Boys are falling behind in school. What would help?

Dr. Leonard Sax remembers being an Ohio middle schooler and attending his school’s end-of-year honors assembly.

All but one of the students being recognized on stage that day were boys. That was in 1976 — 50 years ago.

“At my own public high school, the highest achievers — the valedictorian, the editor of the school newspaper, the winner of the poetry award — were all boys.

“Not anymore. Things have changed profoundly,” said Sax, a physician and psychologist who earlier this month presented at Utah’s Show Up for Teachers Conference.

An author of several parenting books — including the recently updated “Boys Adrift” — Sax spoke with the Deseret News regarding an educational question vexing Utah and the nation: Why are so many boys and young men struggling to succeed in school?

When Sax recently visited a middle school, he took a peek at the honor roll posted in the hallway. There were 22 names on the list. Only three were boys. While meeting with a group of students at that middle school, he asked the boys why there were so few males on the honor roll.

One of the boys raised his hand, offering this answer: Girls are smarter.

“And (he was) not joking,” said Sax. “He believes this. He’s grown up in a world of ‘Girls rule — boys drool’ and ‘Girls go to college to get more knowledge — boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.’

“That’s the world he lives in.”

When asked what’s behind such academic gender shifts over the past few decades, Sax references the 1994 book “Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls,” which detailed gender bias in schools that left girls with classroom disadvantages.

Such research prompted changes in how instruction was formulated and delivered in American classrooms — and now it’s the boys who are being underserved, asserted Sax.

Today, in every K-12 grade level, girls are earning higher marks than boys — and by a wide margin, he said.

“The American Institute of Boys and Men recently published the male-female ratio in each of the 10 percentiles of grade-point average,” he said. “In the top 10 percentiles — the kids who are the top 10% of students in the United States — girls now outnumber boys by 2 to 1.”

And that academic performance gap, he added, is seen across K-12 curricula — including math, science, and career and technical education.

“Now if the gender gap was growing because girls are doing better, I don’t think that would be a problem. That would be cause for celebration,” said Sax. “But the gender gap is growing not because girls are doing better — but because boys are doing worse.”

Boys have little interest in picking up a book for fun

To illustrate his claim of dramatic slips in motivation for boys in the classroom, Sax points to surveys from 40 years ago asking American teenagers if they read for fun. The girls outnumbered the boys, but the difference was small.

But a recent national study showed the “reading-for-pleasure” gap between girls and boys is now a chasm. Reading for fun has become a gender identity marker.

But the recent survey also reveals that the reading gap isn’t widening because girls are reading more, explained Sax.

“Girls are reading significantly less today than they were reading 40 years ago. But boys have stopped reading altogether.”

No surprise, the differences between male and female educational engagement and motivation don’t end with high school graduation. Women at four-year colleges in the United States now make up approximately 60% of enrollment.

That holds true for completing a bachelor’s degree as well. Twenty years ago, the number of men and women 25 to 34 years old holding college degrees was even; now there’s a 10-point gap favoring women, according to Pew Research Center.

Sax: The societal realities of ‘educational assortative mating’

When Sax sounds the alarm about the growing gender gaps in the classroom to educators, their reaction, he said, is often hostility or indifference.

A common response: It’s no big deal if the gender pendulum has swung the other way in recent decades. Men still control most of the money and most of the power. Why should it matter if boys are doing worse in schools than girls?

“The answer,” responded Sax, “is educational assortative mating.”

Those three words — educational assortative mating — basically mean a woman will typically choose a man whose educational level is equal or greater than her own.

“If a woman is going to marry a man, she’s looking for a man who is as accomplished and as motivated as she is,” asserted Sax. “And there are not enough good men to go around.”

That tendency, he added, is not confined to women who have earned a college degree. And it’s happening in countries far beyond the United States and is a major factor in declining marriage and fertility rates.

