Book by Christina Hoff Summers
(Simon and Schuster, 2000)
Reviewed by Peter Franklin on 1 December 2001
KEY POINTS
· 'Gender fair education' is powerful movement in the United States but is almost absent in Britain.
· As such it provides an object lesson in the way that leftwing coalitions of academics, journalists and campaigners can push unsubstantiated social theories into the public sphere to the detriment of those on the receiving end.
· Though rooted in the feminist ideology of the 1960s and 70s, 'gender fair education' is a 90s phenomenon attracting the active financial support of the US Department of Education during the Clinton years.
· Christina Hoff Sommers systematically exposes the gaping holes in the evidential base for the movement's main assumptions.
· The most important assumption is that girls are being short-changed by the education system. In fact, boys are falling behind girls according to both academic and behavioural indicators of educational progress.
· The main proponents of gender fair education have recently modified there position to recognise that boys as well as girls are 'in crisis' and have been damaged by 'gender stereotyping'.
· Christina Hoff Sommers demonstrates that there is no scientific evidence to support the notion that gender is a 'social construct' or that lack of maternal influence is the primary cause of behavioural problems in boys.
· Evidence actually points to the conclusion that the most important cause of criminal behaviour in boys is the absence of positive male role models, especially paternal role models.
The phenomenon of "gender-fair education"
The proponents of this ideology are dedicated to what they term 'gender-fair education'. Hoff Sommers provides numerous examples of how 'gender-fair education' works in practice:
· In New York City, an all-girls school was established in the African-American neighbourhood of East Harlem. The Schools Chancellor refused to countenance a similar island of excellence for boys, saying that "the existence of the all-girls school makes an important statement about the viable education of girls. I want to continue to make that statement." The fact is that amongst African-Americans, 63% of bachelor's degrees go to women as do 66% of master's degrees.
· Take Our Daughters To Work Day is a holiday originally promoted by the Ms. Foundation for Women in 1993. This proved popular and within a few years parents and employers wanted to include boys. The Foundation refused and tried to organise a separate day for boys, which would take place on a Sunday so that work experience could be replaced with housework experience.
· Boys as young as three are forced to participate in federally funded anti-sexual harassment classes. Boys who chase girls in playgrounds are described as committing acts of "gendered terrorism". Older boys are asked to participate in "rape envisioning exercises" in which they are told to imagine the rape and beating of a mother, sister or girlfriend. The idea is that this will make them more sensitive to male violence against women.
· Recreation times during the school day have come under attack from the "gender fair" activists. Playgrounds are seen as arenas of sexist behaviour. Running, jumping and games like tag are banned in many schools. Schools in Atlanta and Philadelphia have stopped recreation periods altogether and new schools are being built without playgrounds.
· And, of course, teaching materials for ordinary lessons are being doctored to reflect a "gender-fair" position. My favourite example is from the US Department of Education which recommends an alternative second verse for the nursery rhyme 'Jack and Jill':
Jill and Jack went up the track
To fetch the pail again.
They climbed with care, got safely there
And finished the job they began.
These are just a small selection of examples from Hoff Sommers' exhaustively researched book. It is important that they should not be mistaken for the excesses of an irrelevant lunatic fringe. What the author describes permeates America's educational establishment and is common practice in schools.
Debunking the philosophy of gender-fair education
The real success of the book is not so much the documentation of practice, but its penetrating analysis of underlying philosophy. Hoff Sommers efficiently sets out the key assumptions of the 'gender-fair' education movement and then goes on to pull them apart:
Girls are short changed by the education system. Respected feminist academics like Harvard's Carol Gilligan came to prominence by arguing that schools systematically discriminate against girls. Christina Hoff Sommers points out that if this is true, discrimination is doing wonders for girls' education. Exam statistics show that girls are well ahead of boys in the humanities, with the gap widening. And while boys are slightly ahead of the girls in sciences the gap is narrowing. Furthermore, these statistics exaggerate the achievement of boys because, amongst children of lower ability, boys are less likely to sit exams than girls. Another telling statistic is that women now account for 55% of college enrolments.
The existence of a girl crisis. Unable to prove their case with exam statistics, Carol Gilligan and colleagues have fallen back on highly subjective research into 'self-esteem'. It is claimed that between the ages of eleven and sixteen American girls suffer a catastrophic loss of confidence. These 'findings' have made a major impression in the US. Carol Gilligan's books and those of like minded commentators have sold in their hundreds of thousands. Hoff Sommers points out that Gilligan's research data has never been replicated, peer-reviewed or even published. Furthermore, Gilligan's research is on girls alone. There is no evidence that loss of confidence is a specifically female phenomenon, rather than one suffered by all teenagers as they move from late childhood into early adulthood. Indeed, statistics for suicide and behavioural disorders all show that it is boys that suffer most in adolescence.
