But, what is it like to be a boy these days? What pressures does society put on them? How do they handle it?
Why do boys statistically drop out of school more often, attend college less frequently, and get poorer grades than girls?
What do you think???
In society today boys are statistically struggling. They are getting lower grades, dropping out sooner and fewer of them are going to college. Part of this decrease in male performance in schools and the classroom is how education became geared in the 1990's. Education became focused on girls in math and science working to improve their grasp on the subjects, whereas now boys are falling behind in reading and writing.
ReplyDeleteMale students develop later in life when compared to girls, they learn verbal skills later in life, and early education teachers have a hard time putting up with the ways boys express themselves. The accelerated curriculum and de-emphasis on recess do not make the classroom boy friendly, and already set boys up for failure that gets larger with each passing grade.
Overall I believe that our school system caters more towards girls and their learning styles than that of an adolescent boy. This contributes to the problems of dropping out of school more often, attending college less frequently and getting poorer grades than girls.
MacKenzie Jones
lets look at it from a human nature point of view, men are more aggressive and violent than women. It may not be very evident in today's society but that's only because we have to be more 'civilized'. (well, actually, it might be incredibly evident ) Either way, looking back on education, why would hormonal aggressive teen males want to spend time sitting down at a desk?
ReplyDeleteI certainly don't, i want to go outside and do something, it can be almost anything as long as it's physical and entertaining. It's probably why a lot of men just have the attitude "screw school, i hate this and it's boring" and because of that attitude, they take easier classes so they don't even have to put effort in.
I can even agree that school sucks, and depending on your view, school could even be looked at as a 'prison' where: you do things on a strict time schedule, you are forced to be with certain people, you have to sit through brainwashing periods of approved information , and you have to abide by rules. Once someone has proposed that view to you, it's fairly hard to look at school any other way than "Wow, that sucks." We don't even get to learn what we want!
Okay, enough ranting and back to the topic. There might be other factors why women do better than men at school. Some may include past culture. For example, i'm fairly sure that throughout history, women have been treated as 'lesser' than men. Because of that, mostly men would have become educated. However, today, now that women have more equal opportunities, women can actually show that they may indeed be better at academics than men.
Moving on to the topic of pressures society puts on us. I would suppose that men and women are equally pressured by society. I mean, we're human, society will always give us problems in some form or another. I think it just depends on how much you care about society and it's demands. In this case, men probably care a lot less about the demands of society.
Coleman Williams
In my opinion the problem does not lie with any one particular gender. Society puts pressure on everyone. Society tells us who to be and how to act. It is because of Society that we have so many problems. “Nature loves analogies not repetition,” we are each our own person and no two people are alike so we should not try to make them the same. Society should be like Emerson’s ideal teacher, one who guides us when we need it but lets us learn and grow on our own.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that throughout history women have not been treated as equally as men. It has not even been a century since the Women’s Rights Movement has been enacted. A woman’s role was always at home and a man’s role was always to be more educated than the spouse and to provide for their family. We’ve all learned it from our history books at school. I think the reason women are doing so well in school is because they want to be equal, independent, and want to have careers. It is because of this passion and enthusiasm that women have done so well with the opportunities that they are given.
Another example of enthusiasm is the children in third-world countries who are given the opportunity to learn; they thrive because they were once deprived. When given the opportunity they try their hardest to succeed.
Tariq Onodu
It’s true that boys drop out of school more often, attend college less frequently and get worse grades then girls. I believe that teenage boys these days have an “I don’t care” attitude towards everything, not just academics. I think this mindset is a reflection from the people and environment around them. If boys don’t have family, parents and teachers pushing them, encouraging them and giving them the confidence to succeed, then they feel like their grades don’t matter and they don’t need to put out as much effort.
ReplyDeleteFrom a girl’s point of view, I have noticed that girls receive more praise and encouragement for our successes most likely because we are more sensitive than boys are. I rarely see boys getting praised for their hard academic work. It’s more common to see a group of girls worrying about their grades or talking about how they got an A on an assignment. Girls are more competitive with each other and constantly have the need to be better than everyone else, therefore always giving more effort. When I see a group of boys, they will most likely be joking around and thinking its “cool” or no big deal that they’re failing a class or got a bad grade on an assignment. It’s because the friends are encouraging that “I don’t care” mindset. Friends, parents and teachers are strong influences on boy’s academic efforts and performances.
Hannah Smith
I would first like to agree with Tariq in that our society puts pressures on everyone. Any student in Hill's class could surely attest to the strenuous pressure applied by parents, teachers, peers, and the self.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I believe that the real issue that restricts the academic success of boys is almost entirely a cultural one. In America, we have so quickly grown comfortable with girls attending school that excelling in school has become more widely expected of girls than boys. The reason for this is that boys have other ways to earn the approval of society--namely sports, work, and outdoor activities.
Girls' athletics have yet to truly catch on in mainstream American culture, so girls lack the outlet of athletic prowess (or even simply participation). Their grades are one of the few ways that they can earn acceptance. On the other hand, a boy can earn the approval of his father (who likely participated in the same activities as his son), his friends, and his relatives by winning that starting spot on the football team or finally being able to dunk a basketball. Never mind that that boy's grades are slipping in the process. Similarly, a boy can receive his father's approval for a particularly large slain deer just as easily as by making that tough A in a class.
Until American culture truly embraces boys and girls as equals, there will be differing expectations and standards for boys and girls. Boys will continue to be the athletes and girls will continue to be the students in the minds of the average American. It will take a major cultural shift to change this fact.
Andrew Bates
I find your analysis and response to the statement to be completely sexist, superficial, and generalistic. I don’t believe that girls are expected to excel at academics any more than boys are. There are many girls who don’t succeed at academics because they lack the effort needed to achieve academic success. There are many men who achieve academic success and continue to become great scholarly men. Jeremy Sicile-Kira was an autistic man who couldn’t speak and Jeremy passed his California High School Exit Exam, finished high school with a 3.5 GPA. I believe that if somebody so challenged could achieve academic success without the expectation of become academically or physically successful, then so can the rest of the boys in high school.
DeleteI also believe that women’s sports are accepted and do contain athletic skill or expertise, such as Softball, Tennis, Volleyball, and Ballet. Might I remind you that many men also participate in these activities? If a woman participates in ballet is it a sport? If it isn’t then how come so many football players participate in it and admit that it is one of the hardest things they have done? Steve McLendon plays for the Steelers and tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “It's harder than anything else I do.”
