Caring for men and boys; This episode draws on Jordan Peterson’s book, '12 Rules for Life' and William Collins book 'The Empathy Gap' and blog, ‘The Illustrated Empathy Gap'; it explores some the ways in which boys and young men are disadvantaged in education, explores some strategies for improving the situation and asks a few painful questions in conclusion.
And of course there’s 'Good Guy of the Week’ who is Sam Darlaston, a DJ from London; he brought home more from the supermarket than was on his shopping list. His story involves a charming adventure with Tesco, broccoli and caterpillars.
Caring for men and boys; This episode draws on Jordan Peterson’s book, '12 Rules for Life' and William Collins book 'The Empathy Gap' and blog, ‘The Illustrated Empathy Gap'; it explores some the ways in which boys and young men are disadvantaged in education, explores some strategies for improving the situation and asks a few painful questions in conclusion.
And of course there’s 'Good Guy of the Week’ who is Sam Darlaston, a DJ from London; he brought home more from the supermarket than was on his shopping list. His story involves a charming adventure with Tesco, broccoli and caterpillars.
Boys are Suffering in the Modern World
This is a quote from Jordan Peterson’s Rule 11 chapter in his book, The 12 Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
One of Peterson’s personality characteristics is ‘agreeableness’ which is associated with compassion, empathy and avoidance of conflict; it’s also associated with a lesser susceptibility, at least after puberty, to anxiety and depression. On the whole, boys are less agreeable than girls and also more disobedient. They’re also more susceptible to anxiety and depression.
Peterson tells us that boys are more independent than girls which he cites as a positive; independence is indeed a positive, but the behaviours associated with it, in my opinion, are not as respected or warmly welcomed as the compassion, empathy and avoiding conflict behaviours of agreeableness.
I would say, if we have a need to be needed, if our self-esteem depends on being needed, then someone who is independent and doesn’t require our help denies us an important source of gratification, doesn’t make us feel good about ourselves and may leave us feeling less than warm towards that person. This dynamic fits with what Peterson tells us about girls generally leaning towards people and boys generally leaning towards things.
He goes on, boys like competition, and they don’t like to obey, especially as adolescents when their developmental task is to escape from their family and establish their own independent personality and existence; it’s their job to challenge authority but this does not make them popular with authority figures.
Asserting independence doesn’t go down well in school, an environment that was, after all, established in the 1800’s with the precise intention of instilling obedience. School tends to be an environment where being provocative or daring, no matter how tough-minded and competent it might show a boy (or girl for that matter) to be, is negatively framed as a challenge to authority.
Peterson goes on to point out that another factor that puts boys at a disadvantage is that girls will join in boys’ games, but boys are much more reluctant to join in girls’ games. This is because it’s admirable for a girl to win when competing with a boy and it’s also OK for her to lose to a boy. However, a boy winning over a girl is not so OK and it’s even less OK for him to lose to her.
The author asks us to imagine a girl and a boy aged nine getting into a fight. Just for getting into that fight the boy will be judged negatively; if he wins the fight, he’ll be labelled pathetic, and if he loses, his life may as well be over because of the shame of being beaten up by a girl.
Peterson makes such an interesting and insightful point here in my opinion. He says girls can win by winning in their own hierarchy, by being good at what girls’ value, but they can also top up their victories by winning in the boys’ hierarchy. Boys however he says, can only be winners in the boys’ hierarchy; they are highly likely to lose status among girls and boys by being good at what girls’ value; it may cost them in respect from boys and in attractiveness to girls. Girls tend to find boys attractive who win status contests with other boys; boys can’t and won’t try and win status contests with girls; they can’t be truly competitive with girls because there’s no way to win.
Peterson fears that university is becoming a girls’ game. He invites us to go deeper into the statistics of educational institutions to get a clearer picture of just how problematic it is for young men. I’m going to use UK statistics here which I’m sure are similar to Canada, Peterson’s home country and the US.
I f we look at STEM subjects, according to UCAS data in 2019, males took 57% of the physical sciences places, 66% of the mathematical sciences places, 84% of the engineering and technology places and 84% of the computer sciences places. However, William Collins, in his book entitled , ‘The Empathy Gap’ makes a distinction between STEM with one ‘M’ and STEMM with two ‘M’s. The second ‘M’ stands for medicine and allied subjects and when these subjects are included there are many more female undergraduates than male.
Again, according to UCAS, Collins using 2017 data
· in medicine and dentistry women outnumbered men by nearly 50%
· in the social sciences women outnumbered men by 60%
· in art and design women outnumbered men by 80%
· in the subject of law there are twice as many women undergraduates as men
· in languages and literature women are almost three times as numerous as men
· in veterinary science there are four times more women and women even outnumbered men in the agricultural sciences
· in educational studies there are six times as many women as men
· in subjects allied to medicine (the extra ‘M’ in STEMM) there are four and a half times as many women as men, and in the nursing cohort this exceeds nine times as many women.
Interestingly, Collins points out that the gender dominance in the various subject areas precisely aligns with two categories that Peterson has also drawn our attention to. Men are aligned with subject areas that have to do with things and women are aligned with subject areas that have to do with people or animals.
