The new issue of Business Week has a long, thorough, thoughtful piece about why and how boys are falling behind in school and--by extension--in life. Well worth a careful read.

UPDATE: For balance, check out this USA Today editorial on how some colleges have instituted affirmative action programs for boys, and about the legal problems their use of sex preferences in admissions may run into if the Supreme Court finds that Michigan's race-based affirmative action program is unconstitutional. Intriguing numbers:

According to USA TODAY research and interviews with both admissions directors and college consultants, private, four-year colleges routinely accept boys over girls who have better applications. The data colleges provide for surveys and guidebooks show male applicants' chances of being accepted are often three to 10 percentage points higher than girls'. At Pomona College in California, for example, 35% of male applicants are accepted, compared with 24% of female applicants, according to U.S. News & World Report data for the class of 2005. At Brown University in Rhode Island, 18% of male applicants get in vs. 15% of females.

Even some public colleges treat boys' applications differently. At Virginia's prestigious College of William & Mary, 42% of male applicants were accepted last year, compared with 32% of female applicants. Karen Cottrell, associate provost for enrollment, says boys' applications don't receive preferential treatment. Girls typically have better high school transcripts, which count most heavily in admissions decisions. But she says male applicants' average SAT scores are higher: 1,347, compared with 1,323 for women.

Most college admissions officers refuse to discuss the special preferences boys' applications receive. An exception is Robert Massa, director of admissions at Pennsylvania's Dickinson College. Massa readily admits tilting the admissions scale toward boys. At Dickinson, the male-female ratio is 45-55. Without preferences for male applicants, the percentage of men would drop as low as 38%, he says.

Another institution that concedes it isn't gender-blind is Hobart and William Smith in Geneva, N.Y. Though it looks like a traditional co-ed college, Hobart-Smith is two colleges: Hobart, which accepts men, and William Smith, which accepts women. Combined, their male-female ratio is nearly 50-50. On average, though, men at Hobart ranked in the top quarter of their high school classes; women at William Smith ranked in the top fifth.

Yes, an interesting article, one that touches on many aspects of this, and also on the possible causes, most of which while I can see make some sense, at the same time I have no strong feeling about. But I will say this: Every time I hear a woman say that what she really wants is a nice, intelligent, sensitive man, it is difficult for me not to guffaw out loud. Because in my experience, including HS and beyond, these are definitely not the characteristics (or behaviors) that many women, including attractive, intelligent young women, reinforce with their sexual choices. Certainly in my day it was not "cool" to be smart, or do too well in school. I still remember from my HS how the class salutatorian -- pretty, smart, active in activities -- dated an absolute goon, we all thought only because he was an athlete. And so on. Today, many male engineers and technical professionals -- most bright, decent, sociable guys -- go unmarried (many unhappily so), partly IMO because the idiotic mainstream popular culture has stereotyped them as dull geeks or nerds, and not the 'bad boy' many women seem to see as desirable. I have no idea what others have observed, or what role this actually plays, but I for one believe the romantic and sexual choices made by girls and women help shape male behavior and outcomes.

"I have no idea what others have observed, or what role this actually plays, but I for one believe the romantic and sexual choices made by girls and women help shape male behavior and outcomes."

So nice of you to work on shaping our male behavior. I'll try to fashion mine according to your smallest whim and desire. That is precisely what God put me on earth to do.

Men exist independently from women, EH. I don't take kindly to the notion that you have a mission to fashion me.

Another flash: physical beauty and academic prowess are not mutually exclusive. This conceit is the favorite of those who have only one or the other. You assumed the jock was dumb as dirt, but maybe he wasn't. And maybe you are a little jealous of that girl who got the jock. The quarterback of the Ohio State Buckeyes, who recently won the national championship, majors in Molecular Genetics. I'll wager that Craig Krenzel will one day be a U.S. Senator or President. Wanna bet?

This is not unusual. In my youth, I received an offer to play minor league baseball. I have an advanced degree in a technical field. I am a professional musician.

Sheesh. Get a grip.

The article includes a sidebar on one woman's experiences with her 3-year-old son. It seems that in Manhattan there are *elite private kindergartens* that require *entrance examinations*. One of the things on the entrance exam is "fine motor control," which means basically "coloring within the lines." Boys develop in this area more slowly than girls, so hundreds of families are spending big $$$ sending their sons to therapists so that they can pass the kindergarten entrance tests...

Remember our troll who was obsessed with women's tendency toward "obedience" and how that made them better suited to the classroom? There's an element of truth in what he said.

We deliberately remade schools and the workplace over the past 40 years to suit women. We gave women quota preference. We went absolutely nuts over a non-existent crime wave against women. Every time any woman anywhere whimpered that her feelings had been hurt or that somebody had snapped the elastic band on her panties, we legislated and expelled men from school and imprisoned them. Does anybody see a pattern here?

I'm gonna go back to my comment about what men expected at school or in the workplace, prior to this outbreak of insanity (and remember that I have no quarrel with the right of women to an equal shot to a job or an education.) Men, I think, believed that authority was abusive because it was in the nature of people to become abusive when they obtained authority. Men didn't want to change that because they thought that the recognition of it was honest, and it struck them as dishonorable to pretend otherwise. Women, it appears, want authority to come cloaked as a guidance counselor who has your best interests at heart. The sum of this in school is: Women like the strange interplay of gaming and strategizing. Men call this "ass-kissing."

I tend to agree with the men. I'm not sure where the world will go in the future, but I think that we've got to start thinking about a world that accommodates men as well as women. And most men do not want their school or their workplace attending to their feelings and wiping away their tears.

I don't think that many of the posters to this site watch the Speed Channel on TV. Try watching the motorcyle, truck and car shows for a while. You'll see that when men are interested they can master the most arcane and difficult material. We just don't have much respect for the things men like to do... particularly in that world of literachoor.

"We deliberately remade schools and the workplace over the past 40 years to suit women....And most men do not want their school or their workplace attending to their feelings and wiping away their tears."

Schools used to beat their scholars into submission. And up until 30 or 40 years ago, schools demanded a much greater of the quiet docility that we now hear is damaging to boys. How did they do it? Through violence, basically. Most parents are no longer willing to have their boys (or girls) strapped and caned into obedience. I'm only half-joking when I say this is why so many little boys are now on Ritalin: they used to be beaten, and now they are drugged, into docility. Do you have another solution? I mean beyond blaming feminism for the touchy-feely stuff. Return to corporal punishment for boys instead of feelings and tear-wiping?

