anti-intellectualism in this regard and of our having, in the U.S., developed the liberally educating college as the necessary form of education for all.
Really enjoying our recent exchanges. Should I call you Jay? You're right to highlight these two opposing trends. Look at the comment thread beneath the Jessica Valenti post that I link to, and you'll see plenty of full-throated and broad-spectrum male bashing. But I quite take your point about socializing young men to suck it up in the classroom. A previous reader, Laura, mentioned the favoritism shown to men at elite institutions, where things like legacy admissions still persist. And so a young George W. Bush is still going to college and going to do quite fine for himself professionally despite any slings and arrows he might face about toxic masculinity. However, the same is not true of a first-generation Latino student from New Mexico. For young men who do not bring privilege or a sense of entitlement to college, and who really are trying to read the room and avoid pissing off people in power, it's not always as simple as just speaking their minds. In that case, I'm not sure that historical payback cuts it as an ethical argument (not saying you're making that argument, but "that was the experience of women for how long" doesn't really help a blue-collar kid who already can't afford college). Of course there will always be the knuckleheads who speak their minds freely, but who do so out of ignorance, without a good faith commitment to examining their views, and that's of no value to themselves or anyone else. That's how we get Toby Keith's "Angry American" and Donald Trump.
Ye, please call me Jay. And you, Joshua or Josh? I'm enjoying the exchanges too. You're right. I didn't intend to make that terrible argument. (What comes of trying to abbreviate to avoid excess length.) What I hoped to convey, I think, and did poorly, was that there is never going to be an ideal balance of comfort among students in their reception of their education and their sense of their own voice being accessible to them. Beyond stating the obvious in that, and the inevitable overcompensating reactive swings in mores and policy, is, I think, the intricate individual level at which every student is living out their experience. Maybe that first-generation male Latino or African American student not in line with current campus ideological trends feels intimidated to speak his mind (as a different student in a contrary way might have in 1955). Maybe it's more specific to some current challenges to masculine modes. Maybe it's because as a first-generation college student raised perhaps in a family without an intellection culture, he lacks confidence in his own ideation and views. Maybe, from that specific background or not, he is one of those people not compelled to share his opinions with the world. It isn't his mode of being. Maybe he doesn't even want to be in college, but he's told that's where he needs to be to find opportunity in life. There are so many possibilities to get wrong outside of one-on one relationship. and the possibilities for that are limited. There are certainly general trends, but our approach to them, to shifting culture where only some of us at any time think it should go, is like a bus driver with thick hands steering a tractor trailer through a Formula One racecourse. The turns are always going to be wide and late and success, if there is any, mostly means not driving off the road.
Thanks -- Josh is what I'd prefer. You offer a great list of all the possible reasons why a young man might feel uncomfortable speaking his mind. I think the purpose of DEI programming is often to create that "ideal balance of comfort among students": a welcoming, inclusive space. But we all know there are very clear rules about what *not* to say in such a space. And I saw some of the most profound dissonance in young men of color, who knew that their views were highly sought after on race, but that their fairly traditional views of gender or sexuality were verboten. The good thing about teaching a writing-intensive course is that a teacher doesn't have to guess about these things: they manifest in a student's writing. And so, while I quite take our point about the tractor trailer on the racecourse, I think the metaphor does not hold for a small college like the one where I taught. Partly because there are many opportunities for one-on-one conversation with each student. Partly because writing allowed me to know my students better in certain ways than many family members might have. And partly because the data points in such an environment are vast. I observed my students as they walked across campus, how they behaved and who they sat with in the dining hall, how they carried themselves on the playing field or court. Coming to class 10 minutes early and asking the wrestler what he puts in his protein smoothie as other students were trickling in was one of many ways I tried to know my students.
But the real conundrum was the sense that no change to the assignment structure would have helped some of my students. More credit for participation? Doesn't help the man of few words. More credit for informal writing? Doesn't help the student who struggles to keep up with low-stakes daily tasks. More weight on high-stakes formal assignment? Doesn't help the student who is unprepared for college and saves everything until the last minute. The only thing that moved the needle often was intensive mentorship, and some of those young men got that through their teams. Others did not. The wrestling team had an excellent culture. Their coach preached a version of the platitude, "How you do anything is how you do everything." You can't phone it in during class and then suddenly flip the switch to a champion mentality in the gym. So those wrestlers sat in the front of every class, they participated, and typically they thrived.
