Schools

G. Schools

Schools originally developed to bring organizational support to students in their learning. At their best, they have brought together adults who are intelligent about helping people learn and young people who are still eager to learn. Schools can give students an opportunity to be together, learn from each other, acquire life skills, and widen their view of the world. For some young people in current societies, they are also a safe haven from harmful home and neighborhood circumstances.

Unfortunately, in our current situation they have become a primary means for socializing boys from a young age to accept without too much question the oppressed role assigned to a man and the oppressed role assigned to a worker in our society.

Schools, as institutions, play a very large role in fostering the oppression of men. They actively oppress males by encouraging competition instead of cooperation, by suppressing discharge, by dividing boys into the "good" and the "bad," by providing a distorted view of history, and by glorifying war and war heroes. By being irrelevant and meaningless to the lives of many young males, schools fail to nurture them as valuable members of the society.

Schools are likely boys' first exposure to government-sponsored institutionalized oppression. School teaches a boy to "act like a man." Schools induct boys into conforming to the oppressive society and all its oppressions.

Young people are acclimated to scarcity of approval. They learn to conform to the school's notion of "what is good behavior," "what is bad behavior," "what is a girl," "what is a boy," "what happens to you when you don't do what is expected of you," etc.

Although military service and prisons are places where men are obviously scapegoated, mistreated, and abused, much of what happens there is set up by what happens to boys. Because young people are naturally eager to learn, eager to be active and playful, schools are usually poorly matched to young people's learning styles and levels of activity. Young people don't learn well when forced to sit at desks for long hours. Boys, who tend to have been less conditioned into passivity than many girls, are punished more under these learning conditions where passivity and timidity are rewarded. Boys unable to conform are often invalidated, criticized, blamed, and punished. This treatment deeply reinforces the message that boys are "bad." Schools in the United States categorize boys early into "troublemakers" and "good boys." Most boys are told that they are either "bad" because they are acting out of the rigid norm for a "good student," or "good" because they follow the rigid norm and "work." These attitudes become magnified by the racism usually practiced in schools. This harsh and invalidating treatment starts an alarmingly high number of African-American boys on a path toward prison or early death. Most suspensions and expulsions are of boys, giving
them the message that society is "willing to give up on them."

The systematic intimidation combined with suppression of discharge really takes hold in the school atmosphere. Boys are pitted against boys in the classroom in competition for grades and class ranking, in strength contests, and in "organized" sports. On the schoolyard and on the way home younger or weaker boys are "bullied" by boys who were themselves previously bullied.

Self-worth is linked directly to achievement. Boys are divided into "winners" and "losers," and few boys "measure up." Throughout the school years, boys make up the majority of students at the bottom of the class in academic achievement.
Boys are also disproportionately over-represented among those diagnosed as having "learning disabilities" and among those failing academically. The internalized feelings of lack of worth and stupidity attach onto boys' feelings that they are "bad," and many never
recover from this image of themselves as being "dumb."

In the United States schools play a hurtful role in supporting and implementing the drugging of young boys with Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs, in response to behaviors that are the result of the schools' failure to accommodate to boys' needs.

It is also harmful to boys to spend large parts of their childhood and school experiences with few if any male teachers or male role models. The chronic low pay and low respect given to teachers still keeps most males from even considering a teaching career.

GOALS

Schools must be transformed into forces for liberation and vehicles for teaching basic democratic principles and ways of caring deeply for one another, in addition to furnishing an informed education. Schools need to make available to all students the tools for self-initiated, lifelong learning. Schools need to be transformed into institutions where boys are valued as boys and nurtured to be successful.

STRATEGIES

a) Boys should learn about justice, equity, and inclusion. They should be taught an accurate view of history, of how the world works, and how the world should work. They should learn about oppression and liberation. Their natural interest in fairness should be encouraged, and they should be equipped with the skills to stand up against injustice and oppression in all its forms.

b) Schools should be adapted to fit the needs of boys, rather than expecting boys to fit the current structures of schools. Specifically, schools need to be organized so that differences in learning styles are allowed for. Schools should support boys to learn through play and activity, and should develop instructional methods that enable all boys to be successful.

c) Schools need to actively support the discharge process for boys and girls alike. Schools should support and encourage the full range of human qualities for boys, outside all limiting gender roles. All students need to be taught an accurate view of the nature of males. Schools should encourage boys to tell their stories and let others know what their lives are truly like.

d) We need to eliminate the present categorization of boys as either "troublemakers" or "good boys" so that they can see their goodness as young men, apart from their ability to "do something" or "follow instructions." We need parents and teachers who can think well enough about boys to not do this and care for them so that they can grow up knowing that it is possible for people to care for and think well of each other. Boys should be validated and fully supported to know their own goodness. Because boys need a community of support, parents should be invited to participate in every part of children's education.

e) Competition in schools should be eliminated, enabling educators to rely
on eliciting students' natural curiosity for motivation in learning. All
classification of students into "smart and dumb" or "good and bad" must be replaced by success for each and every student. Schools should never give up on any student.

f) All categories of school employees, including teachers, should be approximately fifty percent men in number, to provide good role models and a personal understanding of men's issues. Teachers should be adequately compensated for doing some of the most important work that is done in the society. Teachers should be trained to handle and give assistance to boys with the distress patterns that society frequently installs on boys and then blames and punishes them for, such as being violent, loud, cynical, arrogant, "cool" and disinterested, etc. All punishment should be eliminated, including punishment for violence and mistreatment among boys. It should be replaced with assistance in discharging distresses that lead to boys' harming others and themselves.

g) Schools should refuse to participate in the drugging of students and educate parents about the harmful effects of psychoactive medications. Eliminate "hazing" and all "games" or rituals designed to "test" masculinity or manhood. End bullying.

(c) copyright 1999
Rational Island Publishers
Reprinted on this site with permission of the copyright owner.

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