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Boston Globe
a day ago
- General
- Boston Globe
Should boys start kindergarten a year later than girls?
Some districts, including New York City, have banned this practice (with exceptions), in part because these children already tend to be ahead in school, so it could contribute to a long-existing achievement gap by race and family income. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But a different way to address that issue, supporters of redshirting say, is to make it the national policy for all boys. That would make it accessible to more Black and Hispanic boys and those from low-income families -- the children least likely to be redshirted now but most likely to benefit, says Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Advertisement Such a policy might sound far-fetched. The data is not clear that it helps in the long run. Children develop at different rates, and a universal policy is unlikely to serve them all. Crucially, kindergarten is usually the first year that parents have free child care, and without universal pre-K, this would force many parents of boys to pay for another year of private care. Advertisement But research shows that being a year older benefits children, especially boys, in one crucial way involving self-control -- and helps illuminate why many young children are struggling in the American school system. Redshirting has been happening in small numbers for decades. Malcolm Gladwell popularized it in his 2008 book 'Outliers,' noting that professional athletes were often old for their grade. The idea to redshirt all boys was proposed in 2022 by Reeves in his book, 'Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.' It gained momentum because of two changes to education. First, parents have become more competitive about educating their children, and redshirting has been a way to give them an edge in academics or athletics. Also, school has become more academic earlier -- meaning more time spent preparing for tests and less time learning through play. That has been particularly difficult for boys, who on the whole mature later than girls. The result is a gender gap in kindergarten readiness that continues through high school, with boys going to college at lower rates. Shrinking the gap early on could help in adolescence, too. Girls go through puberty about a year and a half before boys do and tend to develop the executive function skills crucial to school, like time management and self-control, earlier. 'I think the main reason for giving more flexibility is not because of kindergarten; it's because of those later years,' Reeves said. 'I actually think adolescence is when the gaps are biggest, or at least the most consequential.' Advertisement Joe Strickland, who taught middle school outside Savannah, Georgia, for 25 years, said he thought the policy would be 'the smartest thing the schools ever did,' because in his experience, boys and girls at that age 'are completely different.' The girls, he said, tend to be focused and interested in school. Many boys? 'Just general silliness, horse playing with each other, anything but focusing and concentrating on their work,' he said. Nicole Appell started her son in kindergarten at age 6, after his preschool teacher suggested it. At first, Appell, also a preschool teacher, was taken aback. He was already reading, but he wasn't emotionally ready, becoming easily overwhelmed and crying a lot at school. 'In hindsight, I'm so glad she did that,' said Appell, who lives in Seattle. 'It was really important. Being a little more mature means being able to handle the situations that happen at school.' Studies of redshirting have found pros and cons. Some research has found that any boost in achievement fades away as children get older. Redshirting could increase high school dropout rates because older students would reach the legal age for quitting school earlier. It could also disadvantage men by delaying their entry into the job market. Yet several large studies -- of nearly all kindergartners in three states -- show clear benefits to being older. In Florida, where children start kindergarten if they have turned 5 by Sept. 1, researchers compared those with September birthdays, who were relatively old for their grade, and those with August birthdays, who were almost a year younger. The older students consistently scored higher on tests in third grade and, to a lesser extent, eighth grade. They were more likely to attend college and less likely to go to jail as juveniles. The findings were true for children of all backgrounds, but especially for boys and for children from low-income families. Advertisement Researchers in Tennessee and North Carolina found similar results, including that redshirting reduced the male-female achievement gap. Studies in other countries have also found that older children score higher and have more self-confidence in school. One line of research provides a clue as to what exactly is benefiting older children. They stood out in a key skill: their ability to sit still, concentrate, think before acting and see tasks through to the end, a study of Danish children found. These traits, which girls tend to develop earlier, have been shown to be crucial to academic success. Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education and an author of the study, said children develop this kind of self-control through pretend play, and older children probably spent more time doing that in high-quality, play-based Danish preschools. (He cautioned that the potential benefits of redshirting might not be realized if the extra year were spent in a less enriching environment.) This idea -- that these attention skills are driving the differences between older and younger students -- is backed by studies showing that the youngest students in a grade are more likely to be diagnosed with attention disorders. A study of 400,000 children in every state found that those with birthdays just before the kindergarten cutoff were significantly likelier to be diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder than those with birthdays just after the cutoff. A study of 1 million children in Britain found a similar pattern. Advertisement 'Age really matters,' said David Figlio, professor of education and economics at the University of Rochester and an author of the Florida study. Yet he also didn't think universal redshirting for boys was the answer. A better alternative to redshirting all boys, some researchers said, would be to make it optional for any student so that parents could choose whether it was right for their child, with advice from teachers and the option to attend an extra year of public pre-K. An easier change, some said, would be to make the cutoff date for kindergarten earlier, so all children would turn 5 at least a few months before they start. Teachers could group classes by birth month, with the older kindergartners together in one class and the younger ones in another. Also, schools could restore more of the play-based learning -- like dress-up, art and nature exploration -- that was much more common in kindergarten before 2000. 'Boys are half the population, so if we're doing all these things in school that we think are disadvantaging them, the answer isn't to redshirt,' said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, professor of education and social policy at Northwestern. 'We can do something cheaper and better, like not overintellectualizing kindergarten -- more circle time, fewer worksheets about circles.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Educators On Why Fewer Black Men Enrolling at HBCUs?
