The grim future awaiting our boys

Implications for boys

The future for boys is grim. Years ago, an article named jobs that were employing fewer people. They included ship-building, steel-making, munitions, clothes manufacturing and shoe-making: all male-heavy jobs. We could have added jobs like banking- another industry offering far worse employment prospects today compared to 1970 or 1980. Meantime, jobs like childcare, beauty therapy and care giving have been rising in demand. All are female-heavy jobs. And work everywhere has been casualised: far worse working conditions, worse sick leave and holiday pay, if any. Sally McManus pointed this out last week. No wonder they call her a dangerous radical. These worrisome trends have accelerated in the last twenty years. So the future for boys is bleak.

Not for all boys. Walk around Central Station in Sydney and look at the boys in smart uniforms. Many Asian faces will brush past you as they scurry off to well-financed schools. Some are selective schools; some are private schools. But these boys will do well. Life has shown them many favours. Well-paid jobs and good careers await. One could ask why Australians tolerate such a large proportion of foreign-born students in well-financed schools, while the problem kids are usually bundled off to poorer State schools, but of course that might be racist.

This leaves working-class Australian boys. For some time we've known that certain groups of boys have been facing a tough future. Dark-skinned boys threaten established routines; they are very visible and are easily targeted by teachers and police. Some of the Africans face particular issues, as portrayed in SBS-TV's excellent show "Sunshine" . (Perhaps they are fortunate not to be in the USA, in a country where black men face far more problems, as I've explained in an earlier article.)

White working class boys are also in trouble. So many good jobs lost: and so many jobs are offering just casual or part-time labour. How can a young male do what his dad and his grand-dad did: meet a nice girl, buy a house and yard with a bit of room to move, and raise a growing family? In Sydney or Melbourne, with median house prices over a million dollars? Impossible, unless New Zealand's new Prime Minister brings her foreign ownership rules over here and house prices fall to levels ordinary people can manage.

The media don't help much with all this. They follow their own agendas. I've written before about how much people in the media like writing about themselves and riding their own hobby-horses. Commercial media are a lost cause with endless trivialities. Meantime the ABC seems obsessed with being 'more diverse' (as usual, this means giving more attention to women and some favoured ethnic groups, rather than anything else). SBS might be forgiven for following their charter and highlighting ethnicity, though some ethnic groups are more equal than others. In all this, there's not much attention given to the problems of unfashionable working-class Australian boys. Yes, boys can be loud, boisterous, noisy and rude, as teachers tell me. But they – with girls- are our hope.

A grim future for boys

Now put all of the above together. What is the future for most boys, if those steady jobs like steel-making are in strong decline? Where are the good sound jobs for ordinary decent young Australian males? Why isn't there an outpouring of popular feeling for them? Why is the academic world so hostile to boys as a race of individuals? Do a search on "boys' education" and look at the astounding number of articles determined not to help boys to learn. Even the idea of boy-friendly teaching seems to offend many academics.

The future for many boys is bleak. It will mean more trouble: on the street; in workplaces; in hospitals and other institutions, where frustrated boys will lash out; and in our schools. More men shut out of post-school education. More men in jail. And nobody gives a damn.