A fascinating article by education consultant Michael Gurian in the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section on the fact that boys are not learning as well as girls. It's been an untold secret for a long time that the majority of college students and increasing percentage of students in graduate schools are female. This, despite continued moaning and groaning from feminist groups about the supposed disadvantages girls encounter in schools. The author of this article makes the obvious point that it is boys who are more likely to encounter disadvantages, and he sketches out what some of those may be. On this subject, I look also to Christina Hoff Summers's The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.
Gurian makes the interesting point that the most active crusaders for appropriate education for boys tend to be (as Summers is) the mothers of boys. My own observation in the circles I frequent is that men tend to glide along and assume that their children are getting along pretty well, while women tend to worry that they aren't and work fiercely to improve their chances. So, even if it makes the feminists happy, score 1 for women.
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