Some people are very good at understanding and manipulating the emotions of others. (I wanted a neutral word in place of "manipulating" but couldn't think of a good one.) It's likely that this ability is more common among women, although I'm convinced that individual differences outweigh any gender differences.

Like any ability, this one can be used for good or ill. Good uses include comforting a friend who is feeling down, sorting out organizational problems in a way that benefits everybody, and selling a worthwhile product. An example of a bad use would be knife-in-the-back political manipulations.

Those who use this empathetic ability harmfully are particularly dangerous in schools and universities. Many teachers and professors seem to be unusually limited in their own understanding of emotional dynamics; hence, they are easy prey to those who seek (even subconsciously) to manipulate them.

I think these thoughts are relevant to the earlier discussions of "obedience" in schools.

The mythical past according to the abuse activists: everybody was beating the hell out of everybody. I went to school during the period you've mentioned. Doesn't bear any resemblance to my experience.

Did violence exist? Yes. Will it exist in the future? Yes. Should corporal punishment be employed in child-rearing? Yes, but only when necessary.

The bizarre past created by the leftist drivel of the past 40 years makes my head spin. Here's the real answer, and I was almost moved to state it during the discussion of sexual harassment. I reject categorically the basic tenet of the Marxist faith -- that power relationships alone define people. This is a load of crap.

All discussions on this board (and by the standards of this day you might call this board "neo-conservative) seem to embrace this basic tenet of the Marxist faith. It's like a strange disease. I loathe Marxism. I regard those who embrace Marxism as little more than clever thieves.

The notion that the world will be saved if only violence is eradicated is Marxism, folks. Wean yourself from it. It is the false god.

Huh?

"I don't take kindly to the notion that you have a mission to fashion me."

I assure you I have none. And as I think my remarks clearly implied, any such 'fashioning' is inadvertent, and not the result of any "mission".

"Men exist independently from women, EH."

Well, yes, as physical beings. But not as elements or players in the larger social context that is the backdrop of this story.

I did not say (and nothing in my post suggested I believe) that intelligence ("academic prowess") and an attractive appearance are mutually exclusive. You then cite one instance of a current-day college athlete you believe to be intelligent, and who may well make a mark in another way in the future (JC Watts and Steve Largent are good examples of this). Taken together, my reaction is...So what? What does any of this, or your personal experience, have to do with the larger social and statistical phenomenon that is the subject of the article?

Yet one more flash: I am male. You seemed to assume from my post, or perhaps from previous posts where I took exception to your (seemingly) unjustified, knee-jerk defense of a couple of black college athletes accused of raping white women, that I am female -- the wording and tenor of your post suggests you think I am female. I also think your resentment of my previous posts colored this one.

So no, I am not "jealous of that girl who got the jock." Childish. As for the anecdote I cited, I did know the "jock" personally, and he was a goon. And dumb.

Finally, I already have a grip, and No, I don't "wanna bet".

Stephen, I think you are operating on the assumption tht EH is female. My impression was the opposite and that he was making his observations based upon his experience as a male. Those experiences may not have tracked yours - but it does not necessarily mean they have no merit.

I also did not get the impression that EH was trying to shape male behavior generally or attempting to fashion you in any way.

I think EH makes a valid point, one that borders (at least to me) on stating the obvious. Our species, like every other, is designed to procreate. It is as deeply encoded in our makeup as the need to breathe. Sex is the meachanism (or course). Just as in any other species we are also genetically inclined to make ourselves as attractive (physically and behaviorally) as possible in order to accmplish our pre-destined task. If it appears to a boy that girls like a certain type of guy - why wouldn't they think about transforming themselves from Richie Cunningham to the Fonz. (I know, there must be a better way of saying this. Mea culpa).

I do not think it is far fetched at all, as a societal matter, not as a matter meant to be applicable to any individual experience, that as a boy's (or girl's) sexual instincts roar to life he/she will consciously or unconsciously face some pressure to coform to societal notions of what makes him/her more attractive to the opposite sex.

Of course not all jocks are stupid and not all blondes are bimbos. Some are. I've known plenty of all types. At the same time, there is a fierce strain of anti-intellectualism or anti-geek or nerdism that runs through our daily life. Many boys learn to hide their academic light under a bushel because they risk losing peer group status. Some azre stronger than that. In fact, it may be easier for the best athletes to excel academically - because they end up as peer group leaders and run less of a risk to their status by getting good grades.

On the other hand - the 'smart girl' faces a bit less presssure in that regard. I think that is the grist of the matter for me.

I also think EH's abservation about the dichotomy between what some women say they want (and I know this is a rank generalization but it is not uncommon for some women to state that seek a male who is sensitive, in touch with his femine side, etc. but who make choices that contradict those stated desires. That is not controversial to me. It happens. Being aware of that dichotomy does have some impact on my daiy life.

You are correct that when men are interested they can master the most arcane subject. The trick is getting them interested. I could point to dozens upon dozens of my buddies who hated math and who got failing or close to failing grades from K-12. At the same time, Reggie Jackson goes 3 for 5 and we all could figure out his batting average pretty damn quick. Same in England. I spent a lot of time during my years there in a coal mining town in Yorkshire drinking in a Coal Miner's Social Club. I would play darts with miners who never went beyond priary school but who could calculate scores far more rapidly and quicker than I could.

Stephen,
You've made an ad hominem attack (anyone who questions you must be a Marxist), but without addressing my question. I can only conclude that you are either unwilling, or perhaps, incapable of doing so. One needn't be an "abuse activist" to point to the empirical and sociological reality that where corporal punishment was once the norm, the teacher who now resorts to physical discipline will very likely be charged with assault.

I think the issue of boys falling behind is a real problem, worthy of serious discussion. Since corporal punishment is out, and apparently the newer (more "touchy-feely," if you will) learning styles aren't suitable for boys, what might be the solution?

Like most boys, he's hyperactive and can't sit still. He's always bouncing off the wall, yet he started reading when he was four. He can do additions, subtractions, and multiplications. He is starting to learn division, and he is an excellent speller. He is picking up English pretty well, as little kids do, but he is still conversant in Filipino, at least so far. He is in kindergarten right now and his teachers say he is the smartest in his class.

