Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
As others have pointed out, this isn't really a new thing. I'm also not really sure that younger people are any more hedonist than older people, or have ever been.
I suspect it's either that the hedonism of younger people is louder and more energetic, therefore more noticeable, or that older generations get to define what culturally-normal hedonism looks like so hedonism that violates those standards is more recognizable.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
I don't have an interest in career because careers are a means to an end. I don't want to be CIO or Director of IT because more money isn't worth the stress and responsibility and takes away from spending time with my wife, my cat and my friends. If there is one lesson a lot of people have picked up from their parents, it's that working hard and trying to rise to the top still doesn't guarantee happiness and/or stability.
I can attest to that. My primary career "drives" are vainly attempting to prevent boredom and making more money so I can pay bills easier. Of course, I'm sitting here posting in this and other threads at work, so the boredom half of the equation I seem to be failing at. >.>
I'm in a weird place. I was born in 1980, and so I share many qualities with both Gen X and Millennials, but don't really fit in with either. I am the sole income for a family of four. I feel strongly the responsibility to succeed monetarily so that I can provide for my family, but also the responsibility to do so with a minimum of time investment so as to be accessible as a husband and father. Like the stereotypical male gender role demands, I have trained myself to be logical and emotionless, a rock standing against the waves of an ever-stormier world. Growing up as an un-athletic and socially awkward nerd, I have refined this emotional detachment to a level of apathy that I sometimes find curiously shocking; I often feel more regret over my lack of feeling than for the loss that triggered the examination in the first place. I feel no drive to succeed beyond ensuring that my responsibilities are met, yet those responsibilities take up the majority of my life. I am smart, I learn fast, and will devour a new subject with all-encompassing enthusiasm, only to completely drop it a few days or weeks later in search of something new to obsess over. My sole "hobby" is video games, of which I purchase more than I have time to play, and what little time I play I tend to feel guilt for, as it is a waste of resources (time and money) that could have been better spent engaged in fulfilling responsibilities. I have learned to interact with people socially, but I find it difficult to make friends. It is not uncommon to reflect to myself that all people are inherently alone, and that life is pain to be endured.
So when I see a thread like this, which hints at trends that may or may not apply to me personally, I fall into the trap of self-examination to determine what similarities there are between myself and the rest of the world. Is this trend of bucking social norms by millennial adults "normal", or a problem to be corrected? If I empathize with portions of this, where does that place my standing in the world as a whole? Why in the hell do I even care?
Again, I need that drink. And it's only 10am.
This sounds very similar to my life situation in many ways.
I was born in 1977. I don't have any kids, but I've been the breadwinner fore basically the entirety of my six year relationship with my partner. She worked a low end service job when we got together, and after relocating (for my career) and her having no luck finding something new (this was during the lead up to the financial crisis), I encouraged her to go back to school and financed the whole thing. Right now I pay two tuitions (my MBA and her degree), the mortgage, the works. This is only possible because I've always held relatively high income jobs (video game programmer, then programmer and team lead at a tech start up, now a risk analyst at a major bank). I would say I am pretty conscious of the fact that I am fulfilling an assigned gender role, and I am not super thrilled about that. I was also an unatheltic (and fat) nerd, but as my career has progressed there's a lot of pressure to be healthy, so I eat food I'm super fond of and reluctantly spend a lot of my free time in the gym. Nonetheless, I consider myself pretty lucky, because I'm in a relationship with a woman who doesn't give me grief about my appearance or my spending money on nerdy hobbies (but like you, buying a video game and taking the time to play it generates a guilt response). This contrasts with the attitudes of a lot of the women in my peer group (the potential mates mentioned by Hymowitz) - for instance, one of the career services advisers in my MBA program suggested leaving the fact that I was a video game programmer off my resume, because anything to do with video games suggests I'm immature (okay) and lazy (yeah, I worked at EA and averaged about 80 hours a week there, how's that lazy again). Obviously that's pretty terrible advice, though, but it's indicative of some of the attitudes I'm talking about. I also have had years of low level conflict with my mother over my choice of partner (she would much prefer some one more suited to being the other half of a power couple, and probably resents being proven wrong about the whole "no woman will want you if you keep playing those stupid games" narrative she had going).
This is why I was contemplating a "modern male" thread, but I honestly have nothing of substance to offer it other than anecdote.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
As others have pointed out, this isn't really a new thing. I'm also not really sure that younger people are any more hedonist than older people, or have ever been.
I suspect it's either that the hedonism of younger people is louder and more energetic, therefore more noticeable, or that older generations get to define what culturally-normal hedonism looks like so hedonism that violates those standards is more recognizable.
A few things:
1. I had the sudden fear that I'm having a "Get Off My Lawn" moment for real.
2. I then realized that I actually have no disapproval of any activities that may be engaged in, so I can't actually be having a "Get Off My Lawn" moment.
3. I then questioned if it was perhaps that I was jealous of the apparent lack of responsibility, considering that I have personally allowed the concept of responsibility define the majority of my actions in life.
4. I have finally decided that it's more nuanced than that; I am neither jealous nor disapproving, but merely curious how it is that they have arrived at such a drastically different place than I have, and whether or not that seemingly responsibility-free lifestyle is more or less fulfilling than one devoted almost religiously to responsibilities.
Couple pages behind, but I'm glad people pointed out that toys in general are prone to sucking. There are just a ton of cheaply made, poorly conceived toys out there. It's less a gender problem and more that the industry is largely full of shit.
could be because every damn class assigns hours of homework. It's like working two jobs, there's just too much busy work from every subject and each year is a re-hash of the previous. No wonder kinds in general can't give a shit about education.
This sort of hit me in the tail end on my way out of school. Yeah I remember doing more work at school than I have ever done at work. It would literally take me from 3:00 until almost 9:00 at night to finish it all. If there was a project or essay, forget about it, midnight or later most of the time.
Block scheduling helped alleviate that a huge bit, but we only got that our last 2 years so I really can't comment on it.
I think it had more to do with shifting from one teacher controlling the entirety of the student's learning plan in grade school, to having 4+ teachers a day with no actualization of what is going on in the rest of the subjects, timing, or otherwise.
I can see the argument for this.
the 4+ teachers was true when I was in school too, but the teachers didn't feel the need to each give out 2h + of homework each day.
Math being one of the worst since it's just busy work and regurgitates all the stuff you learned last year and the year before that.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
Couple with with the complete lack of role models. I grew up with Optimus Prime. I grew up with men as competent heroes who flexed the perfect amounts of brawn, wisdom and willpower to win the day. Heroes almost as father figures. Today all I see on TV are fat, borderline retarded man children who are the butt of every joke. Going through school, I encountered a whopping three male teachers. So finding role models there too was hard to come by. And surprise surprise, I've come to find that pedophile hysteria has driven, and continue to drives, most men out of education. It's all anecdotal, but I've seen to many former male teachers complain that they loved the job. But they just couldn't deal with the constant stress of suspicion. I've known two friends personally who worked with children. One at a sailing camp and he quite because parents were so weird about him interacting with their kids. The other works with kids at a christian youth camp. And he too has to deal with parents having "concerns" about him interacting with their kids. Thankfully he doesn't give a shit and I'm glad because he's a fantastic role model for these kids, and I'm sure they could use it.
