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| Male bonding in crisis of masculinity? | |
Johnny (arch-conservative) Howard had a little snipe at the ALP last month with comments about
public schooling lacking values and predictably, the politically dysfunctional
ex-schoolteachers in the ALP bit back with a litany of core values which their
publicly educated children
were learning - things like 'inclusion', and 'tolerance', and 'caring', and
'empathy', and lots of new ways of saying 'political
correctness'. Predictably, words like 'honesty' and 'responsibility' didn't
feature highly. Mark (Maddog) Latham pretended to be suitably outraged, but now
that the rabid snarling has died down, he's barking a different tune. Maddog is now calling attention to a 'crisis in masculinity' among men and
boys. One is tempted to suggest a relationship with Maddog's bout with
testicular cancer, but that would really be hitting below the belt. The ball-breaker for Maddog here is the push to allow a small number of
men-only scholarships by private schools. That is - affirmative action
for men. The worm has turned. Maddog is not yet willing to admit the ALP's role in this - but even the True
Believers would have to be wearing blinkers not to see the connection. One of the big justifications for affirmative action in the '80s was that
it was necessary to have role models for girls to see and aspire to. Exactly
why a women who was obviously
less competent than her male underlings would be a good role model was always a
bit of a mystery, but that point always got lost amongst the subsequent shrill
accusations of 'chauvinist' and
'misogynist'. It was, of course, always about subsidies for educated
middle class women masquerading as compassion for other
people. But their approach to the education system was more insidious. Quiet
suggestions of child
molestation drove men out of the teaching profession while 'flexible'
selection criteria at teacher's colleges (involving interviews by panels of
women) prevented men entering it, and eventually stopped most of them from
applying. Male primary-school teachers are now rare enough to stand out like
dog's balls. Mothers now send their sons to schools in which the gardener (the
most junior position) is the only adult male, and then wonder why their sons
exhibit behavioral problems. The family law court effectively removed the ability for separated fathers
to help raise their children, and the feminization of the education system
produced a shortage of suitable role models and further alienated the boys.
Curricular tampering, girls-only IT classes, and 'control' techniques
designed to 'stop the boys getting more than their fair share of attention'
all took their toll. When they go to high school, the strongest males they see are the older
boys in gangs, and then their single mothers wonder why their sons become
gang-members. (How could this happen? Today's education system is so
.. caring.) The boys see no future in school, they see no future in
education, and they now perform worse than the girls in every subject. Men are
generally more poorly educated, they suicide at five times the rate
of women, and die on average seven years younger. And now Maddog laments that so many men suffer 'depression and
alienation in society'. The ALP not only championed political correctness, but institutionalized
it. If Maddog wants to explore what went wrong he'd better be prepared to have
his nose rubbed in it. The ALP created this problem, and can't back out of it
without admitting it. The ALP is getting another political wedgie.
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