Truth in Packaging time…
School systems consume huge amounts of tax revenue, and spend much of that money, via the time and resources it pays-for, forcing boys to act like girls. They waste the time of bright children, especially of bright boys, by forcing them to sit still and wait for duller pupils to learn lessons they have already “got”.
Kleinfeld (2009) reported:
middle class parents … were worried that so many of their sons had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and prescribed drugs such as Ritalin which might damage their developing brains. They suspected that teachers’ intolerance for active, boisterous boys, not their sons’ presumed deficits, was responsible.
Middle class parents—all or mostly respectable citizens—were worried about schools abusing their children—if the children were boys. Sax (2007) considered over-prescription of stimulants so serious as to make it one of five main factors in the de-motivation of boys and young men.
Girls didn’t seem to need worrying-about, Kleinfeld wrote later in the same paper: “ While the educational problems of girls have led to numerous policy efforts to increase their achievement in areas where they are behind, such as achievement in mathematics and science at the top, the problems of boys have been largely ignored by federal agencies, foundations, and school districts. ” Schools, over the past two generations of time, have changed to be more girl-friendly, but have demanded the boys change rather than the schools, even to the point of forcing the boys to change by drugging them (Kleinfeld, 2009; Sax, 2007, Anonymous, 2011.)
Drugging children to force them to adapt to inappropriate circumstances is abuse and may constitute torture. If this were done to children of one race, rather than of one gender, it would be criminal. The only reason it is not criminal—if indeed it is not—is that laws have been written to privilege female and disempower male citizens. Imaginably, men rank lower in civil standing today than Afro-Americans have ranked since Brown v. Board of Education.
Not being a lawyer nor a policeman, i don’t know whether criminal prosecution of school agents for drugging boys is possible. I would encourage it if it is—if street pushers go to prison, why not school pushers?* With the street pushers, acceptance is at least somewhat
voluntary, so school drugging is worse on the face of it.
If drugging stopped tomorrow, schools would still be prim, sit-still environments that down-grade pupils who—frankly, who act like
boys (Anonymous, 2011, Sexton, 19??). Few schools have taken notice of recent research showing that not only are boys naturally more
active and boisterous—boys learn better when active. School teaching techniques are more suited to girls than to boys. To repeat “in other words” for emphasis: Schools are failing boys more than boys are failing in school.
Whether or not school “drug-pushers” can be prosecuted, and this may vary from state to state, some truth in labelling is “long overdue”: Schools should be pinked. Pink school doors and school buses would be a warning few could misunderstand. They would also be a “bur under the saddle” on school boards and officials until the implied remedy of boy-friendly education is in operation.
Petitioning School Boards had damn well better be lawful, and in a real democracy it should be encouraged whenever the petition has some merit. That’s the kind of effort i’ll sketch here. The many good activists who read this site should be able to improve the petition and add other ways of getting after school systems to stop drugging boys and start educating them in boy-appropriate ways.
… and meanwhile, pink school buses and pink school doors will at least be some kind of fair warning what schools are like.
Here’s a rough draft petition [which does not mention drugging, because that abuse should be more aggressively attacked] for the lawyers and
politicians among you to refine:
To the [name of local “School Board”]:
Whereas, the structure of today’s conventional classrooms and the behavioural demands made by today’s conventional schoolteachers therein, are inconsistent with and inimical to the natural psychology of healthy boys; and
Whereas, the natural psychology of girls is more adapted to such classrooms and demands than that of boys; and
Whereas, the present school bus practices constitute “babying” of most school children, which children need to know how to deal with the traffic on the roads next their homes anyway:
Therefore,
we the [undersigned, presenting] petitioners, hereby demand with all due respect (which may not be very much respect if our efforts should be scorned) that the [name of local “School Board”] forthwith:
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Cause all School Buses operated by the Board to be painted a bright pink colour, which colour be as easily visible as the presently used shade of yellow, and which colour additionally designates the school buses and schools to be more suitable for girls than for boys
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Cause the entry doors of all schools operated by the Board to be painted pink, further designating the schools to be more suitable for girls than for boys;
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Form a committee including at least 50% skilled trades men (which category can include cooks, farmers, airline pilots, physicians, engineers, etc.; but not bureaucrats) to design a school system, as to both architecture and teaching practices, adapted to the psychology of normal healthy boys;
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Until there are boy-friendly schools available, cease to tax parents of boys;
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Form a committee of rural residents to review the possibility of replacing the present School Bus system with rural buses which may
carry persons who are not school children, thus increasing the mobility of rural non-drivers and the efficiency of rural life; and -
Retain the pink colouring of both school doors and school buses except, unless, and until:
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in the case of school buses, a rural-bus system replaces the school-only bus system;
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there are boy-and-man approved, boy-friendly schools in operation, which schools may have doors of some other appropriate colour.
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Presented this ___ day of __________ 201_, by the undersigned.
_______________________________________________ ____________________ _______________________________
_______________________________________________ ____________________ _______________________________
…and further signature lines…
Note:
As the State of Texas has demonstrated well enough for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to take notice and report nationally, punishments and corrections other than caging [wo]men up in prisons, may be preferable. The topic is too large to be included in this “blog”.
References:
Anonymous, 2011. Reports of school practices in New Brunswick and Anglophone Quebec. November 6. Anonymous, a substitute teacher and church
pastor, reports that schools still require pupils to sit quietly in neat rows and listen to Teacher, time-wasting [esp of ablest pupils] is if anyting worse than when he was a schoolboy, many boys are
“tuning out”. Drugging does occur; he could not state the extent.
Kleinfeld, Judith. 2009. “The State of American Boyhood”. Gender Issues.26, 113-120.
Sax, Leonard (2007). Boys Adrift. New York: Basic Books. Note also review by Steven Svoboda,
Sexton, Patricia Cayo. 19??. The Feminized Male.