That's interesting, I can only count one person who would have my back and I'd have his too. I never really boiled down my friends like that.
That's the only true friend you have then.
OK that was maybe a shitty way to put it: I personally consider that the only kind of true friend. I've categorized the people I know on that basis for most of my life, so it just comes naturally to me. Most people I've met are merely friendly acquaintances.
This is an interesting tangent I can directly relate to, where I'll throw my two cents into the thread. When I was growing up until high school I had one or two circles of friends that were almost exclusively guys (boys), who I would hang out with regularly. The only reasons I would hang out with them however were mostly the fact I had similar hobbies as them; playing video games, other miscellaneous kid-like things, and, eventually, getting intoxicated at parties. Beyond that I didn't really identify with any of them on a deeper emotional level, and only rarely hung around girls because, at that time, girls were still largely this "other" you didn't associate with beyond an arm's-length unless you were trying to "get with them."
Since the end of my high school years however (where I started getting in touch with a girl who I share the same birthday with, and who I "knew" as a baby because we were born in the same hospital and our moms became friends through that) I began forming legitimate friendships with quite a few women who actually became my confidants and vice versa. While I don't talk to this circle of girls as often as I did in college (since we have been shifting locations, and obligations, often the past couple of years), we still at the minimum keep tabs on each other with the requisite basic updates, and I still count them as friends (the aforementioned "birthday buddy," who lives halfway across the country from me, I actually went out of my way to visit a couple years ago). I've also been in a committed relationship with a girl the past 2.5 years and count her as both my best friend and lover.
Now this isn't to say I haven't hung out with any guys since graduating high school. The difference here however, is that almost all the guys I became acquainted with in college, I only associated with because I socialized/partied with them by convenience of being in the same dorm or apartment as them. I can only count three guys (since going through college) who I actually got to know better in a substantial way beyond generally socializing with, and even then I would still put them in the "friendly acquaintances" category.
Basically I am now virtually a lone wolf, save for having a g/f, and my only other friends are (now long-distance) friends who are exclusively women that I keep in touch with online from time to time. I've been with many circles of people growing up, but never really formed actual friendships with most them, and certainly have not done so with most any of the guys I've met in life. My g/f would consider these groups "friends" since I have socialized with them on a periodical, or regular, basis, but beyond getting along with them on a general level and having some common interests I neither know them super well, or am that interested in getting to know them further to begin with - thus, as you put it, they're just circles of acquaintances I associate with.
I think the point I'm trying to make out of this, as a young and (so far) reasonably successful male, is that free of the "boys club" pretenses I grew up with in school, I don't identify, or care to identify with, these masculine gender norms in "the real world" and have a much easier time relating and connecting with women I meet in life. I don't consider this as being more "feminine" or less "masculine." Rather these women, as people, are on a similar wavelength as me, and I simply connect better with these women as "people;" not women.
Also the majority of people who I consider mentors in my life are women. There are a handful of men (mostly (music) teachers and professors) who have also played an important role in helping me develop, but they are by far the exception rather than the norm of people in my life that I look up to and hold as standards.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
Lilnoobs on
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
If there is one thing about my generation that is weird to me at least, it's that I don't have very many local friends. Goddamn internet is making me a remote friend.
Well, it's kinda in the branding. Feminism. It'd probably be easier to be all-inclusive if it started morphing into "egalitarianism" or something.
I would be more partial to the idea if it wasn't based on a silly notion- i.e. that since it is called Feminism, it can't be for men as well.
I don't know, it seems a weird argument to make, even though I hear it made a lot
When there are sects within Feminism that themselves say it is not for men...
All I'm arguing is that words have power, and this particular word was chosen in a time and place when it was necessary to highlight the Female aspect of the movement, as the social discomfort was key towards changing attitudes in regards to social inequalities. You can argue that 3rd wave and beyond has become largely more inclusive in it's goals for gender equality across the board, but it's still using the empowered label of exclusivity.
All I'm saying is that most people respond to words on a much deeper level than they realize.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
And I'm not sure if this is scientifically true but I believe that this environment is similar to the "manual" approach to learning. Where girls would read a manual before using a complex device while boys are more likely to ignore it and try to fiddle with it till they get it working.
DanHibiki on
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
As others have pointed out, this isn't really a new thing. I'm also not really sure that younger people are any more hedonist than older people, or have ever been.
I suspect it's either that the hedonism of younger people is louder and more energetic, therefore more noticeable, or that older generations get to define what culturally-normal hedonism looks like so hedonism that violates those standards is more recognizable.
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
Eh... no? Call it what you want, there is a marked increase of frat boys and party girls going on 30. I'm not judging it one way or another. But it's noticeable. It isn't just about accidental pregnancies. It's also rejecting the idea that once college is over, it's time to get married and have kids. It's a rejection of going to school to get your M.R.S. And it's creating a culture that is fairly new and noticeable. Noticeable for its many similarities to adolescence.
You both make good points, but I think the root cause of the "hedonism" life path becoming more common is entirely caused by the vast lack of career path oriented jobs, thanks to this shitty economy. If there were reasonable careers paths actually open to most college grads, I believe that the party lifestyle would be much less common and statistically in line with the previous 20+ years up to 2008.
However, let's drop this tangent before we get the thread shutdown for being a megathread.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
This is completely true.
Also, 50+ years ago girls were still actively discouraged from excelling in school as a pointless waste of time better spent working on becoming an object of desire to win a suitable mate.
The ultimate point I am making here is twofold- I am extremely amenable to the idea that the push for equality for women (vis-a-vis breaking traditional gender role ideas) may have "left men behind"...but keep in mind two things.
1) It took years of struggle, often one sided, by women's rights groups to break free of their gender shackles. Men simply have not done that yet, and by all accounts the majority seem to be intent on disregarding and diminishing the very movement they could learn these techniques from, which is a cruel irony (unsourced allegation, but I would at least point to the last three or four feminism threads on these boards, where most of the people arguing against feminist thought would most likely agree that men need to break out of traditional roles).
and
2) To go back to Julius' post...there is currently a movement advocating for freedom from, or at least the freedom to choose to ignore, traditional gender roles. That movement is the bulk of the current feminist...I guess zeitgeist? (To willingly accept a No True Scotsman fallacy)
Let me put it another way. I am (by all accounts) a straight white male. However, to know me, I realy shirk a large amount of traditional male gender norms. I haven't eaten red meat in 6 years (and just started eating fish again) I am extremely concerned with fashion, I dislike families and don't want to be a father, I have never played a sport in my life, I don't know a thing about cars or power tools, the list goes on and on and I think you get the point. Essentially, if we imagine gender to be a spectrum with "male" on one end and "female" on the other, I fall much closer to the "feminine" side. So it is not surprising I have found solace in a movement that seeks to allow any person to live how they want with regards to gender norms.