~Madison Whitman
I definitely agree with Madison, in that your response was sexist.
DeleteExpectations have nothing whatsoever to do with one's gender. If you think about it, people have just as many expectations for girls as they do for guys. The pressure put on us is equal. Every single one of us is expected to excel, and we're all expected to be perfect. It's how this pressure affects each individual person that is important. Some people crack, and some push through.
I don't think that the drop out rate of males has anything to do with pressure. I think it's all simply laziness. They see that girls are starting to become just as important as they are, and that we're slowly rising up in the world. Because of this, they're sort of adapting this "leave it to them" attitude that makes them think they don't have to work as hard, as long as we're here to shoulder the weight.
That being said, I think it is ridiculous that you don't think girls can be athletes. Have you never seen the Olympics? Do you have any idea how many females win gold medals? I don't know if you've noticed, but those people are athletes, and they're just as talented as the men.
~Shelby McKinney
I would like to take a moment to defend Andrew, for i think you all have misinterpreted him. From what i have read, it seems that he was trying to make a generalization about what the Average American thinks, rather than stating what his own beliefs were. He made this clear by using phrases such as "in the minds of the average American" or "is almost entirely a cultural one"
DeleteI would like those of you who think his response is sexist, to take a look at things from our country as a whole, look at our history; women have fought for many years for rights including suffrage, and just overall appreciation as a members of society. Like Mrs. Hill said, the generation of young women today are some of the first that are able to express themselves without ridicule legally (Though some people are still sexist).
If you were going to make a generalization about what the average American thinks about this topic, would you not include somewhere in your argument that women have been ridiculed in the past, and this influence is still present in our culture today? Andrew was only trying to answer this question from our culture.
I can further narrow down my response, by pointing out that the majority of the people in our English class have grown up in rural/small town Kentucky, where white men once owned slaves and racism/prejudiced was not an issue whatsoever. When you think of this cultural background, and mix it with women's rights, what comes to mind? More than likely some redneck sitting on a couch telling his wife to go cook some food.
I do not agree with these beliefs, but i do not think that Andrew was being sexist by pointing out generalizations made by other people.
-Parker Buckley
I think Andrew was unintentionally sexist, but only slightly. He said "Girls' athletics have yet to truly catch on in mainstream American culture, so girls lack the outlet of athletic prowess (or even simply participation). " He used this statement to make a point, not to be an offensive statement. I think people took this point differently than as it was meant.
DeleteFrom a girl's perspective, I actually tend to agree with Andrew. In our culture boys and girls have totally different standards. He mentions boys dunking basketballs as a way of acceptance. If a girl did this, some people would think she was to manly and she would be ridiculed. But some people would consider it a major accomplishment and she would probably be sought out by college basketball programs. If a boy does this it is considered "normal" or expected.
Well I'm not a girl in modern society, but I am a boy so let me shed my own dim, black lighted ray of thinking on this. I personally believe that boys go through just as much stress as girls do, and that whoever decided girls are more stressed than boys are, should be attacked by a wild honey badger. Girls worry about being to scrawny or too fat well boys do to. Girls worry about getting bad grades in school or not having any friends...boys do too. Girls worry about how they look, what people think of them, what they're parents think of them.....I think that's the biggest pressure that most children and young adults face, what they're parents think of them. I think that a parents support or lack-of is the worst pressure in the world. If they're disappointed in me it only makes me 20 times more disappointed in myself.
ReplyDeleteI think that the way people deal with problems generally has nothing to do with gender. Dealing with stress all depends on who you are, what kind of stress your going through, and whether you even have the strength to deal with it at all. And for those of us who do have the strength it's just a matter of learning to deal with the pressure put on us. Some relax, some push through and overcome the pressure, and some crack and breakdown under the weight of the world on their shoulders. I for one fall in the first category choosing to overcome pressure with relaxation and sometimes even neglecting it all together. I like to lay in my dinky backyard hammock with a virgin daiquiri and watch the clouds roll by. I envy the clouds, they just roll on by, no worries or responsibilities...mocking me like a 91 on a test that just barely isn't an A (Me and clouds have a love hate relationship).
For those who breakdown however, their just like us, they just can't handle the pressures put on themselves, most of the time by themselves. This is primarily found in the kids we call the "gifted". They put so much value on grades and point scales that when they do something, anything wrong it's like adding the bullet to a gun chamber. The pressures that aren't there, those are terrible. By this I mean the ones we trick ourselves into believing in, the ones that we put there ourselves and then flip our lids when we own up to it. Like when we're gifted and after doing all our AP BS we forget to do some measly 20 point assignment, and then the next day we sweat bullets and hyperventilate when our teacher asks us to turn it in.
On a shorter note, I find that people undergoing great pressure will often find solace in exerting pressure on other. That by some means of science fictional hoo-hah that they can transfer their own stress onto others through means of bullying them or just generally putting them down. As far as I'm concerned putting pressure on others is just a form of breaking down that leaves one with the inability to acknowledge that they can't handle the pressure, so they just try desperately to get rid of it. Well this is the real world people, telling Becky her hair looks like animal barf isn't gonna make your homework disappear.
Sincerely with love and candied eyeballs,
Gabriel Warren
As a female of our generation you may think that I'd just go on about how great girls are, but I'm not going to. As females I believe that we put too much on the shoulders of the men in our lives. We expect them to do what we want without protest or shedding a single tear. We take too much and give so little. We forget to treasure those that we have in our lives. We've lost the meaning of love or perhaps we never truly knew it.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm not saying that men are perfect because they're far from it. They need to understand that we are their equals and deserve to be treated that way. Stop being so afraid to seem smart instead of being muscular or athletic. It's better in the long run to be able to have a safe, stable environment. Try harder now to prevent having to later.
Both genders clearly have areas that we need to improve in but communication is the key to allowing that growth.
Carpe Diem
Hannah Metzger
I cannot read the mind of a teenage boy and I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing, but I do know that, as a girl, I worry about literally EVERYTHING. Everyone claims that girls stress about education related things while boys concern themselves with more masculine things, but I believe girls and boys worry about relatively similar things. I’m sure boys fret about relationships, academics, athletics, and success, just as girls do; they just don’t show that any of these things bother them because they feel wrong for wanting to do well and be prosperous. In today’s world, boys are considered “too feminine” if they express and advertise their emotions, therefor they keep them to themselves. Does this mean they don’t care? Of course not; they are just sheltered under the “I don’t care” label in which they think comes with being a boy, as Hannah stated above. Ultimately, everyone wants to succeed, but whether or not we, as individuals, show this want and desire relies on our gender and also on how much we care about other peoples’ opinions.
