On this week’s Bespoke Parenting Hour, host Julie Gunlock talks to writer and education advocate Erika Sanzi, who serves as the chief editor at Project Forever Free–an online platform for education activists. Julie and Erika (both moms of three school-aged boys) talk about what Erika calls “the boy crisis in American schools” and the very grim statistics that show boys are falling behind both in school and life.
In addition, they discuss why it’s become acceptable (even fashionable) in American culture to disparage boys and men and why terms like “the future is female ” and “girls rule” creates an unhelpful (and weird!) “us against them” way of thinking that harms both sexes and creates unnecessary hostility. Julie and Erika also discuss what Erika says is the “narrative that boys are inherently bad or broken” and the media-driven generalizations about boys and men, which suggest they are “unworthy, expendable and deserving of scorn … just for being male.” Tune in!
Transcript
Julie Gunlock:
Hey everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock your host for the 10th episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families themselves and most importantly, their kids. So on the show today, I’m really excited to have Erika Sanzi joining me. Like me, Erika is the mom of three boys. She lives in Rhode Island and she spent a decade as an educator and she had kids and spent seven years as a stay at home mom. She also served as an elected school committee member. And she now writes about education and she interviews education stakeholders at Project Forever Free, where she is an editor. And she tries to keep up with her blog, Good School Hunting. I really urge all of you to find Erika’s writing and her interviews, her wide interviews which are so informative.
The greatest thing, there’s so many great things about you, Erika, but one of the greatest things is just Erika interviews everybody, everybody. And she doesn’t just interview people who she agrees with or who agree with her. She’s heterodox. She looks for all sorts of opinions. She really tries to think these things out thoroughly and shares that with her audience. So she is just a tremendous I would say just fountain of information I have found. So I’ve learned so much from Erika. So I’m thrilled to have you on today, Erika.
Erika Sanzi:
I’m so happy to be here, Julie. Thank you for having me. And I appreciate all those very kind things that you said about me, which I was taking notes so that I can share with my family later today and let them know that some people actually say nice things about me.
Julie:
Well, but I have nothing but nice things to say about you. It was funny before Erika and I were scheduling this and we were wondering if either one of us will get an interruption during this podcast. And as I said at the beginning of the interview, if there is an interruption, like if a kid comes in screaming that they want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or if a dog starts barking, we’re not going to stop the podcast and deal with things, we’re just going to roll with it. So here’s good luck to us both here, Erika as we try to get through this.
So, the reason I wanted you to come on today is I think one of the issues that I think you are so passionate about and have spent a lot of time writing about is the issue of boys and how they’re faring in America’s educational system. And I’ll just bottom line this for everyone they’re not doing so well. So you spend a lot of time talking about that. And I do want to get to that. That is the point of our podcast today. But before we get into that, I want to talk about what your situation is. You’ve got three boys at home, but what is the situation? Are they at home? Is it hybrid? What schools? Are they in private, charter, public? What’s your situation?
Erika:
So, I have three sons, sixth grade, eighth grade and 10th grade. And all of them are in a hybrid situation right now. So the oldest goes to parochial high school and they do every other day. So he gets three days, one week and two days the next but then they live stream whatever’s happening in school for the kids that are home. So the good thing about the way they’re doing it is you get the same content and instruction whether you are at home or in the classroom.
And that is much better than what is happening for my middle school children who they’re in the district and the district has it set up that Monday is distance learning for everybody. And then… My gosh, hold on. I got to let the dogs out already.
Julie:
No worries.
Erika:
Monday is distance learning for everybody. And then you either go Tuesdays and Thursdays or Wednesdays and Fridays. But on the days that you don’t go in, you have what’s called independent tasks. So you have no interaction and no instruction those two days. I think they go into Google Classroom, your assignments are there and you are expected to just complete your assignments. So that’s been a big disappointment in the sense that even though they’ll say we expect the independent task days to move kids forward in the content, the reality is my middle schoolers are probably going to get half as much content as my oldest simply because they’re only getting instruction two days a week.
And another important point is that I have received an email in the past week from the superintendent, from two teachers, not just to me but they wrote them to all of their students. And then I watched a video from the high school principal all saying that the turn-in rates of the work are really, really concerning them. So what they’re seeing is that on these independent task days, large numbers, they did not give a percentage. They didn’t give any breakdown other than we are seeing a lot of kids not doing their work. And it was a plea for parents to encourage their kids to complete their work and turn it in. And while I’m not personally struggling with that with my own kids at the moment, I am incredibly concerned that it’s happening though not surprised when you’re asking kids to essentially work independently on their own with no interaction two days a week.
Julie:
Right. Yeah. It’s tough. And it’s funny. You said your oldest was in a parochial school, is that correct?
Erika: Yes. So just a little bit of background so people know. I’m not just a heterodox in my political views but also in the way that I pick schools. Because last year for example, I had one in a charter, one in the district and one in this parochial high school. All of my kids went to charter school, the same charter school. It’s a school that actually serves two suburban and two urban districts. So it’s what they call it the diverse by design school. So my oldest was in our local elementary school, which was the quote unquote top elementary school. And I can literally hear recess from my house.