You would probably find Nietzsche's 1869 lectures on academia entitled "Anti-Education" incredibly illuminating... and highly disturbing to realize where so much of what remains in place to this very day under the banner of "progress" came from originally.
This is one of the most thoughtful articles about higher education I've read and it touched on a lot of themes I have been thinking about.
I work with college athletes in their academic endeavor and I see firsthand the imposter syndrome. The frustration, mostly from males but also from females, of young people who are used to doing and producing something you can measure, being forced to constantly write essays, discussions and placed into philosophical courses. Although many eventually manage and feel a sense of accomplishment from "vanquishing the academic struggle", they still continue to view themselves as athletes first, and often their Plan B has nothing to do with what they learned in college. They either go back to the work in the family or get into modeling and other celebrity/media careers where they make more money than a regular college career.
And I've had the same experience as you with the young men that quit. They knew they should've done it, but they also continued to feel they are not people that "talk' but people that "do" things. I think the reason males are afraid to speak up is because we are not used to speaking to solve problems. We do things, we don't talk about them. So young males feel uncomfortable in this position, while girls are used to talking. It's a symptom of how we teach, not the root of the male problem. Not everyone is cut for philosophical inquiry, and not everything in life is a philosophical problem. By forcing everyone to follow this path, we have created a nation of talkers and philosophers wannabes. Every problem in real life has become a college discussion assignment, where we argue on social media what should be done, but few of us are trained to actually fix things.
I have come to believe we need to reform higher education into 3 paths/formats:
- Vocational/technical (2-3 years most with 1-2 years vocational mixed with 1 year general liberal arts); these days there are many careers tied to technology (media tech, GIS, computer tech, etc.) where you can have higher earnings; it's not all about manual trades.
- Professional Masters (why do we have a bachelor and a master in a profession? shouldn't everyone know everything about their career once they graduate?)
- Research/PhD careers (for those who truly want to spend time analyzing things and teach about them)
I think these paths are equally valuable and students should be able to choose which one they do because neither one is better than the other. Students can return to college and do another path later in life. The one-size-fits-all model of education does not work anymore.
I too am a father of two sons and a girl. The girl finished college already and is happy in her career. My son, he preferred to go into the Army to get the kind of jobs he wants. He did not follow in my liberal arts educator footsteps. The other son is an artist and he is learning through a trade/art school because he wants to do art, not read about it. We need to change how we do higher education or we'll continue to lose young people to careers where they can make a lot more money without having to spend 4 years sitting in a classroom listening to a professor talk.
Really smart commentary, Angel -- thank you.
This is particularly well said: "I think the reason males are afraid to speak up is because we are not used to speaking to solve problems. We do things, we don't talk about them. So young males feel uncomfortable in this position, while girls are used to talking. It's a symptom of how we teach, not the root of the male problem. Not everyone is cut for philosophical inquiry, and not everything in life is a philosophical problem. By forcing everyone to follow this path, we have created a nation of talkers and philosophers wannabes. Every problem in real life has become a college discussion assignment, where we argue on social media what should be done, but few of us are trained to actually fix things."
I was always plenty comfortable talking, but I also had no trouble earning a PhD. The young men who struggled in my classes were cut from exactly the mold that you describe, and they presumably learned that from the men in their lives. There's real value in the military for that mentality. Who needs a critical thinker when there is a chain of command and a mission to be executed? The same was true during my time as a seasonal firefighter with the Forest Service. Overthinking can be dangerous in a lot of work situations.
Your closing examples anticipate a post I'm queueing up for next week. To a large extent, I think the undergraduate curriculum -- at least the gen-ed curriculum -- has been diluted to the point that it no longer requires a PhD. So if that is the direction that colleges want to continue to pursue, then something about how college teachers are credentialed needs to change. Virtually no prospective student or parent that I spoke to over 16 years cared one whit about my dissertation topic or how many peer-reviewed articles I'd published. That sentiment is more pronounced all the time. I think a professional master's with a certificate in college teaching could easily replace a traditional PhD for many undergraduate institutions. A topic for another time, perhaps, but thank you for reading and taking the time to respond at such length and with such care.
