La nostra società si sta trasformando in qualcosa di inospitale per i maschietti, la cosa diventa ancora più palese se guardiamo al sistema scolastico sempre meno tollerante verso il rischio, la competitività, il contatto fisico, gli scherzi e l’aggressività virile tipica dei bambini. Della cosa si occupa Christina Hoff Sommers nel suo The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men.
La faccio breve: un tempo si riteneva che bambini e bambine necessitassero di stili educativi differenti per dare il massimo, cosicché le classi erano divise per sesso. La cosa sembrava naturale e a dirla tutta l’idea di fondo era tutt’altro che peregrina, senonché, in epoca recente, nel soppesare i pro e i contro, si è preferito andare verso la classe mista. Purtroppo, la classe era mista nella composizione ma non era affatto “mista” nella didattica: lo stile educativo “femminile” si è imposto facendo nascere una serie di problemi nei maschietti.
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A New York c’è una scuola stranissima: l’ Aviation High School in Queens. Cos’ha di particolare? Scatena l’entusiasmo dei maschietti e innalza il loro profitto.
… This is an institution that is working miracles with students. Schools everywhere struggle to keep teenagers engaged. At Aviation, they are enthralled. On a recent visit to Aviation, I observed a classroom of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds intently focused on constructing miniaturized, electrically wired airplane wings from mostly raw materials. In another class, the students worked in teams—with a student foreman and crew chief—to take apart a small jet engine and then put it back together in just twenty days… The school’s two thousand pupils—mostly Hispanic, African American, and Asian from homes below the poverty line—have a 95 percent attendance rate and an 88 percent graduation rate, with 80 percent attending college… Aviation High lives up to its motto: “Where Dreams Take Flight.” So what is the secret of its success? “The school is all about structure,” Assistant Principal Ralph Santiago told me… anyone who spends a little time at the school sees its success is not about zero-tolerance and strict sanctions. The students are kept so busy and are so fascinated with what they are doing that they have neither the time nor the desire for antics… Despite its seventy-five-year history of success, and despite possessing what seems to be a winning formula for educating at-risk kids, it suffers from what many education leaders consider to be a fatal flaw: the school is 85 percent male… Principal Deno Charalambous, Assistant Principal Ralph Santiago, and other administrators have made efforts to reach out to all prospective students, male and female, but it is mostly boys who respond…
Per questo è presa di mira da certe associazioni: non si pone in modo altrettanto attraente per le ragazze. Una cosa è certa: per farlo dovrebbe snaturarsi rinunciando ad essere quello che oggi è.
D’alto canto, altrove, esiste il problema opposto:
… At the same time, it is girls who are the overwhelming majority at two other New York City vocational schools: the High School of Fashion Industries and the Clara Barton High School (for health professions) are 92 percent and 77 percent female, respectively…
Il fatto è che sia il “problema” dell’Aviation sia quello opposto è relativamente da poco che sono diventati “problemi”. Prima non erano nulla.
Quarant’anni di lotte ma i “problemi sono ancora” tutti lì (nonostante la neutralizzazione delle desinenze):
… Despite forty years of feminist consciousness-raising and gender-neutral pronouns, boys still outnumber girls in aviation and automotive schools, and girls still outnumber boys in fashion and nursing. The commonsense explanation is that sexes differ in their interests and propensities. But activists in groups such as the American Association of University Women and the National Women’s Law Center beg to differ…
Montare e smontare motori d’aereo all’ Aviation agli ordini di un sergente di ferro non sembra il massimo per la bimbetta media newyorkese, e questo per molti è legato al sessismo delle scuole professionali:
… Marcia Greenberger, along with two activist lawyers, wrote a letter… “The vocational programs offered at these schools correspond with outmoded and impermissible stereotypes on the basis of sex.” The letter noted that “even the names assigned to vocational high schools send strong signals to students that they are appropriate only for one sex or the other.”…
Come si applica l’uguaglianza di opportunità nelle scuole? Alcuni guardano alle possibilità aperte, altri alla partecipazione effettiva. E’ chiaro che i secondi hanno un problema con l’Aviation:
… The educators at Aviation define equity as “equality of opportunity”—girls are just as welcome as boys. They were frankly baffled by the letters and threats and seemed to think it was just a misunderstanding. But the activists at the National Women’s Law Center, as well as the authors of the Blue School, Pink School report, believe that true equity means equality of participation…
Per molto tempo il femminismo ha insistito su una frode: il sistema scolastico penalizzava le femminucce.