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are renowned for prioritizing post-secondary education opportunities to all Black students, but a recent report says that enrollment rates for Black men at those schools are suffering. The New York Times reports that Black men only account for 26 percent of the students at HBCUs. That's even lower than the previous number of 36 percent in 1976, according to numbers gathered by the American Institute for Boys and Men. The story also states, 'there are now about as many non-Black students attending HBCUs as there are Black men.' Antoine Hardy doesn't teach at HBCUs himself, but he has personally seen decreasing numbers of Black men in his classrooms. He's an assistant professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, and an adjunct professor at New York University's Clive Davis Instutute of Music. He told The Root that he had five to eight Black or afro-latino men in his courses in 2018 and 2022 at both schools, respectively, and that he only has two to three Black men in those courses this semester. After having conversations with high school students about the issue over the years, Hardy attributes multiple factors to account for the dwindling numbers of Black men in college. He says that some of these men are disenchanted after seeing their siblings struggle with college loans and job placement, and that the variety of vehicles to learn online decreases the allure of college for them. 'The anti-intellectual/entrepreneur rhetoric has been loud since middle school for them,' he says. 'Influencers and successful people celebrate dropouts and being self-taught, and this media and algorithm is geared to male consumers.' He adds that men deal with societal impatience for them to make money. 'College is framed as a feminine thing, and girls have more patience. Men [have this perception of] 'I need money now,' mixed with this idea that being broke as a man is the worst and that a 'real man' can hustle,'' Hardy continued. He also adds that some men have dealt with low expectations from people around them. 'Whether at home or school, no one has believed in them, and their school doesn't push college.' Eugene Lee-Johnson is a tenure track assistant professor of political science at his HBCU alma mater, Southern University in Baton Rouge. He wasn't surprised by the New York Times report: he says that he's been surrounded by women students and professors, both while receiving his education and in his teaching career. Through his experiences as a mentor for young men and research he's found, he mirrored Hardy's comments about societal expectations for men. 'There's a trauma that comes with Black male patriarchy. Men need to provide, men need to protect, and a lot of our young men internalize these things rooted in our oppression. I even experienced it myself,' he said. 'If I don't work, I don't eat, so to speak. When you think about the way Black boys are disciplined, educated, and mentored, it doesn't always look the same as it does for women. We see sports, music, and even drug dealing as a means to an end. It's one of the ways we experience gender differently. Black girls face their issues as well, but their pathways look different.' 'Black women shape their priorities differently. Being doubly-disadvantaged, and for some Black women even more, Black women understand that they have to be twice as good,' Lee-Johnson continued. He emphasizes that despite being rampantly underpaid by way of gender pay gaps, 'Black women understand that education is a ticket to a better life. Also, education is a form of civic engagement for them.' Hardy and Lee-Johnson both say that colleges have done a poor job of reaching out to Black men, but the latter says that it's not all HBCUs' fault. He explains that most HBCUs don't have large endowments, so that they have fewer resources to work with. He says that even though they're pivoting to maximize the way that social media pages like WatchTheYard, HBCUBuzz, and HBCUPulse showcase the dynamic HBCU atmosphere, that they're still lagging behind financially. 'The historic underfunding definitely comes into play. I've worked in recruiting at a PWI (predominantly white institution), and we went on monthly recruiting trips to high schools, community colleges, Black Greek Letter Organization conferences, and even detention centers across the country and some internationally,' he said. 'We created pamphlets, mailers, and digital infographics to send to everyone, including alums. HBCUs don't have the money to do those things consistently.' On the bright side, Hardy says that BMCC has seen a slight increase in Black enrollment this spring, and that his Black male students there are doing well, with some of them returning to school after taking a few years away to work. But he knows that with the anti-intellectual tones of the manosphere, he's fighting an uphill battle. 'For me, it's tough. I like teaching fellow Black men, but it's been on decline for a while despite a slight uptick in the late 90s. And I truly believe college is not the only option,' Hardy said. 'But I also don't know how you counter so much content and discourse that reinforces that college is a scam.' For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