Julie:
That’s great.
Erika:
But I just wasn’t loving it. And I just didn’t really feel that satisfied with it. And he was talking a lot about how he didn’t feel he was really learning anything. And I should say by the way that that school has really dramatically improved in recent years. But anyway. So they all went to the charter school through fifth grade, then they’ve all gone to my district middle school through eighth grade. My oldest is at this parochial high school. And if things go as planned, my middle one will also go to that same high school next year.
Julie:
Well, that’s similar to me. And I’ve mentioned this before on the show but I like to say I’m doing this grand experiment because my oldest is being homeschooled, fully homeschooled by me. He’s on lunch break right now. And then my middle is in a Catholic school, but it’s totally online. And then my youngest is in the public school, which I don’t have… And I will say that he’s finishing up fifth grade, so he’s finishing up elementary school and he was very, very… He had tons of anxiety about leaving it.
If anybody follows me on Twitter, you know that I’ve had a lot of problems with my local school district. And I think they’re dishonest. They’re completely dishonest with parents. They’re keeping schools completely shut down. We have no hybrid options in this district. And we have a huge number of very poor and English language learning kids and special needs kids that have been completely abandoned because it’s not like they’re bringing back those small number of kids who are English learning language or special needs, they’re not bringing back those kids at all either. So it’s just a complete and total shutdown.
Erika:
So, you’re in one of those cities, one of those districts where literally no one’s been into schools since March.
Julie:
Well, my children have not entered a school building since March. It’s last spring. And it’s completely insane and they completely ignore. I mean, you’ve got to talk to Fauci at this point, mister Mask, mister shutdown saying, “Okay. But schools should be exempt from a little bit of this.” I felt he keeps saying like, “Hey, look, it doesn’t look like schools are the real problems in terms of transmission.” I mean, you literally have the most cautious man in America and God bless him. I’m not one of these people who hates doctor Fauci. I think I have mixed feelings. I don’t agree with everything he says but when you have doctor Fauci even saying like [inaudible 00:09:40] and you have New York city okay with governor de Blasio that’s opening the schools and Alexandria city doesn’t, it’s insanity.
So that’s why I pulled my oldest son out. And that’s why I pulled my middle son, because I feel like you get to a certain grade… I feel sixth grade is really important. I think fifth grade math is important. And for instance, my son who’s in fifth grade, who’s still in the public school. I will say like an exception, the elementary school he’s in, the teachers are trying really hard. And I think it’s not as bad. It’s the upper grades that are getting really bad. This is only my opinion in my local town. But I hired him a math tutor because he was really falling behind in math. So anyway.
But the point is like, no. No child in this town has been in a school since March and it’s complete insanity. And so I have a lot of problems but again I think as a parent what you try to do in these situation is figure out… You also don’t want your child to have tremendous anxiety. And I think the shutdowns coupled with, at least for my youngest, the shutdown coupled with the idea of going to a whole new school was just really hard for him. So we kept him in the public school. So again, as I’ve said, I’m doing this grand experiment because I literally am doing homeschooling, private school and public school all in the same year. So very similar to you.
And I guess that also makes me heterodox in terms of like you say, in terms of education, which is, I like that, I like that title. So, your situation, we can’t say… Go on.
Erika:
No, I was just going to say that part of the reason is because I don’t have an allegiance to any particular school model or any particular version of school governance. I don’t play on any of these teams where I think one is better than the other. I just think that common sense tells me that children need different things and that the right fit… I mean we see within families often that the school that’s the best fit for one child is not the best fit another child. And that’s the children coming from the same house. So yeah.
And part of what makes these education conversations incredibly frustrating and honestly they get boring after a while is because the tribes that only cheer lead for one school, they’re all wrong. Because the only thing that makes sense is to be agnostic about school models and then want the best for every child whether it’s my own children that I’m talking about or any other mother out there or father, I should say, because I’m saying to myself, I just want every kid to be in a school that’s the best fit for them and where they have the best chance of to quote a good friend of mine, Deral Bradford, we’ve talked about and of themselves.
And that’s how I think of it, right? I want kids in a place where they have the best chance of becoming the best version of themselves. And if it’s a massive comprehensive public high school, that’s great. And if it’s a really small specialized school, that’s great. And if it’s public or if it’s private, I don’t care.
Julie:
Well, I start off this program, every time I start off this program, I say that this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families themselves and most importantly, their kids. It’s a little tagline I say it at the beginning of every single… And that’s the point of bespoke. It’s tailor made. Bespoke clothing is tailor made. So that is such a great, I’m so glad to hear you say it because it fits in perfectly with my podcast. Thank you very much. But it’s the way I also view things. It’s funny that you say because sometimes I do find myself being a little bit on a team, but what I really want is choice. And I really, really want what’s best for every child.