A call for ‘snowball zones’

Schools have changed over the past several decades in ways that have had the unintended outcome of disengaging boys from school, said Sax. Classrooms have become “unfriendly to boys.”

To illustrate, Sax points to K-12 schools in the U.S. that prohibit tossing snowballs. Designated “snowball zones” were once common on the American playground. But that’s changed because of liability risks.

“But as I’ve shared with American schools, don’t criminalize boyhood,” he said. “Boys doing things that boys have always done — throwing snowballs, drawing pictures of weapons, writing stories where people get killed — now can get you a disciplinary referral.”

Many of today’s American educators, added Sax, have been taught that gender is a social construct and that teachers should not use the term “boys and girls” because it reinforces the heteronormative binary — or loosely, the view that one is either male or female.

The consequence of such beliefs, asserted Sax, are disengaged boys.

Meanwhile, schools that are seeing motivated boys in the classroom are often those that foster and encourage competition.

“You can boost achievement and motivation for boys without making school unfriendly to girls,” said Sax. “You have, say, a snowball-throwing tournament. If girls sign up, that’s great. Some girls love to throw snowballs. Some boys don’t. That’s fine.

“You can make the school more friendly to boys without making it unfriendly to girls. The snowball tournament is open to everybody.”

Do gender differences matter in the classroom?

A boy’s negative attitude about school, warned Sax, often starts early, long before he ever steps on a college campus. “And we can change that easily and at zero cost — you just have to have school leaders who understand the problem and care about it.”

Sax advocates for “gender-aware” instructional strategies in K-12 schools.

“The best way to get boys excited about Emily Dickinson is very different from the best way to get girls excited about Emily Dickinson,” he said. “And the best way to get girls excited about computer coding is very different from the best way to get boys excited about computer coding.

“But you put in place gender-aware instructional strategies.”

When educators ignore gender differences, Sax added, they ultimately reinforce gender stereotypes.

“If you understand gender differences, you can break down gender stereotypes. And that same boy who loves football and video games will love ‘Jane Eyre’ and will love Emily Dickinson.”

An effective teacher, explained Sax, will recognize gender differences when, say, preparing a middle-school history lesson about the Civil War. While many boys will be drawn into the accounts of men who fought battles and made key decisions, many middle school girls will respond to lessons that connect them to the experiences of Civil War-era girls.

“I’ve seen how well this works,” said Sax. “If you understand gender differences, you can break down gender stereotypes and boost achievement and motivation for every girl and every boy.”

The dangers of porn, AI and the manosphere

Originally published in 2007, Sax’s “Boys Adrift” originally identified five factors resulting in unmotivated, underachieving boys and young men: schools unfriendly to boys, video games, medications for ADHD, environmental toxins and the devaluation of masculinity.

A revised edition of “Boys Adrift” — scheduled for a September release — adds a sixth factor: the combined forces of pornography, AI, and the “manosphere.”

The growing pervasiveness of pornography and AI are reshaping today’s male understanding and expectations of sex, said Sax. Consequently, women are increasingly hesitant to form intimate relationships.

Young women, he declared, “are sick of these boys raised on porn.”

“We are failing in our most basic obligation as a culture to raise boys to be men that women want to be with.”

When Sax works with parents of boys, he counsels them to “lock down the manosphere” that can prompt anger and disenfranchisement. And, he added, moms and dads must be willing to be “the evil parent.” Say no to the porn and the manosphere.

“You have to say ‘No’ to the porn and the manosphere. Lock it down so your son can’t access this stuff,” he said.

“But you also have to say ‘Yes.’ You have to offer your son a healthier culture; a healthier community.”

Sax noted that Utahns are fortunate to have an abundance of “healthier culture” options.

“Turn off the screens and go for a hike,” he said. “People come from all around the world to Utah to do what people here can do. There’s so much fun stuff to do.

“Build connections with your kid by climbing a mountain or sailing on a lake. Do something real.”