I do think it’s connected to the femininization of public schools.

Most people need to eat and sew on the occasional button – these are not “feminine” skills. The people I felt most sorry for in college were the guys who never learned to cook. One friend of mine ate frozen food for every meal for an entire year (until I started to teach him to cook.)

We had a basement drain back up a month ago. The Rotorooter guy got $325 for about an hour’s work. Say he gets two of those and six of the $125 calls for a week. That’s a call and a half a day. Given that they are always on another call when we need them, they are probably busier than that. So let’s say he has ten $125 calls. That’s $1900 gross billings. If he gets half, that’s about $40k a year. And that’s about twenty-five hours including driving.

Christmas Eve I spent from 11:30 to midnight going up and down our street with the gas company guy looking for a leak we could smell when we got back from Christmas Eve services. He allowed that he got triple time.

We’re remodeling our home. The contractors and subs seem to be living pretty well.

And they can’t outsource bricklaying.
The Maytag guy gets $85 for knocking on your door.

But let’s be smart about it.

In an academic class, students still need to be evaluated on their competence in the academic standards.

And as for artistic talent, no student should ever be penalized for lacking talent, artistic or otherwise. If a student can demonstrate academic excellence via an artistic expression they ought to be credited for it (if, for example, a foreign language student wrote and produced a play in that language or wrote a song which required using vocabulary and grammar she was supposed to learn). If a literature student can show a deep understanding of a novel through a graphic depiction that could replace an essay, at least once in a while (actually, I might have that student then describe his art in writing as a step toward bringing his writing up to the level of his drawing or painting)….

But shouldn’t those be options and not requirements….

In 7th grade I ecall my book reports were judged not by what I wrote, but on the quality of the cover I put the report. My father’s help, with his backoround in commercial art, was critical in getting me through the course. What talent I displayed, my teacher did not appreciate.

Boys have to learn to sew and cook; girls don’t have to learn to hammer nails.

I don’t know what the origin of this change was. In our case — in NY — it seems to have come from the state, which sets state standards and requirements for learning.

But I do think it’s connected to the femininization of public schools.

These institutions are almost completely female-dominated: “the percentage of 6th-grade teachers who were female ranged from 58 to 91 percent across four core subjects (math, science, reading, and history).”

The Why Chromosome

C. is in 7th grade now.

He’s had two male teachers in 8 years of public school, both of them this year, and both of them in “specials.”

One teaches music; the other teaches art.

Is there a national ranking of Middle Schools?

> has so few assignments that jazz him up
> the way the locker has.

Seems to me this says a lot more about the boy than the mother is willing to admit.

> He was so motivated to make it,
> and the assignment gave him the opportunity to exercise
> a little-used part of himself—

Any vocational classes in this school? If not, what about from another school source, or a hobby group?

Seems that the boy failed to read the assignment (presumably in English) that directed him to manage his time on a 90/10 basis. Whose fault is that?

It stands to reason that any assignment in a Spanish Class would result in either a verbal, or a written, report. Why would anyone (even a mother) not understand that?

When I attended middle school in the late 1950′s and then high school, boys who were not set on college — and even some like me who were — had the opportunity to take several shops. To be more correct, we were REQUIRED to take shops: Print, Metal, Wood, Handicrafts, Auto. Today that is not the case, in fact the Wood Shop teacher at a local high school has a room full of unused equipment and his job is to supervise youngsters interested in learning CAD design.

Not to be forgotten: girls of that era learned sewing, cooking and office machine skills. It does seem silly to think of the distinctions during those times. But my point in this remembrance is to punctuate how far we have come and what we have created or not created in the young men who exit high schools for the world of work.

One of Murray’s articles pointed out that skilled cabinet makers can earn more than most college grads. In a society where men are continually apt to be less able to fix anything around the house, the handyman’s potential income will only increase. And with husband and wife both working, they can afford to hire him. What a world.

Yet most parents have bought into the idea that their kids will only get a good paying job if they go to college. That’s certainly not the reason I have paid and will pay college tuition. I have and will send my children to schools that see a college’s job as illuminating the search for truth; and teaching a person how to reason. Not to learn a trade.

Why high schools direct every student toward a version of college prep escapes me. Young men, turned off with certain classes, have no outlet at the school for their creative instincts. So school becomes a 100% negative place. Sports fill the gap but only provide an illusion of a future and then only to a small percentage. As David Foster asks: Can anyone explain this paradox?

My son is seriously deficient in arts and crafts skills, and no one’s made any attempt to remedy the problem.

But he’s been graded, in academic subjects (middle school), on coloring, “artistic qualities,” and the like.

At a minimum, if schools are going to grade a child’s ability to make craft projects, they should teach kids how to make craft projects instead of leaving it up to parents.

Of course, I would prefer my son’s school teach academic subjects via reading & writing, not making collages.