And what this year has taught me, it’s exactly what you say about you can have… My husband and I joke that we can’t believe our three boys or brothers. They’re so different. They are so different. And they share a lot of things in common but they’re very different personalities. And it’s interesting how the homeschooling has really been good for my oldest son but I don’t think it would work out for the other. So anyway. So I’m living what you’re saying and it’s just great to hear. I think one thing is that we’re lucky that we have choices.
Erika:
Absolutely.
Julie:
And we can make those choices on our own. But we know that many people can’t. And so one of the things that you’ve written about a lot is the condition of… And I say this because I do think a little bit of this, why my son was not doing well in the public school system is because he was a boy. Okay? And I’m not going to say, “It was a sexist system.” Or something like that. It wasn’t a system that was really designed for him. Okay? And the system that I set up at home with him and me being his teacher has been really a miracle. It’s amazing to me how much he has thrived. He has gotten through the curriculum so quickly. I’ve had to buy parts of the next year’s curriculum because he has gone through this so fast and he enjoys it so much and he’s done so well.
I could do five, 15 podcasts on how my son has changed over the last three months. But a lot of people don’t have the opportunities that I have to make that decision. Luckily I work at home. I have a flexible job, so I can wedge this in. It’s not easy but I can wedge this in. So I want to talk to you a little bit about your work on the condition of boys in the public schools. I mean, I shouldn’t say the public schools. I don’t know if your writing is just centered on public scores or if the data itself is centered just on public schools. But from what I’ve read, and I’ve done much less work on this, I’ve done almost no work on this but I’ve read everything you’ve done, they’re not doing well. Can you give us an overview of what that situation is?
Erika:
Yeah. So the reason that I’ve done so much work on this and I’m so interested in it, it’s easy I think to say, “Well, she’s a mom of three boys. And so she’s worried about her own kids.” It’s not really that because I’m not particularly worried…. Even though I do have concerns about large issues in the larger society and culture around what I consider to be almost a vilification of being male. I fell into this because a lot of my work is about looking at student outcomes. Because again, student outcomes drive me. It drives why I believe so much in parent choice and parents having options.
But what I discovered was we now live in a time where we are almost obsessed about talking about disparities and equity. But there is a glaring and deliberate decision that has been made somewhere somehow to ignore one of the most consistent and glaring disparities, which is to say, “You will read all the time about the disparities around race and they are consistent and they are very big, particularly around math and reading outcomes.” And particularly around discipline statistics like suspension. You will also always notice that they will talk about disparities around income. So they’ll compare children from low-income households to children who are not from low-income households. And again, the disparity is consistent and it is very big.
Sometimes they’ll talk about disparities between students with disabilities and students who don’t have disabilities. And those are massive. But they don’t in almost every case, they do not mention the disparities between boys and girls. And that disparity is equally important, equally massive and equally consistent. So for some, it’s almost like you know that the crowd wants to hear about racial disparities, income disparities, and special education disparities, but they don’t want to hear about the gender disparity because it doesn’t point in the direction that they want it to point in that they lie and claim it points in, or that they’ve been conditioned to think it must point in.
Julie:
Well, you wrote a great piece about this and I just want to read a little excerpt because it gives a little bit of a history. Because I truly think some people don’t even know about this.
Erika:
I think most people don’t know about this.
Julie:
Right. Most people don’t. So you said, this is from your piece. It says, “There was a time decades ago when girls trailed boys in math and science and we as a nation deemed it to be unacceptable starting in the 1970s.” And I have to say, just I’m stopping right there because when you wrote starting in the 1970s, I didn’t even realize it went back that far but you wrote, starting in the 1970s, initiatives and organizations sprung up all over the place to help girls catch up. And they did. But as girls began improving in math and science, boys were on a decline that people either ignored or worse scoffed as it being the just desserts for those who had unfairly benefited from the patriarchy.
So, I found that interesting because again, I didn’t know it went back that far. But as you say, you do have some people… You’re talking about how they’re not willing to listen to the disparities between boys and girls. And part of it is what you just wrote. Well, that’s what you get, right? For so many years,
Erika:
100%. 100%. Because it used to be that we talked about equality, right? And so people were fighting hard because they wanted girls and women to have the same rights and same opportunities. But somewhere along the line, it shifted because equality is no longer the goal. Because what we’re seeing instead is that cheerleading of female ascendancy and the cheerleading of decline among their brothers. Now, one really important point about this by the way is that when I speak to people about this, the reason that they feel so strongly about this being a crisis, they’ll call it the boy crisis is because boys are trailing their sisters significantly across every single demographic. So it is true for example, that black boys are doing far worse than white boys, generally speaking.
It is also true however that within every category, the sisters are leaving their brothers in the dust. And so usually what’ll happen is they’ll say, “We have a crisis across the board.” And then they’ll say, so it could be, it’s like a three alarm fire. And then they’ll talk about how. And then when you look at black boys, it’s a five alarm fire. But we can’t only talk about this based on income level and race because it cuts across every single demographic. Which means by the way, that’s kids growing up in the same house, attending the same schools with the same curriculum and the same teachers and having vastly different outcomes.
