Yesterday I was substituting for the librarian in a K-2 school. In three of the classes I read a book, then allowed the younguns to browse through the shelves to look at books. About four boys in each class refused to have anything to do with the books, and sat at the table instead of even looking at pictures.

I will say that one boy finally did give up and start looking at books, if only from boredom. But what’s with that, anyway? Boys no longer want anything to do with books?

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A caller I’ve spoken with several times was telling me a while back about some female superiority writing he had been looking at. It described the female as more evolved than the male of the human species, saying that females have continued to adapt, while males are still essentially cavemen, unready for civilization.

That sounds all well and good, but not having seen the article myself, I was unable to imagine a mechanism that would allow females to continue to evolve while males stopped doing so.

Having considered this for a while, I now am convinced that males have indeed continued to evolve, but in the wrong direction.

Enter male agressive risk-taking behavior. As I often tell my callers, the male mountain goats are seen in those nature documentaries butting their heads against each other, either falling off the mountainside or causing themselves brain damage. While the (invariably male) narrator drones on about the males competing to gain the favor of females, you might not notice that there are never any females in sight. They are off raising the next generation, pretty much ignoring the battles on the mountainside.

Now in the case of human females and males, the males are pulling foolish stunts like street racing and bungee-jumping. When asked, they will say they are doing these activities to impress women. Of course, the women are not impressed in the slightest by what they consider to be immature behavior by the men.

A slightly larger number of babies born each year are males than females, yet adult females generally outnumber males overall. It was theorized in the past that this could be attributed to young male babies being more succeptible to congenital and/or infectious diseases, or men dying in war more often then women. A study finally analyzed these statistics and found that the difference in adult numbers could be attributed entirely to male risk-taking behaviors. In other words, these males are voluntarily thinning the herd, but the individuals being selected are braver and bolder, but more foolhardy and less intellectual. In other words, they have weaker self- and group- (family) preservation instincts, and are slower on the uptake. Hmm, sounds like modern males, especially the younguns.

I found a cool newspaper article, but after all this writing, I don’t have time to work on it. I’ll try to summarize and analyze it tomorrow, and if not, then the weekend.

Ta-ta, guys.

I was in a 6th grade class where the students were doing some writing. A boy turned to the girl next to him and asked her how to spell “attacked”. She rolled her eyes and spelled it for him. Of course, since she was an ESL student, it’s hard to figure out why she would be more likely to know how to spell a common English word than a native speaker. He was entirely oblivious of this. Well, either that, or he is just aware of his natural inferiority…

Another day this week I spent in a grade 3-5 behavior classroom. There were 4 adults and five students in the room, but more specifically, there were 5 boys in the room.

Why no girls? Why are behavior classes full of boys, and why do special ed classes seem to have more boys than girls?

On the one hand, it has been shown that boys are more likely to misbehave, and thus get the attention that would get them evaluated and placed. But why is it the case that boys with educational issues act out, while girls do not?

As I see it, the boys have fewer resources all told - emotional, mental, and social. Therefore, when they have academic issues, they have less to fall back on. They are already maxed out. Thus, they frustrate earlier and act out in response, rather than attempting other actions.

Another class I was in this week was a high school French class. I had a section of level 2 and level 5. Level 5 was 10 girls and 2 boys, typical ratio for an advanced-level class nowadays.