MENSIGHT:
The Journal of Conscious Masculinity On-line Magazine of
TheMensCenter.com
A Service of the Men's Resource
Network, Inc
Now with over 800 Pages of male positive content
This
two DVD set features author Warren Farrell,
Glenn Sacks, Father's 4 Justice founder Matt
O'Connor, Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson authors
of Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry,
Stephen Baskerville author of Taken Into Custody,
Christina Hoff Sommers who wrote the War Against
Boys and many more. This is a powerhouse of
presentations by some of the best minds in the world
on the topic of men and boys.
The Trouble with Boys:
A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School,
and What Parents and Educators Must Do.
By Peg Tyre
In
a spinoff from her 2006 cover story for Newsweek,
The Boy Crisis, Tyre delivers a cogent, reasoned
overview of the current national debate about why
boys are falling behind girls' achievement in school
and not attending college in the same numbers. While
the education emphasis in the 1990s was on helping
girls succeed, especially in areas of math and
science, boys are lagging behind, particularly in
reading and writing; parents and educators,
meanwhile, are scrambling to address the problems,
from questioning teaching methods in preschool to
rethinking single-sex schools. Tyre neatly sums up
the information for palatable parental consumption:
although boys tend to be active and noisy, and come
to verbal skills later than girls, early-education
teachers, mostly female, have little tolerance for
the way boys express themselves. The accelerated
curriculum and de-emphasis on recess do not render
the classroom boy friendly, and already set boys up
for failure that grows more entrenched with each
grade. Tyre touches on important concerns about the
lack of male role models in many boys' lives, the
perils of video-game obsession and the slippery
dialogue over boys' brains versus girls' brains.
Tyre treads carefully, offering a terrifically
useful synthesis of information. (Sept.)
It's a Boy!:
Your Son's
Development From Birth to Age 18
Michael G. Thompson, Ph.D.
and Teresa Barker
From
the New York Times bestselling co-author of
Raising Cain, It’s a Boy! is the first major
parenting book to chart every stage of a
boy’s life. This upbeat, authoritative, and
reassuring guide–written by psychologist
Michael Thompson, Ph.D., a leading
international expert on boys’ development,
and journalist Teresa H. Barker–shows how a
boy’s inner life progresses through infancy,
childhood, and adolescence.
What do boys actually
need? How exactly does a healthy boy look
and act? It’s a Boy! has the answers,
providing expert advice on the
developmental, psychological, social, and
academic life of boys from infancy through
the teen years. Exploring the many ways in
which boys strive for masculinity and
attempt to define themselves, Dr. Thompson
identifies the key developmental transitions
that mark a boy’s psychological growth and
emotional health, and the challenges both
boys and parents face at each age.
Boys
Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing
Epidemic of Unmotivated
Boys and Underachieving Young Men. Leonard
Sax.
DESCRIPTION:
Something scary is happening to boys today.
From kindergarten to college, American boys
are, on average, less resilient and less
ambitious than they were a mere twenty years
ago. The gender gap in college attendance
and graduation rates has widened
dramatically. While Emily is working hard at
school and getting A’s, her brother Justin
is goofing off. He’s more concerned about
getting to the next level in his videogame
than about finishing his homework. Now, Dr.
Leonard Sax delves into the scientific
literature and draws on more than twenty
years of clinical experience to explain why
boys and young men are failing in school and
disengaged at home. He shows how social,
cultural, and biological factors have
created an environment that is literally
toxic to boys. He also presents practical
solutions, sharing strategies which
educators have found effective in
re-engaging these boys at school, as well as
handy tips for parents about everything from
homework, to videogames, to medication.
The Cleveland
Plain Dealer
“Sax, in his pointed, conversational new
book, Boys Adrift, reports seeing
something new in his medical practice, and
hearing something disturbing in the comments
after his talks around the nation. Parents
and girlfriends describe boys and young men
plastered to the controls of their video
games, hostile to school, disconnected from
adult men and listless on "academic
steroids" prescribed to them for attention
deficit disorders. Sax zeroes in on these
maladies . . .Boys Adrift is an
important entry into the conversation. This
call to reconsider how the boy becomes the
man is worth heeding.”