I mean, the number of times I have been called "gay" in public, by strangers or light acquaintances because I like tighter, form fitting clothes and carry a sidebag is just staggering...which again explains why I enjoy the current wave of feminist thought.
TL;DR- if you think men are actively harmed by outdated notions of gender roles, you should be paying more attention to modern feminist thought and ignoring the "crazy radicals" people enjoy using to strawman the movement.
I apologize both for this post's lack of citations and rant-like nature. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
Oh yeah the feminist movement is what we should look to. I meant that most men aren't in a movement because there is still this perceived idea that feminism is for girls. Which it was when the fight was about legal and moral equality, but now it's about role equality and even more about how the idea of roles itself doesn't really work.
The whole point is that we don't need two movements, there need be only one movement for equality and it's sorta sad that we have in our culture basically told men and boys that feminism isn't for them.
The curriculum also teaches for the tests, rather than teaching to learn. I can't even count how many "essays" I did to learn how to properly format a regents level essay with thesis, supporting bodies, and conclusion. I'm fairly good at it, to say the least. That is to say I learned how to take literary elements and tear them from the book.
I didn't actually learn what the book was trying to teach, or enjoy reading (I still cannot read to this day without passing out in 5 minutes) but I'll be damned if I couldn't give you the perspective it was written in and characterization, theme, and other such things about the book.
I could also finish a regents test designed for a 3 hour period in about a half hour. So uh, what good did that do me? Sure as fuck didn't help me in my job. The reports I write now are in no way similar to the Regents style or other book reports (basically education style reports as opposed to technical or informative). The only thing that helped me was 2 years of algebra and typing. Sure as fuck would've enjoyed a budget/business class.
Edit: being a male, I have no idea if this type of education is more suited to a specific gender's learning ability or whatnot, but school in general was A) A piece of fucking cake for me and didn't really teach me anything past the 5th grade, aside from social studies level classes like PIG, history, economics, etc.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
Well, it's kinda in the branding. Feminism. It'd probably be easier to be all-inclusive if it started morphing into "egalitarianism" or something.
I would be more partial to the idea if it wasn't based on a silly notion- i.e. that since it is called Feminism, it can't be for men as well.
I don't know, it seems a weird argument to make, even though I hear it made a lot
When there are sects within Feminism that themselves say it is not for men...
All I'm arguing is that words have power, and this particular word was chosen in a time and place when it was necessary to highlight the Female aspect of the movement, as the social discomfort was key towards changing attitudes in regards to social inequalities. You can argue that 3rd wave and beyond has become largely more inclusive in it's goals for gender equality across the board, but it's still using the empowered label of exclusivity.
All I'm saying is that most people respond to words on a much deeper level than they realize.
Indeed, and as you and I can attest to. I would add that Feminism has done a lot for girls by encouraging them to do anything they want and demonstrating that females can do anything, whereas, the vast majority of males receive no such encouragement from any quarter, and are often encouraged to settle instead of strive.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
Couple with with the complete lack of role models. I grew up with Optimus Prime. I grew up with men as competent heroes who flexed the perfect amounts of brawn, wisdom and willpower to win the day. Heroes almost as father figures. Today all I see on TV are fat, borderline retarded man children who are the butt of every joke. Going through school, I encountered a whopping three male teachers. So finding role models there too was hard to come by. And surprise surprise, I've come to find that pedophile hysteria has driven, and continue to drives, most men out of education. It's all anecdotal, but I've seen to many former male teachers complain that they loved the job. But they just couldn't deal with the constant stress of suspicion. I've known two friends personally who worked with children. One at a sailing camp and he quite because parents were so weird about him interacting with their kids. The other works with kids at a christian youth camp. And he too has to deal with parents having "concerns" about him interacting with their kids. Thankfully he doesn't give a shit and I'm glad because he's a fantastic role model for these kids, and I'm sure they could use it.
THIS!! :^:
I love your post. Thank you for your words.
It's like we are spirit brothers, because of how close my experience is to yours.
The ultimate point I am making here is twofold- I am extremely amenable to the idea that the push for equality for women (vis-a-vis breaking traditional gender role ideas) may have "left men behind"...but keep in mind two things.
1) It took years of struggle, often one sided, by women's rights groups to break free of their gender shackles. Men simply have not done that yet, and by all accounts the majority seem to be intent on disregarding and diminishing the very movement they could learn these techniques from, which is a cruel irony (unsourced allegation, but I would at least point to the last three or four feminism threads on these boards, where most of the people arguing against feminist thought would most likely agree that men need to break out of traditional roles).
and
2) To go back to Julius' post...there is currently a movement advocating for freedom from, or at least the freedom to choose to ignore, traditional gender roles. That movement is the bulk of the current feminist...I guess zeitgeist? (To willingly accept a No True Scotsman fallacy)
Let me put it another way. I am (by all accounts) a straight white male. However, to know me, I realy shirk a large amount of traditional male gender norms. I haven't eaten red meat in 6 years (and just started eating fish again) I am extremely concerned with fashion, I dislike families and don't want to be a father, I have never played a sport in my life, I don't know a thing about cars or power tools, the list goes on and on and I think you get the point. Essentially, if we imagine gender to be a spectrum with "male" on one end and "female" on the other, I fall much closer to the "feminine" side. So it is not surprising I have found solace in a movement that seeks to allow any person to live how they want with regards to gender norms.
I mean, the number of times I have been called "gay" in public, by strangers or light acquaintances because I like tighter, form fitting clothes and carry a sidebag is just staggering...which again explains why I enjoy the current wave of feminist thought.
TL;DR- if you think men are actively harmed by outdated notions of gender roles, you should be paying more attention to modern feminist thought and ignoring the "crazy radicals" people enjoy using to strawman the movement.
I apologize both for this post's lack of citations and rant-like nature. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
Oh yeah the feminist movement is what we should look to. I meant that most men aren't in a movement because there is still this perceived idea that feminism is for girls. Which it was when the fight was about legal and moral equality, but now it's about role equality and even more about how the idea of roles itself doesn't really work.
The whole point is that we don't need two movements, there need be only one movement for equality and it's sorta sad that we have in our culture basically told men and boys that feminism isn't for them.
The curriculum also teaches for the tests, rather than teaching to learn. I can't even count how many "essays" I did to learn how to properly format a regents level essay with thesis, supporting bodies, and conclusion. I'm fairly good at it, to say the least. That is to say I learned how to take literary elements and tear them from the book.
I didn't actually learn what the book was trying to teach, or enjoy reading (I still cannot read to this day without passing out in 5 minutes) but I'll be damned if I couldn't give you the perspective it was written in and characterization, theme, and other such things about the book.