My nephew is lucky but he really is just like any other boy. The difference is my sister-in-law. She devised a teaching method that is truly boy-friendly. Indeed, the difference between the methods she uses between my nephew and my niece are so conspicuously different. I am not PC but I sometimes fear what others might say. But luckily, my brother's family only came here from the Philippines almost two years ago so they don't really care about PC crap. My sister-in-law has an amazing tolerance for my nephew's hyperactivity. And just as amazing, she has a great boy-instinct, and she's not afraid to use it to connect with my nephew. The results are outstanding.

For instance, my nephew is fascinated with guns, soldiers, machines, superheroes, karate, and other stereotypically boystuff. To get him interested in reading and math, my sister-in-law creates stories and math problems that incorporate my nephew's interests. For example, instead of just asking him to spell "boy" or "friends" or "cop" or "plane," she'd ask him to spell "karate boy" or "superfriends" or "police car" - basically just combining words he likes with other words. Oftentimes, when my brother and sister-in-law shows my nephew off, they'd even make him spell "gun." I know some folks would think that's criminal. But I'm proud to report that my nephew is not violent at all. He's hyperactive, yes, but in fact he is also very bright and gentle.

He is lucky because he has parents that don't criminalize him for being a boy. He has parents who let him run around the house, play with toy guns, dress up in military fatigue and most important of all, give him the proper context for his boyish imaginations so he still knows what's right and wrong. My nephew is not only getting to be a boy, he gets to be a good boy too. Not only has he skipped two belts in his karate class, he is also the smartest and most popular kid in his class. His sister is doing just as well. She's one of the smartest in her class and was voted the prettiest and most popular girl in her school.

Oooops! Sorry for the vague pronoun. I meant to write "my nephew" in my first sentence.

I didn't call anybody a Marxist. I suggested that the Marxist dictum that humans are defined solely by power relationships is now the standard coin of the realm. Even on this board, I suggested, people are unaware that they have absorbed this insane idea. It has, after all, been the single dominant idea of discourse in the humanities since the mid-1960s.

And I have suggested a strategy. Reject this dogma. Quit trying to rid the world of violence so that no woman and no gay ever has to worry about their personal safety for a moment. Nature works through violence. Once you accept the fact that violence is part of the human condition, you've gone a long way toward solving the problem.

Children who were properly disciplined at home seldom present a problem for the teacher. You see this most clearly in the inverse. In inner city schools, fatherless black men present one hell of a disciplinary problem.

The schools have engaged in a stupid campaign to remake humans. It's time for them to stop that foolishness. Encouraging children to ponder their sexual identity should not be the province of schools. Ridding the world of violence is not a mission for schools. Get the schools out of this idiocy, and the solution will start to present itself.

Ideology dominates the humanities because gassing about that shit is less tiring than actual work. I have been a teacher all my life. Currently, I am deeply involved in e-education. Actually imparting information and skills to people is a very difficult task. Men, in particular, have very little patience for schooling if it doesn't deliver something concrete. The humanities have collapsed into the man-hatred and the ideological gassing in order to avoid real work. Saving the world massages the ego, but it accomplishes zilch.

Once this madness ends, the solutions will appear.

Just like the _Businessweek_ article that Erin suggested says,

"'Girls are more willing to take the initiative...they're not afraid to do the work,' says Tara Prout, the Georgetown-bound senior class president at Lawrence High. 'A lot of boys in my school are looking for credit to get into college to look good, but they don't really want to do the grunt work.'"

I'm a boy; I do well in college. I am adept with using language and have no trouble interacting and cooperating with people. These are not qualities to be ashamed of having, and that goes for both sexes.

If other boys cannot live up to being reasonable, intelligent, well-behaved, hard-working human beings, then they deserve to fail.

"If other boys cannot live up to being reasonable, intelligent, well-behaved, hard-working human beings, then they deserve to fail."

Josh, your post is so wonderful, so full of the sense of honor and responsibility that I've learned to admire in men.

Trouble is, we stopped applying the same principle to every other group. I agree with your solution. I just think that it should be applied to women, gays, blacks, etc. We developed a different ethic for these people. We decided that their success was so important that we would bail them out every time, that we would create an absolutely safe world for them to live in, and that we would deal them in with quotas if nothing else worked.

I am also in favor of individual responsibility. Let's start applying that to women. Now, I'm going to go back to the sexual harassment discussion. That entire discussion worked on the assumption that the villain was always a man, and since it was a man, his intent was to harm. As soon as I reversed the equation and made a woman the harasser, the discussion turned into one of attraction. In other words, when a man harasses, it's because he wants to hurt a woman. When a woman harasses, it's because she's attracted to the man. Our capacity to engage in this blind double standard is staggering.

The "bad boy" mystique actually works for gay men too. Society has grossly underestimated the allure of the body and the attitude in favor of intelligence largely because our intelligence was supposed to free us from our irrational desire for the primal. Yet while intelligence has altered our economic realities, it has barely changed the nature of sex. There are absolutely many jocks who are also intellegent. While I don't doubt that their intelligence raises their sexual success, I doubt that it is their primary attraction. Intelligence often signals maturity and security. I think this true for women and gay men (I think for str8s too.) Intelligence is deeply valued in friendships and relationships that don't require too much activity anymore and where there is greater tolerance for boredom and where the meaning of fun itself has changed or where fun itself is no longer enough . Which is why 2nd or 3rd - generally late marriages - work better than young marriages. Intelligent people make great lifetime partners but only if one is ready to make a lifetime partnership. That is why we fuck around with one kind and marry another. Oftentimes, our party hormones don't go too well with our thought hormones, unless they are accompanied/compensated by an equal amount of party hormones. That is why a geek is almost always a sexual loser compared to a dumb jock or an intelligent jock. It is unfair yes. But that's just how it works.

And, yes EH, it's doubly troubling that a man would see men's role as making themselves fit for association with women. It reminds me of a news story that came out several months ago. The story was about the tragedy of men's shorter lifespan. As you got into the story, you realized that the "tragedy" was that women would be left without male companionship. Men's tendency toward early death was just another in women's endless burdens. That the men were dead didn't seem to factor into the story.

My final post. I'm on vacation today.

EH, I direct you as well to the story of Ibrahim Halsey, a running back from Elizabeth, NJ who now attends the University of Illinois. He is one of those black athletes accused of sexual violence who I defended in a knee-jerk manner. The story in all the newspapers a year ago was the Mr. Halsey was sure to be convicted, that he was a cad no sane school would touch, and that the university should put the safety of its fair maidens first.

