By Alexandra Cortes
The University hosted Stony Brook professor and author Michael Kimmel and award-winning journalist and author Peg Tyre last Tuesday at a public seminar, “Boys in School: Perils, Problems and Promise,” addressing current issues with young men in education.
“I think it’s very important to engage in a discussion [about boys in school] without hurting our high-performing girls,” said Tyre. “They key is objectivity.”
Kimmel and Tyre said they agreed on the importance of their common theme and also that they differ in their approaches to the subject.
“Peg knows good data when she sees it,” referring to the fact that boys perform lower than girls in U.S. schools, “but I’ve gone out and asked collegiate-aged boys why and my research shows two reasons,” said Kimmel. “One is homophobia and the other, entitlement.”
Tyre’s approach has more to do with society’s influence. “This is when the gloves come off,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t think so negatively about boys as Michael’s approach seems to suggest. I think we ask for Marlboro men and then aren’t satisfied when we get them. The question really is, what do we want from men?”
Both speakers spoke for about a half hour on their own approaches, and then together took a half-hour for audience questions that addressed issues such as media influence, passivity and all-gender-school performance.
Kimmel shared an anecdote with the audience, saying, “I used to ask women 20 years ago how they thought they’d be able to balance work and family and they’d say, ‘we’ll love each other and work it out.’ Now, I ask women and they have a whole plan about their future…and I’ll now ask the men, and they’ll say, ‘we’ll love each other and work it out.’ Men have now accepted that they must answer this question. There’s the huge difference between 20 years ago and now.”
The audience responded well to both speakers. “I believe it is very important that we determine why our boys lag behind our girls academically since for a future as bright as the one we hope for we need our children, all our children, to be as bright as they can be,” said University student Ian Johnson.