I could also finish a regents test designed for a 3 hour period in about a half hour. So uh, what good did that do me? Sure as fuck didn't help me in my job. The reports I write now are in no way similar to the Regents style or other book reports (basically education style reports as opposed to technical or informative). The only thing that helped me was 2 years of algebra and typing. Sure as fuck would've enjoyed a budget/business class.
Edit: being a male, I have no idea if this type of education is more suited to a specific gender's learning ability or whatnot, but school in general was A) A piece of fucking cake for me and didn't really teach me anything past the 5th grade, aside from social studies level classes like PIG, history, economics, etc.
I would always read the book first, just for enjoyment, and THEN ruin it with analysis after ... maybe why I managed to maintain a love of reading despite school.
I would suggest that perhaps the subject matter of many books taught in school is more geared toward females or females are simply more tolerant of boredom, because when I was in a fantasy and sci-fi class in high school, suddenly all these dudes that normally sucked, were learning.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
As others have pointed out, this isn't really a new thing. I'm also not really sure that younger people are any more hedonist than older people, or have ever been.
I suspect it's either that the hedonism of younger people is louder and more energetic, therefore more noticeable, or that older generations get to define what culturally-normal hedonism looks like so hedonism that violates those standards is more recognizable.
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
Eh... no? Call it what you want, there is a marked increase of frat boys and party girls going on 30. I'm not judging it one way or another. But it's noticeable. It isn't just about accidental pregnancies. It's also rejecting the idea that once college is over, it's time to get married and have kids. It's a rejection of going to school to get your M.R.S. And it's creating a culture that is fairly new and noticeable. Noticeable for its many similarities to adolescence.
You both make good points, but I think the root cause of the "hedonism" life path becoming more common is entirely caused by the vast lack of career path oriented jobs, thanks to this shitty economy. If there were reasonable careers paths actually open to most college grads, I believe that the party lifestyle would be much less common and statistically in line with the previous 20+ years up to 2008.
However, let's drop this tangent before we get the thread shutdown for being a megathread.
I wonder if the movement back into the cities and streetcar suburbs is also a large influence. Instead of watching TV behind the white picked fence, today's young people are heading out to modern dance halls, AKA clubs.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
This is completely true.
Also, 50+ years ago girls were still actively discouraged from excelling in school as a pointless waste of time better spent working on becoming an object of desire to win a suitable mate.
Smaller class size benefits everyone, regardless of the type of instruction.
I'm still hesitant to say the hands-on approach was the thing that made it successful, when it could have well just been the smaller class sizes (which leads to numerous benefits, perhaps one of them is the ability to include hands-on projects?).
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
This is completely true.
Also, 50+ years ago girls were still actively discouraged from excelling in school as a pointless waste of time better spent working on becoming an object of desire to win a suitable mate.
Smaller class size benefits everyone, regardless of the type of instruction.
I'm still hesitant to say the hands-on approach was the thing that made it successful, when it could have well just been the smaller class sizes (which leads to numerous benefits, perhaps one of them is the ability to include hands-on projects?).
Given class size, it's a far from definitive argument, but if males really learn better with hands on learning which is engendered by smaller class size, then it could be argued that school is skewed toward female success by virtue of larger class sizes, thanks to funding cuts.
I think the strongest argument is the lack of encouragement for the vast majority of males to succeed. I also favor a second strong argument, that females seem to be much more boredom tolerant or at least much more able to succeed despite boredom (although that is also far from proved and is purely based on my own experiences with female and male success rates when given highly boring tasks in school and work).
I always was baffled by the reading lists in school. It was so, so hard to find a book I'd actually enjoy. I am enormously thankful that I had a few teachers who didn't give two shits about what the lists said. If I begged and pleaded to read a book I wanted to read, that was 300 pages longer and several reading levels higher than what was on the approved list, they were A-OK with it. In retrospect I had a lot of really amazing teachers who thumbed their noses at the system and helped me thrive. I had one math teacher who let me not do homework. But only so long as I continued to get A's on all his tests. And I did. I was even the only student to get a perfect score on the multiple choice part of the AP Calculus test from 1986 we practiced on.
And even when I was in highschool, from 1998 to 2002, I was watching these amazing teachers struggle against a system that seemingly wanted to ruin their classroom. My mom still works in the school system, and year after year, there is more tests, more teaching to the tests, more teaching how to take tests. Teachers are given less and less leeway. I'm terrified to think what my school experience would have been like these days. Are those amazing teachers still out there? Are they even allowed to make the exceptions they made for me that helped me thrive? I meet young boys not unlike how I used to be through teaching Martial Arts, and most of them seem to just want to drop out. It's enormously depressing.
Namrok on
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
I always was baffled by the reading lists in school. It was so, so hard to find a book I'd actually enjoy. I am enormously thankful that I had a few teachers who didn't give two shits about what the lists said. If I begged and pleaded to read a book I wanted to read, that was 300 pages longer and several reading levels higher than what was on the approved list, they were A-OK with it. In retrospect I had a lot of really amazing teachers who thumbed their noses at the system and helped me thrive. I had one math teacher who let me not do homework. But only so long as I continued to get A's on all his tests. And I did. I was even the only student to get a perfect score on the multiple choice part of the AP Calculus test from 1986 we practiced on.
And even when I was in highschool, from 1998 to 2002, I was watching these amazing teachers struggle against a system that seemingly wanted to ruin their classroom. My mom still works in the school system, and year after year, there is more tests, more teaching to the tests, more teaching how to take tests. Teachers are given less and less leeway. I'm terrified to think what my school experience would have been like these days. Are those amazing teachers still out there? Are they even allowed to make the exceptions they made for me that helped me thrive? I meet young boys not unlike how I used to be through teaching Martial Arts, and most of them seem to just want to drop out. It's enormously depressing.
Again you make a great post. Both of my younger brothers ended up in alternative high school for exactly these reasons and they are two of the smartest people I've ever known. I too got lucky with teachers and dodged that bullet, but it is a huge, fundamental (and mostly unnoticed) flaw in our modern education system.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
My wife volunteered in both my kids classrooms the past 2 years, and this is spot on. In fact, she ended up doing most of the grading
I always was baffled by the reading lists in school. It was so, so hard to find a book I'd actually enjoy. I am enormously thankful that I had a few teachers who didn't give two shits about what the lists said. If I begged and pleaded to read a book I wanted to read, that was 300 pages longer and several reading levels higher than what was on the approved list, they were A-OK with it. In retrospect I had a lot of really amazing teachers who thumbed their noses at the system and helped me thrive. I had one math teacher who let me not do homework. But only so long as I continued to get A's on all his tests. And I did. I was even the only student to get a perfect score on the multiple choice part of the AP Calculus test from 1986 we practiced on.
