Peter DeWitt, who is an elementary school principal in upstate New York, got very ticked off by a column written by David Brooks in the New York Times.
DeWitt has written a post in which he takes Brooks to task for his confusion and ignorance about schools today. He sees it as just another example of school-bashing by an uninformed critic, the sort that is making teachers and administrators feel shell-shocked.
Brooks blames schools for being too feminized, too collaborative, too sensitive, too eager to medicate rambunctious boys, and thereby turning boys off. Boys are falling behind girls in academic achievement, he says, because of the schools.
Boys need competition, says Brooks, as though the testing regime is not competitive enough for him. Boys need boot camp, he says, echoing one of the themes of the “no excuses” wing of the charter school movement, which Brooks admires. Boys need military virtues, he says, not more environmentalist sentimentality.
I have no idea what Brooks’ evidence is, but I suspect he is just spouting off. He recently returned from the Aspen Ideas Festival, and he seems to be recycling some opinion he picked up there.
Brooks is not a tough guy, at least not in appearance, and he appears to be the sort of kid who would have been bullied by the sort of boys he thinks we need more of.
Judging from our nation’s performance on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t think our society is in any danger of being too soft and too sensitive. We appear to have an adequate supply of warriors to fight all over the world.
What in the world is David Brooks worried about?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think Brooks has a point. Schools are being feminized. Boys are being left behind. And it’s hard to speak out on that. You’ll get shouted down.
Sorry.
Thomas, I am a high school principal and I have to tell you….I don’t see it. I think Brooks is talking about something else entirely.
i taught HS for 10 years, and schools are not being feminized–whatever that means. schools are still organized in very patriarchal ways, and girls are the ones being left behind, by being marginalized in math and science, and ignored in the other subjects.
like most in the ed reform community, Brooks is smart but ignorant–a deadly combination.
The boot camp style is straight out of the charter school playbook. It is taught at Relay Ed and Match Ed, the other new ‘graduate’ school. These programs train teachers in charter school methodology and bases graduation on the test scores of the candidates’ students. This is the ‘new’ thinking…urban (code for Black) students need a different education than suburban (code for White) students. Urban needs ‘boot camp’. Urban needs grades posted to foster competition. I find it offensive and in my opinion, racially biased. The education that the best suburban high school provides, is the best education for all.
Certainly Brooks heard this nonsense at Aspen.
I agree. I cringe when one of my 15 year old Freshman boys tells me he went to “boot camp”. I wonder where am I?
Brooks does have a couple of valid points that are misdirected. Boys are being over medicated so they can sit still while information that will be tested is pounded into them. However, it is NCLB and not feminism that is the culprit.
“Brooks is not a tough guy, at least not in appearance, and he appears to be the sort of kid who would have been bullied by the sort of boys he thinks we need more of.”
HA! I LOVE your sense of humor!
On a serious note, when my son was in 2nd grade all the moms in the neighborhood wanted their boys to have the very strict teacher who lived on our street. I was smart enough to recognize that my sons needed the warm & fuzzy, nurturing type. Well, my 18 year old has thrived in school with many many wonderfully nurturing teachers. He is not naturally brilliant, but just got a 5 on his AP Calculus BC exam and will be entering a top university. That strict teacher down the street? Very sadly her 2 sons have ongoing struggles with drug abuse, unemployment and never made it to college. All children, boys and girls, need to be nurtured, respected and understood.
Brooks is always just spouting off. He’s never right about anything. I’m not exaggerating here. I defy any reader of this comment to find something that David Brooks said that could be true or false (a prediction, for example) that has turned out true.
Dr. Ravitch – I really have nothing to add to your put-down of David Brooks except congratulations. You have him spot on, in my opinion. People I know who know Brooks say he’s a “nice guy,” and it’s not hard to credit that (he’s pleasant and never rants and raves); but he’s way, way out of his depth. He seems one of those people who admires thought–it excites him–but he can’t quite attain to it on his own. When it comes to education he joins a growing multitude who believe knowing nothing about the subject (in the professional sense, anyway) and having at best only the most random experience in that area does not disqualify them from pontificating about it. I’m so sorry you have to spend your time on David Brooks (and even more serious offenders), but nonetheless I can’t resist cheering you on.
