Selling out our boys

We can no longer allow the partisans of girls to write the rules.

This is Christina Hoff Sommers, writing in her book, The War against Boys, which showed how feminists were controlling American education and distorting research findings to suppress how badly boys were doing in school.

That was a quarter of a century ago and still the partisans of girls have a very firm grip on American education, with boys falling even further behind. Hoff Sommers' efforts to wrestle back control from the ideologues sadly have had little impact.

The same dire state of affairs applies in Australia. In this country we have thousands of blinkered partisans of girls working as education bureaucrats, academics and policy makers. These femocrats are doing a remarkable job suppressing evidence of boys' ongoing education crisis whilst continuing to promote measures to enhance girls' performance.

Across Australia our education departments publish annual reports which list achievement gaps – by indigenous status, socio-economic status, disability, geolocation and language background – but never by gender.

Yet the data is there showing girls are streaking ahead of boys in almost every subject in final year exam results. There's now hardly a subject where boys come out on top, apart from a couple of advanced maths and physics units.

Yet far more important than who is top of the pile is the deteriorating position of the boys at the bottom. The latest NAPLAN school tests show twice as many boys as girls seriously failing in writing and numeracy at every level – years 3,5,7 and 9. Almost half (47%) of all year 9 boys fail grammar vs 36% of girls.

Nearly half (44%) of boys in year 7 failed to reach minimum writing standards. In reading boys are around 13 months behind similar girls. And almost as many males as females are seriously failing the NAPLAN numeracy test at every grade level.

This should be a huge story, with almost half of this generation of children likely to end up barely literate, unable to perform the basic reading required for post school success. We constantly are exposed to media stories highlighting boys in trouble, the massive numbers now on Ritalin and other drugs for attention problems, the one in six boys receiving disability funding for autism or developmental delays. More boys being suspended or expelled, and failing to complete their schooling, dropping out early, fewer making it to university.

Yet our education bureaucracy just doesn't want to know.

Back in the 1990s I wrote a great deal about boys' education, reporting on the efforts of the public servants who run our education departments to deny there's a problem.

"Boys' disadvantage?" one gender equity officer said to me, "Well, it's disadvantage complete with carpeting and air-conditioning."