Julie:
It’s interesting. I see little girls with a t-shirt that says, “The future is female.” I see women, women, grown women walking around, the future is female. And I’m like, okay, how am I supposed to react to that as the mom of a boy? Right? And how are boys supposed to react to that? The future shouldn’t be any gender or any sex. The future is the future. And that’s really insulting when you suggest one sex over another is going to rule. That’s weird. I don’t understand. I mean, I get it’s a flip. I don’t think most people really mean down with men. But I find it gross. And I don’t like the acceptance of that thinking.
Erika:
It is gross. I mean, people can keep saying, “Please lighten up. It’s just a joke.” Okay. Really? Is it just a joke. Would you be okay with all the boys in school wearing t-shirts that said the future is male?
Julie:
Yeah. Of course.
Erika:
It is just a joke.
Julie:
It’s always that certain jokes are okay.
Erika:
And it doesn’t land on the ears of young boys in a way that makes any sense because…
Julie:
I know. Yeah.
Erika:
For my son, he’s like the principal of their schools has always been a woman. And then the woman who operated on him was… I mean, I’m sorry, the doctor who operated on him was a woman. So his view of the world being born, I’m thinking of my youngest in 2008, he sees women doing all of these things that are having achieved great things and being in all these positions of leadership and making all these important decisions. My kids have been pretty well shielded from a lot of this. I don’t live in a place where schools have gone bananas yet with this stuff. They’re not…
Julie:
Don’t move here.
Erika:
No. So I mean, have my children always believed that the way the world is set up is just that only boys get in trouble in school? Yes. That’s a day thing. But they haven’t yet been subjected to where someone is literally telling them ugly things about themselves for being male. And I know that there are a lot of kids out there that are hearing those messages. But the future is female. My youngest did come across that saying recently in the past month. And he literally went, “What?” Because to him, he was thinking, “What on earth are you saying?” And I’m trying to imagine. I mean, that message.
Erika:
And the thing I don’t understand, and I would like to better understand is when I hear mothers of little boys talking like that, saying those things, holding up those signs, wearing those t-shirts. And I’m thinking to myself, I don’t understand what message you’re trying to send. You probably know the quote and it’s like… Again, if it’s about equality, it’s not about nine men on the Supreme court. Okay. Now we need nine women on the Supreme court. To me, it’s about having a mix. The whole point was for there to be a mix. So if having nine men was wrong, why in the world would your goal be to shift the pendulum so far that now you have all women. To me, all you’re doing is creating a different but parallel problem.
Julie:
Let’s not forget though. There’s also a push to really feminize boys and to make them ashamed of very natural boyish behavior. And whether that’s an inability to sit still or be super beautiful in the classroom or rough and tumble play. I am so glad that the years are behind me of going to the playground. And you’ve got the mom who refuses to allow her child to turn a stick into a sword or a stick into a gun or play whatever aggressive game or the mom who flips out if there’s any touch or wrestling or for God’s sake a tackle in a field of grass. Right?
Julie Gunlock:
Because I will tell you, I grew up in a rural area in Illinois, farm country, tough people. And I have now raised children in an area of hovering helicopter parents, nervous parents who a lot of the women would agree with the future is female. So I have really struggled as the opposite of that. And my boys have all always and they’re three boys. And I think that’s probably part of it just, there’s always been rough and tumble. There’s always been aggressive game playing. Every night after dinner, my kids go out, we call it the non-poop part of the yard.
We have a dog. We actually have a very big yard and half of it is fenced off. And half of it is not fenced off. And so they go into the non-fenced off portion where the dog is not allowed and they play tackle games. They basically chase each other and tackle each other. And it’s great fun for them. They come in, they’re sweating. But if they ever tried to play that on the playground years ago, it would have been very difficult for me. I would have been talked to, I’m sure someone would have… Not every mom is like that but I struggled with that.
Erika:
You and I would have been good pals.
Julie:
Yes. Exactly.
Erika:
And part of it is that that when it’s multiple boys, that chaos and physicality grows exponentially as you add more to the mix. And so if there’s one thing that mom’s of boys of the generation older than me have always, I mean, they’ll still tell me now. One mom, I grew up with her kids. She had two sets of twins, so four boys. And she talks about how to this day, she’s like, “They can’t even walk by each other without poking, punching, elbowing.” So the way that one mom put it, she’s a mom in Tennessee and she has three sons. And she said that in some ways, it’s like the feeling is that the school is sending a message without meaning to, that this place is not for you, to young boys.
And it’s partly because typical developmentally appropriate boy behavior is considered a problem as soon as they start school. So they get no affirmation because they’re scolded for what is just normal fidgeting and movement and wanting to touch things. But also they’re not allowed that adventurous play that used to be allowed and that you’re describing. And then as they get older, it just becomes now the books are uninteresting to them and now they’re expected to read. They’re like, “How many books can I read about a girl and all her emotional problems.” And it’s really a fair question.
