The Boy Crisis (Again)

[Trigger warning for misogyny and gender essentialism.]

For the Boys' Sake, Don't Kill the SAT. Here's just a little taste of this gem:

For whatever reason, during the past 30 years, our society has seen girls outperforming boys at every level of education.

...Something is going on. It may be the significant attention the educational establishment has lavished on girls, the lure of video games, the lack of fathers in so many homes, the fact that boys mature more slowly than girls, or maybe none of those. But we do know that whatever may be inhibiting them from excelling in high school as much as girls, boys do score proportionately better on the SATs.

...Scrapping one of the few remaining avenues for talented boys to show, yes, their aptitude, seems unwise.

Oy. Where to begin. Shaker JMonkey sent me this garbage disaster of a column, which ran in his local paper as an editorial last weekend, with the note (which I am sharing with his permission):

Pretty transparent that she wants to keep the SAT to maintain male privilege since she seems to agree with Charles Murray (another red flag) that:

• "... SATs contributed little to predicting a student's success in college, whereas achievement tests and high school grades were more reliable"

• ... [W]hereas the SAT was originally designed to flag kids who might otherwise have been missed by college admissions committees, it has today become a "corrosive symbol of privilege."

I suspect that, if she had her druthers, Charen would prefer that colleges give men preferential treatment in admissions just because they're men. But she knows that's not acceptable. So, even though (and more likely, because) she knows the SAT actually measures little more than privilege and does not predict college achievement, she supports the test even more strongly.

I've seen few articles more transparently advocate for privilege than this one.

Indeed. I've nothing to add which I haven't already said here and here. Charen is right that "something is going on." But what is going on is not video games or absentee fathers or, but the erosion of white male privilege, meaning that young white men are having to rely on something more than a birthright to achieve some measure of proportional individual success.

Which she knows intuitively, if not explicitly. Hence her argument in defense of a tradition that helps confer undeserved privilege upon young white men.

[Previously in The Boy Crisis: The Trouble with Boys, Boy Sues Because Schools Are "Designed to the Disadvantage of Males", The Boy Crisis and Tales from the DOD, "Boy Crisis" Overstated, Put Those Breasts Away, Young Lady!, Separate But Equal, What's Sex Got to Do with It?, Not a Zero Sum Game, But What About the Men?!, OMGWTFLOL WHUT?!, The Worst Thing You'll Read Today.]