The professional master's you mention is exactly what I am thinking. A PhD is about research; teaching is a vocation and a set of skills we apply; in other words, a profession.
I'm looking forward to your post next week. Too much of the college conversation revolves around the monetary value of a degree and around eligibility in admissions. Those are important topics, but what we teach, how we teach it and how the degrees conferred are organized are never questioned. We should.
Are you on LinkedIn? I think I connected to you via a social media account but can't remember which.
Glad to see that we’re connected on LinkedIn! Hope to keep in conversation.
Joshua, today with distance from reading your original article and reviewing the comments, I wonder if we are asking too much of higherEd. I went to high school and undergrad overseas and then a Masters & PhD in the US, did startups here and overseas and now I teach (non-tenure track) at a University. Don't get me wrong, there's much to be fixed in higherEd, but many of the issues around boys, men, masculinity clearly stem much earlier from our homes, communities and the many fables and truths we tell ourselves about American exceptionalism, how the West was won, and what being men (or women) is supposed to be. As several other commenters have stated, clearly different folk (not just along gender lines) respond to different ways of being taught (be that essay writing, playing team sports). So whilst higherEd can and must do things to address this, I wonder how much of this needs to start much earlier?
this is a theme that Prof Scott Galloway has discussed many times and his latest covers that and some new ground in his inimitable style. Check it out, link at the bottom.
https://www.profgalloway.com/boys-to-men/
This is a great point. I'm curious about your thoughts on how masculinity is constructed or perceived in other educational contexts abroad? As you say, the American mythology surrounding masculinity has grown quite confused. In some ways we still raise boys on the same origin stories American have always told, but in many other ways American education confounds the values driving those stories. I have more to say about this in an upcoming post after having spent the past week in Montana visiting family. But I think the MAGA-style defiance you see in rural communities stems in part from this dissonance.
I agree that it's too much to expect higher ed to fix these things. However, the John Struloeff example (and me -- I came from the same background as John) still holds. Higher ed was once a place where young men like us could bring all of our problematic socialization into the classroom and struggle with it, get mad when challenged, reflect on that debate afterward, and slowly evolve. I really do think the conversation in higher ed has hardened into more of a rehearsed consensus that is alienating to young men, in particular. And that coupled with the rigidity of assessment-driven policies (standardization, alignment, and the kind of portfolio model that I describe in this post) is not good for young men from low-income backgrounds, in particular. Boys and men from privileged backgrounds still do quite well and always will.
I wonder if it'll ever occur to you to consider the possibility that your notion of "MAGA-style" "defiance", which you perceive in, and presume to be in a position to characterize despite your disconnect from, and general ignorance of, rural communities, might be a result of your own dissonance. Socrates was a metropolitan character too, but he never presumed himself to possess an understanding of the agrarian G reeks whose lifestyles he was thoroughly repulsed by... but then again, Socrates was a seriously un-serious thinker who admitted when he literally said: “all I know is that I know nothing”, you probably know a whole lot more than that ole'-know-nothing-socrates ever did.
One thing's for sure: conservative Supreme Court justices will never find it objectionable that a sort of affirmative action for men is already occurring at some selective universities to address the enrollment imbalance.
Great point and a good reminder that the nuances are different at elite institutions. I suppose my focus is more on low-income or lower middle class students. And the trend is even more concerning if men of color are self-selecting out of college.
That's a weird take. The conservative supreme court opinions on affirmative action have not changed once since the issue of affirmative action first hit the supreme courts, the only confound in the conservative supreme court consensus on affirmative action pertains to whether it should be argued against on the grounds of the 14th amendment (which would likely fail to pass, but is the clearly more principled constitutional argument), or the more unprincipled argument made on the basis of the MANY federal education non-discrimination policies affirmative action clearly violates (this would be the effectual argument, but would require a tremendous sacrifice of constitutional principle because the federal education mandates are an even more egregious violation of an even greater number of constitutional principles than affirmative action).
