ARE WE NOT MEN -- Mainly on Masculinity, Learning and "Anti-Social" Media

Last month I spent a marvelous weekend in the company of two of my best friends and their sons. It was a multigenerational, manly weekend, full of beef, beer, boasting, boating and blasting the open road in my friend's Porsche 914.

Manly stuff, including long reminiscent and forward-looking conversations wherein we expressed fears, concerns, hopes for our boys. On the whole, they are like the children of Lake Woebegone, above average lads, and nearly all labor with some degree of academic challenge.


Two speakers at Ted Talks intelligently and eloquently spoke to "boy issues" in academia.



Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons. He stops short of solutions. He tells the audience that it's their job. And no doubt it is – their job and ours.


So what the heck do we do?

 

Psychologist Ali Carr-Chellman illuminates reasons boys are tuning out of school in near epidemic proportions. She offers some insights for re-engaging them: bringing their culture into the classroom, with new rules that let boys be boys, and video games that teach as well as entertain. She suggests it will take money and will, but offers too little in the way of detail. As a Facebook friend pointed out, at some points she seems so worried about stepping on toes/"social conventions" that she runs out of time to present an action plan. And we so desperately need one.


As the father of two boys and a professional who has spent much of his life engaged in adult learning, I have some ideas for how to improve boy learning. I have no more credentials than the following:

• Experience with boys, (being a boy, from a "boy family", now raising my own)
• An occasional flash in the pan insight and 
• A deep concern for their welfare.

1.    Single sex schools need a real renaissance. Not so that boys will be free from distraction by girls or vice versa, rather more that teachers can relearn old methods and learn new methods to elicit and demand success from each gender.  Boys and girls are different learners. Girls because of their biological advantages, though this is arguable, have risen to perform better in the factory model of education that has dominated the American landscape since the beginning of the public school system.  Boys have been left behind and I and many others feel that some of the responsibility for this lies square in the lap of an educational system failing both genders, but particularly boys.


2.    Zero tolerance in schools is largely a good thing but ...  Anybody who has ever been bullied in a schoolyard understands this. But the pendulum has swung so far that boys are now routinely seen as problems rather than as engageable. A bully kicking the $hit out of a weaker boy needs to be stopped. Two boys rough and tumbling on a playground don't need to visit a psychologist. The ones that continue to need to rough and tumble shouldn't be spent to detention, but to wrestling practice, where they can engage their energies toward building athletic prowess and glory for their school. Boys get great value from being able to put their physicality toward a purpose.

3.    Boys are dogs. When I say this in social settings, I'm met with a range of reactions between uncertain amusement and disbelief maybe at how politically incorrect this sounds. I'm not trying to shock. Well, maybe I am, a little. Boys are pack animals. Packs have leaders, rules and a pecking order. Packs lend a sense of identity. Boys respect natural authority and fear humiliation and retribution. These two are almost inextricable.


4. Boys crave the feedback of personal touch. All children do, but boys seem to flourish in an environment of physical contact. As long as they're not seriously hurt, they proudly wear bruises and bumps gained in this world as badges of honor. Boys are tactile. In play where most girls will avoid contact and dirt, boys will roll around and revel in it.  Boys need to be unplugged and sent out on real world adventures and quests. They need to get into water, earth and forests. They need to play a little rough and sleep a little uncomfortably on the ground and stare up at the stars and be yes, a little scared because there are no lights and lots of strange sounds.

Aaaaaawoooooo!!!

Yes, a little scary at first, but oh so worth it.  Boys remember their adventures (particularly when shared with fathers) and as men, hopefully share them with their own children. My  camping, boating, quarry swimming and assorted overnight adventures with male mates are among the most meaningful in my life. And though we didn't do a lot of it, I have a handful of very precious memories "in the wild" with Dad.


5.    Boys need to be let to boys within bounds, but they need to be taught how to be men. Parents need the digital equivalent of the kind of authority mine exercised when I was growing up. Parents and authority figures need to be willing to step up and exercise that authority and engage the positive reinforcements that make it stick. Count on resistance from teenagers and keep pushing anyway.


6.    Boys (and girls) need to be taught to do the things that are unpleasant to them. We are so quick to run away from "the boring and unpleasant" and toward more tactile, facile, pleasurable, easier way of doing things. Though human nature, it's not always in our best interest. Point being, it's very clever and worthy to "trick" young minds into learning, but for boys it can't all be about gaming metaphors and pack behavior. Life is full of frustrating bullshit and rote, boring activities that at first seem counterintuitive to boys. Boys need to be coaxed, and if that doesn't work, frog-marched back to those behaviors that will bring them success in today's complex, pluralistic society. Once they get into a book, writing, creating a story (in the medium of their choice), etc., they come to realize "Hey, I really like this."


Boys are unformed, unfinished men. The men in this society who made the transition owe it to the young ones to show them how it's done. This is something women do, in the case of single mothers, often valiantly, but they simply can't do it as well as men.   


7.    Boys need to be unplugged, disengaged from the all-encompassing unremitting distractions of "anti" social media where the tribalistic reinforcement they get is all close-looped, divorced and disengaged from the larger world. They need to be taught the balance of online engagement and real engagement. They need to be coaxed, pushed, if necessary  back to those behaviors like reading, journaling and other activities, that at first may seem unpleasant to them. Once they get into a book, writing, creating a story (in the medium of their choice), etc., they come to realize "Hey, I really like this." 


8. Making it easier to do would be a big help.  I need a Dad on/off switch. Perhaps a master remote with monitoring capabilities. That's the ticket! But the gaming-online-electronics industries are naturally unwilling to do this. Their business models depend on 24/7 consumption unfettered by anybody resembling an adult.