New York Times
30-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
At Black Colleges, a Stubborn Gender Enrollment Gap Keeps Growing
Before stepping foot on Howard University's campus, Skylar Wilson knew she would see more women there than men. But just how many more stunned her: Howard, one of the most elite historically Black colleges and universities in the nation, is only 25 percent men — 19 percent Black men. 'I was like, 'Wow,'' said Ms. Wilson, a 20-year-old junior. 'How is that possible?' Howard is not unique. The number of Black men attending four-year colleges has plummeted across the board. And nowhere is this deficit more pronounced than at historically Black colleges and universities, or H.B.C.U.s. Black men account for 26 percent of the students at H.B.C.U.s, down from an already low 38 percent in 1976, according to the American Institute for Boys and Men. There are now about as many non-Black students attending H.B.C.U.s as there are Black men. The decline has profound implications for economic mobility, family formation and wealth generation. Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist who uses large data sets to study economic opportunity, has found that the income gap between America's Black and white populations is entirely driven by differences in men's economic circumstances, not women's. The causes are many. Higher college costs, the immediate financial needs of Black families, high suspension rates in high school and a barrage of negative messages about academic potential all play roles in the decline of Black male enrollment and college completion. Howard estimates that its cost of attendance for undergraduates easily exceeds $50,000 a year. 'If we are serious about reducing race gaps in economic opportunity, household wealth, et cetera, then our attention should be squarely focused on economic outcomes for Black boys and men — period. Full stop,' said Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. But now programs designed to nurture Black academic achievement may be dismantled by the Trump administration, which deems them 'racist' diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Cultural centers, mentorship programs, work force recruitment activities and scholarship programs are all threatened by the White House's promise to cut funding to universities that do not eliminate what it calls racial preferences. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump asked the Supreme Court to allow him to terminate more than $600 million in teacher training grants, which would decimate two of the Education Department's largest professional development programs. Both were designed to place teachers in underserved schools and diversify the educational work force. 'It's a perpetuating cycle,' said Dr. Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, chief executive of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. 'If you don't see other Black male educators, then it's hard for you to see yourself in that position.' On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services targeted California medical schools for maintaining what Trump administration officials called 'discriminatory race-based admissions,' though bolstering the number of Black doctors has long been a goal of the medical establishment. 'Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,' Craig Trainor, the Education Department's acting assistant secretary for civil rights, wrote in a memo to universities in February. Black educators say burdens are already distributed unfairly. Society undermines Black men's belief in their own potential, starting from early education and continuing through professional development, said Dr. Derrick Brooms, executive director of the Black Men's Research Institute at Morehouse College, an elite, all-male H.B.C.U. in Atlanta. Colleges like Howard may be the starkest of manifestations. Payton Garcia, a Howard sophomore, recalled being one of three men in his introduction to philosophy class, which has about 30 students. 'We did a Cuba trip,' he recalled. 'I was the only male that was in the class.' Recent shifts in higher education, driven in part by conservative policies in Washington, have wrought large changes in predominantly Black colleges, positive and negative. The Supreme Court's ban on race-based college admissions drove up interest in some H.B.C.U.s and strengthened the application pool overall, Dr. Brooms said. But he's still concerned about the long-term trend. Dr. Brooms said at this point, Morehouse may have to re-evaluate its recruitment strategy, including looking abroad: 'Perhaps there may be some Black men in Canada who may want to attend.' On campuses like Howard's, the gender disparity is understood. Women run the place. 'Everybody knows that the women dominate this campus,' said Tamarus Darby Jr., a 20-year-old sophomore at Howard. 