For centuries, men have had all the opportunity in the world to pursue whatever dream that they want while all of society telling them that they were the ones who deserved everything, and all they had to do was work hard. Women on the other hand, were oppressed. Kept down by society and shown that boys had the brains and courage to be great, girls from a young age had no drive and push to pursue their fantasies and strive for excellence. With a revolution of equality, girls and women of all ages have been closing the gap in the field of labor and in the classroom. In fact, while the labor force statistics are basically even between genders, girls’ success in school has skyrocketed past the boys, leaving men behind with less success in school, higher rates of homelessness, and much more depression. While under this new umbrella of “woke culture,” it can be hard to even point out the fact that men and boys alike are struggling without being labeled as “misogynist” or “uncultured” by people who rightly want to stick up for those who have been persecuted for ages but do not understand the context. It can be a difficult topic to talk about or even acknowledge but one that is necessary in the hope of finding a solution.

Starting in the field of education, the male sex has taken a step back in comparison to the female side. It is definitely important to shower light and service on womens’ issues, but because of the amount of attention this draws, mens’ issues have somewhat fallen into the shadows. This claim is impossible not to point out when reading quotes such as, “In the U.S. for example, the 2020 decline in college enrollment was seven times greater for male than for female students,” which comes from a book by Richard Reeves called Of Boys And Men and is a great source for more information and statistics on this topic. 2020 was a difficult year for nearly everyone, and it is no surprise that the college enrollment rate has gone down by so much.. Furthermore, in high school, “ 88.4 percent of girls graduated on time in 2021 compared to 81.9 percent of boys”, says Richard Reeves in an article he wrote on Brookings, in 2022. It makes sense that men were impacted in college enrollment from COVID-19 more than women as they already were failing high school at higher rates. 

All over the country, scientists and researchers have been testing for years why boys’ exam scores and general education falls flat in comparison to those of female students. It takes looking no further than a simple study done by Claire Cameron who works at the Center for the Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of Virginia who was trying to confirm that girls have better self-regulation than boys. As recorded in an article by The Atlantic titled “Why Girls Tend to Get  Better Grades Than Boys Do”, researchers put “several hundred 5 and 6-year-old boys and girls through a type of Simon-Says game called the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Task. Trained research assistants rated the kids’ ability to follow the correct instruction and not be thrown off by a confounding one—in some cases, for instance, they were instructed to touch their toes every time they were asked to touch their heads.” Through this study that tested young children’s aptitude for self-regulation, they combined the “parents’ and teachers’ ratings of these same kids’ capacity to pay attention, follow directions, finish schoolwork, and stay organized” to deem that the boys were in fact, an entire year behind girls in the area of regulating themselves, thus showing that in school, girl students have an entire years worth of self control, awareness, and attentiveness that the boy students are lacking.  

With all of this information and statistics proving something I had thought about for quite some time, I went out to many of the Juniors and Seniors at Mendocino High School and took a poll asking them whether or not they had a definitive plan for what they were doing after high school. I asked 22 boys and 22 girls. 10 of the 22 boys said they had a definitive plan while 14 of the 22 girls said they did. I also collected data from the school’s office showing that in the 11th grade, girls had an average GPA that was .33 higher than the boys. In the 12th grade, the girls also had a higher average GPA by 0.8. The top 10 highest GPA scores in the 11th grade belonged to 4 boys and 6 girls while in 12th grade they belonged to 3 boys and 7 girls. While in every statistic here, girls were scoring higher than the male community, it is also important to know that because of Mendocino High School’s smaller student body, this data does not reflect on a larger scale. It does, however, still show how when it comes to good grades, which can be earned mainly through dedication to learning and simply doing the assignments in a good and timely manner, girls are doing better than boys.

Fortunately for all the struggling boys out there, there are  possible solutions. As Reeves writes how “right now, men have a narrower range of sources of meaning and identity.” The solutions stem from helping men find this meaning and identity. It really starts from a young age with having more inspiring male role models who children and adolescents can look up to. The reality is that there are nearly 3 times as many female teachers as there are male ones and “female teachers are more likely than male teachers to see the boys in their class as disruptive, while male teachers tend to have a more positive view of boys and their capabilities” (Reeves). At the Mendocino K-8 school, there are more than 3 female teachers for every male teacher. Being able to personally identify with having mainly male teachers who really wanted to push and connect with me, I believe that either the ratio of male to female teachers needs to even out, or female teachers apply extra attention to the boys struggling in their class. Going back to that study done by Clair Cameron that showed boys are a whole year behind on their ability to have self control, their awareness,and  attentiveness, one more idea that has been suggested is red flagging. Red flagging entails the start of boys’ education being delayed by a year so that they are on the same level of academic maturity as their female classmates. Even though the numbers on their birth certificates would show different numbers, the level of maturity that the girls and boys would be at would be more even.

While I really hold hope for boys evening out the education gap and regaining motivation and ambition, the purpose of this article is not to make men feel as victims or argue for the victimization of the male sex. It is to simply spotlight the real situation going on and the solutions that are available. It is essential that as a nation, we must look at the reasons behind the faltering of boys and men within the educational and labor aspects of society to be able to better understand how to deal with it. Through this article I have gone over reasons for why boys are struggling in schools compared to girls and theories for solutions that have been circulating for some time. My hope is that this topic be addressed more by schools and in all aspects of education, so that boys get the attention and help that they need in order to be more motivated. Motivation is the key that will set children up for success and keep them on the right tracks for a brighter future.