I can’t believe that someone would actually defend Brook’s logic or rationale. Feminizing? what a stupid & sexist remark, boys & men would greatly benefit if they would open themselves up & others to freely expressing one’s feelings without labels or stigmatization.
A major problem with boys/young adolescent males is that they feel this enormous societal/environmental pressure to conform & deny their feelings, which is a real barrier, especially in the academic setting.
That Brooks would ascribe that he would know how to reach these young boys is truly funny.He has street cred,or is he trying to get some to mask his own insecurity?
His words are extremely damaging in that they validate the mindset of many, especially in the socio-economic cultures where machoismo & male stereotyping is the norm.
I work as a school social worker in the Bronx and also run an afterschool Peer mentoring program, trust me, we don’t need to foster a climate of being tough or any other stupid & confing paradigm whereby being successful is associated with being strong,tough,competitive,”no excuses”,_____insert latest deform buzzword.
And I’ll tell you the biggest resistance I find in this population is trust, so any concepts or so called educational models based the invalidation of one’s experiences & feelings will not be successful in the long run. Do schools want to make good workers, test takers. or good people?
“Do schools want to make good workers, test takers. or good people?”
As a public high school for 18 years I don’t want to ‘make’ any student into anything. I consider it to be my job to present the subject manner in an appropriate fashion that helps enable all the students to learn it if they choose. Now do I listen to, cajole, talk with, try to help the struggling student (whether they are one of the what we label as top students or any other) to figure out where he/she is at the given moment, what they desire out of the class and perhaps what they can/might do to reach that desire.
But I do not try to ‘make’ anyone into anything in my teaching/being in the classroom-‘making’ is not my charge, ‘making’ should not be any public school educators charge.
Regardless of who (Conservative Brooks) writes about it, and his ridiculous commentaries about what goes on in schools we do need to note that there really is a problem that needs to be addressed.
I will add a disclaimer to my words, I do not think its an educator’s job to make anyone do anything other than assist them in realizing their potential. My reference to good people was a poor choice of words (so I guess I did a Brooks) So I will admit my shortcomings in my statement.
But I will add for me as an educator and a person of this world, I think my job is not only to help a student to learn or master a subject, but to realize their potential in any & all capacities. But its the person/student who drives the bus.
Diane,
Thank you for highlighting my blog about Brooks. His comments were really off the mark and irresponsible. I’m tired of people who have very little experience in the school system putting it down again and again.
“Most kids, especially kids with ADD and the ones who just need to move and daydream….” These are the boys. 4:1.
Forget who Brooks is and the rest of his commentary. Lets figure out how to work with these kids, especially African American boys, the lowest performing group by far.
My guess is that Mr. Brooks has no children in public school first of all so that right there disqualifies anything he has to say. Secondly, boys do compete, mainly on the sports field in many cases, but trust me, the boys are just as competitive here in suburbia as ever. They are not being feminized although I would agree elementary classrooms should be places of movement and activity, not skill and drill which is what they are getting because of the emphasis on high stakes testing. Kindergartens look like second grades and fifth grades look remarkably like 7th which is why children of BOTH genders are having difficulty learning. It’s not developmentally appropriate for them to sit still at young ages. No child needs a boot camp. What the heck is wrong with this man?
I would not go so far that people without children get disqualified from the discussion. That statement would have precluded the fantastic writer of this blog. There are many reasons why people choose educational paths for their children. Making uniform pronouncements while not being fully informed would be the greater evil.
It is sad that kindergartens no longer resemble what the term actually means and I agree, boot camp is for those who sign on the dotted line with the military once they reach legal age.
There actually is a lot of evidence that boys are failing farther behind. I have done a lot of research in this area and can support most of what he says.
Yes, boys used to have a huge advantage over girls in math and science. The gap is closing.
But is it because schools are not boot camps? Is it because they are not teaching militaristic behavior?