'You see predominantly women out here running for positions, and then you see their friends, young women, showing up for them and supporting them,' he said. 'It's different for the men.' According to students and faculty at Howard, Black male students can have a difficult time finding both themselves and a community. One night last October, young men gathered in small groups on the Howard yard and wrote down what they were most afraid of — 'I have a fear of failure,' said Joshua Hughes, a senior who led the 'burning of the fears' that night. 'I have a fear of letting my family down. I have a fear of not living up to my full potential.' Some read their fears aloud before tossing their writings into a giant firepit as a drum line banged African djembes. In 2019, Calvin Hadley, then a senior adviser to Howard's president, was asked how Howard could better engage men on campus. He put together a survey of students, faculty and staff, and then hosted several barbershop listening sessions. Something clicked. 'We had these very detailed, emotional conversations around manhood, around masculinity, around relationships,' said Mr. Hadley, now Howard's assistant provost for academic partnerships and student engagement. Male fears can work against college attendance, students said. Fears of failure may deter Black men from higher education, even as fears of letting their families down drive them prematurely into the work force, before their earning potential can be reached. Mr. Darby said many of his friends didn't have parents or family who attended college, or they thought the costs were prohibitive. 'So they were trying to find those other avenues to make money and to be successful, not thinking that college was the number one thing that was going to get you there,' he said. As a middle schooler, Jerrain Holmes, a 20-year-old sophomore, recalled thinking: 'College? What is college?' He added, 'I knew I just wanted a job.' But in his Detroit-area high school, he enrolled in a college readiness program, and it made all the difference. 'As a general proposition, young men are arriving on college campuses less skilled academically than women,' Mr. Reeves said. 'That's even more true of men of color, Black men.' That leads to problems of completion, which are at least as significant as declining enrollment. The first year of college is crucial for male retention, and a lack of services can lead young men to feel isolated or that they don't belong, Dr. Brooms said. 'If you can show you can keep people, that folks can persist to graduation, that becomes a recruitment tool itself,' said Dr. Brooms. On a recent warm, breezy spring day on campus, Howard students laid on blankets, chatting. Some set up tables to sell merchandise, displaying the famed entrepreneurial 'Howard hustle.' Others campaigned for student senate or royal court. The gender disparity was on the minds of the students. Christian Bernard, a 22-year-old senior from affluent Potomac, Md., is a third-generation legacy student. He was on the yard selling items from his clothing brand, emblazoned with the slogan 'Worth It.' He started the brand amid the turmoil and grief of June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the swell of Black Lives Matter demonstrations. He chose Howard for its soccer program and his family ties. Before injuries derailed his athletic career, he made strong friendships with his teammates. 'There's a lot of male camaraderie here at Howard,' he said. Those studying the challenges that young Black men face are careful to avoid a battle of the sexes. Women have faced historical challenges of their own. Some people perceive female gains as a threat to men in a zero-sum battle for resources and power. Mr. Reeves said that is a mistake, particularly when it comes to family formation. Asking the young men on campus how the gender gap affects dating will draw a sheepish grin. They understand their advantage. Young women are thinking about it too. 'Those ratios,' said Nevaeh Fincher, a sophomore, can be 'rough.' 'A lot of the boys feel like they've got options,' Ms. Fincher said, 'which, if we're being honest, they do.' The lack of college-educated Black men could change family structures and bread winning patterns, placing more financial burdens on Black women. College-educated Black women already have higher lifetime earnings than college-educated white women because they work more years over the course of their lives, despite lower annual earnings, according to the Kansas City Federal Reserve. For young women who care about the future of Black America, in general, all of this is alarming. 'We see a lot of school programs and districts that are giving up on students and giving up on Black men before they even give them a chance,' said Ms. Wilson. She's seen it in the male students she mentors, who say their teachers don't offer much encouragement. 'They expect them to be bad,' she said. 'They expect them to be problems.'
The Guardian
09-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Jobless, isolated, fed misogynistic porn… where is the love for Britain's lost boys?