Boys need to be re-educated. As American mainstream opinion has grasped the obvious fact that the crisis in education is with boys rather than girls, the feminist lobby has shifted its emphasis. Their new position is that 'patriarchal culture' not only damages girls, but also boys. The solution to the problems of both sexes is an education system which 'feminises' boys. Hoff Sommers demonstrates that the case on which all this is built, one of pathological masculinity as a general phenomenon, is spurious. She highlights statistics used by Katherine Hanson, director of an agency contracted by the US Department of Education to provide 'gender-fair' education materials. Hanson claims that every year nearly four million women are beaten to death in the United States. In fact, the number of women murdered in the US in 1996 was 3,631.
Gender is a social construction Undaunted by their lack of a sound research base, the gender-fair education movement maintains that gender is something which can be taught to children. And that, for instance, boys will happily play with dolls if they are not discouraged from doing so by 'sex-role stereotyping'. Hoff Sommers cites the long-established scientific understanding that gender is biologically 'hardwired' and not a social construction.
The problem is the separation of boys from their mothers. Carol Gilligan claims that the behavioural disorders of boys stem from their separation from female influence, especially maternal influence. In fact, the biggest problem facing boys is the absence of fathers. As William Galston, Clinton's domestic policy advisor, noted, the relationship between father absence and anti-social behaviour is "so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime."
Boys need to get in touch with their feelings. This is the second strand of Gilligan's boy theory. Hoff Sommers quotes research showing that stoicism was better for mental health than its opposite, a sort of emotional self-indulgence that British author Fay Weldon has called 'therapism'.
Society's male stereotypes damage boys. The third strand of Gilligan's theory is to attack the patriarchal society for valorising the "culture of the warrior" and the "economy of capitalism". Hoff Sommers response is that boys need positive male role models, not the absence of male role models. If positive role models, such as the soldier, police officer, business man or family breadwinner, are systematically suppressed by the education system the result won't be the 'feminisation' of young men, but the adoption of a 'protest masculinity' informed by negative male role models. Politically correct educationalists cannot do anything to suppress these negative, often criminal, role models because they are presented from outside the school system and other official contexts. Having driven out the good role models they cannot do anything about the bad.
A positive alternative to 'gender-fair' education
It should be noted that Hoff Sommers does not pretend that all is well with the youth of America. She acknowledges that there are deep seated problems, but dismisses the notion that these are caused by 'patriarchal culture' or 'gender stereotyping'. She also distinguishes herself from her opponents in the solutions she advocates:
"There does not appear to be anything much wrong with the psyches of the vast majority of American children. On the other hand, there is strong evidence that they are morally and academically undernourished. Every society since the beginning of history has confronted the difficult and complex task of civilising its young, teaching them self-disciplinbe, instilling in them a sense of what is right and what is wrong, and imbuing them with a devotion to public duty and personal accountability. The problem is old, and the workable solution to it is known - character education in a sound learning environment."
Relevance to Britain
Even if one agrees with Hoff Sommers' analysis, it could be argued that her book is irrelevant to a British audience. As the author repeatedly acknowledges, Britain is ten years ahead of America in recognising that it is boys who are 'in crisis', not girls. Even on the liberal left there are very few British commentators that would maintain that schools systematically discriminate against girls. Indeed there is a consensus that boys are falling behind, though this is shot through with sharp differences on causes and remedies.
However, all this is why the War Against Boys tells two stories - one deliberate and one accidental. The latter concerns the way that left-liberal advocacy groups, rooted in academia, branching out into the media and watered by state funding, are able to spread their influence through the public services and into our private lives.
In America a coalition of organisations including the American Association of University Women and the Ms. Foundation, were, in the course of the 1990s, able to spread the myth that schools short change girls, convincing a whole country that black is white. In Britain there is no such coalition and no such agenda.
However, other coalitions devoted to the promotion of other politically correct agendas are at work in this country. We need to identify those areas of public policy where Britons are being told that black is white (on marriage and soft drugs, for example). We then need to follow Christina Hoff Sommers' example and investigate the factual basis on which the black is white case is being made. We should expect to find that the evidence doesn't stand up and that, rather, the data supports the opposite worldview.
What we shouldn't expect is the meek surrender of our opponents. They will instead clap their hands over their ears and scream abuse. This is Hoff Sommers' experience. The American Association of University Women newsletter has likened her to a Holocaust revisionist, while her chief antagonist, Carol Gilligan, has said that her focus on the facts is invalid because it is patriarchal.
However, our job is not to convert the liberal-left but to appeal over their heads to public opinion. In her book, Christina Hoff Sommers has shown us just how to proceed.
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