ReplyDelete-Destiny Hyatt :)
I'm not a boy but I can give it a good guess. Lots of boys have a lack of concentration and have to move around because of excessive enegry. Blood flow slows down and guys feel the need to move around or make peolpe laugh to get blood flowing. In the process losing valuable information taught in the school content. The can also get into trouble by being the "class clown". Girls have a longer patience span because we aren't as physicaly powered but seek more intellectual challenges.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem is that some guys have problems with confidence in their masculinity. Most guys in today's world are short or scrawny. Where as guys before this generation were taller and had a bit more muscle. This problem doesn't really relate to school but it is a problem in guys that could be just as relatable to depression in females. Many guys also go through depression but they don't show it because guys don't really talk. They can punch each other in the face and then 5 minutes later say, "We cool man?"
Another problem is guys aren't the best communicators. They can say something really mean to a girl and when the girl gets mad at them they don't really understand. I guess thats a good thing to rationalize things and get over things in 5 minutes rather than hold a grudge for 2 years. The world would be a better place. So guys can have their great point and their bad points. There's nothing really "wrong" with them. It depends on your perspective.
~Madison Whitman
Me being the guy I am all I want to do is get up and exert energy throughout the school day so you may have a point in guys have a lack of blood flow. And yes that may truly be the case, and you may be right that they goof off during class to exert the energy. That may very well happen but that has nothing to do with them being weird that’s just lack of movement.
DeleteYou also say guys don’t typically hold a grudge that’s not completely true we hit and fight and then come back because guys have this thing about them that no guy or girl who doesn’t have authority over them can’t get them to do anything. In my life when I previously played football I’ve been hit in the back cheap shotted more times than I can count, and I always picked myself back up and slammed or have retaliated back to the opponent in some way.
So your thought of saying we have confidence or masculinity flaws isn’t true we look for the opportunity to strike back if someone tries to point out our flaws, We don’t take it we look for the opportunity to retaliate. And you say we don’t hold a grudge right just proved my point just don’t cross us and we won’t show you were we stand or were we draw the line that says do not cross.
Another flaw you point out in guys is are inability to communicate, that’s not always true we may have a slight inability but we can communicate and express our ideas clearly when needed. If the guy is talking to the girl it’s the guys decision where and when to draw the line, and it is between him and the girl and the quality of the relationship or the friendship determines where the line says do not cross.
I also think that’s our physical and mental attributes may affect where we end up in life. If we want to become a mechanic or to become a lawyer it is whatever the person values and it his personal decision to drop out or stay in school. If you choose this option which I’m not saying is an all bad decision it your cause and your decision and regardless of what the people on the outside looking in its not there place, but once the individual makes a decision to stay in school or to drop out they need to stand by their decision and back it up regardless and it there burden to bare.
I would like to point out that it's not always a male that is a class clown. Females are often times just as bad if not worse at paying attention in class. We tend to focus on the latest gossip, our appearance, or our phone. Not to mention the all females that have ADD and ADHD.
DeleteI feel like you neglected to think of the other person's perspective and I honestly see holes in your argument. It's not to say that your post isn't good, but it has room to grow
Hannah Metzger
First lets talk about what it is like being a boy this days, depending on your background or structure of your family it might vary, in the sense that either more is expected from you or not so much. Some boys loose their parents, father, or mother, and so the assume the new rule of being a parent or parents to their siblings. Which is huge dealings with that and your education.
ReplyDeleteAnd on top this society puts the pressure of them having to accomplish the American dream. It becomes so hard for some boys to handle it, so the start coming to school every other day, then one day a week, then the don't show up in a month. And when the finally come it doesn't make any difference because they don't get anything accomplished.
Most boys wouldn't take it very good, I mean who would, it is just that Some take better than other. They just loose interest in school and so they drop out and get a job to support and raise up their siblings. To my opinion boys have poorer graves than girls and drop out of school more because they have more responsibilities outside of school than girls do. Others boys don't what to try as much because they are afraid to fail, so they just take easy way out and take on sports where they to better than girls.
Nerisia Ngum
As an athlete and an academic team captain my whole life I’ve seen the best of academic success and the worst of academic failure. I have seen the parents who gave little attention to their child’s performance at school while rabidly following their sports teams. Yet I have also seen great academic achievement by those around me, boys with the semi-rare parents who care deeply about their child’s grades. I have enough experience dealing with the sports-crazed segment of the population and the education-minded segment that I believe I have some credibility in discussing the relationship between sports and academics for boys.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, there is a reason the WNBA and Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) are struggling leagues, and pro leagues for women’s softball and other sports hardly exist.
A more careful reading of my first comment would show that I did not write anything about a lack of skill or expertise in women’s athletics—simply that mainstream American sports culture has not completely accepted women’s sports. Anyone who watched a single game of the FIFA Women’s World Cup could attest to the skill level. However, very few sports fans would sit down with our family to watch Sunday Night WNBA basketball with a third of the enthusiasm with which we greet Sunday Night Football. That is no disparagement to women, only a frank assessment of the spectator appeal of women’s sports on the whole.
I will even grant that boys who play sports are less likely to drop out of school. However, this is not to say that our sports culture helps boys succeed; as I previously wrote, many male athletes’ parents (especially fathers) care much more about the sports team’s successes than their son’s work in the classroom. Rather, boys who lack sports as a filler in their lives are even more unlikely to succeed because they are completely lost and devoid of focus. If they cannot please society with athletic success, there is often nothing else to turn to because of society’s collective indifference about school. This is how many kids find themselves dropping out of high school to take a low-paying job, or even turning to drugs.
The selection from Emerson’s Self-Reliance that we recently read in class contained some of Emerson’s most famous lines, including, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” and “whoso would be a man, must also be a nonconformist.” Ms. Hill, along with most of our class, was thoroughly enthusiastic about these ideas of both not conforming to society and being completely frank about our views regardless of society’s inhibitions.