And even when I was in highschool, from 1998 to 2002, I was watching these amazing teachers struggle against a system that seemingly wanted to ruin their classroom. My mom still works in the school system, and year after year, there is more tests, more teaching to the tests, more teaching how to take tests. Teachers are given less and less leeway. I'm terrified to think what my school experience would have been like these days. Are those amazing teachers still out there? Are they even allowed to make the exceptions they made for me that helped me thrive? I meet young boys not unlike how I used to be through teaching Martial Arts, and most of them seem to just want to drop out. It's enormously depressing.
Funny you mention Calculus. Pre-Calc was the class that killed my interest in math; I, too, would ace every test, but the homework was so god damn boring I would fall asleep at my desk every time I tried to do it, and my teacher absolutely would not make any concessions on it, so most of the time it was turned in incomplete, if at all. I eventually dropped the class halfway through the year because the C was bringing my GPA down.
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
My wife volunteered in both my kids classrooms the past 2 years, and this is spot on. In fact, she ended up doing most of the grading
I always was baffled by the reading lists in school. It was so, so hard to find a book I'd actually enjoy. I am enormously thankful that I had a few teachers who didn't give two shits about what the lists said. If I begged and pleaded to read a book I wanted to read, that was 300 pages longer and several reading levels higher than what was on the approved list, they were A-OK with it. In retrospect I had a lot of really amazing teachers who thumbed their noses at the system and helped me thrive. I had one math teacher who let me not do homework. But only so long as I continued to get A's on all his tests. And I did. I was even the only student to get a perfect score on the multiple choice part of the AP Calculus test from 1986 we practiced on.
And even when I was in highschool, from 1998 to 2002, I was watching these amazing teachers struggle against a system that seemingly wanted to ruin their classroom. My mom still works in the school system, and year after year, there is more tests, more teaching to the tests, more teaching how to take tests. Teachers are given less and less leeway. I'm terrified to think what my school experience would have been like these days. Are those amazing teachers still out there? Are they even allowed to make the exceptions they made for me that helped me thrive? I meet young boys not unlike how I used to be through teaching Martial Arts, and most of them seem to just want to drop out. It's enormously depressing.
Funny you mention Calculus. Pre-Calc was the class that killed my interest in math; I, too, would ace every test, but the homework was so god damn boring I would fall asleep at my desk every time I tried to do it, and my teacher absolutely would not make any concessions on it, so most of the time it was turned in incomplete, if at all. I eventually dropped the class halfway through the year because the C was bringing my GPA down.
That's too bad, since Calculus is far more interesting than pre-calc and easier in many respects. It's also the linch-pin of engineering and leads to the cool maths of computer science.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
My wife volunteered in both my kids classrooms the past 2 years, and this is spot on. In fact, she ended up doing most of the grading
I always was baffled by the reading lists in school. It was so, so hard to find a book I'd actually enjoy. I am enormously thankful that I had a few teachers who didn't give two shits about what the lists said. If I begged and pleaded to read a book I wanted to read, that was 300 pages longer and several reading levels higher than what was on the approved list, they were A-OK with it. In retrospect I had a lot of really amazing teachers who thumbed their noses at the system and helped me thrive. I had one math teacher who let me not do homework. But only so long as I continued to get A's on all his tests. And I did. I was even the only student to get a perfect score on the multiple choice part of the AP Calculus test from 1986 we practiced on.
And even when I was in highschool, from 1998 to 2002, I was watching these amazing teachers struggle against a system that seemingly wanted to ruin their classroom. My mom still works in the school system, and year after year, there is more tests, more teaching to the tests, more teaching how to take tests. Teachers are given less and less leeway. I'm terrified to think what my school experience would have been like these days. Are those amazing teachers still out there? Are they even allowed to make the exceptions they made for me that helped me thrive? I meet young boys not unlike how I used to be through teaching Martial Arts, and most of them seem to just want to drop out. It's enormously depressing.
Funny you mention Calculus. Pre-Calc was the class that killed my interest in math; I, too, would ace every test, but the homework was so god damn boring I would fall asleep at my desk every time I tried to do it, and my teacher absolutely would not make any concessions on it, so most of the time it was turned in incomplete, if at all. I eventually dropped the class halfway through the year because the C was bringing my GPA down.
My Calculus teacher was amazing. Seriously, the greatest teacher I have ever had, in any subject, ever. His goal was for every single student to get a 4 or a 5 on the AP test. He would spend any amount of time, no matter what, making sure each and every student not just could perform, but understood the material. He understood calculus so thoroughly he'd just keep coming at it from angle, after angle, after angle, until something would finally click with you and you understood it. Truly understood it. His calculus class actually carried me through 3 more calculus classes I took in college where the professors just expected me to regurgitate how to solve certain classes of problem.
Sci-fi or fantasy was pretty much "Fahrenheit 451". I think that was the only book I could find that was semi-palatable. And I could not read it.
If I had had harry potter or hunger games books growing up, oh my god I would've done so much better. But with my luck summer reading would've been "Twilight" and "50 shades of gray, abridged tween edition" and some other classics that have always been there which are shitty books in general.
The books were definitely female oriented in their messages it seemed.
I tried to get the teacher to approve an Arthur C. Clarke book my sophomore year so I could at least enjoy it (I think I was doing Childhood's End) and she said no I had probably already read it and needed to expand my interests beyond sci-fi. So I went from almost not giving a shit, to totally not giving a shit anymore.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
Sci-fi or fantasy was pretty much "Fahrenheit 451". I think that was the only book I could find that was semi-palatable. And I could not read it.
If I had had harry potter or hunger games books growing up, oh my god I would've done so much better. But with my luck summer reading would've been "Twilight" and "50 shades of gray, abridged tween edition" and some other classics that have always been there which are shitty books in general.
The books were definitely female oriented in their messages it seemed.
I tried to get the teacher to approve an Arthur C. Clarke book my sophomore year so I could at least enjoy it (I think I was doing Childhood's End) and she said no I had probably already read it and needed to expand my interests beyond sci-fi. So I went from almost not giving a shit, to totally not giving a shit anymore.
The only escape I had from this trap was the Gifted program, which I only did so I could get out of the most tedious reading, in favor of my own much higher-grade level interests. I hated Gifted, but I used it for everything it was worth. Luckily, I was tested into it when I was in Kindergarten, way before I was bored with school.
Man, this thread speaks to me so much. And I'm totally not buying the "arousal addiction" excuse, or any sort of biological excuse. It's not good enough for Feminist to say "Well maybe girls just aren't as good as boys at THING" and it's not good enough for me to say the opposite and expect to get away with it.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
My wife volunteered in both my kids classrooms the past 2 years, and this is spot on. In fact, she ended up doing most of the grading
I always was baffled by the reading lists in school. It was so, so hard to find a book I'd actually enjoy. I am enormously thankful that I had a few teachers who didn't give two shits about what the lists said. If I begged and pleaded to read a book I wanted to read, that was 300 pages longer and several reading levels higher than what was on the approved list, they were A-OK with it. In retrospect I had a lot of really amazing teachers who thumbed their noses at the system and helped me thrive. I had one math teacher who let me not do homework. But only so long as I continued to get A's on all his tests. And I did. I was even the only student to get a perfect score on the multiple choice part of the AP Calculus test from 1986 we practiced on.