What is the cause to the effect?
I wish he had never written the last part of the column. It takes away from the problems. But he is right about who is in the top and bottom quintiles of graduating HS classes.
That has to be looked at carefully. Causes are several. There are learning style differences, motor skill differences, reading readiness differences that much of our new test prep style teaching ( forget what he says) has exacerbated.
Because girls have caught up not because boys have fallen by the wayside. There are more science related media with females having a prominent role ( CSI Bones etc) and girls being involved with science/math focus in everything from the girls scouts to after school clubs.
Boot camp has no place in science as it stifles creativity and curiosity. Discipline is absolutely necessary but boot camp just instills compliance not self reliance.
Just like the famous teacher/ magic school bus driver herself “Take chances, make mistakes get messy” .
Girls have caught up. Yes. I was part of that movement to work with them in schools. However that does not remove the problem that boys have fallen behind. This is not a zero sum game.
The issue is that the vast majority of kids in school who need the most help to succeed from K-college are boys. If we are to improve education we must improve their chances. Therefore we have to take their plight seriously, regardless of the politics.
Diane, we are on the same side here. Shouldn’t we be focusing on the cures, not who wrote about the issue?
Actually in physics this is absolutely not the case. It is more the case that females are now moving where there was previously very very low participation/success.
If you informally polled most people involved with science at some level or other, you would find that they were exactly not the kind of people who would thrive in this Brook’s view of what is necessary. The stereotype of a scientists is not one that aligns with boot camp.
Peg Tyre’s “The Trouble with Boys” is a good read. She is on our side of the education battle and a feminist parent with young two boys. It turned her. My son’s experiences when he started school also made me aware. We were told he should be tested for AD/ADHD… Nope. he is now applying to med school and has never had AD/ADHD…I’ve been following this since he was 3.
I suport David Brooks for bringing up this issue. It’s real. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he’s welcome to be part of the conversation as far as I’m concerned. NCLB and high stakes testing has done a lot of harm to all our children, but our young boys are really suffering. Loosing gym, recess, art and music, all areas where one can move around a bit is really bad for young guys, girls too. I was working with a wonderful second grade teacher who told me that durring her last evaluation she had been criticized for having some children moving at their desks. When you have a class of 30 second graders there literally is no wiggle room! Boys are being medicated
rather than being given the time to mature.
I have part of several National Science Foundation grants that had a educational piece that was geared to increasing participation of female and underrepresented minorities. We had to demonstrate why this was necessary based on stats and on how we were going to raise participation for high school students entering into college. There is decidedly fewer females in science and engineering at the college level but there is is an organized and funded effort toward getting that changed. It trickles down into the schools as there are GEMS and other engineering/ tech related programs that are only meant for girls, including the Girls Scouts and female focused robotics.
If you break the stats down, just like in the PISA studies, you find a different picture than the blanket statement that males in math and science is in decline.The overall graduation rate in low ses is skewed higher for females than males in general and for for the males in that profile that are college ready, there is a greater proportion now who state they are pursuing business and finance as opposed to law or medicine..
Schools need more time for running around and movement and in this dark age of testing, there will be precious little of that. Most kids, especially kids with ADD and the ones who just need to move and daydream need the time to move around or daydream some and let their imagination go a little bit. Test prep and boot camp won’t help.
Gail Collins said in Chicago that David Brooks was homeschooled. Isn’t that interesting?
I have just one question to pose to David Brooks, and it is the same one that I pose to advocates of more standardized, regimented, competetive education: Would you subject your own children to this type of education?
As a widowed mother of two sons, I regret to report that I experienced some of the elements that Mr. Brooks describes in public schools. That said, I also realized that, as a parent, I had great choice in how to manage, interpret, and supplement these unfortunate experiences with my sons. I made sure they engaged in sports if that was their interest, and in the arts, if that was their interest. I framed every aspect of school as relevant to school, but not as definitive of their identities or future in the real world. And now my eldest has finished college and is thriving. School is a service, and it cannot do and be everything, and many folks are doing the best they can. Parents have much power and they need to exercise it.