Masculinity

The Decline of Males

in clergy sex abuse scandal, education, Masculinity, Women in Church 4 Comments Tags: ,

Nicholas Kristof has an article in the New York Times (The Boys Have Fallen Behind) about the growing alienation of boys from education and about the consequent decline in their academic achievement. This decline is disguised by the fact that the people at the top of most professions are still male; but under them the great mass of males is sinking down the social scale. 

Women outnumber men in college 3:2, sometimes 2:1 in liberal arts colleges. The recession has hit men particularly hard. Obama, in part because it produces immediate results and in part because he wants to reward his supporters, has funneled stimulus money into salaries of the helping professions, such as teaching, rather than into construction, which has an almost completely male work force.  

Males are abandoning schools and are being driven out of the work force; but they had left the Church long ago. 

The revelations of sexual abuse in Europe have led to attacks on the Church as an all-male institution. But it is only odd corners of the Church that are all or even predominantly male. In Europe as in the United States, 80% of the employees of the Church are female. The congregations in both continents are predominantly female.  

In the hundreds of cases of sexual abuse I have read mothers sometimes courageously defend their children, but all too often mothers don’t want to hear the bad news: they ignored it, or punished their children for saying such things about a priest. I understand from psychiatrists who deal with father-daughter incest that the mother often knows or suspects what is going on, but does not want to confront for fear of destroying the family. 

 

I would therefore not place too much hope that the incidence of sexual abuse could be lessened by having more women in positions of authority in the Church. That might be a good idea for other reasons; but it might make the Church even less male-friendly and our society is already alienating males from its other institutions. Alienated males are fertile ground for crack-pot and dangerous political opportunists, as the history of Europe in the twentieth century demonstrates. 

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Father Absence and Failure in School

in education, Masculinity, Responsibility, Women in Church 4 Comments Tags: , ,

Patrick Welsh, who teaches in the Washington D.C, school system, has diagnosed the problem of poor academic achievement among black students: Making the Grade Isn’t about Race. It’s About Parents.

“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”

In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class — and was constantly distracting other students when he did — shot back: “It’s because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study.”

Another student angrily challenged me: “You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us.” When I did, not one hand went up.

Educators are worried that black children are doing poorly in school because of unspecified “racism” or low expectations. Welsh demurs: 

But focusing on a “racial achievement gap” is too simple; it’s a gap in familial support and involvement, too. Administrators focused solely on race are stigmatizing black students. At the same time, they are encouraging the easy excuse that the kids who are not excelling are victims, as well as the idea that once schools stop being racist and raise expectations, these low achievers will suddenly blossom. 

Fathers have to be present in a home for children to succeed in life; the absence of a father makes it very difficult for a child to succeed. A child growing up in a middle-class community in which almost all children have fathers at home will benefit from this environment, even if he lacks a father. But when whole neighborhoods do not have a father in any home, working, disciplining, guiding, the result is inevitable: academic failure, violence, and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. 

But what can a government do about this? Some policies hurt the family, but churches are really the only way that men can be taught their responsibilities to be responsible fathers and not simply biological males. 

And of course men, especially young men, especially black young men, stay away from church, which they regard as a feminine environment: for women and little children, not for men. 

But all the churches, at least the main-line churches, including the Catholic Church, worry about is how to make more space for women in church – when women are already the vast majority of the congregations.

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From Sitting Still for 6 Hours, St. Fidgeta Deliver Us

in education, Masculinity, schools No Comments Tags: , , ,

Boys have a hard time in school. Teachers like the way girls sit still in school and don’t fool around. Boys are much too fidgety. My son Charles tried out school for one day; he complained for a week that his legs hurt him from sitting all day in class. When the principal asked if he liked the school, he said it was OK, but he didn’t plan to make a career of it. We homeschooled him.

Someone has finally noticed that requiring active children, especially boys, to sit still in hard seats all day does not produce the best environment for learning. The New York Times reports that in a Minnesota classroom

Unlike children almost everywhere, those in Ms. Brown’s class do not have to sit and be still. Quite the contrary, they may stand and fidget all class long if they want.

And they do.

On one recent morning, while 11-year-old Nick Raboin had his eye on his math problems, Ms. Brown was noticing that he preferred to shift his weight from one foot to the other as he figured out his fractions. She also knew that his classmate Roxy Cotter liked to stand more than sit. And Brett Leick is inclined to lean on a high stool and swing his right foot under a desk that is near chest level. Helps with concentration, he and Ms. Brown say.

On one recent morning, while 11-year-old Nick Raboin had his eye on his math problems, Ms. Brown was noticing that he preferred to shift his weight from one foot to the other as he figured out his fractions. She also knew that his classmate Roxy Cotter liked to stand more than sit. And Brett Leick is inclined to lean on a high stool and swing his right foot under a desk that is near chest level. Helps with concentration, he and Ms. Brown say.

The children in Ms. Brown’s class, and in some others at Marine Elementary School and additional schools nearby, are using a type of adjustable-height school desk, allowing pupils to stand while they work, that Ms. Brown designed with the help of a local ergonomic furniture company two years ago.

snip

Ms. Brown says she got the idea for the stand-up desks after 20 years of teaching in which she watched children struggle to contain themselves at small hard desks.

Another teacher has noticed it helps both students and teachers:

I’ve never seen students with their heads down, ever. It helps with being awake, if they can stand, it seems. And for me as a teacher, I can stand at their level to help them. I’m not bent over. I can’t think of one reason why a classroom teacher wouldn’t want these.”

