{"id":844,"date":"2013-09-14T23:13:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-14T23:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html"},"modified":"2013-09-14T23:13:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T23:13:00","slug":"the-future-of-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html","title":{"rendered":"The future of boys?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So everybody\u2019s talking (well,instapundit.com <\/a>for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer\u2019s article in The Atlantic, \u201cHow to Make School Better for Boys; Start by acknowledging that boys are languishing while girls are succeeding.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 She summarizes many of the arguments in her book (girls are outperforming boys at all levels of schooling, and going to and completing college at rates far higher than boys), and highlights programs within and outside the United States that have addressed this problem, either incidentally or intentionally.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The solution that\u2019s being adopted is a return to vocational education (or, in the new terminology, CTE, Career and Technical Education)\u00a0\u2014 partly as an alternative to and partly as a supplement to sitting in the classroom, boys are given opportunities to work with their hands, not just in a traditional automotive repair class, but learning computer repair and networking, refrigeration, and other skills.\u00a0 And this engages them and improves their performance not only in these fields but in their overall schoolwork as well.<\/p>\n

She also claims (I hadn\u2019t heard this before) that one of the causes of the demise of vocational education is not just our national fixation on attending college, but the aggressive push for \u201cgender equity\u201d \u2014 the heavy hitters among feminist and other such groups focusing their energy on getting girls into shop class and ultimately effectively taking the approach that \u201cno\u00a0CTE is better than sex-segregated CTE\u201d in terms of the consequences of their actions.<\/p>\n

What are, exactly, the consequences?\u00a0 If we\u2019ve been talking about alternatives to college and whether marginal kids are wrongly being steered to college when they have no idea what they\u2019d do, maybe it\u2019s not such a bad outcome for fewer boys than girls to attend college.\u00a0 The bigger question is how this impacts their earnings \u2014 and here Hoff Sommers links to a Brookings study<\/a> on men\u2019s earnings over time.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the key chart:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Full-time male workers\u2019 earnings have bounced around erratically, and all men\u2019s earnings have dropped substantially over the past generation, with a few rebounds.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I tried to find the equivalent table for women\u2019s earnings; irritatingly enough, all I could find at the BLS was women\u2019s relative earnings, here:
\"\"<\/p>\n

which is interesting in its own right:\u00a0 the 16-19 year olds\u2019 earnings and the 20-24 year olds\u2019 earnings have been bouncing around at between 90 \u2013 95% of men\u2019s for a fair while, and the 25-34 year olds\u2019 have been steadily and dramatically rising for the duration of this chart.\u00a0 To a certain degree, these results seem almost too<\/em> good, given all the reasons women\u2019s wages can be lower than men\u2019s, including working\u00a0fewer hours (e.g., at the bottom of the 35+ hours per week rather than the top end), residual effects of extended time out of the labor force, and choice of lower-wage careers (social worker rather than chemical engineer).<\/p>\n

In any case,\u00a0looking at the source data,\u00a0I came upon this table, in a PDF<\/a> (which I couldn\u2019t get to copy over well): <\/p>\n

Table 5. Median usual weekly earnings of wage and salary workers, by hours usually worked and sex, 2011 annual averages <\/strong><\/p>\n

Total, 16 years and older:76.2%
1 to 34 hours:105.2%
1 to 4 hours:96.8%
5 to 9 hours:107.0%
10 to 14 hours:101.8%
15 to 19 hours:102.6%
20 to 24 hours:109.4%
25 to 29 hours.105.1%
30 to 34 hours:108.3%
35 or more hours: 82.5%
35 to 39 hours:109.9%
40 hours 88.4%
41 or more hours:86.8%
41 to 44 hours: 86.1%
45 to 48 hours: 91.1%
49 to 59 hours: 90.5%
60 or more hours:85.9%<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the table doesn\u2019t provide data on the number of men and women in each group, of the sort that you\u2019d need to calculate, via a regression analysis, the amount of the male\/female wage differential that\u2019s explained by hours worked. (Or maybe \u201cfortunately\u201d is more appropriate, as I\u2019d have to then admit that I don\u2019t remember how to do this any longer.)\u00a0 But, still, this is pretty remarkable.<\/p>\n