… Mary Pipher’s bleak tidings in her bestselling book, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. According to Pipher, “Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. . . . They crash and burn.”…
Fu condotta una ricerca imponente per supportare un vasto programma di “femminilizzazione” delle scuole e toh, sorpresa: il problema era quello inverso, erano i ragazzini ad arrancare.
Le femminucce sono più attive, più ambiziose, più vogliose di partecipare, più inclini ad andare all’università, più resistenti nel terminare gli studi… senza dire che leggono e scrivono meglio…
Fu uno shock per il mondo femminista che non riusciva a capire: ma i maschietti non hanno punteggi più elevati nei test? Eppure la risposta non era difficile:
… Fewer males than females take the SAT (46 percent of the test takers are male) and far more of the female test takers come from the “at risk” category—girls from lower-income homes or with parents who never graduated from high school or never attended college… There is another factor that skews test results. Nancy Cole, former president of the Educational Testing Service, calls it the “spread” phenomenon. Scores on almost any intelligence or achievement test are more widely distributed for boys than for girls—boys include more prodigies and more students of marginal ability. Or, as the late political scientist James Q. Wilson once put it, “There are more male geniuses and more male idiots.” The boys of marginal ability tend not to take the SAT…
Il “vasto programma” dovette essere abbandonato tra i rimpianti. Purtroppo, per i problemi veri emersi a sorpresa – la disaffezione dei maschietti verso la scuola - non c’era nessun programma e nessuno ne sentiva l’esigenza:
… But what is hard to understand is why the math and science gap launched a massive movement on behalf of girls, and yet a much larger gap in reading, writing, and school engagement created no comparable effort for boys…
Ma che fine fanno i nostri figli maschi? Nelle scuole una brutta fine. Sono le ragazze a comandare.
… College admissions officers were baffled, concerned, and finally panicked over the dearth of male applicants. A new phrase entered the admissions office lexicon: “the tipping point”—the point at which the ratio of women to men reaches 60/40. According to insider lore, if male enrollment falls to 40 percent or below, females begin to flee. Officials at schools at or near the tipping point (American University, Boston University, Brandeis University, New York University, the University of Georgia, and the University of North Carolina, to name only a few) feared their campuses were becoming like retirement villages, with a surfeit of women competing for a tiny handful of surviving men… In the professional schools, once dominated by men, women were earning 57 percent of degrees in law, 62 percent in dentistry, 73 percent in optometry, 77 percent in pharmacy, and 82 percent in veterinary medicine…
Eppure, chi lancia l’allarme è visto come il paladino della reazione. Si ammette che le ragazze hanno migliorato la loro condizione e si teme che “il sistema reagisca” emarginandole di nuovo. La nuova moda è oscurare i successi e concentrarsi su numeri assoluti e lavoro:
… “More men are earning college degrees today in the United States than at any time in history.” Men have not fallen behind; it is simply that females “have made more rapid gains.”… “Perhaps the most compelling evidence against the existence of a boys’ crisis is that men continue to outearn women in the workplace.”
