Who Needs School Anyway - Road to the Middle Class

PITY POOR MARILEE Jones, formerly Dean of Admissions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She figured she needed a bushel of degrees to work at MIT so she faked ’em, according to James Taranto. Fortunately, Taranto only works for The Wall Street Journal edit page. So he doesn’t need all those sheepskins.

I feel her pain, for school never agreed with me. I repeatedly found myself in conflict with teachers and professors. I left high school after my sophomore year; and although I spent several years in college, I never bothered to graduate.

Actually, it’s probably true that school disagrees with most boys. Especially now that school is so feminized and gun-free. As Ruth Dudley Edwards puts it:

The feminisation of education and the ensuing triumph of political correctness have turned generations of boys off reading, not least by urging them to get in touch with their feelings and despise that part of themselves that wants to see heroes biffing villains.

You mean the way that Brigadier Ritchie Hook used to go on about “biffing” in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour series?

Perhaps they could read The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden and

swot up on the solar system, learn about famous battles and read inspiring stories of incredible courage and bravery. Teach your old dog new tricks. Make a pinhole camera

and so on. But it’s not just school that boys don’t like. It’s classes in general.

Women are always going to classes to learn something, even if it is “tennis, wine-tasting, sailing.” Then they complain because they don’t meet any men there, writes Ann Althouse. It’s the old story.

Because, after all, you know that if you’re going to explain gender difference, you’ve got to assume that whatever the women are doing is good, and it’s the men who have the problem. So: You know those men. They think they’re so smart. You can’t tell them anything. They won’t ask for directions.

Let’s look at the male side of this, shall we? Althouse continues.

Men prefer to look at something they have decided to do and figure it out on their own. They like to observe, analyze, and discover. They accept the risks and enjoy the excitement of trial and error. They don’t like sitting around having someone tell them what to do, and they aren’t intrigued by the prospect of meeting women who spend so much time doing something they loathe.

OK, she admits. She made that up.

Then there’s this from Althouse’s comment section.

My daughter, just yesterday, looks at me as we were watching television and says, "What’s with this stupid female superiority thing?"
She elaborated a little bit... no matter what[,] the girls on TV were always right. Smarter, wiser, etc.

Out of the mouths of babes...

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.