Why men don't go to college

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This is a dated commentary but it raises some of the issues that have troubled me for years.

cnsnews.com/ViewCommentary.asp?Page=\Commentary\archive00211\COM20021118a.html

I notice that in my classes both at a Community College and at a Catholic University that women outnumber men usually by 3 to 1. In fact only once has there been more men in the class than women. I don’t put the blame for this on either the young women or the young men. I hope I provide a relatively safe environment for both men and women. But I worry about the men and, for that matter, the women in a society in which men still have more demands to produce in the workforce than there are upon women and it is not likely to ever change.

I’m going to do some more research on this but here are some questions I have that might stimulate some discussion.
  1. How has the dominance of female teachers in Grades K-12 affected the decline of male performance in academic circles?
  2. Why aren’t there more male teachers in this area?
  3. What are the effects of feminism upon this poor performance?
  4. What are the effects of psychotropic drugs which seem to be overwhelmingly prescribed to boys?
  5. Why do young males commit suicide at a 3 to 1 ratio more than females? Is it simply that females think more than act or are there other parts to the story?
  6. Is there a relationship between the breakdown of morals in society and the decline of male educated leadership?
  7. It has been said that without Christ and the Church there would reason for any male to be considerate of any female. I believe that the breakdown of the influence of the Church has caused males to be less considerate of females and females to act more like the uneducated non-Christian males. Are my beliefs just based upon anecdotal evidence or is there more to it?
  8. What effect has the pill had on the decline of males seeking advancement? I.e., to what extent has this neutered males and caused women to act in immoral ways? (Actually this is the easiest for me to discern.)
Hopefully, this will start an interesting discussion.

CDL
 
  1. How has the dominance of female teachers in Grades K-12 affected the decline of male performance in academic circles?
It hasn’t. Elementary school teachers have traditionaly been women. School marms… and all that
  1. Why aren’t there more male teachers in this area?
In part because of the litigious society in which we live. It is dangerous for males to go into elementary teaching without being second guessed.
  1. What are the effects of feminism upon this poor performance?
Little. Feminism is about elevating women, not tearing down men.
  1. What are the effects of psychotropic drugs which seem to be overwhelmingly prescribed to boys?
I would not even want to hazard a guess on that one.
  1. Why do young males commit suicide at a 3 to 1 ratio more than females? Is it simply that females think more than act or are there other parts to the story?
Yes and no to question two. Males commit suicide at a higher rate because they are far more likely to be successful. Men who want to end their lives use guns, hang themselves, etc. Women are more likely to take pills, cut their wrists, etc. Check the stats on attempted suicides. I think you’ll find different numbers.
  1. Is there a relationship between the breakdown of morals in society and the decline of male educated leadership?
No.
  1. It has been said that without Christ and the Church there would reason for any male to be considerate of any female. I believe that the breakdown of the influence of the Church has caused males to be less considerate of females and females to act more like the uneducated non-Christian males. Are my beliefs just based upon anecdotal evidence or is there more to it?
I think it has more to do with the ever-changing roles of men and women in our society. Nobody is quite sure of anything anymore.
  1. What effect has the pill had on the decline of males seeking advancement? I.e., to what extent has this neutered males and caused women to act in immoral ways? (Actually this is the easiest for me to discern.)
It hasn’t. If giving women a choice over their reproductive systems is neutering males, then neuter away. I would hate to think that there are men out there who feel “neutered” because they aren’t in control of their wives’ bodies.
 
This is odd for me to hear because I went to a school where the ratio was 7:1 boys to girls.
 
Pong said:
  1. What effect has the pill had on the decline of males seeking advancement? I.e., to what extent has this neutered males and caused women to act in immoral ways? (Actually this is the easiest for me to discern.)
It hasn’t. If giving women a choice over their reproductive systems is neutering males, then neuter away. I would hate to think that there are men out there who feel “neutered” because they aren’t in control of their wives’ bodies.
Click to expand...
There must be an effect. One of the problems of American society is the prolonged adolescence it fosters. One of the contributers to this is the satifaction of an immature lifstyle that is sexually permiscuous. What percentage of women taking the pill are in a monogomous relationship? These drugs are distributed to school age children.
 
College make up is about 60% women and 40% men right now.

Hear are a couple of reasons men don’t care to go :
  1. Relevancy
  2. Cost and its long term payback and effects on their life.
 