Anyway, where was I?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a story from my own extended family:\u00a0 girl gets pregnant at 17.\u00a0 She has twins, but the local daycare, whose owner is a friend of the family, cuts her a break on tuition while she works there, and defines \u201cwork\u201d very loosely to enable her to get her high school degree.\u00a0 She\u2019s praised as having her head on straight and doing a great job, given her situation.\u00a0 Dad, age 18 when he got his girlfriend pregnant, dropped out of high school to support the young family, but wasn\u2019t able to get much of a job.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t doing too well in school in the first place, and even flunked the aptitude test when he tried to join the Marines.\u00a0 He broke up with the girlfriend after a while, and now works cleaning\/emptying out\u00a0foreclosed houses.\u00a0 Future unknown.<\/p>\n

(I\u2019d tell you about my own boys, but they have issues of their own and are not \u201ctypical boys\u201d by any means.\u00a0 I will tell you that, at the parochial school they attend, enrollment has dropped considerably, and my 1st grader\u2019s class is the smallest yet, and disproportionately boy \u2014 which could be chance, or could be a disproportionate number of parents of boys fearing that they\u2019d struggle at the public school.)<\/p>\n

Another memory:\u00a0 when my children were babies, and I was home on maternity leave or on my days off on my part-time schedule, the TV was on fairly often, as a bit of company, while nursing the baby, for instance.\u00a0 And the number of commercials for various \u201ccolleges\u201d \u2014 Westwood College of Business, or a culinary school or fashion design school, or for video game designing or general IT professionals \u2014 was astounding.\u00a0 I came to\u00a0the conclusion that the target audience was a large pool of high school graduates who were watching daytime TV without the foggiest idea of what to do with their lives, except for maybe some part-time job.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t be a zero-sum game.\u00a0 We, as a society, can\u2019t afford to ignore our boys any more than our girls.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So everybody\u2019s talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer\u2019s article in The Atlantic, \u201cHow to Make School Better for Boys; Start by acknowledging that boys are languishing while girls are succeeding.\u201d\u00a0 She summarizes many of the arguments in her book (girls are outperforming boys at all levels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe future of boys?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So everybody's talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer's article in The Atlantic, "How to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The future of boys?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So everybody's talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer's article in The Atlantic, "How to\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-09-14T23:13:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/files\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-ciW6tWG0E4E\/UjUfWWHo8sI\/AAAAAAAAAAk\/w994yaVkt24\/s640\/Men's+Median+Annual+Earnings.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html\",\"name\":\"The future of boys?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-09-14T23:13:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-09-14T23:13:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a\"},\"description\":\"So everybody's talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer's article in The Atlantic, \\\"How to\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The future of boys?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/\",\"name\":\"Jane the Actuary\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a\",\"name\":\"Jane the Actuary\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jane the Actuary\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/author\/actuaryjane\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The future of boys?","description":"So everybody's talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer's article in The Atlantic, \"How to","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The future of boys?","og_description":"So everybody's talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer's article in The Atlantic, \"How to","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html","og_site_name":"Jane the Actuary","article_published_time":"2013-09-14T23:13:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/files\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-ciW6tWG0E4E\/UjUfWWHo8sI\/AAAAAAAAAAk\/w994yaVkt24\/s640\/Men's+Median+Annual+Earnings.png"}],"author":"Jane the Actuary","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jane the Actuary","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html","name":"The future of boys?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-09-14T23:13:00+00:00","dateModified":"2013-09-14T23:13:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a"},"description":"So everybody's talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer's article in The Atlantic, \"How to","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/the-future-of-boys.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The future of boys?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/","name":"Jane the Actuary","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a","name":"Jane the Actuary","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Jane the Actuary"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/author\/actuaryjane"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}