Reply #130: Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Yes, the whole pop culture urges boys to be tough and macho and to spurn academic work. Even 15 years ago when I was teaching college, most of the male students seemed compelled to put on a "tough and dumb" attitude. They seemed to be in much more of a behavioral straitjacket than the female students.

If you talk to grown men who are in academia or the arts, they'll tell you tales of being bullied and taunted and ganged up on in high school.

It takes a brave boy to defy the stereotypes and get A's in English and music.

Even being a math whiz can be social death. I once knew a math graduate student whose T.A. job in the department was organizing math camps for gifted kids. He said it was such a relief for some of the boys, especially the ones from small schools, to learn that there were other boys with intellectual interests (as well as for some of the girls to see that other girls were interested in math).