Gender Bias, My Ass

This story is great. I kid out in Milton is trying to say that the school system is gender biased towards female students. I can't get enough of him. I'll start out with a quote:

The system is designed to the disadvantage of males...From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this.

Thankfully (or unfortunately, depending on your view) this isn't this kid's only point. Can you imagine a world where we try to instill discipline into the youth? But let's not judge too harshly or too quickly; maybe he has a point. Could it be that he is identifying something valid but isn't quite saying it right? Maybe what he's really pointing out is that much of what determines one's success in school does NOT come from academic achievement, but rather from simply following rules.

I think he's just making excuses for not doing well. He says he wants to get into Holy Cross, and this seems to me to be a feeble attempt by this kid (and probably his father, who is a Boston lawyer) to somehow explain away why he doesn't have the grades to do it.

Not surprisingly, this kid has support among other students in the school. Amazingly, however, even the female senior class president back several of this kid's ideas.

You can't expect a boy to buy pink paper and frills to decorate their notebooks.

What she's essentially claiming here is that because one teacher offers extra credit to anyone who "decorates" their bookcovers, this equates to using glitter and feathers. It may be just a way in which that teacher is getting kids to cover their books, something that prolongs the life of the book so as not to have to buy new ones any time soon. In the same breath, the president complains that the same teacher requires students to type up reports, which is somehow girly. Wow...typing, what an unneeded life skill.

Many of the other points this kid raises seem to have nothing to do with academics at all, and could actually be testament to favoratism towards girls in his school. If teachers are asking boys for passes in the halls and not girls (one of his claims), it could be that they like girls more....OR it could be that it has nothing to do with gender at all, and those people who are asked for passes have established some precedent for the inquiry, and this kid (I love calling him that) is simply trying to conveniently generalize it to fit his whacko theory.

To top off this kid's list of ridiculous suggestions, he poses the idea that boys should not be made to fulfill the community service required of all high-school seniors to graduate, saying it is "another burden that will just set off resistance from boys, who may skip it and fail to graduate as a result"...this kid could care less about the community apparently. His father should be ashamed of himself for raising such a child (and that's exactly what he is) and in fact encouraging this type of mentality.

The fact is, this kid has no idea what it is like to be discriminated against. He's a white guy who seems pretty well off and will be provided for regardless of what he does (or more acurately, doesn't do) in whatever school he ends up going to. Daddy, it seems, will make sure of that.

I enjoyed the other things boston.com readers posted in response to this story. Read them here.