Senonché:
… It is true that in absolute terms more boys were graduating from high school and going to college in 2005 than in the previous forty years. But that is because the population of college-age males was much larger in 2005 than in the previous forty years…
Un altra strategia è quella di spostare il fuoco dal genere alla razza:
… As one AAUW author told the Washington Post, “If there is a crisis, it is with African American and Hispanic students and low-income students, girls and boys.”51 But here the AAUW obscures the fact that the gender gap favors girls across all ethnic, racial, and social lines. Young black women are twice as likely to go to college as black men…
Ma l’argomento non gira:
… The facts are incontrovertible: young women from poor neighborhoods in Boston, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC, do much better than the young men from those same neighborhoods… Kleinfeld found that 34 percent of Hispanic males with college-educated parents scored “below basic,” compared to 19 percent of Hispanic females…
Quello che inquieta la militante femminista è osservare i vertici della società: il maschio predomina tutt’ora:
… When they look at society as a whole, they see males winning all the prizes. Men still prevail in the highest echelons of power. Look at the number of male CEOs, full professors, political leaders. Or consider the wage gap…
Eppure, l’effetto “spread” spiega questa situazione e la rende compatibile con il declino del maschio…
… There are far more men than women at the extremes of success and failure. And failure is more common… More than one million Americans are classified by the Department of Labor as “discouraged workers.” These are workers who have stopped looking for jobs because they feel they have no prospects or lack the requisite skills and education. Nearly 60 percent are men—636,000 men and 433,000 women. Consider also that that more than 1.5 million (1,500,278) men are in prison. For women the figure is 113,462…
L’altra classica lamentela femminista è il wage gap. Ma anche qui gli elementi concreti a supporto sono pochi.
… The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time… When mainstream economists consider the wage gap, they find that pay disparities are almost entirely the result of women’s different life preferences—what men and women choose to study in school, where they work, and how they balance their home and career… In addition to differences in education and training, the review found that women are more likely than men to leave the workforce to take care of children or older parents… esempio… “Female doctors are more likely to be pediatricians than higher-paid cardiologists. They are more likely to work part time. And even those working full time put in seven percent fewer hours a week than men. They are also much more likely to take extended leaves…And as economists frequently remind us, if it were really true that an employer could get away with paying Jill less than Jack for the same work, clever entrepreneurs would fire all their male employees, replace them with females, and enjoy a huge market advantage…
Poiché simili verità appaiono ormai lampanti non resta che arroccarsi nell’ultima casamatta: lo stereotipo di genere. Le donne scelgono quel che scelgono non guidate dalle loro reali preferenze ma perché sono eterodirette da una cultura maschilista.
Qui si puo’ discutere all’infinito ma andremmo fuori tema. Torniamo a bomba: perché le nostre scuole si sono “femminilizzate” cessando di essere un posto per bambini?
La “pistola fumante” sul punto sembra il differenziale riscontrato tra test e profitto scolastico:
… Boys score slightly better than girls on national math and science tests—yet their grades in those subjects are lower. They perform worse than girls on literacy tests—but their classroom grades are even lower than these test scores predict…
A quanto pare, nella valutazione dell’allievo, gli insegnanti “fattorizzano” la disciplina, un elemento che avvantaggia le bambine:
… Teachers as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades—and girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better and are more amenable to classroom routines than boys… “We trace the misalignment of grades and test scores to differences between boys and girls in their non-cognitive development.” Non-cognitive skills include self-control, attentiveness, organization, and the ability to sit still for long periods of time. As most parents know, girls tend to develop these skills earlier… At all stages studied, teachers’ assessments strongly favored the girls. Girls reap large academic benefits from good behavior… The researchers found that boys who possess social skills more commonly found in girls—those who are well-organized, well-behaved, and can sit still—are graded as well or better than girls. But such boys are rare…
La conclusione di molti: se i maschietti tendono ad annoiarsi di più a far più casino tanto peggio per loro.
Vero, ma forse, con una scuola differente le cose andrebbero in modo diverson. E qui torniamo al tanto odiato Aviation High School.
… If little boys are restive and unfocused, why not look for ways to help them improve? When we realized that girls, as a group, were languishing behind boys in math and science, we mounted a concerted national effort to give female students more support and encouragement, an effort that has met with significant success…
Così come dobbiamo ammettere che nella società uomini e donne hanno preferenze diverse e carriere diverse, allo stesso modo dobbiamo ammettere che a scuola bambini e bambine hanno esigenze differenti e spesso inconciliabili. Le soluzioni a questa diversità ci sarebbero se solo si volesse porsi il problema della “scuola femminilizzata”.
