Schoolgirls Book

I gave this book four stars because it does exactly what its description says it does: describe the hardships that girls in their adolescence face.

And now for the $1,000,000 question:

Where is the equivalent book (call it "Schoolboys") that describes the hurdles that adolescent boys face???

People, especially feminists, like to assume that all is hunky dory with boys and that we don't need to help them (even the media likes to assume this -- just ask Time magazine). I don't think this is the case, because if it were, then we wouldn't see a few teenage boys walking into schools with ammunition and opening fire. It is evident that our public schools (I don't know about private schools, parochial ones, etc.) are failing to meet the needs of boys, in part (in my opinion) because it isn't politically correct to do so.

An anecdote comes to mind. While I was student teaching, my cooperating teacher was teaching a lesson on ratios of boys to girls in the class (this was a ninth grade class). She asked the class how many girls there were and recorded the number on the chalkboard. Then she asked the class how many boys there were, and then said, "way too many."

Is it any wonder, then, why we see boys dropping out of school way more often than girls do (even though the total number of male dropouts have decreased over the years -- I'll give you that -- but that still doesn't take away from the problem), attending college less, doing much worse in reading (even though they do slightly better than girls in math and science, but that too doesn't take away from the problem), and making the honor roll less often than the girls? Despite this, we not only see books like these, but also, programs like the ones on WeTV that highlight the hurdles of adolescent girls -- think of the programs as the video equivalent of Peggy Orenstein's book.

In sum, what I'm getting at is that even though this book does do girls a favor by highlighting the challenges that they face, it is high time that we do likewise for the boys. For as long as politics and the media ignore the suffering of a segment of the youth population for the sake of "leveling the playing field," instead of seeing EVERYONE as a victim, our society will remain a precarious place.