By now, all our schoolboys and schoolgirls are back in the little red schoolhouses, studying diligently. Well, the schoolgirls are.
Books have been written, like “The War Against Boys,” to suggest that American schools are set up to favor girls, and there?s even talk that we need affirmative action to help these intellectually handicapped boys … or, if not, we?re going to end up with an American society of eggheaded executive women and ham-headed worker men, where the gals do all the heavy thinking, while da guys come home from their jobs flipping burgers and spend their downtime playing video games and watching poker and arena football on TV.
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This fall, 58 percent of the U.S. college population will be female, and more women stay in college and more apply all the time. When this freshman class graduates in 2010, the Department of Education estimates that as many as three out of every five diplomas will go to women.
Now, there are a lot of reasons that might account for this, including the dread possibility that the so-called weaker sex may be, well, simply smarter than we dim brutes. But I certainly think that at least some of this scholastic imbalance may be accounted for by the fact that, from an early age, boys are directed toward sports and rewarded more for their athletic prowess than for their classroom work. For boys, readin?, ?ritin? and ?rithmetic have been replaced by a new set of three R?s: Runnin?, reboudin? and let?s go to da replay.
And it isn?t just that classic inner-city delusion where little boys bet their future on becoming a great, multimillionaire sports superstar. No, in our middle classes, all too many parents push children to excel in sport so that their child might win a college athletic scholarship. This is the cockeyed system we?ve developed in the United States, wherein the free road to a college education is through a tennis court or a soccer field, while someone more accomplished in the school classroom has a harder time getting to the college classroom.
How else do colleges desperately try to attract more males? Well, even for those geeks who can?t play a sport, more and more colleges offer sports management courses. Yessirree bob, we are going to have the best-run sports franchises in the world. Of course, they?ll all be owned by Indians and Chinese … or women.
Another desperate admissions ploy is for small colleges to field football teams. It?s easily the costliest sport around, but football is a game played virtually only by men, so that helps to desperately inflate that shrinking male college ratio.
Well, there is one hope for us guys. Because of Title IX, more and more girls are being introduced to sports, and studies show that female athletes eventually start to act like their male colleagues. That is, their grades go down, and they lose interest in other campus activities.
Here?s our chance, men. Don?t protest Title IX. Support it. Get those little girls away from their homework and out on the playground, with us. It may be our only hope to keep running America in the style to which we fellas are accustomed.
Frank Deford?s column also appears as commentary Wednesdays on National Public Radio?s Morning Edition. Deford is a Baltimore native and an award-winning author who has written 14 books. He can be reached at [email protected].