However, judging by the mild outrage my comment created, to truly solve the problems we face in education today, we must accept Emerson’s word with all its consequences. To pretend that in American society, women and men are perfectly equal in all ways, and that women should never be better than men at anything and vice versa, is exactly the “foolish consistency” of which Emerson writes. In this context, one could even paraphrase Emerson as, “Political correctness is the hobgoblin of little minds.” We expend so much energy protecting ourselves from sexism, from racism, from discrimination, that we in turn protect ourselves from finding a real solution to our problems. If we are to solve a problem involving a gender discrepancy, we must first accept that such gender discrepancies exist. It could be misconstrued as sexist to imply that boys do not communicate well, or are emotionally shallow, or care about their physique too much, as there are many counterexamples to all of these. However, any potential reason for boys’ academic lagging should be considered for what it is—a suggestion—and simply condemning something as sexist helps no one.
In sum, we cannot hope to fix boys’ educational struggles until it is no longer taboo to point out a difference between sexes. Clearly, as with all our manifold problems in America, we have a ways to go. I apologize for the absurd length.
Andrew Bates
As a girl, I have absolutely no expertise in the mind of boy, much less the emotions or inner workings of one. I can say that personally, the stresses that I have to deal with in my everyday life can tend to overwhelm me, and I can imagine that there are other girls that feel exactly the same way.
ReplyDeleteI have a brother, and as I see he reacts in various situations and how he works in school, I can understand how we as a society can brand boys as a completely passive, laid back group. When he gets bad grades, or misses assignments he doesn’t rush to the teacher to beg for extra credit. He doesn’t stalk his infinite campus profile, or pester the teacher, I have barely seen him react myself. But if I go to my friends and brand him as an emotionless psychopath because he doesn’t react every situation the way I do would be ridiculous. So why do people feel justified to label the entire gender as dumb, slackers, or emotionless just because they are not as open about their feelings as you are? Society practically scream from the mountain tops not to care what others think, and to ‘just be yourself’, or ‘that everyone handles things differently’; as soon as someone does exactly that everyone jumps down that person’s throat.
In conclusion, I believe that boys are known as completely objective about everything has been created purely because people refuse to be open-minded to other people’s personalities and habits. If people would care enough to get to know someone before they assume about their character or just not judge a person at all, this problem would be as significant as it is now.
Erin Chapman
I feel men do worse in today's education due to several reasons, one of which being how we learn. Most men learn from hands on experience, rather than just writing down the information like in some classrooms. This becomes an issue in areas like history where you learn almost everything through reading and writing. This makes it harder for guys to retain the knowledge.
ReplyDeleteBehavior and has also had an impact on how men learn. A lot of guys don't care much about school. As said in many of these posts, men tend to have the "I don't care" attitude when it comes to school. If they don't care then logically they won't give out much effort in school. I have felt like that before, I will have so much work piled on me at once and I say "**** this im done". Im not saying all guys are like this but there are a lot that are.
I would also like to say that I don't think gender makes too big of a difference in learning. It comes down to the individual. Being female doesn't automatically make you a genius and being male doesn't mean you are gonna be dumb and athletic.
- Supreme Brigadier General Sir Robert Todd Cameron Bunyea The Third Duke of BUFFALOS
How do you answer a question regarding a new outlook that has nothing to do with even your own gender? Question? What problems do boys experience in today's society? We always hear about the girl's problems and the drama they experience and create, so what do boys go through that we do or do not go through? How are we to answer the questions that even your own gender can not explain abojut itself? No one individual is created the same. I have about or are aquatinces with about six sets of twins and one set of triplets. Hardly any similar tastes in style or personalities. One of the six sets are boy/girl.
ReplyDeleteSo with being born within the matter of minutes of each other, it still shows that you can never have a scientific duplicate of yourself. Every thought and action is that of your own free will. So if you can hardly say what your twin is thinking or doing how can you expect to answer a question on a generalization of what a boy in our society experiences or thinks, there is a reason why men and women will never understand each other, mainly because you can't even understand your own gender have the time. To make matters worse within the realm of the same gender you have various characteristics that group the gender together and within that you have similarities' of different groups that the person you're grouped with first doesn't share with the others that you are now grouped with and vice versa.
People sometimes experience the bond between an individual and it seems that you were born to find each other, you were born to separate families and yet it feels as if you have been with them since the dawn of time, how do you explain the phenomenon that transpires? Sad truth is that with this intense bond you still can't explain the one person's thoughts and experiences and the feelings that went through them at the most intense moments in their life.
*Mikka*
Boys are, in general, much more laid back than girls. They see what is socially acceptable, just as girls do, and follow those expectations. The difference between boys and girls is that somewhere along the way, a boy decided they were going to act a certain way, and a girl a different way, and boys and girls accepted their 'roles' and did what they believed was right.
ReplyDeleteMen believed that they were in charge, tougher, and more powerful than girls (in general). Women believed that they were meant to have children, cook, clean, and take care of their husbands needs. This was mainly in the past, and I am grateful for the fight that women put up for themselves and for the respect they have gained. Gender equality doesn't bother me normally, I just think everyone should give and receive respect from another.
Connecting back to the question, men may be discouraged in school or life in general because of their loss if respect. Men usually don't gain as much respect by having straight A's or getting an academic scholarship to college, as they would making the football team or getting a D1 basketball scholarship. Girls are different because in some way, they get credit for either. Girls have not had high expectations for success in the past, so when they do succeed it is more impressive to the outside world than if a boy would. Boys have had high expectations, so it's not surprising if they succeed. This is bad though, in the way that if guys cannot excel in the expected categories if their parents, peers, or society, then they tend to drift off course and quit trying. They drop out, don't go to college, and end up struggling in the future and regretting what they didn't do.
This a a continuing process and to change it we need to encourage boys and do this based on their efforts, not their success rate, as suggested in the article "How not to talk to your kids" that we read earlier this year in English. Boys need as much encouragement and push that girls need throughout life, just in different ways.
Darby Taylor
Being a boy today is not easy. Depending on what the boys priorities are causes large amounts of stress. I feel that boys are preasured to try and be the best at what they do. I like to relate it to the idea of "How Not to Talk to Your Kids". The idea was to praise them for their efforts, but when a boy boy fails today, he is looked at as a total failure.
ReplyDeleteI can compare to this being a male athlete in school. Every time look at my own grades and my own athletic abilities I like to compare them to those who were known best for thier grades or sports. I am aware that I am not where I have set my goals for these things yet but I still have motivation to accomplish my goals.
The problem with boys today is that when they notice how they that they are yet to reach the goals that they set they have a tendencie to just give up on it. I like to relate this to " How Not to Talk to Your Kids" because when boys don't appear to be the best at what they are doing, others either give them no praise at all or they shoot them down. When they hear this, they believe that if they just don't try they will not have to worry about the oppinion of others or more importantly failure.
When boys give up it shows. Such as how the school grades and attendence drop, they feel that they will not be good enough at what they are doing so they feel that they shouldnt feel the need to try. It seems that boys today are really just missing confedence.
With confedence boy's will have more desire and pride for what it is they do. Boy's also need people to give them confedence in whatever it is thhat they do. When people give eachother confedence it causes loss in jealousy between peoples goals. If confedence is given so will the better chance of this person reaching their goals.
Davis Nesselrode
I must agree with davis's theory about the weight and pressure to succeed as a male in today's society. This takes a toll on a person; a male today has many things expected of him today such as, work, providing for a family school, athletics ect. As davis states "when a boy fails today he is viewed as a total failure." I believe that in this extream pressure on a male today is where the seed of failure lies. For if one is caused a great amount of stress by this it may lad to a dramatic decrease in motivation. especially in vonerable teens today, this lack of motivation due to stress and failure leasds to a statistically higher drop out rate for males in high school.
DeleteNot to completely rule out the hardships of a female in today's society. They face many pressures as well, some of these arre delivered at an early age. This can result in the same pattern as it dose in a male leading to a lack of motivation; in that the troubles between male and female are comparable to Emerson's on education, as he believed in gental up bringing as to respect the pupil, foster natural thought and avoid the weight and stresses at an early age. This is what i believe we can base our educational system on, not only to decrease these statistics but to improve th motivation in males today. -Will Shuffett
I believe that members of our society put more focus on women because we automatically perceive men as intellectually smarter, and more able to understand and get the subject criteria. With this being said, people are more relaxed with teaching men. With the less focus on men, we receive more pressure with trying to keep up the pace with the rest of our peers. The more pressure leads to men being more afraid to fail. The fear of failing therefore leads to the higher chance of men dropping out. But, if some men are able to go through the hard times and keep trying, we can get through it.
ReplyDelete-Donovan Billings
I do agree that society believes men to be intellectually smarter.
DeleteThis is only because society is still hung up on the outrageous belief that men are superior to women. Despite everything we've gone through, we still aren't seen as equals.
If people would actually look into things like this, they would find that scientific research and psychological tests prove that women use their brains more efficiently than men, using less energy and fewer brain cells to achieve better results.
Fact found on: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2287523/Women-really-smaller-brains--use-efficiently-men.html
~Shelby McKinney
Society seems to accept that a bit more because of the past being with only men in charge, but women get more equal standing nowadays. There are plenty of women who can do things better than men, and vice versa. There are things we can d o that women can't, and things women can do that we can't. Intellectually, it all depends on the drive and initiative in my opinion, no matter how many brain cells are used.
Delete-Tyler Chapman
As said before in many comments, I feel that girls stress over many different things, especially grades. They want to know the content while retaining an A in their classes. I personally feel like I should always have an A in every class but as I have grown to understand this year, is that the letter grade doesn't matter as long as you are learning and understanding the what you are being taught.
ReplyDeleteif you understand the content then your grade should not be too low. I think that our families have a huge impact involving school and grades. I know one of the big reasons I try to get A's are because I want my parents to be proud of me because that is the standard they have for me since in past years I have generally received all A's. Other people may stress over grades because it affects their GPA and with a higher GPA, the more money you could earn for college.
When it comes to boys, I do not know what goes on in their heads. In general, I do not see many guys being concerned about their grades. It is not fair to say that all males do not care about their grades because it isn't true. What I said earlier about some parents having certain expectations of their kids applies to boys too. I have seen many parents not care if their child passes or fails. To me, that would show me that if they don't care, why should I? If students don't already have the will to learn and do work and they do not receive any encouragement, they probably wont see schools as a big deal therefore they do not do anything about their grades. Some guys care about their grades enough to seek help when they need it. Others may care about grades but don't do anything to fix it. Then the most guys I see do not care about their grades whatsoever.
I also feel that generally people in AP or honors classes, disregarding if they are male or female, care more about their grades and understanding the content. Some people take more challenging classes and if they don't get the grade they want, they worry about it because they are most likely used to getting straight A's. I'm not saying that people in regular classes do not care about their grades. Some people know that they do not learn as quickly as others so they take normal classes. Although I think that most boys in regular classes are those who could care less about their grades.
~Ashleigh Johnson~
It is true that boys statistics for a success in education and things of that nature are decreasing while the girls are increasing. I think that a "problem" with boys is that they are trying to be what society wants them to be instead of what they want to be. Having said that, as much as it is a problem of the boys, its a bigger problem for society. I think it is time that that image of what boys should be should start to fade, and everyone should let them be what they want to be.
ReplyDeleteI also think that boys don't necessarily have their priorities straight, so to speak. They would rather play sports, video games, or whatever else they enjoy in their free time, instead of doing their homework and school work. It has nothing to do with girls being smarter than boys are. Girls just have that extra discipline and push to get what needs to be done, done, in order to succeed.
Torey Hawkins
I feel that so many of these comments are based on generalizations and unsupported claims about the basic nature of boys and girls. There are many comments such as "girls stress more", 'boys are more athletic", and “guys just don’t care about school”. Of course I know there are some innate differences between male and female (or we wouldn’t have separate bathrooms); however, I feel the reason boys are falling behind in school are not due to their character traits but because of the pressures of society.
ReplyDeleteIt is unquestioned that, from virtually the beginning of time, men have been seen as favorable over women. Society has, in just the past ninety years began to move away from this and give women more opportunities. However, in this comes a new expectation for women. With so many feminists ideals and movements girls are empowered and pushed to succeed not only for themselves but to prove “yes, I am a girl and I can do anything you can do”. Men don’t feel this empowerment as society already expects them to succeed, therefore they do not lack skills or character traits predisposed to learning, just societal motivation As Tariq said in his post regarding underprivileged children in third world countries, “…they thrive because they were deprived…”. This quote can easily be applied to this case about women.
It should also be noted that the majority of teachers in schools are women. It should also be considered that the majority of teachers grew up in a different time when gender equality wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. (I tried to find a statistic on this but all the websites I found were down due to the government shut down. Thanks Congress!) This is not to say that women teach in different ways, but may act a certain role that was engrained in them by society. Emerson talks about the “female force” and the “male force” in his piece Education. I do not agree with these generalizations about thought, but they do shine light on the ways society expects women and men to think. You may then ask; how does this affect boys? If what I say holds true, boys may see this style of learning as geared towards women and fear that learning makes them weaker or more vulnerable due to society’s expectations and stereotypes. As quoted from my all-time favorite movie Fight Club, “We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” This quote, in my mind, is referring not to women themselves, but the stigma and stereotypes that society relates to women.
To conclude, I feel many men are feeling somewhat challenged by the empowerment of women, and many (male and female) respond to challenges such as this through separation and distancing themselves from the problem. Therefore, I believe there is nothing “wrong with boys”; just things wrong in society.
Sidney Cobb
On the topic of pressures, and not just academics, boys are put through just as much stress as girls are in my opinion. We refuse to show it however. We tough out the day and go home and blow off steam somehow and then feel a little bit more stable about it. Social pressure are the same for us in a way. Girls worry about their physique a bit more, but we aim to impress namely women. The stresses we face can be just someone expecting a certain mentality from us that we can't add up too. I see people making better grades than me, and when I get compared to them and pushed to were I have to do it, I shut down and give up because I feel the pressure overwhelming me. I am expected to want to get better at everything im not good at, including sports or even improving my physique. All I care about is maintaining at least a B average and keeping contact with my friends. Without the ones I talk to every day, I'd be lost. But high school relationships are where most of our stresses come from as well. Girls. Y'all can make or break a guy-we can be just as fragile as you are, we just get more volatile when we break and not all sobby(I don't necessary know how most of you deal with personal problems, I just see much crying and guys don't like to cry but we will if it can't be avoided) that is the difference between us handling pain. we take the same routes as girls do, but we lash out a bit more violently when pushed in a direction we don't want to go when our stresses get too high to handle.
ReplyDelete-Tyler Chapman
Mainly I agree with Darby's points, she is correct in saying that we should give guys just as much encouragement as girls. But I believe the main problem with guys is they don't try as hard as girls. Many guys just give up because they don't see any real reason in striving. Like in the situation of academics many guys would rather strive in sport and girls would rather academics that is because girls see academics as more of a competition between each other. Were as guys look souly on sports they don't care what grades they make or what they can get on a test they care about how well they can throw a ball. But I do have to agree there are some guys that strive only for academics but truly do we look at them the same way.. No.. The guys focused on academics are look at as "nerds" and the sporty guys are "jocks". When in reality we should give guys and girls the same opportunities for achievement, and the same praise for what we can do.
ReplyDeleteAshton Chaney
There are some guys who have a huge problem and that is they don't have manners or don't choose to use manners. Where as girls display there manners and use them. By not using there manners guys have create themselves a look from society of being egotistic. They don't know when to stop and what is appropriate to say and what isn't. But the guys who don't use there manner are the ones who have subjected society to associate all males as big headed.
ReplyDeleteAshton Chaney
In my opinion, there are many problems with boys. But the most significant is that they have no sense of responsibility. Nothing really depends on them, and if it does they don't care enough to go through with it. Most boys stay home, play video games and play sports daily. The boys that play video games "for a living" could careless about school work. They do enough to get by, and honestly that's their own personal problem. And the big athletes are a whole different story. They think that their only responsibility is to play good and be a star.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that parents put enough pressure on boys to perform well in school. I know that my parents were very hard on both us to have all A's but they don't expect that with my brother. They are happy as long as he has no C's.
- Makayla Hawkins
I don’t think that there is a specific problem with boys. I believe that they think that other things and activities are more important than the school work. For example, my brother is one of the most intelligent people I know and he always has been, but he would rather focus on going out with his friends and playing computer games than doing any type of school work unless he found it interesting. He didn’t care about doing his school work because he already knew the content and felt it was a waste of time. Therefore, I don’t think boys care about what their grades look like as long as they know the material.
ReplyDeleteTaylor Moreland
Many boys are pressured to do many things: sports, get good grades, get a significant other, be good at everything they do. If they fail any of these, some parents yell at them to try harder, or just ignore them completely.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine has a brother and his parents did the latter to him. His father was one of those stereotypical sports father, and expected his son to do very well in the American football team his father forced him to join. After he didn't show improvement, his father barely talked to him until he graduated high school where his son tried to make up with his father for trying to do something that he loathed doing.
From a very early age, most fathers tried to teach boys to love sports. In movies, when an expecting father learns he's going to have a boy, he goes out and buys sports equipment. All of the big-league stars that you know off the top of your head are men. Spartan boys were trained from an early age to fight. That is why when one thinks of a stereotypical man, they imagine him sitting in front of a television watching sports.
Most boys are just pressured, and if they don't live up to those expectations, then they drop out.
- Aurora Strider
First off, boys don't have nearly as much pressure as girls. Okay, yeah they have the pressures of not being able to live up to who their parents want them to be but a lot of time, parents are usually happy with their child no matter what. But secondly, I think that guys just DO NOT care. They will make no effort to get "good grades" but usually girls will do anything they can to achieve good grades. They do not care about grades. But they will pour their heart and soul into a football game. Or use every last bit of breath to scream in front of a tv screen at a sports game. Why you ask? I have no clue. I'm not a guy, I don't know how their brains work. Hell, I don't even know how mine works. For some reason, guys don't care academically, but they will do anything to not show weakness of any kind. I just don't think they push themselves enough when it comes to school. Some guys don't even like to show any kind of emotion. They just keep everything bottled up inside. (Wish I could do that)
ReplyDeleteHannah Hyatt
I feel like boys just deal with stress differently than girls. Boys blow a lot of things off that girls find important, like homework and studying for tests. As a girl I feel like we have more competition within each other and feel the need to get good grades and "fit in", but boys its nothing if they don't get an amazing grade on a test. Depending on your friends, depends on a lot of things. I notice if one guy gets good grades, the rest of this friends typically get good grades and the same with getting bad grades. I don't really know what's wrong with boys, I just feel like girls expect higher expectations of ourselves than boys.
