The real boy crisis

The Washington Post touts a new study that purports to debunk the notion that a “boy crisis” exists in the U.S. According to the Post’s account of the study, over the past three decades boys’ test scores are “mostly up” (whatever that means) and more boys are getting to college and getting bachelor’s degrees. The study claims, in the Post’s words, that “much of the pessimism about young males derives from inadequate research sloppy analysis and discomfort with the fact that although the average boy is doing better, the average girl has gotten ahead of him.”

I lack the expertise to weigh in on this issue except to say that if the scores of girls were increasing but not as fast as the scores of boys, I doubt that the Post and the educational think tanks would take so sanguine a view. Certainly, when the topic is income disparity, it is no answer to tell a liberal that all incomes have been rising.

Meanwhile my daughter reports from summer camp that her nine year-old bad boys are as unruly and obnoxious as she expected, but that they cry when subjected to discipline. That’s what I call a boy crisis.

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