The boys are not all right. That's the message from a new Centre for Social Justice report, Lost Boys, published last week. It surveys how boys and young men are faring in Britain and finds that in several areas there is now a reverse gender gap, with boys, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, struggling to keep up with girls. When it comes to education, girls outperform boys at GCSEs and A-levels, and the ratio of women to men at university is 60:40. Boys are more than twice as likely to be excluded from school, with rates of exclusion particularly high for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is all feeding through into labour market outcomes: in the 00s, women aged 16-24 were more likely to be not in employment, education and training than young men; in recent years, that has flipped, with young men also significantly more likely to be unemployed than young women. The pay gap for young people has also become a more complex story: for 21- to 24-year-olds, median earnings are now higher for women, but this has been driven by a stark drop in earnings for non-graduate young men, with graduates still earning more than their female equivalent. What's more, boys are more likely to be obese than girls, and rates of suicide are three and a half times higher for boys aged 15-19 than girls of the same age. None of this is to deny the many inequalities faced by females in a patriarchal society. But neither should a focus on women's equality crowd out discussion of the problems being experienced by a minority of boys; improving their lot would do a huge amount to make life better for both sexes. But we have struggled to have a constructive conversation about the specific issues facing boys, with a tendency for all sides to slip into polarised, zero-sum framing. For some on the left, there is an implicit fear that focusing on boys might distract from the challenges facing girls; and certain sections of the right wrongly regard boys falling behind as a product of important feminist wins of recent decades. This new report is a healthy corrective, and follows similar work in the US by thinkers such as Richard Reeves, who recently set up the American Institute for Boys and Men. Reeves' diagnosis of the problem is part institutional, part cultural. We today have an education system better suited to girls, but a labour market still structured around the needs of higher achieving men. And the positive shifts we have seen in the cultural script about successful womanhood have not been accompanied by changing narratives about what it means to be a flourishing man, a vacuum that has enabled misogynist influencers such as Andrew Tate – the third most Googled person in the world in 2023 – to seed the idea with some young men that women are to blame for their ills. Reading Lost Boys made me feel as though there's a long way to go in properly understanding what's going on with young men's wellbeing. Convincing hypotheses abound. Boys get conflicting messages everywhere, from the violent, aggressive pornography to which so many young people are exposed, to important societal conversations about male violence, to the harmful stereotypes found in books and toys and on clothes. Adverse childhood experiences and mental health issues tend to manifest differently in boys – in externalising bad behaviours, rather than internalised feelings of depression or anxiety – and are seen much less sympathetically in society, playing into higher school exclusion rates and higher rates of autism and ADHD diagnoses. Men tend to be more socially isolated – data from the US highlights they have fewer close friendships and that young men are twice as likely to be single than women. They are also much more likely to live in the parental home for longer. And Laura Bates has documented how social media algorithms target young men with extreme misogynistic content, with increasing numbers suffering from body dysmorphia or eating disorders, and taking steroids to bulk up. Some of the differences between boys and girls will be driven by biology; much will be socially constructed. In terms of the violence gap between the sexes, for example, the average man is not much more violent than the average woman, but there are many more very violent men than women. That is partly a product of higher testosterone levels, but also how some boys react to negative childhood experiences, such as domestic abuse or an absent father. On the friendship gap, one ethnographic study has found that in early adolescence, friendships between girls and between boys are not that dissimilar, but in later years boys learn to become more detached through 'macho' culture. Nature or nurture, these differences exist, however, and while some solutions, such as improving online safety and tighter regulation of online pornography will benefit boys and girls, the former also need solutions tailored to their needs. In the US, Reeves has called for boys to start school a year later, better vocational and technical education, and more male teachers. These are worthy of exploration, but it is striking how little we know about what might work in improving boys' outcomes. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion Redressing this is vital to improving the wellbeing of all young people. Failing to do so could also have political consequences, further opening the door for the far right to play on young men's grievances, as we have seen across Europe. In the last election, young men were twice as likely to vote for Reform as young women, with the latter twice as likely to vote Green, reflecting a growing attitudinal gap. The ubiquity of social media and the grim financial climate into which young people are maturing – a growing number of gen Z will never be able to afford their own home, and will spend most of their working lives paying off tuition fees – bring a unique set of challenges for this generation. But young men are no less deserving of a specific policy and cultural focus than young women; and to deny them this is to the detriment of everyone. Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist
