Education Inequality Is Leading to a Generation of Disgruntled Men
Education is failing boys, and they’re paying for it in their relationships — or lack of them
Everyone is having less sex than ever, especially young men. That is what a public health study from 2020 which looked at sexual activity in the US between the age groups 18 to 44 found.
It found that between 2000 and 2002 18.9 percent of young men in the US aged 18 to 24 reported having had no sex in the past year, for women in that age group it was 15.1 percent; however, between 2016 and 2018, the figures were up to the 30.9 percent for young men with only a small increase amongst young women, from 15.1 percent to 19.1 percent.
That means close to 1 in 3 young men are sexually inactive compared to less than 1 in 5 young women. It should be noted that the figures beyond this age group become more equalised, but at the same time, they still show the same trend i.e. men especially having less sex. For example, men aged 25 to 34 saw sexual inactivity increase from 7 percent to 14.1 percent, which is a doubling, whereas women in this age group only rose from 7 percent to 12.6 percent.
The question is what gives, why is everyone having less sex than ever, especially young men?
Why are young men having less sex than ever?
The answer is as ever complex, people’s lack of social skills inevitably plays a part i.e. men and women alike find it harder to connect because they don’t know how to, but that doesn’t explain the big gulf that has opened up between men and women in the 18 to 24 age bracket. So, what gives?
One thing the study found that stands out is men with lower incomes along with men not in employment, including students, were the most likely to be sexually inactive.
This reality has inevitably led the incels of the world to claim this is the ultimate proof that men are judged based on their income. The logic is on one level sound, it is undeniable that a man with money will on average more often than not be seen as more attractive overall to a woman than a man who is not earning anything or is earning little.
As a woman I’m not afraid to admit this, whereas a man being rich isn’t everything, earning enough to be able to provide for a family does make a difference.
It makes sense why, considering that women have to carry the child and if they want a family and a career, have a narrower timescale to achieve both than men, a man earning a decent income inevitably is important.
This is why it’s not surprising that a recent study found that the average generational age of a father over the last 250,000 years has been 31 whereas the average generational age for a woman has been 23 i.e. men have to spend more time proving their ability to provide.
However, the caveat is repeated data shows that the age of motherhood in women is rising and this is not just because women are delaying parenthood, but also because men equally are becoming less likely to enter relationships with women who don’t earn a decent income — despite their willingness to have sex with such women.
This is why university goers, both male and female, have a greater chance of having relationships, and successful relationships at that, than lower-level earners, they are both more likely to be decent-level earners.
But here is where the education inequality shows, because more women are likely to go to university, on a per-person basis women are on average doing better than men — on close to every metric.
So, you have men at the top who earn more than everyone, and you have men at the bottom who earn the least of everyone, which means men flood both the top and bottom ends of the earning spectrums.
Men are both the biggest earners and the lowest earners
It is easy to understand why there are so many men that flood the top of the earning spectrum; however, why are there so many men who are lower earners these days?
This is the harder question to answer, is it because women have proven themselves to be more suited to the modern workforce, is it because women have proven themselves to be on average more intelligent?
No is the answer to both, it has been because of a complete and utter failure to create an education system that actually works for boys, especially boys from middle-class upbringings and especially especially boys from working-class and impoverished upbringings.
This is leading to many middle-class and especially working-class boys seeing their growth to adulthood stunted through lack of adequate education.
Education systems are stunting the growth of boys — robbing them of employment opportunities and with it, relationship opportunities
I recently read a truly eye-opening book by a man called Richard Reeves, it’s called Of Boys and Men: Why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it. Reeves highlights brilliantly how in our efforts to end the discrimination against girls in the education system, we have managed to create a system that fails boys to an even higher level than it originally failed girls.
It should be noted, the fact that the education system is enormously failing boys is not a new thing, for example, the 2013 book, The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What it Means for American Schools, by Thomas A. DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann, brilliantly captured using data just how troublesome the education system has become in regards to providing boys with adequate educations. This book is a tough read due to its academic nature, but it is still worth reading for anyone willing to face it down.
But despite these facts having been known for a while now, only now are the effects of these failures towards boys starting to properly show in our societies. In terms of what these failures are, firstly, as Reeves highlights brilliantly, boys simply learn better through vocational training (so practical learning), as such a system that is focused mostly on classroom learning, which education has predominantly become, inevitably is failing to provide adequate learning systems to boys.
However, it is doing more than just that, it is leading to a situation where there are far more female teachers than male teachers, mainly because just as a classroom teaching style does not favour boys as students, it does not interest men as adults. If you look on YouTube, you will see male educational creators largely favour more proactive styles of educational videos versus more classroom-style videos, wheras female creators are more likely to create classroom style.
This means the teaching profession is inevitably not attracting enough men, and so both boys and girls are suffering from a lack of male influence — and boys are suffering from it worse.
Everyone needs male influence — especially boys
A lack of male influence can be best seen through the lack of a father effect, for example, studies over the last several decades consistently show that single-mother households account for between 60 and 70 percent of all youth suicides, between 60 and 70 percent of all teenage pregnancies, over 70 percent of drink and drug problems in adolescence children, upwards of 80 percent of those in juvenile prison, and upwards of 90 percent of runaway children (see reference list at the end for more info).
However, the crazy thing is when it comes to single-father households, there is no greater likelihood of any of these factors than is found in households where the mother and father are still together. Two-parent households with a mother and a father still have on average far better life outcomes, and single-mother households trump single-father households in different ways, just not when it comes to troubled children.
That means single-mother households lead to massive increases in troubled children, whereas single-father households appear to not do so.
It has been postulated that poverty may play a part in this outcome, but it was found that it did not as even when it was accounted for it did not make a difference i.e. poverty is not per se on its own a leading barometer for more crime, but for some reason, single-mother households are, regardless of poverty.
It has been postulated that it could just be because there are so many more single mothers than fathers that the data may be distorted. However, whereas it is true 85 percent of single-parent households are mothers, that still means that there are a lot of single-father households.
It seems to be the difference truly is male influence on children. So, children really need both male and female influences in their life, both at home and at school, but the effect of a lack of male influence affects boys more than girls, which is furthering their disadvantage.
This is why Reeves calls for a big push to try to create an environment where men can have more involvement with children, both at schools and at homes. I agree with this, which is why I’m a big proponent for not just changing the school system to make it more gender-equal, but changing divorce laws to give men more equal rights over child custody in the case of divorce.
But it is more than just learning style and lack of male influence that is holding many middle and especially lower-class boys back, it is the differing development rates between boys and girls.
Girls develop faster than boys — we don’t acknowledge this anymore and are paying the price for not doing so
All of human history it has been widely acknowledged that girls develop faster than boys, and we have now proven scientifically that girls develop faster than boys on every metric. For example, girls go through puberty sooner and faster, their brains develop much more rapidly to the point they can go through fire and wire — an integral part of brain maturation — upwards of ten years before boys.
This matters big style because development rate greatly influences school outcomes — mainly due to unbiased discrimination.
The book Outliers perhaps provides the best proof of just how the rate of development in children causes schooling discrimination. In his book, Gladwell highlights how children born in September have a substantial advantage due to being the oldest in their classes, with them having a year development advantage over August-born children.
The result of this development advantage can be seen in the fact that most successful people in both business and especially sports are born in September through to December.
Crazy, I know, but hardly surprising. Inevitably the most developed children will be at the top of the class both academically and on the sports fields, not because they are the smartest and most physically capable, but because they are the most developed.
Here is why, because they are seen as the best, they get put in the highest classes, by getting put in the highest classes, they get given better educations. So, rather than the naturally smartest kids getting the best chance at the best educations, the most developed kids more often get the best chance.
As girls develop more rapidly than boys, having boys and girls of the same age in the same classes gives girls an immediate advantage on every level in the education system over boys — bar sports.
So, even if the education system had a more balanced style of learning with a more even mix of male and female teachers, by starting boys and girls at the same time i.e. at the same age, girls have a developmental advantage over boys.
This developmental advantage is arguably one of the reasons why boys are 50 percent more likely to fail at mathematics, reading, and sciences than girls. Boys are starting school before they are ready, inevitably are falling behind from the beginning, and then simply can’t catch up because they are never given the chance to.
This is because rather than being given the education they need to catch up i.e. a one that takes into account their slower development rate, they are just seen as not being that bright — which is wrong, they are, they are just being robbed of the chance to prove it.
This is why Reeves proposes starting boys at school a year later than girls. I fully agree with this, and will be doing it with my son — if you have a young son, especially if he is born after December, it may be wise to do the same.
Final words
It is great that we have worked to make schooling work better for girls, we needed to do that, but we should not have done it at the expense of boys — we have.
If we are to start moving in the right direction, we need to start changing this by making a gargantuan effort to fix the schooling system so that it works equally for boys as much as it does for girls. If we don’t, we are going to find ourselves with increasing numbers of men in which the education system has failed, and so who struggle to make a living and find relationships — which is exactly what’s happening.
A world with increasingly large numbers of boys who have been failed by education is not one I want to live in, because inevitably it creates the world we are now seeing, one where all of our rights start to fall back because the less educated the population, the greater the danger men like Andrew Tate and Donald Trump will come along and reach out to those lost boys, boys who have every right to be angry.
That means if we are to get our society moving in the right direction again, we need to start fighting against the discrimination of boys at school level, they need our help, and it’s time we started giving it to them. The greatest reward of all, if we start doing so, through the power of a better-educated populace, we will all start seeing our rights moving in the right direction again, forwards.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy the following:
References:
Single-parent families, economic disadvantage, and youth crime
