When I was a boy, I just could not sit still in class. I was very
bored and active by nature, so I would rock my chair back, whisper and
write notes to kids, even wander around the classroom until the teacher
yelled, "Martin, sit down!"

That was decades ago. Today, I
suspect I would have been put on Ritalin. But in either case, the blame
is placed on the smart, active boy, rarely on the schools, which claim
to celebrate diversity of learning styles and needs but stop
celebrating when it comes to smart, active boys. Indeed, this decade's
signature domestic policy, No Child Left Behind redirects nearly all
efforts to educate the lowest achievers.

This, of course, is
ironic in that smart kids have the greatest potential to contribute to
society: to cure its diseases, close the racial achievement gap,
develop cost-effective solar power, etc.

The unfair treatment of smart, active boys comes from four factors:

1. The media's continuing to perpetrate the myth that females are oppressed and males are the oppressor. For example, they continue to spout these disproven assertions:
-- women earn 79 cents on the dollar compared with men. In fact, according to the definitive book on the topic, Why Men Earn More, for the same work, women earn at least as much as men do.
--
women are underrepresented in high-level positions because of sexism.
In fact, as documented in recent well-reviewed books such as Susan
Pinker's The Sexual Paradox, women's not being in high-office comes much more from choosing to have a less work-centric lifestyle.
-- the schools shortchange girls relative to boys. (the long-debunked Reviving Ophelia canard.)
-- men abuse women--in fact, studies show that 30 to 52% of severe domestic violence is perpetrated by women.

Thus, the feeling among the public, educators, and policymakers, is that we need to do more for females than for males, ignoring such statistics that make clear that boys are achieving at lower levels than are girls, are much more likely to be put on Ritalin, abuse drugs, commit suicide,
and drop out of high school, far less likely to graduate from college,
much more likely, as young adults, to be sleeping late unemployed on
their parents' sofas.

2. The widespread abandonment of ability-grouped classes.
In most of today's elementary schools, gifted and slow are placed in
the same class. That creates more equality--especially racial
equality--but the result is that all children receive a worse
education. Imagine for example, that you spoke good Mandarin but wanted
to become expert. Wouldn't you prefer a class with advanced students
rather than one that also had beginners? Yet today, we don't give smart
kids (or their parents) that choice. We force them into mixed-ability
classes, where dispositive metaevaluations reveal they learn less and are bored.
And because, on average, boys are more active than girls, they more
often can't sit still for six hours a day, five days a week, 180 days a
year, year after year. Rather than the harder task of accommodating to
smart, active boys' needs, countless teachers have urged parents to put
these boys, long-term, on Ritalin--a meth-like drug.

3. That elementary school teachers are overwhelmingly female.
Today, the percentage is up to 92%, the highest ever recorded. Even if
teachers believe they're accommodating to all students' needs, they
can't help but tilt their teaching to what appeals to them. Thus, books
about male heroism are replaced by those of female relationships and
heroines, typically in which an inferior male is shown-up by a wise
female. Competition--a prime motivator for boys--is replaced by
so-called "cooperative learning," which usually reduces to the bright
doing the slow's work, boring the bright kid and precluding him from
learning new things.

4. Society's bias that says: let's help those with the greatest deficit rather than those with the greatest potential to profit:
"Those smart boys will do okay on their own. Let's commit our resources
to the lowest achievers." I deeply believe that such a philosophy will
reduce our society to the lowest common denominator, ironically
resulting in a worse life for us all. Besides, it simply is unfair for
the public schools to not provide at least a marginally appropriate
education for all kids, and right now, smart boys get the very least
appropriate education.

What do you think?