Collins points out that in spite of the large and growing disadvantage to males in primary, secondary and tertiary educational attainment, the 2016 government White Paper entitled, ‘Education, Excellence, Everywhere’ makes no mention of it.
To see if the situation had improved, I put ‘help for boys in UK schools’ in my Google search engine, I invite you to do the same. I had to scroll down through four and a half pages of links about ‘child’ or ‘children’ in schools until I got to the 44th link which was about the ten best boarding schools for boys. I put ‘help for boys in UK education’ in the search engine and came across a Mayor of London report entitled ‘Boys on Track’ which purported to address the needs of Black Caribbean and Free School Meal-Eligible White Boys in London; this excited me until I got into the detail of the report; the recommended strategies were limited to peer support, albeit four different kinds. What a weedy, not to say cheap, response.
Collins on his website, ‘The Illustrated Empathy Gap’ points us to the Government’s ‘Report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities’. This was originally triggered by the spirit of the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer. In my opinion, some helpful findings for boys emerged. For example, a very significant finding was that most of the disparities that were examined often do not have their origins in racism. Rather, different experiences of family life and structure can explain many disparities in education outcomes; and early years experiences, including stability and security at home, matters to children more than anything else.
The report acknowledged that many different family structures can provide a happy childhood, including millions of single parents doing a loving and effective job in difficult circumstances. The report states that children require both time and resources which are more likely to be available when both parents play active roles. It identified a need for more explicit public policy promotion of parental and family support. The authors rejected both the stigmatisation of single mothers and the turning of a blind eye to the impact on the life chances of children of family breakdown. The government was urged to investigate the issue of family breakdown and look at prevention initiatives.
Economic factors were also at play in young people’s educational attainemnt. Children of lower income white and black families did less well than other groups with boys in these families faring significantly worse than girls.
The last revelation from the data that I’m including here is just how stuck some groups from the White majority were found to be, and as a result of this finding, it was recommended that wherever possible, be designed to remove obstacles for everyone, rather than specific groups.
The last recommendation is one that Ben Bradley MP voiced in his international Men’s Day speech in parliament last year. In conclusion, I’m left with a few painful questions. “Will we ever put ourselves out as a society to understand men and boys’? To have compassion for their different nature and needs? Will we ever just accept that they are different to women and girls, and that that’s OK? Will we ever see any social engineering on their behalf, the likes of which women and girls have benefitted from? And finally, can we just stop trying to change men and boys and respect and appreciate them for who they are and their unique contributions? Can we stop trying to change them but change society and ourselves instead?
Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities: report
William Collins: The Empathy Gap: Male Disadvantages and the Mechanisms of their Neglect
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empathy-Gap-Disadvantages-Mechanisms-Neglect/dp/0957168888
Good Guy of the Week
Sam Darlaston lives in London. He’s 27 years old and a DJ for Kiss FM and E4. He was doing the prep for his evening meal and found seven caterpillars wriggling in his broccoli. He wrote a message to Tesco’s warning them about the creatures that were lurking in his favourite vegetable of all time and told them “they’re actually really nice” and that he'd decided to keep one as a pet.
Sam then began documenting his efforts to raise ‘Cedric’ the caterpillar and shared a video clip of his uninvited dinner guest squirming in the splendid ecosystem, a very small green compost heap, that he’d created.
Later the same day he told his almost 5,000 followers that he had purchased another broccoli from Tesco, which had more caterpillars lurking inside.
The day after that Sam posted: 'WELL! What do you know! My housemate just went to cook his broccoli and BAMMMMMMM, he’s got green mates too. We now have seven caterpillar children and would like some help naming them.'
He posted a series of photos and videos showing Cedric, Broc, Ollie, Carlos, Croc, Janine, and Slim Eric eating broccoli and wriggling on the leaves within the now extended eco-system.
On day three, Sam revealed that some of the caterpillars had begun to cocoon. His delightful Twitter thread included pics of their progress from caterpillar, through cocoon to becoming butterflies.
His Tweet thread went viral and racked up over 30,000 re-tweets and attracted a stream of mixed responses and over 50,000 likes. Many of the respondees were very impressed by Sam’s efforts to raise the caterpillars. However, others were worried that they may have eaten the creatures; one of whom said 'oh my Lord, I've probably eaten those bugs. I rarely look closely at broccoli'.
Another pointed out that it was good news that the broccoli was not so doused with chemicals that it killed the creatures.
A third added: 'we had exactly the same thing last week! Except I didn't realise we had a visitor until the caterpillar was boiled and floating at the top of the pan. Not such a happy ending here.’
Sam joked that the experience had put his mother off eating broccoli with her roast dinner for life and Tesco offered him a £1.10 gift card to cover the cost of his broccoli.
Finally, Sam shared a video of himself releasing the green veined, white Pieris napi butterfliesinto nature, where they can lay many more eggs in broccoli. What a very kind and interesting thing to do. Great stuff Sam!
Sam Darlaston, Daily Mail