America spends a great deal of time talking about what has gone wrong with young men.
They are falling behind in building families and in their careers. Too many lack direction, discipline, purpose and confidence. Many worry about pornography, loneliness, video games, declining marriage rates, anger, apathy and more.
Yet remarkably little attention is paid to a more fundamental question: Who should be forming boys to become men? For much of American history, the answer was men themselves.
DADS AREN’T OPTIONAL — AND AMERICA’S KIDS ARE PAYING THE BRUTAL PRICE
Before education became synonymous with brick-and-mortar classrooms, a boy learned first from his father, then from a career mentor, from older male relatives and from other leading men in his community. Education certainly included literacy and arithmetic, but also scripture, history, duty, courage, self-control and how a man was expected to conduct himself.
At least until reformers such as Horace Mann came on the scene. Mann, known as “the father of American education,” wanted standardized education across the country, which required enormous numbers of teachers. Women, who were up until then typically homemakers, became the answer.
Some argued women were naturally nurturing and morally suited to shape children. Still, others noticed something else. Finding inexpensive labor for the growing number of schools became a priority. Women at that time could be paid considerably less than men.
Mann asked in 1838 why communities should pay male teachers $25 or $30 monthly when women could do the job for roughly half the price. By 1870, nearly 90% of Massachusetts teachers were women.
Industrialization further transformed fatherhood. Boys who once watched their fathers work on farms, in workshops and running family businesses increasingly saw less and less of their fathers who began working elsewhere. Fathers became primarily breadwinners while others assumed responsibility for children’s formation.
The cultural division became this: Dad earned the money. Mom handled education.
TRADITIONAL TWO-PARENT FAMILIES VANISH FROM BIG AMERICAN CITIES AS ‘MARRIAGE DESERTS’ EXPAND
Today we can see what Mann’s reform wrought.
Nearly 80% of America’s public school teachers are women. Meanwhile, approximately one in five American children, more than 15 million, live with their mothers but not the fathers.
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Based on the proportion of female elementary teachers, a simplified statistical model reveals nearly half of American children could complete kindergarten through fifth grade without ever being in a classroom led by a male teacher. This is not to suggest female teachers provide inferior education. Women stepped into a space too many men vacated and continue to carry an enormous responsibility educating both girls and boys. But a system offering boys almost no male role models is missing something essential.
Consider then what happens when these two realities intersect. Millions of boys are growing up without a father in the home. And classrooms are overwhelmingly led by women. Some boys may go through their most formative years — during which they develop confidence, courage, resilience and the ability to handle frustration — without a consistent male role model in the places they spend most of their time.
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This raises a serious question: Who is teaching America’s boys how to become good, responsible men? Should we really be surprised too many boys are struggling when good male role models are so scarce in their daily lives, especially in education?
Boys need meaningful exposure to good men who take intellectual and moral development seriously. Men who teach boys to turn aggression into protection, competitiveness into excellence, physical strength into service and eventually sexual desire into restraint, responsibility and commitment.
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Yet, influential men spend hours today discussing what’s happened to 25-year-olds while devoting remarkably little attention to boys at 7, 10 or 13. They discuss declining masculinity without discussing curriculum, history, character formation or what fathers should personally teach their sons.
We have become fascinated by repairing men while remaining strangely disengaged from making them. It’s been said, after all, it’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
AMERICAN SCHOOLS COST MORE THAN EVER BUT OUR STUDENTS STILL KEEP FAILING
This boy crisis is indeed an education crisis. And nothing will be solved by a new bureaucratic policy or a government spending scheme. The heart of education is the human mind and important formation happens when boys are little.
How does a 10-year-old prepare for life’s challenges? Where does he find courage? Can he distinguish good from evil, control his emotions, tolerate rejection and understand his responsibilities to his family and to his neighbor?
Perhaps the most consequential change in America was when men gradually stopped believing educating children was central to how boys became men.
That is a cultural mistake we should correct.
Boys need more male teachers and fathers who are involved in their children’s schools and learning journeys. America’s boys need more intellectuals who take childhood education as seriously as geopolitics. And they need more politicians who care as much about who helps form a child’s mind as who gets to formulate a school’s budget.
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Here and now I hear my own father saying: “Stop complaining and do something about it.”
Many men complain about education becoming “too feminine” while at the same time treating education as a woman’s responsibility. But if men genuinely want to reverse the boy crisis, American education can no longer remain a no-man’s land.