Mr. Halsey was acquitted and exonerated of all charges. He has won the starting half-back job for next fall. I hope to see Mr. Halsey play in the NFL one day.

Pok, well said.

I would add that my straight experience (as to your party v. personality discourse) is not dramatically different from yours.

Yes, animal attraction is just that - and it is a darned good thing we have it. These instincts are underestimated in society today as you suggest. I also agree that as a society we like to look to our better nature - and sometimes downplay what we now call our 'baser' instincts.

But, just as we are endowed by our creator [or whatever you choose to ascribe it to] with certain inalienable rights - we are also endowed with those instincts and they are to be just as prized as our ability to think. They should not be permanently etched as a mutually exclsusive set of human tools.

stol, you are absolutely right. Brains and brawns don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I think the message and the culture of the classrooms is very anti-brawn. At least this was my experience through high school. Except in college, the smartest kids have always been predominantly either girls, gays, or girly men. There was barely an intelligent alpha male in the honor roll in my grade school and high school. It wasn't until college that I actually met butch men who were not only as intelligent but sometimes even way, way more intelligent than the smartest girl, gay, or girly man I knew. Some of them were bonafide bullies, gang members, and studs. For me, that was honestly the first time I saw the possiblity of being butch and smart. And I think that really legitimized male intelligence for many of us closet-butch (gay or str8.)

Those of us who realized this were lucky. But many simply chose being masculine over being smart. The schools, meanwhile, have chosen the opposite: drugging boys who are being too boys in order to sedate and educate them. The end result is neither an educated or a real boy. What you have instead is a pyschologically disfigured boy and the message that being educated is inconsistent with being a boy.

If we can make boys smarter and make smart boys more like boys, I think there will be a great boost in "geek" population, and "geek" will finally have some "bad boy" mystique.

POK, I feel your pain. I'm an attorney who likes to work on old motorcycles, drink beer, play rugby and hunt. My wife is a similarly inclined good 'ol girl - she's the perfect wife and is now a very smart human resources manager, but when she was a cop, she stopped a machete-wielding bank robber by tackling him and giving him a beat-down. (Hey - let Tomboys be Tomboys).

Most of my colleagues (and hers) think we're wierd because we're a little rougher than the average bears. They like us, but probably fear us a bit. My blue-collar roots may also have cost me a job in a silk-stocking law firm some years back. I came into work with brake dust embedded in my skin one Monday, and had to explain over lunch why my palms were grayish/black. My social relationship with the partners changed at that point, when they realized that I worked on my own car. I apparently slipped into the class of people who are a little too rough to work in such a genteel place.

Teddy Roosevelt would have trouble getting a job in today's world, much less becoming governor of New York.

Speaking of stupid prejudices... I don't know if you are following the University of Michigan affirmative action litigation, but there has been a really big development in the last couple weeks. There hasn't been any news on it here so I'll bring it up.

No, the Court hasn't signalled how it is going to rule. What has happened is that a freelance reporter, using Freedom of Information Act requests, has apparently surfaced internal University of Michigan reports that seriously undercut the Universities position in the litigation. This was reported in the Wall Street Journal on May 16, but the press has, for some odd reason, been really silent about it.

If you are interested in knowing more, I've blogged about it here.

Omnibus Bill - great handle. I tried your link but couldn't get anywhere. Its probably me but I thought you should know.

Pok, it is an interesting process that we all must (or perhaps should) go through. At the end of the day, we cannot live happily in the skin someone else choose to put on us.

As trite as it might sound, Popeye's "I yam what I yam" view of self is not without merit and does not necesssarily reflect a lack of self-critical analysis. Once we lose the self-insecurity we tend to view others with a bit more equanimity. This is equally true with regard to race, gender, sexual preference, religion.

Okay, I have now reached my daily maximum of self-aggrandizing posts and will have to wait until tomorrow before engaging in amy more of this type of self-congratulatory epistles.

I have a very different take, which is that you can create a trend very easily. The writer starts out with an unidentified Long Island high school where all the top achievers are female (except, it turns out the valedictorian, a guy). He's just gone a good way to discredit his own argument, but we give him a bye, probably because we want to agree with him. Then he jumps to Rising Sun, MD. Why? Did he spend all day calling around and fishing for quotes from principals, and the only other good one he could get was from Rising Sun? I dunno, but I wonder.

He cites many books with panicky titles: "How Cats are Overtaking Dogs as the Most Popular Pet and What You Can Do About It". This drivel flows into bookstores year after year. Every once in a while someone with sense reads one of these books and discredits the presumed trend, and the hacks go looking for another one. I guess it sells books.

I think it's a phony problem, frankly.

"I think it's a phony problem, frankly."

John, I couldn't agree with you more. It's so irritating to see silly statements like, "If this (two-year) trend continues, by the year 2525 [blah blah blah]."

Also agree with Josh: "If other boys cannot live up to being reasonable, intelligent, well-behaved, hard-working human beings, then they deserve to fail."

Things change. They change over time. They go one way, then they go the other. (Hari Seldon knew (will know) all about it. Maybe it's time for psychohistory to hit the scene.)

Well this trend didn't start in Long Island, and it's not just in Maryland either. Christina Hoff Sommers has been documenting this boy-problem since the 90's. There have been others before her but she's one of the strongest boy-advocates around. The gender gap in reading, which already favors women, is still growing. Boys are now lagging two years behind girls in reading skills. And the gender gap in math and science has now virtually vanished in the classrooms even though boys still narrowly outperform girls in standardized tests. But the most serious and alarming indication of the boy-problem is the rising rate of drop-outs among boys, particularly black boys. We simply cannot afford having too many idle and uneducated young men running around the streets. That's a major crime wave about to happen. Plus boys simply deserve the kind of outreach girls got to narrow the gender gap in education.

Laura, loved the Harry Seldon reference. OT question for you - did you read the post-Asimov sequels (or prequels or whatever they were) and if so - what did you think of them? Feel free to email re the Foundation.

John - I agree in part with your conclusion. Some of the writing on the subject does take on something of a sham-empirical or psuedo-scientific approach that borders on alchemy which does tend to inhibit my feelings a bit. On the other hand . . . I do think there is a point here despite some of the pretense of the writers.

Cheers.

NB - by writers I mean authors of some articles etc. - not other posters on this thread. sorry about possible confusion.

When I look at this issue through my ideological lens, I see it as an example of identity politics, and I develop antibodies.

