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Wednesday, February 28, 2007



The Birds and Bees
of Education

by Coyote

The hamfisted, inexpert view


When I first checked my email this morning, a message from one of the many Tyee regulars with whom I still have an ongoing exchange back and forth, post my banning from Tyee, was there waiting for me. He urged me to check out a Tyee thread on the, alleged, poor performance of boys compared to girls in the world of academe. While normally that would right away roll my eyes into the back of my head and put me in a drooling, vegetative power snooze, especially one called Nightbloom who frequents those kind of "sexual identity" threads there, in a persistant bid to impose his own sexual identity confusion upon it , and I won't say more than that :-), but really just a swishing, obnoxious and pompous ass. iIt was nonetheless a rather interesting discussion. Mostly, I think, or at least I found it interesting as much for some of the unintended things it was revealing about the current... How say I? ...mutually unhappy state of the male-female relationship that some, at least, seem to be anguishing over-, on both sides of the two solitudes.

It was though, one anarcho, gwest and someone I'd not read before, raingirl, making the most sense, I thought, out of a subject that almost invariably seems to wind up chasing its own tail most of the time. And that is so, again from purely my "inexpert" view, because some time needs to pass yet for "boys and girls" to find out some things about the consequences that have gone on in the still ongoing, so called "sexual revolution". (Though I suspect, like all previous generations, for all the flim flam, both camps are probably still jerking and rubbing off more than there is any actual real loving sex going on between them. Too much mutal hostility for it to be otherwise, despite what was the assumed liberating consequence of the pill. Thank God for the immigration that actually maintains current population levels in the country, one might say. Though even here, a declining population might not be a bad thing, necessarily. :-)

And what says to me that is the case, is too much porn, hype, talk and cleavage show going on, evidence of the mutual frustration, for there to be a lot of mutual loving sex to be happening. You know, the kind that actually forms the material basis of "love", makes babies, forges families, and leads to any amount of real emotional fulfillment or sexual mental health. Even "fucking" very often can be just a kind of jerking off.

But back to educating boys and girls. :-)

In my experience at least, "most" boys and girls, 'allowing for the inevitable exceptions, learn differently... Basically that simple. ...with females being more "bookish" /laboratory inclined, and blooming in that kind of an environment. (My old lady reads way more books than I do. She's always in the armchair.) Plus they mature, or are more "settled" earlier. Or at least give the surface appearance of it-, though having raised all girls, I wonder sometimes how deep that actually runs. (Anyway, itself a complex subject.)

The driving energy of testosterone really fucks us males up for a very long time. And you girls just have to accept that.

We get there, but it's a longer and more risk fraught route is all.





It is likely even though, I also think, that girls and boys should probaly be educated separately, though more importantly differently-, again allowing for those pesky "exceptions", male and female, as always exist :-) Certainly most of the working class males I grew up with were more "hands on" and "in the field" in the manner of their learning, preferring the actual "physical" world of experience to the friggin' "theoretical" or "classroom realities" environment in which girls again, always seem to flourish the better. (Or is that too just illusion?)

Let 'em fuckin' have it was always our dominant attitude. And we didn't envy them in the least. We think it's weird, but then ehh... they think we are weird.

School, for me and most of my male peers, was the most boring and sterile experience of my life. I gladly leave it to the ladies frankly, for in the end, I do not think it makes them any "smarter", just more overall "straight line" and "conformist" in their thinking actually. (Sorry girls, somebody had to say it. We really think that. We say it about "educated" guys too. With what?... Exceptions.) And while we males come on later and respond more favourably on a much different "directional" education tack-, myself only having a formal Grade 8 education until I was into my thirties, at which point I completed my academic high school, simply to improve my job chances, I didn't and don't in any way feel that women are overall particularly smarter than me. Even the university educated ladies.

Indeed, I think it is just possible that many males, not all for sure, may understand something about "education", at least in this particular social model form, that women have been rather slow to pick up on, frankly, as a consequence of their different experience history-, having in turn to do with the particularities of the female's historical oppression experience. And what males , perhaps some instinctively, but more likely as a result of their relatively more "privileged" history overall, understand over women is, that the formal, academic school environment is not especially the best place to learn about life, nature and the essential character of reality at all, quantitatively or qualitatively. Really, at root, you're just learning to do it "their way". It is indeed stultifying to that pursuit more often. It was for me and many of my "brothers" certainly. (Exceptions, exceptions.)

I don't much care what goes on in the "academic" environment, frankly, or how successful females are there. Nor do most males, I think, AND more than small numbers of females. Not that it is entirely useless, I'm sure. It seems to work well enough as a fulfillment experience for a great many ladies, and again, those "exceptional" males. So the ladies are welcome to it, if that's where they think it is at. We'll see what effect the passage of more time and experience with it, for girls, has. (And it's not as if I have never been wrong. :-)

For me"higher academe" was and is, and likewise most males I suspect, though some feel threatened by it, and we met a few of those in the Tyee thread this morning, a non-issue-, other than the bullshit expectations "elite society" has and creates to "guilt us out". They want that straight-jacket conformity drummed into us all, that the education system serves the purpose of instilling, especially over a long period of time. We'll see. Don't sweat it either way says I. Though many a guy does suspect that girls, eventually, will discover what boys already seem to know, or are coming to know better: While formal education has some minimal, short-time frame uses, but across an entire life-time, its value is largely a myth. (Though it may well help to improve the cash incomes of women. We'll see there too.)

Dig in on it ladies. Our absence from the halls of academe is certainly not anything you or we should sweat about. I understand that you think it is the path to your liberation. Indeed, I hope it helps serve that end for you. But don't be surprised if it is a disappointment in the end. Though it may serve to advance the "material" interests of your lives some. Even then, there are many degrees still locked into menial tasks and minimum incomes.

Capitalism has not yet changed its exploitive spots.

Also, we should probably all just accept the reality that we, males and females, are different. (Though we yet be the two halves of the whole.) And you ladies pursue your dreams, no doubt. It's just that we males at least will not allow ourselves to be made or reconfigured by education or any other shit into the same. We still like the difference. Insist upon it. And, "Vive la difference!"

Go for it girls.

Which is just my, like I say "inexpert" plebeian view of it all, of course, formed amongst lower class males anyway. Oh, and working class women. Bless 'em. :-)

3 comments:

kootcoot said...

Mornin' wild canine!

I was surprised to see the new posting. I had just read and forwarded to my recent Grand Father creating son, this article by one of my favorite columnists - Mark Morford of the SF Chronicle. Morford incidentally grew up in Spokane, so is almost a local.

The name of the Column is "Are New Parents Utterly Insane" and you can find it here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2007/02/28/notes022807.DTL

It seems to me to deal with some similiar issues.

kootcoot said...

The link looks destroyed, just go to www.sfgate.com and then click on columnists then on Morford if the link don't work, which wouldn't surpised me at all.

Coyote said...

Koot,

Read this link. Indeed he does deal with similar views. Enjoyed the piece.

And being one of "those", married for 48 years and still in love, I was able to relate to at least some of his concerns about the "incoming" generation. :-) Like he and yourself have said, fairly standard concerns for one of the "outgoing" generation. 8-D lol