Women can be pregnant or postpartum, and thus it is not always realistic for women to be able to do hard physical labor in hazardous environments. Therefore, if a woman’s skills become obsolete, she is unemployed, whereas a man can fill in those imes with a job on a loading dock or in a chemical plant more readily. In the old days, men were women’s insurance. They became less and less reliable during the industrial revolution (I don’t know why, but statistics bear it out) and by the First World War women knew they needed some other insurance as well. Women turned to politics and law to secure rights, and the colleges filled with women even faster than they filled with men as women struggled to develop skills to overcome social bias against them in hiring, firing, pay scales, workloads and retirement plans. As women graduated, they started working in collges and though most professors were still men, women professors saw and started changing problems that had bothered them as students. This didn’t lead to less attendance by men, just more attendance by women.
To be able to go to work without college is to be free of the burden of tuition, which can be a lifelong handicap. Men aren’t endangered. They are living in a state of ease compared to women. Even compared to their fathers at their ages. And an astounding percentage of them go to college. But more of them have the ability to support themselves all their lives without college, too, and some choose to save the tuition.
 
I can’t answer specific questions but I can give my thoughts as the mother of two boys and two girls.

Men are depicted on tv as stupid, incompetent jerks. If a man is shown being moral, noble or intelligent then he is depicted as gay or wimpy. Many boys grow up without fathers so their view of manhood is what is shown in the media.

The media doesn’t do women much better either. Women are either depicted as shrill mother figures constantly halting their husbands’ fun, overly sexual bombshells or tough, man like women. A woman who is truely strong, like Jane Eyre, is considered weak unless she can kick someone’s butt.🤷

I know lots of kids who only have their mothers and female relatives as influences in thier lives. Kids need both male and female role models, but this isn’t happening for many kids.

Society seems to expect less of everyone and people often only live up to what is expected of them.😦
 
Pong said:
  1. What effect has the pill had on the decline of males seeking advancement? I.e., to what extent has this neutered males and caused women to act in immoral ways? (Actually this is the easiest for me to discern.)
It hasn’t. If giving women a choice over their reproductive systems is neutering males, then neuter away. I would hate to think that there are men out there who feel “neutered” because they aren’t in control of their wives’ bodies.
Click to expand...
I’ve known women who want more children but their husbands refuse to let them have any more. 😦 I also have known many women who are having sex with men who refuse to wear a condom, thus putting the burden of preventing the pregnancy on the woman’s shoulders.

I’ve heard MILs claim that the future daughter in law purposely forgot to take her pill thus trapping her poor son:rolleyes: into wedlock or 18 years of child support.

I’m not certain how much freedom the pill offers women. Sometimes the pill seems to benefit men more then women.😦
 
Pong,

I certainly disagree with your observation on #3. Feminism has upped the stakes on the war between the sexes. Boys tend to be taught in most schools that masculine assertive behavior is bad and feminine receptive is good. I see very little positive about the feminist movement. I disagree on the effects of the pill. Others have made the case quite well so I won’t repeat.

I’ll post some of the responses I’ve been receiving from a general email I sent around on the subject when I’ve time.

CDL
 
Isn’t it all so predictable - something wrong in a man’s life so it must be some woman’s fault.

Poor helpless creatures.
 
Here’s is just one of the responses I’ve received thus far from an email I sent.

…men don’t teach because teaching is a pink-collar profession. It is a sorority and the deck is stacked (so to speak) against testosterone. Men like to compete, whether it is in the workplace or any other setting, and competition is largely considered unwelcome in K-12 environments.

We give our little boys to women, many of them young women, who do their damnedest to turn those little boys into little girls. When they can’t make those little boys submissive through regulating their activities, they use drugs to calm down those little monsters.

I realized as a little kid that I was only barely tolerated by women teachers. I learned to keep my head down and to shut up. Imagine that from me, eh"? The boys that were favored by women teachers were the nice little good-looking boys who were favored by the girls in the class. Girls win in these settings and the boys lose. The only thing different now is the Education Guild has psychotrophic drugs available to use on boys.

Good luck on this discussion. I a certain you will get many well-considered and thoughtful responses, but it is going to come down to a pure Thurber-esque equation at the very end. This is one of the major fronts in the War Between The Sexes.
 
