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Whitmire's Book WHY BOYS FAIL Delineates the Problem, but Not the Solution

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Is it in the realm of the possible that more women scientists do not rise to the highest ranks of scientists because women scientists perhaps lag behind male scientists in their competitiveness and perhaps in their willingness to lose, figuratively speaking, as one experiment after another fails to produce the joys of a significant scientific breakthrough? Has anybody ever tried to count the number of scientific experiments that failed to produce significant breakthroughs?

I know, I know, American education today is supposedly competitive. But elementary and secondary formal education in the United States today do not foster classroom contests and the spirit of competitiveness that Western education for centuries fostered.

As a matter of fact, Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003) has likened Latin language instruction in the Renaissance to a male puberty rite that is how rigorous and strenuous such instruction was. However, when Ong made this comparison, he was not criticizing Latin language instruction. Instead, he was recognizing the socially constructive role of male puberty rites conducted under the supervision of adult men.

In the United States today, we do not have male puberty rites. So we may wonder about the plight of American boys who are trying to grow up today without the opportunity of adult-supervised male puberty rites.

In light of the history of formal education in Western culture, we may raise the question, "How rigorous and strenuous can elementary and secondary education be without corporal punishment?"

Please do not misunderstand me here. I am NOT advocating a return to using corporal punishment in the classroom.

So no corporal punishment. That's a given.

But how could we then encourage rigorous and strenuous learning in the elementary and secondary classroom?

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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