A sad legacy of an over feminized society

This probably wont set the cat amongst the pigeons but it should.

A report released yesterday shows the achievement gap between male and female students in New Zealand schools is the higher than for any other OECD country.

The Rector of St Bede's in Christchurch suggests it is the lack of male role models in boys lives that lies at the heart of this. And you can be sure he is not far wrong.



We can start with the breakdown of the family - and ask who gets custody of the Kids in most cases? It is well established that children raised in two parent households do much better in school and later life than those from single parent homes and that this is exacerbated for boys who in most cases will lose their primary male role model.

Our nanny Governments have, over the past thirty years, introduced policy after policy, starting with no fault divorce, to weaken the family unit - to reduce its centrality in our society and relegate it to the periphery - with great success I might add.

A second factor, I might suggest, is the lack of male teachers - particularly in primary school. And after all what male in his right mind would take on that job in todays New Zealand - since "the all men are rapists" brigade succeeded in establishing their meme in the public mind it is downright uncomfortable for many adult males to interact with non biological children and something that is often treated with suspicion.

If you think I am exaggerating recall it was recently revealed that Air New Zealand moved a male passenger on one of its planes because he was seated next to an unaccompanied child.

My son did not have a single male teacher until he started secondary school - an all boys school as it happens. I recall his amazement in his first week of secondary school when a lunch time game of Rugby wasn't promptly stopped but the (male) teacher shouted encouragement to tackle harder. A real culture shock and a pleasant one at that for him.

Another thing about the feminization of education and society is the material taught and the way it is taught.

My son who is now year 12, that would be sixth form for all you antediluvians out there, is studying Physics and Maths. The trouble is these are hard credits in our brave new world and the sad truth is I had to work at getting him to persist with these subjects.

Another subject in his curriculum is media studies - the analysis of movies, magazines and the like. So he gets to watch old Billy T James shows and write essays on how the media perpetuates stereotypes of Polynesian males.

Can you guess which classes he prefers - those made up of hard analytical science or those consisting of spewing out soft propaganda.

The real truth is getting credits for Math and Physics requires far more work than getting them for the more woolly subjects such as media studies, subjects which favor feminine thinking over more masculine thought processes.

I would not be at all surprised if New Zealand's engineers of tomorrow all turn out to be made in China while our locally born boys struggle to figure out why they can't gain meaningful employment with an "achieved" in media studies.