And even when I was in highschool, from 1998 to 2002, I was watching these amazing teachers struggle against a system that seemingly wanted to ruin their classroom. My mom still works in the school system, and year after year, there is more tests, more teaching to the tests, more teaching how to take tests. Teachers are given less and less leeway. I'm terrified to think what my school experience would have been like these days. Are those amazing teachers still out there? Are they even allowed to make the exceptions they made for me that helped me thrive? I meet young boys not unlike how I used to be through teaching Martial Arts, and most of them seem to just want to drop out. It's enormously depressing.
Funny you mention Calculus. Pre-Calc was the class that killed my interest in math; I, too, would ace every test, but the homework was so god damn boring I would fall asleep at my desk every time I tried to do it, and my teacher absolutely would not make any concessions on it, so most of the time it was turned in incomplete, if at all. I eventually dropped the class halfway through the year because the C was bringing my GPA down.
My Calculus teacher was amazing. Seriously, the greatest teacher I have ever had, in any subject, ever. His goal was for every single student to get a 4 or a 5 on the AP test. He would spend any amount of time, no matter what, making sure each and every student not just could perform, but understood the material. He understood calculus so thoroughly he'd just keep coming at it from angle, after angle, after angle, until something would finally click with you and you understood it. Truly understood it. His calculus class actually carried me through 3 more calculus classes I took in college where the professors just expected me to regurgitate how to solve certain classes of problem.
My Engineering Calc 1, 2 and 3 teachers were all amazing and of this caliber that you describe, but my Calc 2 teacher was absolutely phenomenal. He was from Spain and had this crazy beard, but he was incredibly intense and engaging and could explain concepts in so many ways. He would even take us through visualization exercises. I was so lucky at KU.
However, in high school, my pre-calc teacher pretty much ended my interest in maths and sciences just like @Houn's, until it was re-awoken in college.
Actually, this all raises a very good question: if all this schooling and college and whatnot was preparation, what the fuck were we preparing for? I graduated in 2001 with a 2-year degree in Web Design, right after the dotCom bubble burst, rendering my degree useless. Nothing I have done career-wise has ever needed any of the "preparation"; I have built my tech career on my logical nature and ability to quickly analyse, adapt and correct.
I guess the big question here, for me and for the "pre-adults", is: What's my Motivation?
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
Actually, this all raises a very good question: if all this schooling and college and whatnot was preparation, what the fuck were we preparing for? I graduated in 2001 with a 2-year degree in Web Design, right after the dotCom bubble burst, rendering my degree useless. Nothing I have done career-wise has ever needed any of the "preparation"; I have built my tech career on my logical nature and ability to quickly analyse, adapt and correct.
I guess the big question here, for me and for the "pre-adults", is: What's my Motivation?
Oh, exactly.
I also want to know how it is that all these scholars have missed these obvious and common root causes of failure. Who the fuck are they studying, that they haven't learned of these common issues with the public education system?
I was actually curious about my old high schools reading list this year. Hunger Games was on it for 10th grade. It actually seemed to have a better mix of fantasy than I recall, but no science fiction. There are a bunch of graphic novels oddly enough. That's weird to see on a summer reading list. Weirdly enough there are a lot of books about the Middle East and the Iraq War, so I guess they are trying to stay topical. It's hard for me to look back on it now and think if there was anything I'd want to read. My favorite books growing up were Frankenstein, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and War of the Worlds when I was in elementary school. I was reading anything by Ian M Banks I could get my hands on in Middle School. Come high school I was all about Dune and that whole series.
I'm still a huge reader, went through A Game of Thrones through Dance with Dragons not long ago. Read volumes 1 - 3 of The Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire by Gibbon. Started on Malazan Book of the Fallen.
What's weird that I've noticed is all my friends who used to be on ADD meds can't read. They literally can't. They cannot force themselves to concentrate that long. It's so bizarre. They had taken the meds long enough to get through school, and once they are off them they never learned how to cope with their own brain. So there goes reading.
Yeah I can't really say I've used much beyond knowing how to read and write proper English (which pretty much ended at 5th-7th grade) and simple maths. Sure knowing what a metatarsal is, is semi-useful when I'm talking to a doctor, or knowing the general chemicals on our earth, but their practical use is ... limited.
Even those essays and summer reading were pointless. Aside from the rare book I read in high school, TKAM, ethan frome, and animal farm. 3 out of the at least 2 dozen books we were supposed to read.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah I can't really say I've used much beyond knowing how to read and write proper English (which pretty much ended at 5th-7th grade) and simple maths. Sure knowing what a metatarsal is, is semi-useful when I'm talking to a doctor, or knowing the general chemicals on our earth, but their practical use is ... limited.
Even those essays and summer reading were pointless. Aside from the rare book I read in high school, TKAM, ethan frome, and animal farm. 3 out of the at least 2 dozen books we were supposed to read.
No one will play You Don't Know Jack with me because I always win. Also, I love to shout out answers at Jeopardy, though I wouldn't say I'm good enough to actually be a contestant.
Well, it's kinda in the branding. Feminism. It'd probably be easier to be all-inclusive if it started morphing into "egalitarianism" or something.
I would be more partial to the idea if it wasn't based on a silly notion- i.e. that since it is called Feminism, it can't be for men as well.
I don't know, it seems a weird argument to make, even though I hear it made a lot
There is a fair amount of irony in the amount of academically rigorous work done with feminism and linguistics, and the implications and subtext of language, while simultaneously dismissing the negative connotations implied by a lot of feminist terminology because, "That's not the definition." Which isn't an excuse to lazily misinterpret things, but still makes for bad terminology.
"More fish for Kunta!"
--LeVar Burton
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
I wish I had the tolerance to get through precalc. I just wound up being bored and confused not because it was easy but because I couldn't apply it to anything I really cared about. Logs on the other hand are fascinating as fuck.
Well, it's kinda in the branding. Feminism. It'd probably be easier to be all-inclusive if it started morphing into "egalitarianism" or something.
I would be more partial to the idea if it wasn't based on a silly notion- i.e. that since it is called Feminism, it can't be for men as well.
I don't know, it seems a weird argument to make, even though I hear it made a lot
There is a fair amount of irony in the amount of academically rigorous work done with feminism and linguistics, and the implications and subtext of language, while simultaneously dismissing the negative connotations implied by a lot of feminist terminology because, "That's not the definition." Which isn't an excuse to lazily misinterpret things, but still makes for bad terminology.