ReplyDeleteCasey Marshall
I would like to start off by saying that boys have just as much pressure in their lives as girl do. All girls think us boys care about are sports. I think a lot of us guys can agree that this is not true at all. I am not saying that boys don't care about their sports because I myself love playing sports, but that is not all we're made out to be. I spend many hours of my life playing soccer but I also strive to get good grades. I will say that I know some boys that do not care about their grades at all and I believe that a lot of times, that comes from the attention and support they get while they are at home. If a parent does not push their kid to get good grades or go to a football practice, then they are not going to be successful at it. I think a big reason why girls are in more of the advanced classes are because of competition in friend groups. If one of her friends is in all AP and honors classes, she is going to feel the need to take those same classes even if she knows she cannot in fact pass the class. I also feel like if a boy is very successful at a certain sport, the parents are going to focus on making him even better at it and try to get him to move on to the next level which then leads to moving the focus away from academics. My brother and myself are a good example because he was very successful at baseball and is now playing for the University of Kentucky. Since he was a star at baseball, my parents were a lot more lenient with him on his grades because they knew he was going to move on to the next level. With me, I don't want to play any sport in college so I feel like my parents are harder about grades on me. Girls don't know half of what goes on in boys minds as they think they do.
ReplyDeleteGrayson Arnold
I would like to start off by saying that boys have just as much pressure in their lives as girl do. All girls think us boys care about are sports. I think a lot of us guys can agree that this is not true at all. I am not saying that boys don't care about their sports because I myself love playing sports, but that is not all we're made out to be. I spend many hours of my life playing soccer but I also strive to get good grades. I will say that I know some boys that do not care about their grades at all and I believe that a lot of times, that comes from the attention and support they get while they are at home. If a parent does not push their kid to get good grades or go to a football practice, then they are not going to be successful at it. I think a big reason why girls are in more of the advanced classes are because of competition in friend groups. If one of her friends is in all AP and honors classes, she is going to feel the need to take those same classes even if she knows she cannot in fact pass the class. I also feel like if a boy is very successful at a certain sport, the parents are going to focus on making him even better at it and try to get him to move on to the next level which then leads to moving the focus away from academics. My brother and myself are a good example because he was very successful at baseball and is now playing for the University of Kentucky. Since he was a star at baseball, my parents were a lot more lenient with him on his grades because they knew he was going to move on to the next level. With me, I don't want to play any sport in college so I feel like my parents are harder about grades on me. Girls don't know half of what goes on in boys minds as they think they do.
ReplyDeleteGrayson Arnold
I have read that there is a higher ratio of ADHD in males than in females. In a study to examine age and gender in ADHD the male to female ratio is 2.28:1(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20410711). This could help to prove that boys have a harder time with their attention spans. If they can’t pay attention to the teacher and the classes then they will have a harder time passing tests and making good grades. Which might discourage them and cause them to feel like they are wasting their time and it is not worth it. This may cause them to drop out. Some may even say the reason that more boys drop out is because they are treated differently. They think that girls are treated better or are favored over boys by teachers.
ReplyDeleteRachel Wallace
I feel as a boy in today's society, there is one big pressure I think society puts on boys. As someone who use to play alot of sports in middle school, I stopped playing to focus more on school, as I felt sports weren't going to get me anywhere. After I stopped playing, I felt that I wasn't as important as I used to be while I was playing sports. I think this is what is wrong with boys today, we are so pressured to be good at sports and I think this is what keeping boys at our school from doing anything productive in school. A lot of friends I have that play sports don't take school seriously because they think they are going somewhere in their sport. Even though I highly doubt anyone of them are, they just seem to not care about school. I think boys shouldn't have to feel as if they have to play sports. For most people. school will get them farther than sports ever will.
ReplyDelete- Dallas Taylor
i thinnk that girls just work harder than boys at everything expecially the things that they dont want to do. on friday some of the biys on the soccer team were talking about how they didnt want to play a team they thought they would lose badly to, the girls team is the oposite if we are playing a team that we know is good we are going to work harder to try and beat them.
ReplyDeleteAnnie Cunningham
I feel as if in order to get away from the stereotypical “stay-at-home mom” idea, woman have to do well in school in order to succeed in the world around them. Since society has changed from the perspective that men are the rulers of the house, it has given them reason to slack: The standards aren’t as high. I know I’m not a boy, but I feel as is some boys find it okay to let women do all the work.
ReplyDeleteMy brother and I are 13 years apart. My mom always says that I have the brain and my brother just kept his room clean. Does that make the pressure to do well different? Maybe, but maybe it’s not the pressure from parents that drive the girls to better. There is plenty of unsaid pressure just from how well your friends are doing. As a girl, I worry all the time about how I can better my grades so that I don’t fall behind. I feel as if guys are more relaxed in the aspect that they don’t care their friends are doing, therefore leaving them less motivated.
I’ve noticed that maybe once a boy has his mind set a goal, they will work harder to achieve that goal. Girls have the same drive, it may just come at an earlier time. For example: I’ve know that I’ve wanted to be a pediatrician since I have been about three. I have worked hard toward my goal, as it is a difficult goal to achieve. My brother on the other hand, most likely had no idea what he wanted to do after high school, so he did not do well. He ended up going to the Navy and being a pastry chef. Now, out of the Navy, he is going to college for criminal justice and is doing much better than in high school.
Shannon McCutcheon
I have a completely different look on this all.. I think that guys do care a lot about school but I feel like since they are a guy they can get away with not doing homework or not doing what the teachers ask them, but once a girl does that the teachers go crazy, or just people in general do. Just because they are a guy does not mean all they care about are sports. I myself play a sport that takes a lot of my time and I will admit I slack a lot at my school work because I would much rather be practicing than doing homework. So you can't really say that is only a guys thing because my teammates and friends play sports and I know what they would rather be doing than homework. Guys can succeed just as much as girls can. But girls have to prove themself more than guys.. In school, sports, and what they do. People are harsh and majority of the people that are harsh is girls but guys hold things against girls longer than girls do. They think just because they have made one mistake in their life, they are worthless.
ReplyDeleteMackenzee Sawyer
Even though boys and girls both have certain pressures in todays society girls have more pressure on them because they not only have pressure from family and friends to be the best of the best but we also put a lot of pressure on ourselves to meet higher expectations. Us girls worry a lot today about "fitting in" with the right group, having the best of the best stuff and on top of that we have pressure from parents to get good grades in school and doing he best you can at everything. Boys on the other hand don't worry about "fitting in" or having the best stuff and I'm sure their parents also put pressure on them about grades but boys usually go with the flow and don't worry about a lot of things.
