Is there a crisis in boys' education?

While not directly related to schools, a third reason why boys are at risk educationally is because of their low self-esteem and often negative self-image. The sad fact, as attested by Australia's youth suicide rate, is that many boys lack resilience, confidence and inner strength.

Whether it is caused by the ever-increasing incidence of single parent families where fathers are absent; the increasing assertiveness and independence of girls or the feminist attack on so-called traditional masculinity, boys are taught to look on themselves as flawed, anti-social and misogynist.

An example of the way masculinity is attacked can be found in the Australian Education Union's (AEU) submission to the boys' inquiry, when it states:

Dominant concepts of masculinity and femininity define males and females as opposites by highlighting their differences and assigning them unequal value, status and power.

The implication is that the characteristics associated with being "male" are misogynist and ripe for change. Even worse, the assumption is that traditional role models must be abandoned as boys become sensitive new age guys (snags) and embrace the world of the gender correct.

Increasingly, men are beginning to respond to the gender agenda imposed by feminists over the last 20 or so years. The University of Western Sydney's Mens Health Information and Resource Centre offers one example. The Centre provides a series of papers written by men that seek answers to questions like youth suicide, under achievement at school and the place of fathers in a post-feminist world.

Making it OK to be Male (pdf file) (is one paper that should be compulsory reading for anyone wanting to learn about the problems caused by the way men have been emasculated by the feminist agenda. For too long, especially at school, boys, and men, have been told that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Instead of celebrating masculinity in a positive way, men are portrayed as misogynist, violent and emotionally crippled.

This deficit view of what it means to be male is based on the assumption that men need to become "more 'feminine' in order to be whole". The result, according to academics like Peter West and John Macdonald, is that boy's lack self-esteem and a "positive sense of self".

The alternative to a deficit approach to masculinity, in the words of the above mentioned paper, it to "create a culture which does not run away from the darker side of men but which validates and honours men … a culture where men and boys and older men don't feel they have to apologise for being male".

The federally funded Boys' Education Lighthouse Schools Programme offers a second example of the emphasis shifting from positively discriminating in favour of girls to addressing the question of boys' educational disadvantage. Schools around Australia are being funded to identify and support "best practice" and to make what works available to other schools.

One of the most damaging aspects of the feminist agenda is the assumption that equality means sameness. Not only do girls, to succeed, need to become more like boys, but boys, so they are told, need to be more in touch with their feminine side. The alternative is to celebrate difference and to realise that men and women are not the same and that gender is not simply a social construct, but also biologically determined.