When I look at this through my educational lens, I see it as a substantial societal problem and a personal loss for millions of individuals.

Hello there,

I wonder if anyone would care to answer the post I am about to make. While this discussion has naturally focused, following the article's lead, on the US, girls outperforming boys is not exclusive to the States. The country where I originally come from is an unlikely prey to PC fads. Throughout all of my academic career, the emphasis was wholly on competition (which got fiercer and fiercer by the year as a tight job market/college entrance approached) and achievement, and "emotional expressivity" and other such tripe were awarded a big fat zero of our time. Oh, and we had sports - real sports, compulsory and competitive.

Furthermore, there was no real struggle between brawn and brains. I was (and am) a total and unabashed science and technology geek, but I was still one of the alpha females in my high school class and a basketball and football (soccer) ace; the smartest boys in my class (and therefore, the school, since we were the top class) were very popular and were also very good at sports. Of course, this is anedoctal, but even in the culture at large I never noticed significant stigmatisation of "geeks." In fact, a great deal of prestige, across all social classes, comes with academic achievement, perhaps because due to that tight job market I mentioned.

As for affirmative action in college admissions and so forth, there is none whatsoever (it would be unconstitutional to start with). College admissions are made on pure meritocratic bases - in fact, applications are strictly anonymous (I was never asked to tick a race box during all my years there, in fact). College entry is dependant exclusively on grades (generally 50%, although it varies from major to major) and national standardised exams - for instance, if there are 20 places for Biology at University X, the 20 applicants with the 20 top scores will be admitted and that's that.

And, guess what, girls outperform boys at all levels of the educational system. In fact, the gulf in the high school and college years is much more pronounced than in the US. In medicine, the course I attended, about 2/3rds of the students were female. This female majority was true even in traditionally male fields such as the hard sciences and engineering.

That is why I take claims that the US situation is due to PC emotional gobbledydook in education and affirmative action with a grain of salt. Frankly, I find that those trends are actually deterimental to female, as well as male, performance. Wallowing in self-pity and being forced to disclose personal feelings never made anyone succeed, or learn chemistry or "Hamlet." As for affirmative action, I find it frankly insulting. And, at least in my birth country, girls thrive under the "masculine" regime of competition and objective achievement - clearly, at least there, the reasons for the achievement imbalance are not any of those discussed so far.

Mind you, I cannot offer you any alternative explanation, because no one delved into this "problem." In fact, like Josh, I (and society at large in my home country) do not consider it to be a problem. If someone, male or female, lacks the drive to succeed, it's no one else's problem when they fail. In my country we do not encourage self-pity in girls, and it's highly unlikely we are going to start encouraging it in boys.

Any thoughts?

DL,

Would your country be Soviet Russia, by chance?

I'm interested that my very own institution is used as an example - Hobart & William Smith. There are certainly interesting factors behind this one!

Hobart & William Smith only reached something like 50/50 parity in the 80s (I remember from casual conversation with the director of Wm Smith Admissions) -- before that the Hobart men outnumbered William Smith women at least 60/40 if not 65/35.

There is a publically-stated understanding that if the Hobart numbers drop too low the alumnI giving will fall -- and the figures are way too clear. Alumni give more than alumnae even in the early years. They give more absolutely and they give more per capita. The best thing in the WORLD is an alumnus/alumna marriage -- they not only give more money but they often send us one or more of their offspring at full tuition!

That said, William Smith admissions are indeed tougher. Deal with it. We can't afford gender blind admissions -- the Ivies gave up need blind, after all!

My archive is a bit blogspotted up right now. Just click on my homepage, or go to http://www.crimen_falsi.blogspot.com

I've been doing continuing research on the situation, and it's not as simple as Michigan being deceptive in court. The plaintiff's attorneys may have also missed some opportunities as well. It's disappointing that a landmark case like this would be so marred with factual errors and deceptions.

DL,

Would your country be Soviet Russia, by chance? ~ Ritchie Aprile

Very funny, Ritchie. Because, as we know, Soviet Russia was sooo good at inculcating personal responsibility and valued individual achievement so much (evidently you chose to bypass the entirety of my post).

As a matter of fact, I come from Portugal. As in, the country that hosted the pre-war on Iraq coallition summit. Or, as in, the country whose political alignment in 1976 helped the rest of the democratic West win the Cold War.

DL,

I think one difference might be whether girls are doing better because boys are doing worse, or because everyone is improving, and girls are just improving more than boys. If everyone overall is learning more and becoming proficient at things at an earlier age, then I agree there is no problem.

But some of the research here is indicating that the girls are doing better because the boys are doing worse. I do think there is a problem when an entire demographic group goes downhill. I'm sorry, I can't cite any specifics yet, as I have not read The War Against Boys, this is just from people in education that I know have been looking into this.

That might be one explanation at any rate, for why people might be worried here, but not in Portugal.

Catherine

DL the Portugese experience you describe does not seem remarkably different from that of much of Western Europe particuarly as it relates to competition and gender-blind admissions.

As you note about Portugal the results you portrary provide some support for the assertion that a focus on merit-based competition (rather than one geared at rectifying a historical imbalance) has resulted in more rapid achievement for women in Portugal than would a program designed with that in mind.

To what do you attribute the lack of race-based affirmative action in Portugal? Is there a belief that society is more homogenous? I realize you have traditionally had immigrant groups particularly from Africa but wonder if the 'idea' of homogeneity had some impact on the absence of race-based programs.

Has race played a role in recent elections or is the issue portrayed more as one of economics relating to undocumented workers rather than race.

In the U.S. it seems that the politics is structured vertically and we have political fault lines of race (affirmative action), relgion (school prayer, vouchers, abortion), etc.

This in part explains why racial/social issues appear to dominiate U.S. politcal issues. Does the fact that politics in Portugal might play out more on horizontal/economic fault lines minimize this racial focus? For example, does the Portugese Socialist party, whether when in power or out, ever play racial issues up. Similarly - how do the Social Democrats apprach race?

But if Business Week and USA Today can come up with opposite conclusions, I suspect there is in fact no discernable trend, other than those who wish to sell magazines and newspapers can generate.

This is the sort of material that used to be included in college courses that gave responsible citizens-to-be some basic tools for gross evaluation. Books like How to Lie With Statistics were assigned. The false premises of "if present trends continue" arguments were dissected. In fact, I remember teaching a class each semester on the latter in freshman comp.