Don't think that I'm a kneejerk advocate for just pulling the plug. Education scientists like the brilliant Suguta Mitra, demonstrate how Internet computers drive powerful self-education. If he can make incredible strides  happen in some of the worst slums in the Third World, what's preventing learning scientist/innovators from making it happen in this, our very entitled society?



Theories about "crowd-accelerated innovation" and child-driven education" aren't just the newest buzzspeak. I predict, they will profoundly change the face of education. And it so desperately needs, not just a face change, but a game change. What happened in this country, where we once had the best public education on the planet and are now rapidly slipping into the middle tier? Doesn't that just burn your @ss? I know it does mine. Education needs revolution.

Anti-social Media

But there is another level to this story that social observers need to consider. There is a current and I think growing backlash against male role models and a systemic downgrading of "maleness" in our culture. In an article in the Daily Beast,  author Marty Beckerman pokes lighthearted but accurate fun at the divide between classic role models like Papa Hemingway and his watered-down commercial clone, the Dos Equis, "most interesting man."

Drink my beer and be an admirable man!

Commercials cast men as leering frat boys, hollow role models like the smug, cynical Dos Equis man or the sniveling, incompetent male bumbler types found pathetically lost in the laundry room or rooting around in the refrigerator for lowfat yogurt.  Where do these mythical "incompetent men" in commercials come from. Perhaps it's because a truly competent man doesn't need to buy your ###ing @$$$ product to be a man. But the boobs in the 20 second spots do. And nothing they buy will ever be enough. Keep buying America, until you forget what a real man looks like and smells like.


In another advertising ripoff of the Hemingway mythos that I've seen in gentleman's magazine GQ, the nattily-dressed Bono disembarks from a twin engine plane on the steppes of Africa. The "rock legend" is joined by his sultry fashion designer wife.

What's wrong, I ask somewhat cheekily, when la muchacha es más machista than el hombre?

What's wrong is virtually all the models in GQ, these impossibly hairless, smooth, angel airbrushed boy-men who are foisted on men as icons of male beauty (the way that waif angel-women are foisted on women). They are beautiful but they are not a representative sample. Where are the real men?

Old male role models, and let's face it, they were far from perfect, were at least more celebrated for their accomplishments than their looks. Hemingway lived (and died) large, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, a man of rapidly fading looks, but an unwavering master of form, economy and understatement in his prose. He was arguably also a manic-depressive who self-medicated with alcohol and lawdy knows what else. Then in the final stroke, with a shotgun. Ah Papa.


The new role models are just because they are; tabla rasas that people chirp pitiful, worshipful, choirlike responses back at that advertisers and the whole thing goes endlessly viral until it makes you want to hurl with the utter banality of it.


(ugh!)


One commenter to Beckerman's article celebrated the "death of male role models" taking bead on Papa, then expanding her scattershot blast to all men

…his writing was occasionally brilliant and moving, but his behavior was brutal and downright cruel, most of the time. He glorified death and brutality, both in his work and his personal existence. Admire that if you wish, but I see no moral imperative to kill anything for any reason.

Personally, I think we could use a whole lot less testosterone in this already violent, bloody and cruel world. I note also that those who celebrate those 'Y' chromosome imperatives are often those who lack the will and atavistic drive to do anything more than bemoan the lack of 'real men' in today's world.

Real men? Does it take a real man to kill an animal from a distance with a high-powered rifle? Does it take a real man to slaughter a bull already weakened by blood loss and severed muscles? Does it take a real man to pick a fight in a bar, cheat on his wife and beat her if she objects? Does it take a real man to lie about his background and life to appear greater than he really is? 

Competent Men. 'Real men'. Bah. So-called real men start wars and end lives and cause suffering. So-called real men lie about their motivations, drive countries to the brink of ruin and let children starve to death. Real men? The passing of the 'Y' chromosome is something to celebrate, not mourn. Let Hemingway's legacy be an example of something to avoid, not emulate.

Wow, how could I let that go?

Trident (that's me), says:

Real men change diapers, support their women, love their children. They're not chronic drunks, but if they want to smoke a big cigar or tie one on once in awhile, they do. They don't need bullfights or shotguns to prove their manliness, but if they hunt and eat or give away what they kill, they get no argument from me. Real men don't adopt Mad Ave. cartoon caricatures as role models and they also know that while Papa was a flawed man, he wrote some of the best prose in the 20th Century.

Real men know real women don't cheat on them with their best friends, don't kill their two year old girls, don't emasculate their man if she makes more money than he does, don't equate testosterone and the Y chromosome with pure evil any more than estrogen with pure good. 

Real men know the difference between a real woman and a woman who just hates men. We feel sorry for you, but we're fortunate enough to know and love enough real women to recognize that your opinions are marginalized and not shared by the majority. We also know that if the Y chromosome passes into oblivion, the X's are sure to follow. There's nothing sexier than competence and real people of both genders get this intuitively.

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Takeaway ...

We need to challenge our children's role models and expose our kids to the real deal. Online is where  kids get most of their information on role models, so parents need to take time to see, think and offer an intelligent filter for the media our children absorb. There's a lot out there, most of it is crap, lots of it sending out messages that are incredibly harmful and socially corrosive.

Yet some of it can be startlingly useful. We need to find the constructive middle ground between knee-jerk denunciation and weary capitulation and take the boxes from our kids' hands and put some thought into how they use them. Then we need to regive them a wired world of education, entertainment and diversion with a set of instructions, or at least a moral compass. We owe them that much – guys and gals. 


The world of men, from our role models to our education, has been usurped. Some of this usurpation is evolutionary and beneficial. Destructive impulses--whether self or other directed, should be mediated. Some of this usurpation is crass, commercial and entirely not to our benefit. We need a dialogue about which is which. What do you think?


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