August 2, 2006
I went for a walk this morning, like I do typically 7 days a week, and I noticed a bumper sticker on a car. It said:

My chihuahua is smarter than your honor roll student.

It brought to mind that gem: My kid can beat up your honor roll student.

My oldest son, Ian, is an honor roll student. In fact, my wife's truck sports a bumper sticker saying: My Son is an OMS Honor Roll Student.

And for those out there who think your kid can beat up my honor roll student, I'll just point out that Ian is a 3rd degree brown belt in Sanchin Ryu karate. Yes, it's possible your kid can beat up my honor roll student, but trust me, there are no guarantees.

Anyway, over on Rick Riordan's blog, he has reprinted a lengthy article from a British newspaper about gender-sensitive education and the apparent need to educate boys differently than girls, partly because boys aren't doing as well. Rick, now a fulltime author (I really, REALLY recommend his books, both the adult PI novels featuring Tres Navarre and the YA books featuring Percy Jackson; in fact, if you're an adult, I recommend the Percy Jackson novels even more) taught middle school for close to twenty years, and his comment is, "About time." Rick, like myself, has two sons, and in fact I think they're pretty close in age.

Do I think boys and girls are different? Well, duh. Yes. Is it societal? Or genetics?

Both. Society gives boys a lot of slack in the intellectual area and encourages sports and competitiveness to an unhealthy level. Probably girls are given too much slack in other areas, as well. Particularly when girls get into the middle school and high school years where they start purposefully acting stupid. It's unforgivable that society actually encourages that.

There was a column in TIME Magazine this week by a female author who sort of went "undercover" in the business world to see how women were treated differently than men. One of the incredibly disturbing, but probably true, things she pointed out was how the business world has gotten away from "intellectuals" and "brains" and encouraged the kind of "social buddyism" that resembled a fraternity house. I'm not sure I agreed 100% with what she said, but there were some definite truths to what she had to say.

So?

Hey, no real conclusions here. I'm a guy and I have two sons. I like raising sons. They're in karate, but they also play guitar. My oldest also plays bassoon and wants to be a writer. They're remarkable people, these two boys (Ian's closing in rapidly on "young man"), and I'm quite proud of them and hope they successfully pick their way through the minefield that is adolescence and young adulthood in a way that will make them strong, happy, successful men--successful defined by them, not society or necessarily their parents.

Best,
Mark Terry