I'm glad to see some entries in the comments section giving these pieces the credit they deserve.

I agree with DL. I am also a foreigner to this country and I'd say I have the same conclusion: girls are dominating the classrooms. I am not saying that boys are dumb. But if everyone listed down the names in our grade school and high school honor roll, the names would generally be women's, gays', and gayish boys'. All I'm saying is that girls develop much earlier than boys. Most grandparents and parents were the first to notice this long before the first scientific research on the subject. Girls just talk and write earlier than boys. The developmental gap seems to be more pronounced in early childhood through adolescence but narrows down in adulthood. By college, even though women are still outnumbering men, the developmental gap is closing. College men have a much higher success rate than their grade school and high school counterparts. Perhaps, the trend might even be reversing in favor of men as they mature.

Since I came to America in 1993, I have taken some additional night and weekend courses at a few colleges and universities in different states. The courses are designed for working adults. I don't have any scientific research for this, but what I observed in the adult classroom is the complete opposite of my experience in grade school and high school. In adults over 25 years old, not only are there almost as many men as there are women in the dean's list, men generally seem to be at the top of the list in every single school I attended.

I haven't read any studies out there on adult education so once again, this is purely anecdotal.

In the Philippines, we have remedial classes. These classes are open to all but are mostly attended by boys. The program seems to work in bringing boys up to speed with the girls. In the island I grew up, we didn't have single-sex education. But in Manila the Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, and Benedictine monks have single-sex schools all over the place. The boys from these schools clearly outperform the boys from co-ed schools at every level. Since the girls are already doing so well in co-ed schools, I don't know how much they are benefitting from single-sex schools, if they are at all. But hyperactive boys seem to benefit the most from single-sex ed. The boys from these schools perform just as well as the girls if not better and they consistently comprise the most successful men in college.

I don't think the answer to the boy-crisis is affirmative action. My initial instinct on it when I came to America was to resist. But there are things the schools can do. Remedial classes can be set up with a more boy-friendly orientation that employs more kinetic methods and materials that are of natural interest to boys. Or those methods may even be employed in the regular classroom too, for as long as they don't slow down the girls. Or a more drastic approach would be to separate the boys from the girls until grades 4 or 5 and integrate them thereafter. Or simply lower the age for girls to enter kindergarten and raise it for boys.

I think the developmental gap between boys and girls is real. The signs are simply too ubiquitous to iqnore. I think childhood is the most critical moment to address this gap because this is where educators build the foundation. This is where boys get their first taste of school. That taste is very critical to their performance later on.

Here's a possible interpretation of the differing conclusions that nobody (in this post, at least) seems to have thought of.

All of the numbers in the column are given as percentages: "42% of male applicants were accepted last year, compared with 32% of female applicants".

Yet we also know that there are more women graduating from high school and college than men.

My guess is that the percentage of women is smaller, but the *absolute number* is not, because more women are applying.

For instance, if you have 500 women applicants, and 100 get in, you've granted admittance to 20% of the women. If 240 men apply, and 80 get in, you've allowed in 33%. If all you say is that "33% of male applicants were accepted last year, compared with 20% of female applicants", then you're obfuscating the fact that the same number of women and men actually got in -- the problem was not that men are receiving some kind of affirmative action, but that more women applied! It puts a completely opposite spin on the problem -- where the percentages imply that men are receiving some kind of advantage in admissions, the numbers show that not only are fewer men applying, fewer are being admitted as well.

Bottom line is affirmative action on the basis of race or gender or any other biological trait is wrong and places an undue advantage on a class of people based on assumptions about those traits. Because of this, affirmative action is inherently prejudicial. No woman should have to give up her seat in the classroom for any man who doesn't deserve to be there. But awarding more points to SAT scores, by itself, doesn't seem to indicate a clear boy-affirmative-action even if it can be used for that purpose. SAT scores have always weighed heavily in college admissions. That may not be right but that definitely predates the decline of boys in college long before any research revealed that boys outperform girls in SATs. It seems to me that the real question then is not whether SATs were designed as an affirmative action program for boys, but whether the weight of SATs and GPAs are justified at all: whether SATs are better indicators of learning and retention than GPAs or whether reversing or equalizing them more accurately reflects knowledge.

One more thing, I don't think SAT scores are on the same level as skin color and gender, no matter how misguided SATs may be. Scores can change: color and sex cannot. But if universities are giving boys points purely in pursuit of diversity, then it is just as unjust as Michigan's affirmative action policies.

What Eric said. The USA Today article is actually rather meaningless and certainly doesn't represent a refutation of the trend pointed out by Business Week. If more women are graduating High School and thus more women are applying for college, then you would expect the acceptance percentage to be higher for men. The USA Today numbers actually support the points made by the Business Week article.

Which is why John Bruce's post is inadvertently humorous when he indicates that reasoning skills are so important when two articles show opposite results. A significant part of reasoning skills is being able to compare two things accurately. The first step in that process is skipped by the majority of people, but is vitally important--make sure you have a baseline equivalence to begin your comparison.

Still, it's an easy mistake to make when statistics are being thrown about and shame on USA Today for publishing such a misleading article.

We're still on reasoning and analytical skills here, it seems to me. USA Today and other posters are citing individual institutions in (apparently) individual years. At least two institutions cited, Pomona College and William and Mary are, based on my understanding, "non-selective". To reach a more intelligible conclusion, you would have to track institutions as a "selective" or "non-selective" class over multiple years. My point is that two half-baked arguments are canceling each other out, and it's hard for me to see how you could conclude otherwise.

This all goes back to what any second-grader knows up front: the teachers prefer girls to boys, because they're more malleable. But others argue that boys do better because they're not afraid to raise their hands and participate in class, and the teachers prefer that. Either side of the argument comes down to one or another version of this chestnut.

But even if you're trying to prove USA Today is wrong, you're still relying on their very limited set of examples -- just a few institutions, just one year of data. This is the same misleading technique Business Week employs. Perhaps USA Today's three cases prove the opposite of what they contend, but three cases don't make a trend.

John Bruce,

I'm not sure what your definition of "selective" is, but W&M and Pomona are both fine liberal arts colleges with low acceptance rates.

Granted, they are probably higher than the Starfleet Academy, but what are you going to do?