ReplyDelete*Miranda Gunn*
Alright. It is 10:00 on Sunday night and I just remembered this was due. Here goes.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to begin by introducing a hypothetical concept called patriarchy. Its dictionary definition is this:
“ Social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : Control by men of a disproportionately large share of power”
I do not mean to suggest that this theory completely encompasses the oily inner workings of the vicious rending machine that is society. However I do feel that it is a grotesquely swollen part of our culture. Its evidence is easy to spot. In most heterosexual couples, whether the male counterpart is dominant or not, the female will take his name when they marry. Then, even if she does not, the children will almost always take the fathers name. This practice asserts the age old sentiment that the furthering of the male's heritage is more important than that of the female. Should the female's family line fade from existence, so be it, says our culture. Her family should have had more sons.
Following the same diseased vein of prejudice, surveys still show that great majority of American parents would still rather have a boy than a girl. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/americans-prefer-sons-to-daughters_n_884220.html)
I could go on with more examples but it is already past my tame bedtime. My point is this: America's culture is largely patriarchal, and therefore we overvalue masculinity. Because of this we feel men are more valuable, and that traditionally masculine qualities are the most valuable assets a man can have. On the flipside of that, traditional femininity is treated as the weaker, less valuable counterpart to masculinity. An accessory.
Young men, and men of all ages, are pressured to be intrinsically masculine. Don't show weakness. Don't be vulnerable. Don't “cry like a little girl”. Don't "Throw like a girl". God forbid you do something that would resemble society's crudely painted portrait of the ideal woman.
Further, don't ask questions in class. Don't let anyone know you don't understand. Either be perfect or act like you don't care. In fact, be aggressively indifferent. Caring is emotional, maternal even. Aggression is strong like a man should be. Women are supposed to be emotional. Be aggressively uninvolved. Stop trying, because trying is struggling. Struggling is weak. Women are weak.
These are, roughly and in their more extreme forms, the ideas that boys are bombarded with every day. They are all entirely wrong. Everyone is vulnerable and everyone has weakness, regardless of gender. These too are qualities that most people must let become evident in order to learn. To inquire, particularly when the inquiry is embarrassingly basic, is to show great vulnerability, a quality boys are punished for showing. (Girls, as well, but that is for another day.) To ask a “dumb question” is to lie belly up in front of the alpha wolf.(wow i need to go to sleep) It is also almost inevitable if you want to learn, or really succeed at anything.
The overall point I tried to eek out of my tired brain tonight was:
There is nothing wrong with boys.
There is something horribly wrong with the way society defines boys, and how it defines gender overall. I wish I could have expressed my feelings with more detail and solid evidence but I am very tired and I just received my “Unicorn Whispers” monthly e-mail newsletter and would like to read it before I fall asleep. Thank you.
Samantha “Tell me to make you a sandwich one more time and I will make sure they'll have to use dental records to identify you body” Hensley
I hate to do this, but I find a comparison of the regular human female and male beings to dogs (at least my dogs that I have had in my past). I see this when I am at home with my new dog Susie, she is eleven and she still has the spirit she would have had at three years old. Susie is always aware of almost everything around her and she has energy almost all the time when she observes that someone is doing something like just simply moving to a different room. As for my other dog Hutch, he is three years old and one of the laziest dogs I have had. Hutch was an excited dog when we first brought him home at the age of about one. He always wanted to run around and get to know everyone. But slowly, as time went by, Hutch started to become very lazy when he finally knew the property, knew all the animals that he wasn’t allowed to chase and just didn’t see anything new and exciting. I find this comparison with my dogs similar to the comparison with human boys and girls. Girls are always aware of the stuff around them while boys won’t pay attention to their surrounding unless there is something that they see that is new and there is something that almost catches their interest. And, for boys, if nothing new is happening then they eventually begin to be lazy and not care as much for the things they were so new to in the very beginning. I know I am going to get hate for comparing humans to dogs but that is just what I see in life and it’s the truth.
ReplyDeleteVictoria Word
"In the year 1960, 45% of all households were composed of married couples with children. As of the 2000 Census, that figure is only 23% of households. The 2000 Census also reveals that during the 1990s in the United States, there was a 25% increase in the number of households headed by single mothers."
ReplyDeleteI personally think that the reason boys aren't pushed in school, is the absence if male role models. A single mother can teach a boy how to treat people, use your manners, but they can't teach boys how to be men. In single households, parents aren't always there all the time, they have to provide for the family, but I think this is hurting our society in the long run, single parents are pushing boys into sports because they see scholarship potential, but you can receive academic scholarships as well.
Women are constantly told you don't need a man, you can get pregnant with a procedure, you can be the CEO of a company. Men have lost the role in society, the media tells us that single women can achieve anything. Which leads me to believe that the roles in the household have changed, women can now be the bread winners. But 50 years ago that was a taboo thought, the place for women was at home raising children, cooking, cleaning. And women that choose to do that now days are criticized.
Rachel Blackwell
I disagree than guys arent pushed as much as girls in school, to me its an equal amount of attention from teachers and classmates. With the exception of the students who decide that they dont care about school (typicall being guys) these individuals arent "given up on" by teachers, but it's usually very obvious in the class room who will make it and who won't. I think this reflects on parenting of the child. It is shown that boys are harder to raise than girls being that boys tend to go against rules more often than girls, they try harder to fit in. I believe once a boy starts to rebel some (not all) parents stop inforcing rules because they dont know what to do, so the child gets into bad things- leading them to drop out. It is shown that guys do have a higher drop out rate than girls and it is shown that boys are harder to raise. I believe these to go hand and hand.
ReplyDeleteI do not think society is harder on guys, in fact I believe society is MUCH harder for girls. Having to put out the image that "Are we pretty enough?" "Am I wearing the right clothes?" "Do i fit in?" Fitting in is the least of our struggles, most teenage girls at some point go through depression because of society, parents and even friends. As guys generally just worry about "fitting in" and "being cool." But my opinion comes from a girls stand point.
-Lauren Knarr.
I believe that both boys and girls have different "standards" that people place on them, but I believe that the levels of boys and girls success is all based on them and how much willpower they have. Most people say that it all depends on your parents and how much they push you to succeed. Although this may be true in some cases I disagree in most. I disagree with that statement because of personal experience. If you want to succeed in school then you will, it will always help to have some sort of motivation from your parents I am sure, but I never had that. I saw how they were and what they went through and realized that I needed to stay on top of my grades and make sure that I had a great future planned for myself because if I didn't I wasn't going anywhere. I don't think that there is anything "wrong" with boys, I just think they should have an increased willpower and push them selves harder in school instead of focusing on "fitting in".
ReplyDelete~Kali Whitaker