Julie:
I’m laughing but my God. I mean, some of the books that are assigned today are just…
Erika:
It’s so true too. All we hear about is we want kids to be able to relate to the books. We want the books to be culturally relevant. And then in the next breath, you’re asking adolescent males to read things that are so incredibly uninteresting to them and not just read one or two, because I have no… Of course you need to read something that’s not interesting to you and that’s hard for you, deal with it. But after a while, it is a little bit like, “Okay, really? How many emotional journeys of females did they have to go on?”
Julie:
Right. Right. Right.
Erika:
As required by…
Julie:
And also, it is frustrating too because there is literature, young adult literature that would be interesting to all kids. You don’t have to choose these like very…
Erika:
Of course. Easily.
Julie:
Like Lassie. Lassie. I’m just going through the books that right now my kids are reading. Or Robin Hood. I mean, the love story in Robin Hood. I mean, even my son, he’ll kill me for saying this publicly but he’s 13. And he got to the end and he was crying. Because it’s such a lovely story but it’s also adventurous. So there’s something for both groups. And I actually, I do have a follow-up question because I got an interesting tweet. Michele Munz, who is, let me just look at her Twitter bio here. She’s a reporter for the St. Louis. She’s health reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And on Twitter, you responded to this. I had put on that I’m going to be talking to Erika today about boys and schools and I had linked to your piece.
And she wrote question, what does it mean when you say boys do not need to quote be more like girls? And then I said, “Great question. I’ll ask her.” And she followed up. As the mom of three girls, I would like to know this statement comes from a cultural assumption of how girls are supposed to be, which is not what you said. But I wonder if you have a response to that. First of all, what does it mean that boys do not need to be more like girls? But I think we’ve already covered that.
Erika:
It’s obviously based on averages and generalizations. So there are always going to be exceptions to the rule. But generally speaking, girls are more verbal and reading and writing comes more easily to them, especially at a very young age. So it is usually much easier for girls at the age of kindergarten to come in, sit still, do as they’re told and achieve academically learning in that way. So for example, one of the ways that you get boys much more engaged in school is if they can move around, if they can be hands-on, if there is some competition built in. And it doesn’t have to be competition with one another, it can be competition with oneself but some competition. And it’s not to say that girls don’t also care about competition. It’s not to say that girls don’t also like to move around. The difference is that the level of need for that and the impact it has on their academic outcomes.
So that’s one of them. But I can add a lot more. I mean, there are a lot of different reasons. For example, I’ll give you a personal anecdote example. Girls and women, generally speaking often like to rehash things and talk things out and then keep talking about it. And then, “My God, can you believe this?” And then talk about it again. Right? So we like to do what’s called problem talk. We want to like, the scandal of I don’t know. The kid who quit the baseball team the night of the championship, right? We want to talk about it from every single angle.
And boys don’t really like problem talk for the most part. Because they don’t see a point in it. So when we try to force, and this is what I was talking about, about making boys more like girls, there’s pressure on boys lots of times, we want you to talk more about your feelings. We want you to talk more about what happened. And it’s not that they don’t want to do it because they’re emotionally stunted, they don’t want to do it because they don’t see the point.
Julie:
Right. Right.
Erika:
And so that is an example. And this happens in marriages all the time. Right? We’re like the wife just wants to vent. And the husband is like, “Well, is there a problem to solve here? Because if you don’t want me to be your solution, what’s the point of that?”
Julie:
Right. What’s the point of talking? Yes. Exactly. Or when your husband goes directly to the solution without wanting to talk a little bit about what the problem is.
Erika:
Well, no, like I can remember years ago, my husband would say, “Well, if you just want me to sit here, like a rock and serve absolutely no purpose, just let me know.” But he couldn’t see the point in me just wanting to get it out. And my oldest son recently, I was like, “I can’t believe you don’t want to talk about this.” And he was like, “Mom, there’s nothing to talk about. It happened. It’s over.” He had no interest. And basically what I was essentially doing< I was asking him to gossip. And generally speaking, right? Generally speaking, males just don’t get as much out of that. So if you’re going to pressure…
You want them to sit still, you want them to love this book. You want to convince them that they don’t need to be competitive. You want to try to like… For example, they often like things that involve risk. I don’t mean risk like going to the top of a skyscraper and dangling themselves down. But calculated risk. Lenore Skenazy talks about this a lot. And so we take the risk away and we take the competition away and we push them to talk more about things that they don’t see any point in talking about. We question why they won’t cry more in public. And it becomes like all of these pressures that do seem like an attempt… It almost seems like what the culture is saying, we’ve decided that boys are just defective girls.
Julie:
We’ve decided that the future is female is what we’ve decided is essentially what a lot…
Erika:
Yeah. And if you could just be more… You’d be less toxic if you could just be more like a girl. And this is a spectrum obviously. I think back to… I went to school with some girls that were incredibly competitive. They also happened to be star athletes. And they were total tomboys, right? So they wouldn’t have fit into a lot of these categories except for the fact that they didn’t have the same struggles academically because they were more like that. And for a lot of kids, it is literally like, school does not feel like a place. It’s almost like they’re the square peg trying to fit into the round hole when they go to school, starting in kindergarten. And I mean, I’ve talked to so many educators that have been working in education for decades, and they will say this till they’re blue in the face. I mean, they watched it happening before their eyes? And it’s only gotten worse.
