Sommers Criticizes Modern Schools' Anti-Boy Culture

Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming our Young Men, criticized modern schools' attempts to pathologize, stigmatize and feminize boys on  His Side with Glenn Sacks.

Glenn was also joined by child development specialist Michelle Ventimiglia, director of the Family Nurturing Center preschool in Northridge, California. Topics included: the way boys who go from preschool to elementary school become "behavior problems" or are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder as they struggle to adapt to a school model which clearly does not met their needs; the way competition, physical play, and even recess are being phased out of many schools; and how boys' natural exuberance and energy is pathologized and deemed to be in need of "fixing."

One caller, Karen,  whose seven year-old boy was repeatedly in trouble for his boyish behavior, said that the teacher brushed off her complaints by saying "males dominate corporate America." Another, Graywolf, explained some of the ways Native Americans incorporated boys' needs and boyish energy into their educational programs.

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To learn more about the boy crisis in education, see Glenn's columns "The 'Boy Parent Dilemma' " (Los Angeles Daily News, 9/6/02, Pasadena Star-News &  Affiliated Papers, 9/12/02), "Boys: The New Underclass in American Schools," (Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 4/15/02) and "Why Males Don't Go to College" (She Thinks, 11/13/02). For a more in-depth treatment of the subject, see Christina Hoff Sommers'  "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming our Young Men" and "Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women" (p. 137-152).