Canada: The war on boys in our schools

Ian Robinson

Calgary Sun

Canadian education is effectively “a neutering program” for boys, said Ian Robinson. Teachers see it as their mission to smack down “any genuine manifestation of maleness.” The latest example? Last week’s ban on so-called violent Halloween costumes by two Calgary elementary schools. Boys were told they could not dress up as superheroes or Star Wars characters because, in the words of one board of education spokeswoman, “We decided to make Halloween a celebration of caring.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

At my son’s elementary school, I recently watched some boys trying to play tag at recess, only to be thwarted by a playground monitor screaming, “No touching! No touching!” Since you can’t play tag without actually tagging someone, the boys gave up, discouraged, and ended up leaning against the wall of the school like sullen gang members. “By the way, school board, how’s that anti-obesity initiative working out for you now that you’ve got all the boys to stand still?”

No wonder boys are so alienated from school that now they are less likely to graduate than girls, and less likely to attend college, not to mention more likely to become addicted to drugs and commit suicide. This “terrible toll of failure and death and destruction” is a direct result of our “stigmatizing normal male behavior.”