On Education and Boys

by Paul Donley
(comments on the fathers4equality Australia Yahoo group)

I've spoken out about this issue a few times, but here goes again.

Why hasn't fathers4equality and other men's and fathers' groups taken a public position on the education issue?
I cannot think of anything that is more important for children in the world today.
fathers4equality and other groups make a great deal of rhetoric about being concerned for the well-being of children, and how precious these children are, but not one word about ensuring the children of Australia are well-educated.

There is a subtle message in the new Optus broadband ad on TV, where the son asks from the back seat why the Great Wall of China was built.
The message is simple: Don't ask your pig-headed ignorant father questions like that unless you want to be embarrassed in school.

The same actor previously portrayed a father as a leech, running next door to use a neighbor's broadband connection, but too selfish to pay for broadband in his own home. Because using the neighbor's broadband is too inconvenient -- The neighbor is practicing on his tuba! -- the father seems to promise he'll get broadband at home.
But the subsequent ads illustrate he hasn't kept his promises...

The latest ad shows the same father riding in a combie van with another father and their children. He seems very resentful that the other father can look up the words to "I've been everywhere, man" on his mobile broadband.

Overall, this guy is portrayed as the average Australian father. It's effective.
The facts don't support the impressions though, since 65% of Australian households on the Internet are on some form of broadband. But that fact isn't given in the ads.

Even more subtle is the underlying message that the average Australian father resents education, and would prefer his children remain uneducated -- as he was forced to do.
This sort of thing may have been true 20 years ago. At best, it is a humorous truism today.

The problem is not just that such an ad is insulting -- to fathers and to the nation.
It is that no one has actively opposed it.

Most of the people on this list are intelligent educated fathers who work hard to ensure their children have the best education possible because they know how important a good education wil be in the future.
But no one would ever know from the silence of the men's and family groups.

Will this be another area where fathers' groups surrender the leadership to feminists?

From the article:
"Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop will call today for a common national curriculum, claiming leftwing ideologists in State governments have hijacked what is being taught in schools, with some themes coming straight from Chairman Mao.

She says State governments have failed to protect the interests of young Australians from trendy educational fads, forcing the community to turn to the Federal Government to take action.

In an explosive speech, she will ask why standards have slipped so far that we have gone from teaching Latin in Year 12 to teaching remedial English in first-year University. "

I have no idea where Julie Bishop's ideas are about domestic violence and family law, but I can tell you where the Maoist influence in the public education process comes from.
As many have noted here and around the world, the victim feminists and radical feminists take a great deal of the rhetoric from early 20th century communism.

You see things and you say, Why?; but I dream things that never were and I say, Why not? -George Bernard Shaw

The Response
Alan Barron, convenor, The Memucan Institute

Alan Barron has spoken out on these issues since 1998.

Gender-issues- in-education is an extremely delicate area and caution must be exercised in implementing such policies, as there is no way of gauging their long-term positive or deleterious effects on students. (It will be individuals and their parents, and not the teachers, who will have to sort through problems created by such policies in the long term).

We suggest:

• * There is an urgent need to recruit more male teachers, especially at primary school levels. The dominance of female teachers is educationally disadvantaging boys and some balance in terms of numbers must be achieved to redress this problem.
• * All matters to do with gender issues in education to be handled by a committee of no less than 7 persons elected by parents, who report directly to the School Council. A schools gender policy should not be set, controlled or monitored by a centralised bureaucracy.
• * Regarding gender issues, no change to the curriculum or to educational policy to be carried unless parents are notified first and their input sought. Such changes to be agreed to by the majority of parents.
• * All students to be treated equally and given equal opportunity and that all persons regardless of sex, race or creed are treated fairly and with dignity. (This does not mean attempting to create equal outcomes or to implement 'non-sexist' education. Such policies go beyond equal opportunity and start to delve into social engineering. It is not acceptable in our view for schools to assume a social engineering role.)
• * There is a need to have subjects which allow gender identification, i.e: Woodwork/metalwork for boys and Home economics for girls. We reject the notion that all subjects should be gender inclusive.
• * Education must reflect the plurality of the school community. The social significance of traditional sex roles should not be neglected or under-sold. Sex roles should be seen as complementary and not competitive. Boys and girls should be encouraged to see each other in a positive light and not dwell on negative assumptions that in the future a relationship might go sour thus necessitating financial independence for both sexes.
  
• We reject the notion that 'a career is an economic and social imperative' for girls. The simple fact is that in any free enterprise economy there are not enough jobs for all adult males and females and to give the impression - even insist - that working is normative for both sexes for most of their adult lives is to invite social anarchy and dislocation.
  
• * Education policies should give recognition that the interests of boys and girls are sometimes different. (Not all the time, obviously). There is a need to allow boys to do masculine things, to work off some of that high energy level they possess, and not take umbrage if they dominate certain subject areas. Girls, too, have special needs and these also should be recognised. It is a complete fallacy to treat boys and girls as gender-neutral persons because there is not such thing as a 'gender-neutral' person.
• * Schooling is to be based on the understanding that gender is not a determinant of capacity to learn so boys and girls, men and women, are to be valued equally as persons of equal worth. This does not necessarily mean identical treatment in school organisation and administration as needs vary in scope and intensity.
• * The true purpose of education is to teach students the three R's: reading, writing and 'rithmetic, and to impart knowledge and prepare students to live in a diverse pluralistic society. Education is about providing equal access and not social engineering or to provide equitable outcomes.
• * Schools should provide a high quality education for boys and girls, set standards of excellence and offer challenging environments which are supportive of both sexes and which realise that one sex does not have a monopoly on virtue nor the other sex on vice.
• * Schooling as an aspect of society is to reflect the entitlement of all persons, including boys and men, in their own right, to personal respect, to a caring environment and to participation in and influence over decisions which affect their lives.
• * Providing a high quality and equitable education for boys is a mainstream professional responsibility for all ancillary staff, teachers, executives and administrators at school, regional and head office level.