I never thought about that, but it is completely hilarious now that you point it out.
Posts
As others have pointed out, this isn't really a new thing. I'm also not really sure that younger people are any more hedonist than older people, or have ever been.
I suspect it's either that the hedonism of younger people is louder and more energetic, therefore more noticeable, or that older generations get to define what culturally-normal hedonism looks like so hedonism that violates those standards is more recognizable.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is why I was contemplating a "modern male" thread, but I honestly have nothing of substance to offer it other than anecdote.
A few things:
1. I had the sudden fear that I'm having a "Get Off My Lawn" moment for real.
2. I then realized that I actually have no disapproval of any activities that may be engaged in, so I can't actually be having a "Get Off My Lawn" moment.
3. I then questioned if it was perhaps that I was jealous of the apparent lack of responsibility, considering that I have personally allowed the concept of responsibility define the majority of my actions in life.
4. I have finally decided that it's more nuanced than that; I am neither jealous nor disapproving, but merely curious how it is that they have arrived at such a drastically different place than I have, and whether or not that seemingly responsibility-free lifestyle is more or less fulfilling than one devoted almost religiously to responsibilities.
the 4+ teachers was true when I was in school too, but the teachers didn't feel the need to each give out 2h + of homework each day.
Math being one of the worst since it's just busy work and regurgitates all the stuff you learned last year and the year before that.
My parents were old school. When I thought my homework was boring and didn't want to do it, they brow beat me into finishing it even if it took them all night. I had a lot of energy, a lot of imagination, and all I wanted to do was learn to program on my computer, or learn more math. Not story board these absurdly simplistic tales from my english textbook, to prove I know what an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion are. School was not geared towards me at all, and it was amazing how much I begged for challenge, but couldn't display enough success (due to lack of interest) to convince the people running the show that I could do it. My aptitude tests were always fine, but my grades never rose to match them.
And frankly, most of my friends were in the same boat. Most of them got put on meds for ADD or ADHD, which to this day they've resented. Most of the still struggle to figure out their own brain. Like I said, my parents were old school. That meant more hands on, forcing me to do my homework, and fuck that pill nonsense. So these days I have no trouble applying myself and concentrating when I have to. And that fits with most cognitive science. Concentration is a skill you have to train. I can't help but feel like ADD meds are like steroids for concentration. They'll work while you take them, but good luck keeping it up once you get off.
All this only ever made sense to me when I started reading article about how the school system just isn't geared towards how boys learn. Boys have lots of energy. They want to be hands on. They want to be competitive. This in an age where kids are more and more deprived of the opportunity to compete, for risk of someone feeling bad about themselves. They are deprived of the ability to be hands on. Across the country budget cuts and destroying hands on science and music programs. Standardized testing is cutting into gym and recess so they can't burn off energy. Not to mention Zero Tolerance turns many young boys into outcasts just for getting physical with each other like boys are prone to do.
Being a boy is almost considered a pathological problem in the public school system.
Couple with with the complete lack of role models. I grew up with Optimus Prime. I grew up with men as competent heroes who flexed the perfect amounts of brawn, wisdom and willpower to win the day. Heroes almost as father figures. Today all I see on TV are fat, borderline retarded man children who are the butt of every joke. Going through school, I encountered a whopping three male teachers. So finding role models there too was hard to come by. And surprise surprise, I've come to find that pedophile hysteria has driven, and continue to drives, most men out of education. It's all anecdotal, but I've seen to many former male teachers complain that they loved the job. But they just couldn't deal with the constant stress of suspicion. I've known two friends personally who worked with children. One at a sailing camp and he quite because parents were so weird about him interacting with their kids. The other works with kids at a christian youth camp. And he too has to deal with parents having "concerns" about him interacting with their kids. Thankfully he doesn't give a shit and I'm glad because he's a fantastic role model for these kids, and I'm sure they could use it.
This is an interesting tangent I can directly relate to, where I'll throw my two cents into the thread. When I was growing up until high school I had one or two circles of friends that were almost exclusively guys (boys), who I would hang out with regularly. The only reasons I would hang out with them however were mostly the fact I had similar hobbies as them; playing video games, other miscellaneous kid-like things, and, eventually, getting intoxicated at parties. Beyond that I didn't really identify with any of them on a deeper emotional level, and only rarely hung around girls because, at that time, girls were still largely this "other" you didn't associate with beyond an arm's-length unless you were trying to "get with them."
Since the end of my high school years however (where I started getting in touch with a girl who I share the same birthday with, and who I "knew" as a baby because we were born in the same hospital and our moms became friends through that) I began forming legitimate friendships with quite a few women who actually became my confidants and vice versa. While I don't talk to this circle of girls as often as I did in college (since we have been shifting locations, and obligations, often the past couple of years), we still at the minimum keep tabs on each other with the requisite basic updates, and I still count them as friends (the aforementioned "birthday buddy," who lives halfway across the country from me, I actually went out of my way to visit a couple years ago). I've also been in a committed relationship with a girl the past 2.5 years and count her as both my best friend and lover.
Now this isn't to say I haven't hung out with any guys since graduating high school. The difference here however, is that almost all the guys I became acquainted with in college, I only associated with because I socialized/partied with them by convenience of being in the same dorm or apartment as them. I can only count three guys (since going through college) who I actually got to know better in a substantial way beyond generally socializing with, and even then I would still put them in the "friendly acquaintances" category.
Basically I am now virtually a lone wolf, save for having a g/f, and my only other friends are (now long-distance) friends who are exclusively women that I keep in touch with online from time to time. I've been with many circles of people growing up, but never really formed actual friendships with most them, and certainly have not done so with most any of the guys I've met in life. My g/f would consider these groups "friends" since I have socialized with them on a periodical, or regular, basis, but beyond getting along with them on a general level and having some common interests I neither know them super well, or am that interested in getting to know them further to begin with - thus, as you put it, they're just circles of acquaintances I associate with.
I think the point I'm trying to make out of this, as a young and (so far) reasonably successful male, is that free of the "boys club" pretenses I grew up with in school, I don't identify, or care to identify with, these masculine gender norms in "the real world" and have a much easier time relating and connecting with women I meet in life. I don't consider this as being more "feminine" or less "masculine." Rather these women, as people, are on a similar wavelength as me, and I simply connect better with these women as "people;" not women.
Also the majority of people who I consider mentors in my life are women. There are a handful of men (mostly (music) teachers and professors) who have also played an important role in helping me develop, but they are by far the exception rather than the norm of people in my life that I look up to and hold as standards.
I would be more partial to the idea if it wasn't based on a silly notion- i.e. that since it is called Feminism, it can't be for men as well.
I don't know, it seems a weird argument to make, even though I hear it made a lot
This may even be larger than that. Something like 75% of couples who go the artificial insemination choose a girl over a boy.
