Let's Read Newsweek Together

Why Are School Age Boys Struggling?

[I'm not copying the whole thing here, just the parts that I read as I read them that I feel the desire to comment on]

Instead of unstructured free play, parents now schedule their kids' time from dawn till dusk (and sometimes beyond.) By age 4, an ever-increasing number of children are enrolled in preschool.

Children are increasingly in pre-school by age 4 because it serves as daycare. More and more both parents are having to work to get by. And as I'm increasingly finding out, you're sending feminism back 50 years if you choose to stay home and raise your children.

In many communities, elementary schools have become test-prep factories—where standardized testing begins in kindergarten and "teaching to the test" is considered a virtue. At the same time, recess is being pushed aside in order to provide extra time for reading and math drills.

Lets not also forget that recess is being pushed aside because schools are afraid of lawsuits resulting from injuries.

Our expectations for our children have been ramped up but the psychological and physical development of our children has remained about the same. Some kids are thriving in the changing world. But many aren't. What parents and teachers see—and what this government study now shows—is that the ones who can't handle it are disproportionately boys.

Can boys not handle it? Or are the girls being coddled and the boys left alone? Let's read on to see what they say ...

Sadly, the article essentially ends there. I'll have to go find and read the study elsewhere. But I completely agree with the author here ...

Let's take a moment, before the school year gets any farther underway, and ask ourselves whether we are raising and educating our boys in a way that respects their natural development. And if we are not, let's figure out how we can bring our family life and our schools back into line.

This is one study that we ignore at our peril.