Also, rest assured lady, dudes like me aren't exactly scrambling to join our alleged intellectual betters in their choice to incur a lifetime of debt in exchange for a degree that is somehow less than worthless... in fact, dudes like me found ourselves with 80-95k salaries right out of high school because we decided to prioritize goofing around with software engineering rather than reading another god-awful piece of shit book by some histrionic moralizing moron who thinks she's "deep" because she naval-gazes with such perspicacity that she frequently finds herself becoming lost in her own belly-button. Don't worry though, I make quite enough money now to buy all the books your university probably told you weren't important enough to read for yourself: which is why I am not just in any kind of debt with a solid career, but I'm actually better educated than the deluded ignoramuses who went into debt for the service of being made dumber. The fact that we continue to encourage young women to be used and despoiled in this way is actually quite appalling to me, but hey, what the hell do I know, maybe being an indentured servant with a degree in "political science" or some other such non-sense is truly the best a woman can hope for.
Perhaps I have misunderstood you, but you seem to argue men are beasts, that women are right to think none of them good--but that they should still go to college and get into lifelong debt to be told they are beasts.
I wouldn't go to to college either.
Better to learn a trade.
As you say "If men who would subject their classmates to tirades are staying home and finding other outlets for their angst, perhaps the drop in male students is a good thing."
I argue no such thing. I do take some pains to show that concerns about toxic masculinity are valid. But I also show that viewing all aspects of conventional masculinity as toxic is really harmful. See the reference to Murray's essay, for instance.
I believe that young men benefit from education and that a good education might be a way of unlearning some of the unhealthy tropes of manhood that persist. But no one responds well to being labeled as a beast, and I sympathize with young men who avoid such conversations.
Ultimately, I think we all suffer if education is inequitable or inequitably accessible. Hopefully that's a little clearer.
As I said, perhaps I misunderstood you.
But reading your essay, I kept feeling that you were thinking that while not calling men beasts is the astute thing, the truth is they are beasts.
I'm reminded of the genteel tradition in America: women on the pedestal, pure and good, while men slither below them, slaves to crude desires.
Much of 21st Century American feminism appears to draw on thar trope.
I am one woman (among many) to say that no blanket statement about any group or categorization of people is the right thing to do. Plenty of women in my experience who are less than angelic, plenty of men who are wonderful human beings. A woman can be a feminist and still appreciate men. If we can't see and talk nuance, we're done for.
I understand your point, but to think is to generalize; humans look for patterns and make rules out of them.
The key is not to fall in love with our generalizations, I think; to hedge too the ones we make as best we can.
Before I say anything at all, I will say the following as my fundamental belief on these things: all "misandry" is likewise "mysogny", and all "misogyny" is likewise "misandry", therefore, anything that is in any way "misogynist" or "misandrist" is better and more aptly termed: MISANTHROPY. Misanthropy is what must be totally rejected, and it has been my observation that there are becoming an increasing number of things which ARE misanthropic but not so offensive as to turn people away from it.
While I appreciate the sentiment, in practice, this "nuance" has produced a situation of an even worse kind of misanthropy than offensive misanthropy, that greater evil being: subtle, covert, and always "nuanced" misanthropy. An example of what I'm referring to that pops to mind is the trend a while back in which feminist mothers dressed their very young boys in a shirt with the following message: "Boys will be *[boys]* Good Humans!". This seems pretty clear to me, but I understand how the obvious meaning of the shirt could be overlooked by according some kind of "nuanced interpretation", regardless, I would make rather be dealing with Valerie Solanas who at least has the deficiency to know what she hates when she's hating it... it is disturbing that so many mothers didn't realize that the meaning of the shirt they'd dressed their son with is this: boys will not be boys, but will instead rather than being the particular sort of human that boys are, he will be just generally human and therefore good. These sorts of situations drive me crazy, how could the message that "boyness" is mutually exclusive to any kind of "humanity that is Good rather than Evil" be called anything but misandrist misanthropic garbage. "A boy who is a boy is an an evil non-human", that is this shirt's message, and some how people manage to convince themselves that it isn't an obviously terrible shirt to make your little son wear.
I love having these conversations, and I have never once found myself feeling "uncomfortable" for deciding to participate in debating of these issues; in my experience, it is the one's who define themselves by the imagined condition of being "oppressed" who become absolutely enraged when "white boy" doesn't shut the hell up when they tell him too.