Julie Gunlock:
No. But I was going to say, I think this question, what does it mean when you say boys do not need to be more like girls? And then she says, this is some cultural assumption of how girls are supposed to be, is all part of this current trend of pretending that there’s no differences between boys and girls.
Erika:
Correct. And right. And I’m talking about an innate. We’re talking about innateness. And we’re talking about innate differences that are the norm admitting of course that there are exceptions.
Julie:
Yes. Of course there are exceptions but I don’t think that some people are willing to even admit any difference. It’s insulting to even have the conversation is what I’m saying. That some people I think would… Anytime you say something like boys are more wiggly and boys want to more competition or tend to be more competitive or whatever, boys talk shoulder to shoulder, not face to face. Girls talk face to face, boys much rather be on a field and look… And I have three boys. I grew up with sisters, I get it. I’m basing this on my own experience. That’s an anecdote. That’s not necessarily evidence but I suspect most people can see that boys and girls are different.
But I do think that there is a part, there are people in this country who just find even the concept of that to be outrageous. And in some cases, you shouldn’t say that. And that I think is the root of some of what the problem is here. And I think that you have an education system that feels nervous about recognizing those differences.
Erika:
But that same education system is okay with diagnoses of ADD that are so much greater for boys than girls and with medicating. I mean, when you talk about the… If you look at the number and I’d have to pull it up because I don’t have it off the top of my head. but I want to say it’s five times but I’m not positive. The boys, we’re okay. I mean, we’re talking about equality and fairness and justice and then we’re okay that five times more boys than girls are being put on medication.
Julie:
Well, it’s just not just that, these are your numbers. These are your numbers from your articles. If you’re going to pretend that there’s no differences between boys and girls, then explain this. Boys are more than twice as like, and again, this is your writing, more than twice as likely to get suspended from school and almost three times as likely to get expelled. Boys represent two thirds of the special education population. Almost 80% of these boys are Black and Hispanic. 60% of high school dropouts are male. 93% of prison inmates are male. 68% of them do not have high school diplomas. 85% of juvenile offenders are functionally illiterate, 70% of inmates in American’s prisons, which again are mostly male cannot read above the fourth-grade level.
So I mean, if you’re going to tell me that there’s no differences but in terms of what boys are going through, the high rates of incarceration, the high rates of illiteracy, the high rates of ADD, the high rates of ADHD, the high rates of detention in that as we say the pipeline from school to jail, I mean, we can’t deny that there’s something going on. And so I agree with you. I think it’s interesting how schools are willing to see these differences when it comes to things like medicating kids but they’re ignoring truly, I mean the suffering of boys in the system.
Erika:
Right. I mean, it’s going to have to reach a critical mass where… I mean, I read a piece the other day and the premise, what was clear to me is that they had decided that they had reached their conclusions first and then they were going to figure out a way to make it work for the finding evidence. And it was all about how much bias girls face in school. And they came up with dress code as the reason that schools are biased against girls. And it is true. When it comes to dress code and how we treat students around dress code and infractions, et cetera, there is no question that it becomes a much bigger problem for girls for all sorts of reasons. One of which being that you’re measuring somebody’s skirt based on their fingertips but they’re tall, they have long…
So that’s true. But I was like, but I don’t know how you would ignore expulsions and suspensions. And I mean, reading scores since the 1940s, we’ve seen these large gaps between girls and boys in reading and writing. And it’s not like it’s getting better, it’s getting worse. I mean, if you even look at, I mean, just the number of students taking AP classes and in honors classes and earning advanced degrees. I mean, females earn more associate’s bachelor’s master’s and doctorate. They serve in much larger numbers in student government. Parents of boys and girls will go to these awards nights and they’ll joke and say, “We’re going to the girls awards night again.” Because it’s like the girls are sweeping the awards. Now I haven’t had that experience personally. So again this is like looking at data and testimony from actual parents, many of whom have daughters and sons. So I can totally understand.
Julie:
You had sent me this article, this new report from the Brookings Institute. You have a lot of liberals out there saying, “Got to worry about the girls, got to continue to worry about the girls.” But this report said that, and this is from their report. They said that liberal say they’re more concerned about girls in general but then when you ask them about their own sons, they’re worried about their sons. So I do find it interesting privately how they might admit there’s a problem publicly. They might say, “We still got to worry about girls.”
Erika:
Right. So the self-described conservatives say that they’re more worried about boys and society. And when asked about their own family, they said they’re more concerned about their sons. Self-described liberals say that they’re more concerned about girls in the larger society, but in their own family, they’re more concerned about their sons. And that to me is an absolute in-group, out-group phenomenon, right?
Julie:
Yeah.
Erika:
Maybe it’s my college professors, maybe it’s what’s my parents told me, maybe it’s everything I read now, maybe it’s my in-group but I have to be more worried about girls in the larger society because we live in a patriarchy and it has to be this way. But then they of course look at their own children who they love more than anything in the world. And when they’re being honest about who they’re most concerned about it is disproportionately their sons.
