Across the country, schools are policing and punishing the distinctive, assertive sociability of boys. Many much-loved games have vanished from school playgrounds. At some schools, tug of war has been replaced with “tug of peace.” Since the 1990s, elimination games like dodgeball, red rover and tag have been under a cloud — too damaging to self-esteem and too violent, say certain experts. Young boys, with few exceptions, love action narratives. These usually involve heroes, bad guys, rescues and shoot-ups. As boys’ play proceeds, plots become more elaborate and the boys more transfixed. When researchers ask boys why they do it, the standard reply is, “Because it’s fun.”
According to at least one study, such play rarely escalates into real aggression — only about 1% of the time. But when two researchers, Mary Ellin Logue and Hattie Harvey, surveyed classroom practices of 98 teachers of 4-year-olds, they found that this style of play was the least tolerated. Nearly half of teachers stopped or redirected boys’ dramatic play daily or several times a week — whereas less than a third reported stopping or redirecting girls’ dramatic play weekly. […]
Schools must enforce codes of discipline and maintain clear rules against incivility and malicious behavior. But that hardly requires abolishing tag, imposing games of tug of peace or banning superhero play. Efforts to re-engineer the young-male imagination are doomed to fail, but they will succeed spectacularly in at least one way. They will send a clear and unmistakable message to millions of schoolboys: You are not welcome in school.
Bug or feature?
An awful lot of Vagina Warriors vote “feature!”
Notes: I attended my twin grandsons’ Back to School Night last Thursday. Besides being informed that California has fully embraced Common Core, I noticed that the teacher staff at their K-6 grade school had only 1 male teacher (6th grade). He got quite the round of applause when introduced. Only other male staff members appeared to be both the principal and vice-principal. Pretty damned sad.
Tug of peace? Is this another article about bonobos?
So? They get fewer boys? Who knew….
“Tug of peace“?
I wasn’t much of a runner in school (past 2nd grade, anyway), and my team sport participation was kinda haphazard.
I was really good at being stubborn and immovable, though. Tug of war was just the place for husky lads such as myself to compete for their class or school with honor (and a brief reprieve from fat jokes).
One tiny thing that was somewhat fun about school, and they have to screw it up. This seriously upsets me.
First they came for Dodgeball . . .
[…] “School Has Become Too Hostile to Boys” [Darleen Click] […]
Not only is it hostile to boys, if the boy has the temerity to reveal that one of his teachers molested him, his house gets fire-bombed.
Check out some of those comments at Insty. Beck has had both parents on his radio program, but hey, maybe the parents burned down their own garage. It COULDN’T be that people routinely circle the wagons around molesters and blame the victim for upsetting the apple cart.
“He could have stopped it at any time,” some of those vile teachers asserted, “he” being the boy. The kid’s mom says that the teacher started grooming her kid in sixth grade but didn’t cross the line until the kid was in eighth grade.
So a hebephile instead of a pedophile. That makes it aaaalllll better.
The parents want to fire the teachers who lent undying support to the molester, “oh he’s reformed, he knows it was wrong, it was just this one time…” but the teachers threatened to sue the school district into oblivion, so the town has no choice but to keep them on.
::spit::
As a fellow Husky Lad, who grew up in the ’70s – don’t know if you’re of the similar vintage or not – I can only say two words: “Sears Toughskins”.
The pants so strong, you could make a trampoline out of them. (Seriously, that was their ad campaign.) And they were every bit as comfortable as any other industrial-grade trampoline-skinning material you’d care to name. Available in many colors, all of them ugly and plaid.
My mother was a cruel woman. Or possibly an idiot.
I just had a flashback. I thought I had blocked it all out.
Ditto, cranky. If I go postal today, the only thing people will hear during the rampage are “Who’s husky, now?” and “Damn you, John Bradley!”
You’re mother was a tight-wad, just like mine, John. I had the world’s ugliest quilted down car coat when I was in Junior High. Because it was cheap and warm and besides “who cares what you wear?” Dear old mom, bless her cheapskate heart.
Greetings:
Wasn’t Hillary Clinton who said, “It takes a bureaucracy to emasculate a nation.”
The Sears line of quality fat-kid wear is notably one of the few things I don’t miss from my childhood. I’d kill a man for a ready supply of Space Sticks and Shake-a-Pudding, but not even the world’s most irony-drenched, PBR-chugging hipster would wear those damned pants these days.
Sears Toughskins
Anyone remember the polyester Garanimals from the ’70s?
Let’s make a clothing line guaranteed to get your boy in a fight every day…….
John Bradley says August 20, 2013 at 9:59 am – don’t know if you’re of the similar vintage or not
Not too far off, probably I started school in ’79.
Other than jibes from my brother about my “husky” jeans I don’t remember much about them. I’m wanting to say they were “Rustler” brand or some such (almost certainly from KMart; Sears wasn’t nearly cheap and embarrassing enough by the mid ’80’s). There still is a Rustler; it looks to be some kind of budget line from Wrangler (~10 dollars at Wal-Mart), but I’m thinking they may not have been related way back when.
And Elmore Leonard is dead, sad to say.
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. — C.S. Lewis
Gangstas tat. They’re comfortable with their manliness, so why shouldn’t they?
They can play tug-my-piece and sing kum-bye-yah and hand out Participation Trophies all day long at school, but those boys are all going home at 3:30 to play Medal of Honor for about 4 hours straight.
U of D needs a transgendered halfrican of multinational parentage apparently.
I now see that the University of Denver is abbreviated as DU so perhaps they can just go with a flashing blue light for the mascot of the DUI, Denver University Idiots.
perhaps du should consider a yellow pikachu holding a cupcake?
yes and nicknamed pikachump
i heart he she it!
i ain’t done made no comment all day I don’t think
I been in my quiet place
plus public school is child abuse anyway I don’t care if you a boy or a girl
America’s unionwhore teachersluts don’t give a shit about kids, lessin they be trying to get in their pants
it’s a thing
hi pikachu !!11!!
hello Mr. newrouter and a pleasant evening to you
in my quest for the red stapler and all of its attendant glory please know it is not my intention to neglect you p wizzles
no that’s not my intention at all
I swear to fucking god it’s not
Feel free to neglect us as much as possible.
I remember being made fun of in 2nd grade (’77 or ’78) for wearing ‘tuff skins’. They weren’t just for fat kids though. They were cheap. The husky sizes were for fat kids. I wasn’t fat then. I cried to my mom who bought me some Jordache jeans. And they did not even have sufficient room for a 7 year old boy’s scrotum. Which was a bit of an omen now that I think about it for what the school had in mind for boys. I also wore levi’s and wranglers for years after that because of the trouble at school. I should have just jawed some kids I guess. Would have been cheaper and more comfortable. But then I would have had to become a skater or something and wear thermal underwear under cargo shorts.
And yeah I bought some parachute pants once in junior high, and a child’s size Don Johnson miami vice white casual suit with day-glo wife beater in early high school.
It seems we never escape school. I just watched Nightline conclude their show by citing a Psychology Today story that conflated altruism (e.g. joining the Peace Corps) with bravery in order to demonstrate that women are the braver sex.