Excellent discussion. I remember something I read a long time ago in a textbook on cognitive and developmental psychology: Roughly, women tend to exhibit a narrower RANGE of intelligence than men. In other words, if you talk the average ultra-high brainy Nobel-winning achiver, that individual is more likely to be male than female. At the same time, those at the lowest levels of intelligence and academic achievement are also men. So men dominate the extremes, with women more clustered toward the center

Anyone know if this is true? If so, it might go some way in explaining why, now that educational opportunity is more available for women, they are (on average) catching or surpassing men, while men still dominate at the very highest levels. Obviously, other factors, such as the social considerations other posters have mentioned, might also play a role in boys falling behind.

To what do you attribute the lack of race-based affirmative action in Portugal? Is there a belief that society is more homogenous? I realize you have traditionally had immigrant groups particularly from Africa but wonder if the 'idea' of homogeneity had some impact on the absence of race-based programs.

Has race played a role in recent elections or is the issue portrayed more as one of economics relating to undocumented workers rather than race.

In the U.S. it seems that the politics is structured vertically and we have political fault lines of race (affirmative action), relgion (school prayer, vouchers, abortion), etc.

This in part explains why racial/social issues appear to dominiate U.S. politcal issues. Does the fact that politics in Portugal might play out more on horizontal/economic fault lines minimize this racial focus? For example, does the Portugese Socialist party, whether when in power or out, ever play racial issues up. Similarly - how do the Social Democrats apprach race? ~ Stolypin

Thank you for answering my comments. I will now try to answer Stolypin's questions (my apologies about the tardiness) here, as I don't like to write lengthy e-mails without knowing if people wish me to contact them like that! Stolypin, if you'd prefer me to e-mail you, let me know here on the board and I'll do so.

Anyway, first things first. The reason why there isn't any affirmative action based on race (or anything else) in Portugal is, I think, based on two factors. The first is that there is recent memory of a dictatorship (1928-1974) in which extraneous factors often were brought to bear on a person's life choices. As such, when the country became a democracy, I believe there was a strong push to extirpate that sort of thing and institute meritocratic advancement. Hence, affirmative action is inconstitutional.

Secondly, there's the fact that it would probably be impossible to enforce it in practical terms as it comes to race, due to miscigenation. That is not to say there is no racism (unfortunately, there is), or that there are no people of clear and close African descent. But due to centuries and centuries of mixing, it's sometimes difficult to know which race box to tick (that's why I was so flabbergasted when I left my country and first came across one of those - I took a long time pondering my answer!). For instance, I am partly Jewish, partly American Indian and would probably be able to pass for mixed race or Middle Eastern when I get a tan. Yet, my parents are both very fair-skinned, my mother with a stereotypically "Nordic" colouring. My parents would be identified as "white," but I find myself ticking the "white" box too when I'm darker than people placing their ticking elsewhere. It's not so much a question of homogeneity per se but of a lot of the whites not being quite white.

Incidentally, the all concept of affirmative action is one I had tremendous difficulty in explaining to my parents (there isn't even a word or a phrase for it in Portuguese). I think they believe that the only people who bring race into a discussion in which it does not clearly belong - such as, whaddyaknow, college admissions - are racists.

As for race playing a role in politics, I cannot answer you with 100% accuracy, but as far as I know, it plays none. You are probably right in saying that the issue is more one of illegal immigrants, but these immigrants tend to come from Eastern Europe (as in, Ukranian doctors working as bricklayers), so obviously race is not going to play much of a role. Maybe the fact that both drugs and prostitution are not illegal also prevents the creation of an underclass of immigrants.

As for party politics, I probably should point out first that the names of the Portuguese parties are somewhat deceiving, as they (the major parties) were created a long time ago. Politics changed radically, but their names didn't. For instance, tax hikes are one of the most unpopular things you can do in Portuguese politics, so people vote in parties with "Socialist" or "Social Democrat" in the name, but don't want what's in the can to correspond with what's in the label, so to speak. None of the major parties has, to the best of my knowledge, mentioned race as an issue.

I remember something I read a long time ago in a textbook on cognitive and developmental psychology: Roughly, women tend to exhibit a narrower RANGE of intelligence than men. In other words, if you talk the average ultra-high brainy Nobel-winning achiver, that individual is more likely to be male than female. At the same time, those at the lowest levels of intelligence and academic achievement are also men. So men dominate the extremes, with women more clustered toward the center. ~ Michael

This is indeed true, and I have observed it not just in data I've studied but also personally. There are IQ graphs showing the male spread vs the female spread, and I remember seeing some on-line. Unfortunately, I don't have the URLs at my fingertips. Also, from my own personal experience, in the top, say, 20% there are more females than males, but in the top 1% the inverse occurs. I was one of those top 1% females during my academic years (let's see if I haven't lost the old magic when I go back to studying ^_^), and the pattern of "people who do calculus for fun" was always something along the lines of me, another girl and three boys.

- DL

Or, as in, the country whose political alignment in 1976 helped the rest of the democratic West win the Cold War.

Fascist, pre-revolutionary Portugal was a proud member of 'democratic' NATO since 1955, I believe; and I can only assume that you're referring to some type of butterfly effect w/r/t the Cold War.

Schools always have favored students who can sit still and shut up. If anything, that's lessened over the last 30 years.

One thing that's changed is that kids are more likely to be growing up without a father. I suspect fatherless boys are less able to control their aggressive impulses and more resentful of female authority.

"And the gender gap in math and science has now virtually vanished in the classrooms even though boys still narrowly outperform girls in standardized tests."

So where's the problem? Do you want there to be a gender gap in math and science? Do boys have to outperform girls or something is wrong? According to Erin's stats in this very thread, colleges still prefer men to women of equal scores.

So what are you all sweating about? Women still don't make 100% of men's salaries, are still minorities in government, medicine, and higher echelons of business, don't get as much funding for sports.

And you feel threatened because girls are finally somewhat equal to boys in the classroom? Pathetic.

BTW I agree about letting active little kids run around and not have to sit in a chair for hours. Little girls too.

Fascist, pre-revolutionary Portugal was a proud member of 'democratic' NATO since 1955, I believe; and I can only assume that you're referring to some type of butterfly effect w/r/t the Cold War. ~ Ritchie Aprile

Pre-revolutionary Portugal was a member of NATO because, although neutral in WWII, they let the Allies set up strategically important bases in the Atlantic islands (which are still very much in use nowadays). You can use the word fascist as much as you want, but the dictatorship, despite being a dictatorship, was no bedmate of Mussolini's.