And the thing I don’t understand about this either is as cliche as it is that we say the rising tide lifts all boats, but it is really true in this case. No one is calling to slow down the ascendancy of girls. Nobody is not celebrating the ascendancy of girls. All we’re saying is that there is no reason to believe that in order for girls to continue on that ascendancy, that boys have to be on a decline and in free fall.
Julie:
But I would also say they are left out. Boys are left out. I wanted to get my son involved in, I’m embarrassed to admit this because it’s so trendy for everyone to get their kids involved in coding but I thought he would enjoy it because he loves computers and he likes video games. So I thought, let me try to make this more constructive. And all I could find were girl code groups, girl coding groups, girl coding classes. It was impossible. I finally found some group that has just general classes, but there were multiple choices for girls and my son was excluded.
So, you’re right about this, no one says we have to slow the ascendancy of girls but we don’t have to leave out boys. It’s stupid now. Okay. It’s stupid to do this now to how all this girl centered stuff in science and STEM and stuff like that and exclude boys, I find it galling at this point that we’re still doing this. I mean, Ivanka Trump, I remember it was three years ago, she started this girl STEM thing. And I just rolled my eyes like, come on, can we just have kids STEM? Can we get everyone interested?
Erika:
Melinda Gates is doing something similar too. And if it was worldwide it would make sense to me because there are a lot of places in the world where girls, they don’t have basic freedoms. But in the United States, not only do we share the same exact rights as the men but the opportunities are endless. And the data just tells us that it’s… I don’t understand the investment in the United States into more of this like girl, girl, girl stuff just in looking across the board at the data in terms of employment, in terms of higher education. I mean, suicide rates, my God, men are almost, it’s three point, I think it should be 3.74 something. It’s between three and four times as likely to commit suicide than women. And I try to imagine to myself, if that was flipped, wouldn’t you hear about that all the time?
I mean, on the job death, 93% of on the job deaths happened to men.
Julie:
Well, it frustrates me too because that’s all part of this narrative too that men don’t do anything, especially domestically or in terms of like the wage gap. But it’s like, “There’s this massive wage gap.” And it’s only to blame for the patriarchy. But then when you really look at the data, and again, I don’t mean to go down this different subject area. But when you look at the data, I mean, good brief, men do so much more dangerous work for which they are paid higher amounts. They do more overtime, they work more hours, they stay longer. There’s so many data points that show that. And I would say, especially on the danger side that they are doing work that can literally kill them.
And also, this whole narrative of men do nothing around the house. Well, let me tell you, like the wifi goes out, I don’t know what to do. Okay. The gutters, if there’s a big rainstorm, my husband is on a ladder in the gutters. There’s a lot of like domestic things that okay, I don’t do anything gross. Okay. If there’s a spider… And I think that’s a major domestic chore to kill a spider. But I’m saying that I don’t like this narrative. I don’t like commercials that always show the wife as the sensible one and all we show the husband as the moron, right? I don’t like this. I don’t like this cultural trend of showing men are stupid.
And I think it does get to boys. I think they see it whether it’s at school, whether it’s in culture, whether it’s on television, whatever. But it is a problem. And there’s far too little appreciation I think for what men do.
Erika:
It’s just unhealthy to be again in this weird us versus them paradigm. I’m thinking back to when Elizabeth Warren was still running for president and she said something about well, you know that when there’s a big mess, it takes a woman to clean it up.
And I’m thinking about that. And I said to myself, if my boys thought of a big mess, basically they would think that their parents would clean it up together based on their skills sets. Right? So there’s just certain things that each of us are better at. And that the way that we would manage to solve that problem or fix that mess would break down along those lines. And honestly, most like… I am a freaking rock star when it comes to kids throwing up. So I will claim credit that I am a deep sleeper and I don’t generally shoot out of bed for any reason at all except if one of my kids stands at the side of my bed and is about to throw up, I shoot out of bed like a fricking missile.
And I am really good at that. Right? But lots of stuff that happens around here. Not only am I maybe not the best one to deal with it but often time I’m the one who caught… Sometimes the mess is because of me. The reason we have a mess is because moms literally set pizza boxes on fire because she forgot they were in the oven. So I don’t like it because I really do feel like we are supposed to be working together and like rowing in the same direction. And I don’t see how that happens when there’s this concerted effort to really diminish 50% of the population.
And when you say things like the future is female and you publish op-eds by Megan Rapinoe, the soccer player talking about maybe it would just be better of men just disappeared for a few hundred years. I get it. There, “We’re not really serious.” But over time, those messages they don’t have no impact.
Julie:
Right. Right.
It does concern me what my boys hear but let’s also concern the impact on girls. What does that give them a license to do? Does it mean you can be mean or… I just don’t understand what actually? To what end? I don’t understand what the message is.
Erika:
It helps nobody. It absolutely helps nobody.