I do wonder about the school system argument. It's hard for me to imagine that school 50 years ago was more active, hands on, and amenable to the needs of boys than school currently. I mean, if the school system argument holds water, wouldn't it mean that education in the past catered to boys' learning, but how was learning in the school house somehow more active and hands on?
I see that argument quite a bit and I'm just a bit skeptical. Part of me thinks it's just a backdoor to always play games in class =p
When there are sects within Feminism that themselves say it is not for men...
All I'm arguing is that words have power, and this particular word was chosen in a time and place when it was necessary to highlight the Female aspect of the movement, as the social discomfort was key towards changing attitudes in regards to social inequalities. You can argue that 3rd wave and beyond has become largely more inclusive in it's goals for gender equality across the board, but it's still using the empowered label of exclusivity.
All I'm saying is that most people respond to words on a much deeper level than they realize.
it was much more hands on in the past. There were a lot more teachers and much smaller class sizes. Modern education is mote of a factory farm, the curriculum is designed to be more failure free, everything is repeated ad nauseum and there is no room for projects where kids can be creative or produce something that can't be easily marked in five minutes.
And I'm not sure if this is scientifically true but I believe that this environment is similar to the "manual" approach to learning. Where girls would read a manual before using a complex device while boys are more likely to ignore it and try to fiddle with it till they get it working.
However, let's drop this tangent before we get the thread shutdown for being a megathread.
try this
Also, 50+ years ago girls were still actively discouraged from excelling in school as a pointless waste of time better spent working on becoming an object of desire to win a suitable mate.
try this
Word.
I didn't actually learn what the book was trying to teach, or enjoy reading (I still cannot read to this day without passing out in 5 minutes) but I'll be damned if I couldn't give you the perspective it was written in and characterization, theme, and other such things about the book.
I could also finish a regents test designed for a 3 hour period in about a half hour. So uh, what good did that do me? Sure as fuck didn't help me in my job. The reports I write now are in no way similar to the Regents style or other book reports (basically education style reports as opposed to technical or informative). The only thing that helped me was 2 years of algebra and typing. Sure as fuck would've enjoyed a budget/business class.
Edit: being a male, I have no idea if this type of education is more suited to a specific gender's learning ability or whatnot, but school in general was A) A piece of fucking cake for me and
try this
I love your post. Thank you for your words.
It's like we are spirit brothers, because of how close my experience is to yours.
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I would suggest that perhaps the subject matter of many books taught in school is more geared toward females or females are simply more tolerant of boredom, because when I was in a fantasy and sci-fi class in high school, suddenly all these dudes that normally sucked, were learning.
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I wonder if the movement back into the cities and streetcar suburbs is also a large influence. Instead of watching TV behind the white picked fence, today's young people are heading out to modern dance halls, AKA clubs.
Smaller class size benefits everyone, regardless of the type of instruction.
I'm still hesitant to say the hands-on approach was the thing that made it successful, when it could have well just been the smaller class sizes (which leads to numerous benefits, perhaps one of them is the ability to include hands-on projects?).
I think the strongest argument is the lack of encouragement for the vast majority of males to succeed. I also favor a second strong argument, that females seem to be much more boredom tolerant or at least much more able to succeed despite boredom (although that is also far from proved and is purely based on my own experiences with female and male success rates when given highly boring tasks in school and work).
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And even when I was in highschool, from 1998 to 2002, I was watching these amazing teachers struggle against a system that seemingly wanted to ruin their classroom. My mom still works in the school system, and year after year, there is more tests, more teaching to the tests, more teaching how to take tests. Teachers are given less and less leeway. I'm terrified to think what my school experience would have been like these days. Are those amazing teachers still out there? Are they even allowed to make the exceptions they made for me that helped me thrive? I meet young boys not unlike how I used to be through teaching Martial Arts, and most of them seem to just want to drop out. It's enormously depressing.
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My wife volunteered in both my kids classrooms the past 2 years, and this is spot on. In fact, she ended up doing most of the grading
Funny you mention Calculus. Pre-Calc was the class that killed my interest in math; I, too, would ace every test, but the homework was so god damn boring I would fall asleep at my desk every time I tried to do it, and my teacher absolutely would not make any concessions on it, so most of the time it was turned in incomplete, if at all. I eventually dropped the class halfway through the year because the C was bringing my GPA down.
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My Calculus teacher was amazing. Seriously, the greatest teacher I have ever had, in any subject, ever. His goal was for every single student to get a 4 or a 5 on the AP test. He would spend any amount of time, no matter what, making sure each and every student not just could perform, but understood the material. He understood calculus so thoroughly he'd just keep coming at it from angle, after angle, after angle, until something would finally click with you and you understood it. Truly understood it. His calculus class actually carried me through 3 more calculus classes I took in college where the professors just expected me to regurgitate how to solve certain classes of problem.
Sci-fi or fantasy was pretty much "Fahrenheit 451". I think that was the only book I could find that was semi-palatable. And I could not read it.
If I had had harry potter or hunger games books growing up, oh my god I would've done so much better. But with my luck summer reading would've been "Twilight" and "50 shades of gray, abridged tween edition" and some other classics that have always been there which are shitty books in general.
The books were definitely female oriented in their messages it seemed.
I tried to get the teacher to approve an Arthur C. Clarke book my sophomore year so I could at least enjoy it (I think I was doing Childhood's End) and she said no I had probably already read it and needed to expand my interests beyond sci-fi. So I went from almost not giving a shit, to totally not giving a shit anymore.
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However, in high school, my pre-calc teacher pretty much ended my interest in maths and sciences just like @Houn's, until it was re-awoken in college.
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I guess the big question here, for me and for the "pre-adults", is: What's my Motivation?
I also want to know how it is that all these scholars have missed these obvious and common root causes of failure. Who the fuck are they studying, that they haven't learned of these common issues with the public education system?
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I'm still a huge reader, went through A Game of Thrones through Dance with Dragons not long ago. Read volumes 1 - 3 of The Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire by Gibbon. Started on Malazan Book of the Fallen.
What's weird that I've noticed is all my friends who used to be on ADD meds can't read. They literally can't. They cannot force themselves to concentrate that long. It's so bizarre. They had taken the meds long enough to get through school, and once they are off them they never learned how to cope with their own brain. So there goes reading.
Even those essays and summer reading were pointless. Aside from the rare book I read in high school, TKAM, ethan frome, and animal farm. 3 out of the at least 2 dozen books we were supposed to read.
No one will play You Don't Know Jack with me because I always win. Also, I love to shout out answers at Jeopardy, though I wouldn't say I'm good enough to actually be a contestant.
There is a fair amount of irony in the amount of academically rigorous work done with feminism and linguistics, and the implications and subtext of language, while simultaneously dismissing the negative connotations implied by a lot of feminist terminology because, "That's not the definition." Which isn't an excuse to lazily misinterpret things, but still makes for bad terminology.
--LeVar Burton
I never thought about that, but it is completely hilarious now that you point it out.