As for the Cold War, if following the period of political chaos in 1975, the country had become a Soviet satellite, given its geopolitical position, I have no doubt that the consequences for the world at large would not have been pleasant at all. Fortunately, as it turns out, it became a capitalist democracy.

- DL

I don't like counterfactual speculation too much, but this is the most hilarious incident of minor-country narcissism I've read recently. There was never any danger of Portugal becoming a Soviet satellite, first of all; and, if it had, it would have posed slightly more of a threat to NATO than a communist Luxembourg.

That's roughly the same brand of thinking which earnestly informed American voters that Soviet-supported Nicarauga was a clear and present danger to Texas, incidentally.

Portugal avidly supported Franco, and the only support it gave to the Allies came because of de facto annexation (with a dubious legal basis in an antiquated Anglo-Portugal treaty) of some Pacific bases they had no hope of retaining for themselves. Ideologically, Salazar's brand of corporatist republicanism was very similar to Mussolini's, though he had more respect for the rule of law (though with greater military relevance, who knows?)

"So where's the problem? Do you want there to be a gender gap in math and science? Do boys have to outperform girls or something is wrong?"

Exactly. Yehudith nailed it. If girls turn out to be more booksmart and to work harder, then so be it.

For me, the issue is not whether one sex "naturally" outperforms another, but how perceived inequities in our society are being used to justify anti-boy social engineering in schools. It was Christina Hoff Sommers who put into circulation the idea that boys are being shortchanged by the American educational system, and it was she who began circulating the statistics about boys' disappearance from school that are coming under fire in this thread. It's worth reading her May 2000 Atlantic Monthly article on the subject, and even more worth reading the book from which that piece was excerpted, The War Against Boys. Of particular interest is what she has to say about Carol Gilligan's enormously influential but undocumented "research" into girls' psychology, about the AAUW's skewed studies about gender dynamics in schools, and about the impact that ideologically motivated, factually challenged work has had on school curricula and policy.

Schools have become places which are focused almost exclusively on *the manipulation of symbols* --verbal symbols, for the most part. But there are many people for whom the manipulation of symbols does not come easily as a primary mode of thought. There are mechanics, for example, who are very gifted at visualizing a problem and the cause-and-effect chain that caused it, but do not achieve this understanding in verbal or quantitative terms.

It seems to me that, once upon a time, schools offered more activities that would help people make the bridge from the physical/intuitive modes of understanding to the symbolic modes. Examples include shop classes and laboratory science classes. But offerings of this type appear to be on the decline, making schools less welcoming to those who don't start out with a strong symbolic orientation. This does have gender implications, but I suspect that the class implications are even stronger....

I don't see how bringing up the reading skills of boys to the girls' level will necessarily reverse the girls' tremendous gains in math and science. We have been constantly taking radical steps in bridging the gender gap in business, law, politics, education etc. Indeed the gap is closing and may even be re-opening in favor of women. It would be then easy to mistake advocacy for boys as obstructionist to these advances. What boy-advocates have done though, particularly Christina Hoff Sommers, isn't to oppose these advances but to challenge the research that motivates some of these radical advances, particularly in education.

Studies by the American Association of University Women and other girl-advocate groups regularly show how girls are supposedly being shortchanged by the educational system. These studies have led to Congressional hearings on the Gender Equity in Education Act to address an educational crisis that actually pertains more to boys, even by the AAUW's standards, but instead rescues girls. All the leading indicators which measures the girls' problems in the classroom are in fact so much worse for boys: that in the classroom and with the AAUW's own standards, boys in fact are the ones in need of attention.

To put it simply, boys are the weaker sex in the classrooms. They are the ones behind and are less likely to attend college. The girl self-esteem problem, which recieved lavish attention in the 90's, pales in comparison to the boy's suicide-problem nor is it even as threatening as the boys' high drop-out rates. Girls are also getting better grades and joining and leading more clubs. In other words, at least as far as the educational system goes, girls aren't showing nearly as many effects as the boys that they are indeed being shortchanged. Not only are women actually doing better than men, it also seems that they do not need special programs like affirmative action and other self-esteem boosting legislation. Furthermore, it seems that the indicators that justified various girl-outreach aren't even accurate, in the first place.

This doesn't mean we should start raising the college application requirements for women and lowering men's. To the contrary, I think this is a clear argument for striking down gender-based affirmative action and instituting a uniform requirement for both sexes. Moreover, I don't think raising the the boy's reading skills and lowering their drop-out rate would necessarily lower the girls' science and math skills. Nor do I see this as inherently contradictory to equity in education.

---

As for the range of intelligence in men and women, I've read the same thing. Men are the idiots and the geniuses. But as Erin said, it doesn't matter. I doubt that a jobless, uneducated man somehow finds comfort in knowing that Bill Gates is the richest man in the world. In the end, his problems are his own and will not be mitigated simply by Bill Gates' success. Similarly, the social effects of failing boys will not be offset by successful men. If anything, their failure will be a major social problem for everyone later on.

Regarding Ritchie Aprile's post, I must say that I previously thought only hobbits lived in a fantasy world. Apparently, I was mistaken.

Back to the subject at hand, my friend Cathy Young wrote a long-ish and very lucid review of The War Against Boys. You can read it here: http://dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/06/21/sommers/index.html (no subscription necessary)

- DL

"counterfactual speculation" . . . now that phrase rings a bell. :)

DL - thanks for the informative response to my questions. Feel free in the future to either post them on the board or send me an e-mail. It is not my board but my theory of blog etiquette is - if the response is on topic (as I thought yours was) it is perfectly acceptable to reply on the blog. If the response is off topic or is tangential to the subject matter - e-mail might lessen the clutter. Guess Erin's thoughts would be dispositive on this point.

Your comments with regard to the meritocracy subsequent to Portugal's emergence from a dictatorship where non-merit based decisions were (apparently) the norm were fascinating. I could not have made that connection alone.

Stolypin and DL,

Fascinating exchange, entirely within the bounds of blogiquette as I understand it. Thanks for sharing it.

DL,

The only fantastic point I made might have been comparing Portugal's military significance to Luxembourg rather than say Zenda. The rest of the points are easily checkable by anyone who cares to read anything on the matter (excluding, possibly, material posted by freeper Salazar-apologists).

Ah yes

. . . counterfactual historical speculation . . . Zenda . . . freeper Salazar appologists . . . corporatist republicanism . . .

Welcome back.