One key to educating boys is to combine learning and physical activity. Sports helps with the  activity, but not with the learning. We need a peripatetic mode of education.

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Huck Finn in Québec

in Canada, Masculinity, Uncategorized 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

As I noted in my book The Church Impotent, the Christian churches and the schools are both female oriented, and boys, especially blue-collar boys, do not like to go to them.

In Quebec, the Montréal Gazette reports

It is mainly boys who drop out and in Quebec, they are mostly French-speaking. Before coming to power in 2003, the Liberal government promised to improve this grim situation, but in fact the dropout rate in the province has gotten worse, not better.

In 2000, 26 per cent of students in public secondary schools left without graduating. By 2008, that rate rose to 29 per cent. Among Quebec’s boys, the figure is 35 per cent. In poor neighbourhoods the proportion reaches dizzying heights: Six per cent of Westmount students drop out; in neighbouring Point St. Charles, the rate is six times as high.

This situation, at least in schools, is not irremediable.

At the same time that Quebec’s dropout rate is climbing, Ontario’s has been falling. Today, for every 100 Ontario dropouts, Quebec has 137.

and

Finland’s dropout rate is a mere four per cent.

The problems of boys in inner-city American schools are not just racial, and the solutions may be out there – if anyone were interested.

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Who Would Jesus Smack Down?

in Masculinity, Women in Church No Comments Tags: , ,

The NYT article on the Calvinist and ultra-masculine Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church in Seattle is not too bad. Driscoll, by rejecting the prissiness of much of evangelical America, has some success in reaching rough young men with the gospel.

 

The theological analysis in the article uses stereotypes. Calvinists believe in total depravity – but so do Catholics. Calvin did not think that human nature was totally corrupt – because insofar as it is created by God, it is still good. Calvin knew his theology well enough not to be a Manichean. What Calvin thought was that all human powers, including reason, had been corrupted by sin, and Catholics believe that the will was weakened and the intellect was darkened by original sin.

 

Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and the role of the human will is also misunderstood. In Jonathan Edward’s excellent explanation, Calvin (along with Thomists) thought that God was the cause of every human action – including sin, insofar as it was an action and had being. Evil is the deprivation of being, and does not exist, and is therefore not caused by God. This analysis is a necessary corollary of the belief that God is the maker of heaven and earth, of everything, including, in a sense, sinful actions, and therefore of salvation and damnation.

 

Edwards identified the dissenters from this as Arminians and behind them the Jesuits, who both believed in the freedom of indifference. Edwards does not go further back to Occam and Scotus, but I think that their nominalism and voluntarism is the original Western source of the freedom of indifference.

 

During the controversy De Auxiliis, the Jesuits accused the Dominicans of Calvinism, and the Dominicans accused the Jesuits of Pelegianism. The pope resolved the matter by telling them both to stop accusing each other of heresy

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Kok-Boru or the Young Male Mind of Kyrgystan

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I think this is for real, unless Sascha Baron Cohen has a new persona.   TAZ interviewed two Kok-Boru players in Kyrgyzstan. The sport was, for reasons that will become clear, outlawed when the country was part of the Soviet Union. My translation:   

TAZ: Herr Taigashkaeb, what goes on in Kok-Boru?

Ruslan Taigashkaeb: Two teams with four players mounted on houses ride against each other. The goal is to bring a dead sheep over the goal line of the opposing team.

 

 

Why do you have to use a dead sheep?

Taigashkaeb: Every foreigner asks me that. But the animal is killed before the game. 

However you could use a ball.

Taigashkaeb: It’s a tradition, that the winning team gets the animal to eat it. What would the players do with a ball? 

Do the horses suffer under the violence of the game?

Taigashkaeb: During the contest the horses don’t think of what they are doing. But after their team has won, they feel they are part of the team.  

When Europeans observe the game, they have pity on the animals and don’t see the appeal. >Taigashkaeb: The game has an unbelievable tradition. When did football start? Kok-Boru goes back a thousand years. All our ancestors, who for centuries lived as nomads in the mountains, played it. When Kyrgyzstan belonged to the Soviet Union, Moscow banned Kok-Boru. However we played the game secretly in the villages. 

Has the national sport changed?

Taigashkaeb: Yes. Previously a game could last a week long and whole villages joined in. The games were hard, and many times people lost their lives. For ten years we have had good rules. A game lasts three times twenty minutes with ten minute pauses. And its become safer. 

What does “safer” mean?

Taigashkaeb: Previously there were many cases of death, because everything was allowed to get to the sheep. Even spectators lost their lies. Today the rules are stricter, and you may not deliberately injure an opponent. 

Urmat Musaev: We wear a uniform, the arms and legs protected from blows and kicks, and a mask for the face. I have no fear.

 

You have a scar on your neck and weals  on your arms.

Musaev: Yes, there are things that happen in the enthusiasm of the contest. The horses often injure us without noticing it. And I first notice it when the game is over.

 

Taigashkaeb: It happens that a player breaks an arm or leg. Bur we have medics at the edge of the playing field. 

And, as you may have suspected, there is a Borat connection: 

Does Kyrgyzstan have the best Kok-Boru players?  Musaev:  Last year I played with a national team at a tourney in Astana. Kazakhstan won. 

Taigashkaeb: Next year we’ll get the cup back. About Kazakhstan it’s a question of prestige.

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