Julie:
It doesn’t. I’m truly trying to figure out the future is female. What actually is the point of that? Who does that help? Because we know that’s not actually going to happen. Okay. So how does that help girls learn to deal with men except in a way that is filled with suspicion and filled with anger and anxiety and a fear of working. I mean, it doesn’t do anybody any good. These phrases are stupid, one, but they actually do great damage. I feel like I could talk for another hour and I’m sure my wonderful producer, Tim here is like, “It’s time.”
So, we do have to wrap up here but I hope you come back on because one thing I’d like to talk about on the next time you come on, like tomorrow. No, I’m kidding. But I’d like to talk about, we talked about the condition of boys but a lot of this data is on a normal day. And we’re not going to know how… Although, I will say there have been some numbers coming in from Fairfax County, which are horrifying, Fs are up by 83% school-Wide for kids learning English, Fs have risen 100%. The number of Hispanic children who have received Fs is 92%. The number of Fs among middle school students is… And that’s not breaking it down by any demographic, race, or gender or anything but it’s up 300%.
I mean, this is grim, grim, grim, grim, grim, grim. And so what I’d like to talk about maybe on a future podcast is how can schools, how can they defend staying closed when we know there’s a lot of people that are struggling. And when you talk about special needs kids, it’s not just boys, there’s girls with autism, ADD, ADHD. And so maybe the next time on the next podcast, we can talk about just the shutdowns, strictly the shutdowns and how we envision how kids are going to come out of this. Because just talking about what we just talked about and the condition of boys, it makes me think, “Goodness, what are those numbers going to be like after all this is over.” So I’d like to have you back on to talk about that. This is just a fascinating topic and you are a wonderful guest to flesh some of this stuff out.
Erika:
And one quick thing about the schools. I think that as much as I hate seeing all of these terrible grades and we know that we’re seeing them pretty much consistently across the country, I think it’s better to have the grades.
Julie:
Me too.
Erika:
And do what Providence, New York city are doing, which is essentially to have these policies where you can’t fail anybody and you have to give incomplete even if no work’s been done at all, because that’s not going to tell us anything truthful.
Julie:
That’s so important.
Erika:
What I would say too is I think that it’s really important that the testing still occur. I think that there’s lots of pushes not only coming from the union but that’s one place they really want to do away with our annual assessments. And I think that’s a terrible idea because we’ve just got to know what we’re dealing with and where we are. And in terms of the boys, so far all I have is anecdotal stuff, which is just that boys are disengaging and they’re losing track of boys at much higher rates. That being said, I also have huge concerns about girls because one thing that we know is that social media has a hugely and much greater impact on girls than boys. It seems to be doing much more damage to girls in terms of levels of anxiety and depression.
And I feel like school used to be a break from that, right? Theoretically, they’re interacting with peers, they’re interacting with teachers. They’re not locked into this social media hellscape. And I worry that for some girls, there is no break from that for them. So they may still be keeping up with schoolwork, right? Or they may still be engaged but we don’t know what’s happening on the emotional side for them if they’re getting literally no respite from some of that online stuff. So again, and to my point, right? It’s not an us versus them thing. It’s looking at where are the alarm bells going off for all groups and then what can we do best to improve things for them?
Julie:
Right. Right. Well listen, soon after this, I’m going to try to schedule you to come back on. I think this is a really valuable conversation. But we’ve just scratch the surface is all you can do really in a podcast but there’s so much more to discuss. And before we sign off, if you can tell people where to hear you, particularly those Facebook live interviews that you do that I think are so great. Just if you could tell the audience where to hear your stuff or read your stuff.
Erika:
Sure. So if they go to projectforeverfree.org, I’m the editor of this platform, Project Forever Free. And it comes from the Frederick Douglas quote, once you learn to read, you’ll be forever free. The main topic is education on the site. And when you get to the site, it says live show. And so if you click on live show, that gives you all of the episodes that I’ve done with all kinds of people and will continue to do. We have not yet gotten those successfully in podcast form. And that has been just an issue of… I don’t know why we haven’t done it yet. B But anyway, we’ve had some problems with some recordings.
But the goal was and is to also have a podcast version of those shows because they stream live on Twitter at the time and they stream on Facebook live, and then you can go back and watch them any time but we don’t have them in audio form yet. The other place to find me is I’m @esanzi on Twitter. And I do write the blog, Good School Hunting, although I have not been keeping up with it the way that I would like to. So yeah, that’s where you can find me. And then we [crosstalk 01:00:13].
Julie:
Blame the kids and the dogs.
Erika:
Yes, I will gladly. And we have a Facebook page for Project Forever Free as well, if anybody wants to check it out. So yeah. That’s where you can find me. And thanks for having me, Julie, I always love chatting with you.
Julie:
I always love chatting with you too. And it is like talking to a friend. It’s so funny. I should tell people that I do feel like Erika is just such a great friend and I enjoy talking to her so much but we met on Twitter and I’ve never met her face-to-face so we’ll have to change that after all of this, after we get our shots after we get our vaccines.
Erika:
I know, right? The pandemic is making it very difficult to meet people face to face and starting to get on my nerves.
Julie:
Yes. It is. It is. Great to have you on. Thank you, Erika. This has been a really important conversation and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
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