In 1915, only 15% of the richest fifth of all Americans 18-21 years old were in college. In the '20’s, college attendance exploded. This happened for both sexes. In 1950, about half of 18-21 year olds across the board, not just the rich, were in college. Also, many people began attending at different ages. In 1960, almost half of all Americans, all ages, either had been to college or had concrete plans to attend at a specific time in the next few years. That percentage increased by more than a point a year until the close of the millennium. Then it reached saturation at almost 100%. Supply and demand meant tuition went up. The attendance rate began dropping. It fell faster for men because men had more non-college options and college was expensive.
As for the very diferent environment of public school, it destroys girls too. Do men really think girls are naturally quiet, submissive, passive beings? We were explorers, questioners, rememberers, historians, seekers of context and pattern and beauty. This was crushed mercilessly by the system I recall back in school.
 
“On an unseasonably cold day last November in Foley, Ala., Colby Royster and Michael Peterson, two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes. The walls of the boys’ classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer, as per the instructions of Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author and advocate who this May will quit his medical practice to devote himself full time to promoting single-sex public education.”

nytimes.com/2008/03/02/magazine/02sex3-t.html

Each semester I seem to have one class that exceeds the others. This time it is the class with 15 men and 11 women in it. When the men are in the minority they usually keep their mouths shut. They’ve been well trained to believe that they aren’t as bright as women. But when the males are in the majority everyone contributes. I suspect that if they were separate I’d be teaching each slightly differently and both classes might flourish.

CDL
 
GregoryPalamas said:
This is a dated commentary but it raises some of the issues that have troubled me for years.

cnsnews.com/ViewCommentary.asp?Page=\Commentary\archive00211\COM20021118a.html

I notice that in my classes both at a Community College and at a Catholic University that women outnumber men usually by 3 to 1. In fact only once has there been more men in the class than women. I don’t put the blame for this on either the young women or the young men. I hope I provide a relatively safe environment for both men and women. But I worry about the men and, for that matter, the women in a society in which men still have more demands to produce in the workforce than there are upon women and it is not likely to ever change.

I’m going to do some more research on this but here are some questions I have that might stimulate some discussion.
  1. How has the dominance of female teachers in Grades K-12 affected the decline of male performance in academic circles?
  2. Why aren’t there more male teachers in this area?
  3. What are the effects of feminism upon this poor performance?
  4. What are the effects of psychotropic drugs which seem to be overwhelmingly prescribed to boys?
  5. Why do young males commit suicide at a 3 to 1 ratio more than females? Is it simply that females think more than act or are there other parts to the story?
  6. Is there a relationship between the breakdown of morals in society and the decline of male educated leadership?
  7. It has been said that without Christ and the Church there would reason for any male to be considerate of any female. I believe that the breakdown of the influence of the Church has caused males to be less considerate of females and females to act more like the uneducated non-Christian males. Are my beliefs just based upon anecdotal evidence or is there more to it?
  8. What effect has the pill had on the decline of males seeking advancement? I.e., to what extent has this neutered males and caused women to act in immoral ways? (Actually this is the easiest for me to discern.)
Hopefully, this will start an interesting discussion.

CDL
Click to expand...
I noticed the universities around here have a 40:60 out of 100% ratio of boys to girls in college. I was wondering why that is, too.

In my classes, it will be all girls and just one or two boys.

BUT, I’d also like to see more studies done by degree, program or field of study.

Once I got out of the basic biology/chemistry courses (such as is required for nursing degrees) I would be the lone girl in a sea of boys. Same goes for political science and math courses.

I wonder if the percentages are skewed because there is such a focus on associate degrees and certification. I remember reading that the number one new nurse is single, white and a mother.

I guess my question is, are there really fewer men attending college and getting a bachelor’s degree compared to men of another time? Or is it just that more women are attending college than a prior time?
 
hasikelee said:
I noticed the universities around here have a 40:60 out of 100% ratio of boys to girls in college. I was wondering why that is, too.

In my classes, it will be all girls and just one or two boys.

BUT, I’d also like to see more studies done by degree, program or field of study.

Once I got out of the basic biology/chemistry courses (such as is required for nursing degrees) I would be the lone girl in a sea of boys. Same goes for political science and math courses.

I wonder if the percentages are skewed because there is such a focus on associate degrees and certification. I remember reading that the number one new nurse is single, white and a mother.

I guess my question is, are there really fewer men attending college and getting a bachelor’s degree compared to men of another time? Or is it just that more women are attending college than a prior time?
Click to expand...
I don’t know the answer to your question, but they are certainly good questions. Much of what I have written is anecdotal thus far. I do want to learn from research. Why don’t we both do some more research?

CDL
 
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