A NEW STUDY... By Judith
Kleinfeld of THE
BOY'S PROJECT THE STATE OF
AMERICAN BOYHOOD... ABSTRACT:
The existence of a “boy crisis” in
the United States is a topic of educational policy debate. While
the problems of girls in schools have been addressed for many
years, should boys now become the forcus of educational reform?
To clarify this issue, this study reviews national statistics on
the well-being of American boys and young men, examining not
only the usual school indicators but also such issues as mental
health, premature deaths, juvenile delinquency and arrest rates.
Boys are in trouble in many areas: low rates of literacy, low
grades and engagement in school, high dropout rates, placement
in special education, especially in the more subjective areas of
emotional disturbance and learning disabilities, more suspension
and expulsions form school, and lower rates of postsecondary
entrance and completion. Boys also suffer from dramatically
higher suicide rates, conduct disorders, premature death, and
rates of arrest and juvenile delinquency. Girls, however, are
far more apt to suffer from depression and eating disorders.,
lower scores on mathematics and science tests, and are less
likely to achieve at the very highest levels. This study argues
that both boys and girls suffer from characteristic problems,
but the issues affecting boys are serious and neglected.
Go to full Study at The Boys
Project Website
A BOOK REVIEW with...
J. Steven
Svoboda
Boys Adrift By Leonard Sax
Leonard
Sax, family physician and author of Why Gender Matters,
has published his second book, and it’s simply superb. While I
found his first book quite mixed, Boys Adrift is one of
the most important, original gender books I have read in many
years.
Not to mention one of the
most worrisome. We already knew that at all levels, boys are
falling way behind girls in education. University students are
close to three-fifths female these days and in some campuses
exceed that margin. Sax provides ample evidence that this male
malaise is deeply entrenched throughout American society. The
author points to several principal challenges, to each of which
he devotes a chapter: boys’ disengagement from education, video
games, over-prescription of stimulants, and environmental
endocrine disruptors. The final challenge may be the most
elusive but is also critically important: boys’ need to be
schooled in what masculinity is by other men (and principally,
by men other than one’s own father).
Go to full review
Guest Article... Robert A.
Glover, Ph.D. author of The Nice Guy Syndrome The
Gender Gap at School, by David Brooks (From
Robert Glover's website)...
There
are three gender-segregated sections in any airport: the
restrooms, the security pat-down area and the bookstore. In the
men's sections of the bookstore, there are books describing
masterly men conquering evil. In the women's sections there are
novels about ... well, I guess feelings and stuff.
The same separation occurs in the home. Researchers in Britain
asked 400 accomplished women and 500 accomplished men to name
their favorite novels. The men preferred novels written by men,
often revolving around loneliness and alienation. Camus's "The
Stranger," Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and Vonnegut's
"Slaughterhouse-Five" topped the male list.
The women leaned toward books written by women. Go to Article
Guest Article... by
Marty Nemko Our Most
Underserved Students: Active, Smart Boys... When
I was a boy, I just could not sit still in class. I was very
bored and active by nature, so I would rock my chair back,
whisper and write notes to kids, even wander around the
classroom--until the teacher yelled, "Martin, sit down!"
This was decades ago. Today, I suspect I would
have been put on Ritalin. But in either case, the blame is
placed on the smart, active boy, rarely on the schools, which
claim to celebrate diversity of learning styles and needs but
stop celebrating when it comes to smart, active boys. Indeed,
the decade's signature domestic policy, No Child Left Behind,
redirects nearly all efforts to educate the lowest achievers. Go to Article
Emotional intimacy is a scary place
for we males. We certainly don't go there much with each other, and
even try to avoid it with our significant female relationships. We
have no "training" in this area and really, no place to sign up to
get it. That's what leaves us feeling so isolated Go to Article
Has Micky done this a lot? Yes, all year. And at
the end of last year, Micky also swiped a medal awarded to Ned for
some school event, claiming he wanted it for his brother. Ned says
Micky doesn't have a brother. (Micky backed down and nearly cried
when confronted on this matter by two girls who are friends of Ned.)
