this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Recess. Unstructured outdoor play including monitored roughhousing.
lol what are you smoking? Recess hasn't gone anywhere lmao. In fact, I fucking wish I had as cool of a playground for recess as my nephew does when I was a kid. Shit's fancy as fuck, all kinds of monkey bars, rock walls, a puke-a-tron that puts the merry-go-rounds of old to shame, etc... Mind you, he goes to school in a super liberal school district of an already very liberal state. The park district playgrounds have gotten way cooler too, one of the playgrounds at my local park has a fucking zipline now.
The fact that fucking recess is the best you could come up with, and it's just blatantly not even fucking true, says it all.
Also, girls like outdoor recess too, MORE so than boys, actually, in my experience. What a weird thing to gender.
The gender performance gap in primary and secondary education is, however, well documented, with girls outperforming boys to a statistically significant degree in ELA across the board, but with variability from school district to school district in math. Interestingly, boys tend to outperform girls in math mostly in higher income school districts, suggesting that two things can be true at once: patriarchal attitudes around boys and math performance can and do persist, mostly in white bread communities, AND, the educational system as a whole may be failing some boys, mostly in lower income communities.
Where the discussion gets gross, of course, is where MRA types use these statistics as a justification for misogyny, or on the flip side where those sensitive to that go out of their way to wave stats like this away, sometimes even making a ‘boys will be boys’ argument that is historically problematic for completely different reasons and in the end amounts to blaming the kids for the problem.
Again, two things can be true at once - society is still male dominated and victimizes women in many facets of life. At the same time, the little boys struggling at school … mostly in poor neighborhoods … aren’t the root of the problem, and certainly aren’t the ‘dominant class’ referred to above. The conversation should not be a zero sum game where recognizing the challenges of one group means you are trivializing the challenges of another.
(Though in fairness many do try to make it thus, so the caution is understandable).
I find it interesting that boys suddenly are described as "struggling" but only when girls started to slightly outperform them in certain classes. School was designed with boys in mind and somehow they never struggled before. For me the reason is obvious, school is perhaps the one field in life where the sexist upbringing of girls gives them a slight advantage because they are raised to be pleasing and responsible.
I can definitely see where that reasoning is coming from. It would be interesting to cross reference school performance against a survey of gendered parental attitudes regarding classroom behavior and to see if there have been shifts over time.
The attitude of your parents isn't the major influence, though. In a society that pushes for gender roles, while you can still try as a parent to not enforce them, this won't help much.
When you look at studies (and there are many which analyse the disparities in school) they often conclude it is because basically teachers like the girls more since they are more often quiet and tidy. Sadly, many studies who used anonymised tests still had handwritten tests or don't mention whether they were handwritten, which I think is a huge oversight.
Also, boys are globally less likely to spend time on their homework, which was directly linked to worse grades. Here is an interesting bigger study: OECD study Underperformance in Boys
Interestingly, even with better grades, people still overall believe girls are good in school because they are diligent and boys are good because they are intelligent. I wonder if that couldn't also influence the way some teachers give marks. The stereotype that girls lack talent
We can trade anecdotes (and insults) all day long and none of it means a thing. You asked for a specific example and I gave you one. Just the first one off the top of my head. Schools in my area are canceling unstructured outdoor play time, which hurts boys more than girls.
Here's one you're probably more familiar with, since it's nationwide: men being pushed out of careers in education.
I'm sure you'll just move the goalposts on that one too though. "Ah but it's not GOVERNMENT doing it so it doesn't count!" or "I know a male teacher so it doesn't count!"
Got a citation for that? I was of the impression that — especially at the primary level — schools were going out of their way to recruit more male teachers. Now retention may be a different matter. I could be wrong on both counts, though and would like to educate myself.
If they are, it doesn't seem to be working: https://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers/
Unless I'm reading it wrong, this is showing a modest but positive increase in the percentage of male elementary school teachers since the 90's.
I would call it in the range of statistical noise, personally
You didn't give an example of shit. I asked for an example of how boys' rights are being treated and you come up with some wussy nonsense about recess. Give me a break. No one has a "right" to recess, even if your complaints about it were true, which they aren't.
Your ideology is a fragile, weak joke. It's pathetic that the right thinks they own masculinity and strength while acting like a bunch of whiny wimps.
It's almost like he'd been told the opinion he was supposed to hold and then had to frantically explain why when someone finally asked him.
Relevant username.
Not everything is a conspiracy. Go outside please.
Please keep it positive (both comments above). Against my better judgment I got involved in this discussion so now it would be wrong to start swinging the mod hammer, but please let's remember this is the nice Lemmy instance. We need to keep the personal comments out of the ... comments.
We're here to discuss tough issues in good faith and learn something. Hopefully. Possibly. Maybe on Tuesday.
Right, sorry. I actually did forget which instance I was on.
Except the conspiracy to rob boys of recess right?
Not a conspiracy, just a natural outcome of anti-male attitudes in primary education.
"It's not a conspiracy when I do it".
...yes. By definition.
Do you have kids? I do. My boy has more than enough unstructured outdoor play and comes home scraped up all the time. I've volunteered as a lunch / recess monitor. They're doing just fine and doing young boy things.
Good anecdotal evidence, the numbers are against you
Did you know that we currently still have almost exactly the same school form that we had when school was for boys only? It was literally designed with only boys in mind. That the sexism girls face, which makes them more compliant and more pleasing for teachers, is now seen as an attack on boys is hilarious. When you want them to be equally liked by the teachers you will have to punish boys as much as girls for being rough. You have to encourage boys as well to stay clean, play domestic shit indoors and care more for their social appearance. Because that's what giving girls their current "advantage".
Lol recess is a right now?