Save The Children From The Ideologies
Herald Sun Saturday, May 15, 2004
Some schooling gurus have been writing articles lately implying that there is no real difference between boys and girls - that it's only how you raise them. They conclude from this that it doesn't matter if there are very few male primary school teachers. In many primary schools today, there are few, if any, males actually teaching.
If the lobbyists are wrong, they are playing with the lives of thousands of unhappy boys. It is mostly boys involved in behaviour problems, learning problems, ongoing medication, depression, suicide. The faction running the school industry say that all our school system needs to provide for boys is more of what they're getting. Sacrificing kids to save a theory.
There are many wonderful female teachers. And it is no fault of theirs that more boys are in trouble. There are differences between boys and girls. And one of them is that boys naturally look to men to learn things about behaviour, attitude and relating skills. Just as girls learn certain things from women. I am not suggesting single-sex primary schools: children also learn important things from the other sex. Girls and boys need both men and women in their lives.
Some have been arguing that it's okay for boys to learn only from women, because female qualities are more desirable anyway. But this doesn't work. Apart from showing ignorance about the essential contribution of males to human life, this approach fails because masculinity is not something you learn. It's something you're born with. Men don't teach boys masculinity. They show boys how to cope with their masculinity.
Save the children from the ideologies.
Philip O'Carroll