An Educator's Primer on the Gender War: Retraining Gender Equity to Include Boys Could Result in Making Schools Fairer and More Humane Environments for All Students

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Several recent books, a seemingly endless series of television and radio talk shows, and a number of newspaper columns have painted a disturbing picture of schools mired in a surreptitious on boys. In such books as The War Against Boys (Sommers 2000) and Ceasefire! (Young 1999), readers are introduced to education using metaphors and are informed that boys are daily casualties of zealous efforts to help girls. These schools-at-war authors also call for more boy-friendly education, including increased testing, frequent classroom competitions, and the inclusion of poetry in the curriculum--all measures intended to counter feminist influences. They also argue that sections of Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, be rescinded. Teachers are informed that giving extra attention to boys in classrooms and building up school libraries that are dominated by books about male characters are useful strategies to improve boys' academic performance. As one book warns, It's a bad time to be a boy in America. After over a quarter century of researching life in schools, I must admit that at first I thought this was a satire, a creative way to alert people to the difficulties of creating fair schools that work for all children. Certainly boys (like girls) confront gender stereotypes and challenges, and teachers and parents must work hard every day to make schools work for all children. But these recent books and talk shows were not intended as satire; they purported to present a serious picture of schools in which girls ruled and boys were their victims. The irony of girls waging a on boys reminded me of a Seinfeld episode that featured World. For those of you not versed in the culture of Bizarro World, it is a Superman comics theme in which everything is opposite: up is down, in is out, and good is bad. When the popular sitcom featured an episode on Bizarro World, Kramer became polite and discovered that doors were to be knocked on, not stormed through. George went from nerdiness to cool, from dysfunctional to popular; he was rewarded with two well-adjusted parents. Elaine's self-absorption was transformed into compassion, a change that would probably lead to a hitch in the Peace Corps and stardom in her own Seinfeld spin-off, Elaine in Africa. In this topsy-turvy transformation, the entire Seinfeld gang became well-adjusted, with their ethical compasses recalibrated to do the right thing. What would schools be like, I thought, if such Bizarro World changes came to pass? What would school look like if misguided feminists were actually engaged in a war against boys? And then I thought, what if girls really did rule? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The statute of Alice Paul at the entrance of the school has become a student talis-woman. Students rub Alice's big toe before taking the SAT or on the eve of a critical soccer match with their cross-town rivals, the Stanton Suffragettes. Although Alice Paul died in 1977, she remains a real presence on campus. Once inside Alice Paul High School, images of famous women are everywhere. Pictures of Jeannette Rankin, Mary MacLeod Bethune, Margaret Sanger, Carry Nation, and Mia Hamm gaze down on students as they go to their classes, constant reminders of the power and accomplishments of women. There are few if any pictures of men, as if in confirmation of the old adage, It's a woman's world. Trophy cases overflow with artifacts trumpeting women's role in ending child labor, reforming schools, eliminating domestic violence, confronting alcoholism, and battling for healthcare reform. It is the same story in the technology and math wing of Alice Paul High, where the influence of such computer pioneers as Ada Loveless and Grace Hopper can be seen everywhere. Few images of males can be found anywhere in the hallways--or in the textbooks. The typical history text devotes less than 5% of its content to the contributions of men, a percentage that actually shrinks in math and science texts. …