Micky is daring Ned to be tough. Jill, who teaches knitting in Ned's
class a couple of days a week, has never liked this kid. Micky
always takes a ball of yarn even though he never knits.
God knows I'm no expert on being tough. I had a
fight in second grade with a guy who later became a lifelong friend
(a draw). I picked a fight in third grade on the playground with a
kid who was minding his own business (a draw). All through seventh
grade some future candidates for work-release used to waylay me and
my lifelong friend as we walked to school. All my life, I'm afraid
I've run away more than stood Churchillian. Go to Article
Visit Jeffs Podcast
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What happened?” “I wanted
to tell Mom myself!” he yelled. “You ruined it.”
Part of me felt empathy for him and sadness that he
couldn’t “surprise” his mother. But another dark voice in my head
was louder. “Why can’t you grow up?” “Are you going to act like this
your whole childhood?” Go to Article
REVIEW:
Self-Made Man:
One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back Again
By Norah Vincent Norah Vincent has produced a new
book whose simple underlying concept nevertheless seems to possess
all the potential power of, say, John Howard Griffin’s classic Black Like Me, in which the Caucasian author masqueraded as a
black man and was astonished at the depths of the discrimination and
barriers he discovered. Author Vincent tries to do the same thing
for gender, dressing in drag as “Ned” and entering various supposed
male bastions to report on what she discovers. READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
The Smart Couple’s Guide to the
Wedding of Your Dreams: Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy
By
By Judith
Sherven and James Sniechowski Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski, husband-and-wife psychologists
and authors of three books previously reviewed by me in these pages
(The New Intimacy, Opening to Love 365 Days a Year, and Be
Loved for Who You Really Are) have just published a new book on
their favorite topic, love and marriage. In a literal sense, The
Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams covers a
narrower subject than any of their three previous books. But
actually, predictably enough given the authors’ excellent writing
skills and tireless, creative devotion to promoting passion, their
latest offering manages to transcend the limits of the genre of
wedding guides. Not seeing a book that went beyond the
technicalities of wedding planning and touched the spirit of the
event, they took the plunge and wrote it! READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival, and
Reconciliation in an American Family.
By Jon DuPre. Jon DuPre’s achievement with “The Prodigal Father” is stupefying.
What this correspondent for Fox Network News has done is so simple:
He has told the story of his family of origin, consisting of two
brothers, himself, and his mother and father. As a novel, the book
would fail. For one thing, the plot would be utterly unbelievable!
But “The Prodigal Father” is billed as an “autobiography,” and
written with loving detail and self-revelation so honest and so deep
that took my breath away. As such, it is utterly compelling and
simultaneously completely credible. READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
MILITARY
HONOR ROLL... Pay tribute to the
Veterans or Active Duty military in your life on our perpetual
Military Honor Roll page Go to
Military Honor Roll
FATHERS
HONOR ROLL... Pay tribute to your
father (grandfather, great grandfather, etc.) on our perpetual
Fathers Honor Roll page Go to
Fathers Honor Roll
MENSIGHT Magazine
is another free service of The Men's Resource Network, Inc. (MRN).
It has grown out of the response that we have received from articles
posted on
TheMensCenter.com (TMC), our official
web-site. The first issue went on-line on May 1, 2000. (Archive)
MENSIGHT
is dedicated to publishing diverse articles for and about men.
We believe that there are valuable lessons to be learned from
the advocates of all the various men's issues.
MENSIGHT
will publish articles, stories and information that will be
welcomed by many and controversial to others. We offer the
magazine for your edification but you are free to disagree or
reject what you do not like. Be advised that we do not
necessarily agree with every position that is expressed here.
We hope that you will be entertained,
informed, educated, stimulated, and/or motivated by what you
read here. We seek to empower men to be the authority of their
own lives. We do not seek to tell men what to think or feel.
